“No one will come with you,” Binnesman said, stepping in front of her. “You cannot draw near, Raj Ahten—any more than can your dogs, or your warriors.” Binnesman menacingly crushed leaves in his hand.

Dogbane. Even when it was not in the hands of an Earth Warden, dogbane was as potent at driving away dogs as Solomon’s Seal was at frightening off cobras. Raj Ahten’s men began backing from the statues. The dogbane would not kill them. Yet their dogs’ noses feared the scent.

“Why have you come here?” Raj Ahten demanded of Binnesman. “This is none of your affair. Leave now, and no one will harm you.”

“More importantly,” Binnesman said, “why have you come here? You are a king of men. Did you hear the trees calling?”

“I heard nothing,” Raj Ahten said.

But Binnesman shook his head. “There are runes of concealment all about this place. Powerful runes. No man could have found it alone. Some greater Power drew you.” He nodded knowingly, and his tone broached no argument.

“Perhaps . . . I did hear a whisper, Earth Warden,” Raj Ahten said. “But it was very faint, like the voices of the dead.”

“That is good. You are strong in the earth powers, and only they can preserve us. The end of an age is upon us. If our people are to survive, we must hold council. Earth called you, Raj Ahten, just as it calls to kings you have enslaved. Can you hear it now?” Binnesman stood at ease, gazing deep into Raj Ahten’s eyes.

“I feel it,” Raj Ahten said. “This place is strong in the Power that you serve.”

Binnesman leaned on his staff. The light of fireflies shone on his face, which had an odd tint, a metallic sheen. Perhaps Binnesman had once been human, but his devotion to Earth had leached him of some of that humanity. Jureem realized that the wizard was perhaps as alien to mankind as any frowth or ferrin.

“And what of you?” Binnesman asked. “Could you serve this Power? Could you serve something greater than yourself?”

“Why should I?” Raj Ahten asked. “My flameweavers ask me time and again to give myself into greater service to their Fires. But why should I? The Powers do not serve man.”

Binnesman cocked his head, as if listening deeply to Raj Ahten’s words. “But they do—oft times, when our purposes agree. And they serve in return those who serve them.”

“Grudgingly they return service, when they serve at all.”

Binnesman nodded. “I am troubled by your lack of faith.”

Raj Ahten responded, “As I am troubled by your abundance of faith.”

Binnesman raised a bushy brow. “I never sought to trouble you. If I have offended, I beg forgiveness.”