A spell of location required burning a part of a person. Hair was the obvious choice, but fingernails or even skin would work. The day after Esrahaddon’s death, she had requested delivery of any personal belongings left behind by the missing leader of the Nationalist army. Parker had sent over an old pair of Degan Gaunt’s worn muddy boots, a tattered shirt, and a woolen cloak. The boots had been useless, but the shirt and cloak held many treasures. Scraping the surfaces, she had retrieved dozens of blond hairs and hundreds of flakes of skin, which she carefully gathered and placed in a velvet pouch. At the time, she had convinced herself she merely wanted to see if the spell would work. When she had started the incantation, she had no intention of acting on the results. Now she was unsure what to do next.

To Esrahaddon, the heir had meant everything. Since leaving Gutaria, the wizard had dedicated his life to finding the emperor’s descendant, even coercing Arista to assist him by casting a spell in Avempartha to identify the heir and his guardian. The guardian she had recognized immediately as Hadrian; however, the heir she had never seen before. The blond-haired image of a middle-aged man had been just a face until after the Battle of Ratibor, when she learned that he was Degan Gaunt, the leader of the Nationalists. There was no doubt that the New Empire was responsible for Gaunt’s disappearance, and the smoke’s color confirmed he was alive and held somewhere to the north within a few days’ travel. She stared at the wall where the smoke disappeared.

“This is crazy,” she said aloud to the empty room. I can’t possibly go in search of the heir. The empire has him and they’ll kill me on sight. Besides, I’m needed here. Why should I care about Esrahaddon’s obsession?

If Arista wanted, she could declare herself high queen of Rhenydd and the citizenry would welcome her. She could permanently reign over a kingdom larger than Melengar and be rich as well as beloved. Long after her death, her name would endure in stories and songs—her image immortalized on statues and in books.

She glanced at the neatly folded robe on the corner of her desk. It had been delivered after Esrahaddon’s burial. The sum of all the wizard’s worldly possessions amounted to just this piece of cloth. He had devoted everything to his quest, and after nine hundred years, he had died without fulfilling his mission. The question of exactly what that mission had been nagged at her. Loyalty to the descendant of a boy ruler from a millennium ago could not have driven Esrahaddon so fanatically—she was missing something.

“They will come.”

What did that mean? Who is coming?

“Without the horn everyone dies.”