Utta ignored that, looking around the room, trying to spot anyplace that someone might hide and spy on them. The chamber had no windows, and since the duchess’ part of the residence was on the topmost floor, nothing lay above them but the roof. Could someone be up there, crouching beside the bedchamber’s small chimney, listening? But surely they would hear anyone moving about up there, or the guards would spot them.

The two women sat together in silence for long moments, waiting to see if anything would come of the strange request and Merolanna’s accession, but at last the duchess raised herself shakily from the bed. “Whatever happens, I cannot in good faith keep you here all day, although it is a comfort to see you, Sister Utta. I do not trust many of those around me, and none of those who have sided with the Tollys, those damnable traitors.”

“Please, my lady, not so loudly, even in your own chambers.”

“Do you think they would have me tried and executed?” Merolanna laughed with something that sounded almost like pleasure. “Ah, but I’d scorch them first, wouldn’t I? I’d speak my mind and burn the skin from their ears! Hiding behind a baby like that, claiming to protect Olin’s throne when everyone knows they’ve been itching to get their hands on it since his poor brother died.” She waved her hand in disgust. “Enough. I will walk you to the door. It is time I get out of this room, before I start seeing the phantoms I’m speaking to.”

Merolanna bid her good-bye, offering her Eilis to walk back with her, but Utta politely refused. She wanted to walk by herself and think about what had happened.

Before she got two dozen steps down the hall, the door opened up again and Merolanna called after her in a cracked, frightened voice.

“Utta! Utta, come here!”

When she returned to the rooms, she let Merolanna lead her with trembling hand into the bedchamber. There, in the middle of the bed, lay another piece of paper—a torn scrap of parchment this time, but the writing was in the same crabbed, ancient style.

“Come to us to-morrow an howre after suns set, in the top of the Tower of Summer.”

14

Hunted

Then Zmeos and his siblings reappeared, and disputed the right of Perin Skylord and his brothers to rule over heaven, but the three brothers met their scorn with peace. For a long time they all lived in uneasy alliance until the eye of Khors fell on Zoria, Perin’s virgin daughter. Khors coveted her, and so he stole her from her father’s house, taking her to his fortress.

—from The Beginnings of Things
The Book of the Trigon

SOMETHING WAS TUGGING at his hair.

Ferras Vansen had been lost in dreams of sunny meadows, but even in that fair place something dark had been lurking in the grass, and now it took him a few heartbeats to shake off the grip of the fearful dream.