Lord Sylvarresta’s eyes widened, and sweat poured from him. But it was a sheen of excitement, an almost demented thrill. His eyes glowed with joy, and every line in his face, every muscle, relaxed.

He had the decency not to sigh, not to make a great show of his pleasure.

Binnesman rushed up beside Iome, leaned near. His breath smelled of anise. His robe was a garment of darkest green, woven of some strange fabric that looked like mashed roots. It had the rich, clean scent of herbs and spices, which he kept in his pockets. His hair had grasses woven into it. Though he was not a handsome man, with fat cheeks as red as apples, there was a certain sexual quality to him. Iome could not have him so near without feeling aroused, a distinctly annoying sensation. But Binnesman was an Earth Warden, a magician of great skill; as such, his creative powers tended to affect those around him, whether he willed it or not.

He knelt down and with dirt-stained hands felt the pulse in Dewynne’s neck, his face looking grave, worried.

“Damn that worthless facilitator,” Binnesman muttered softly, fumbling for something in the pocket of his mud-stained robe.

“What’s wrong?” Iome breathed, not daring to speak loud enough for others to hear.

“Hyde’s using the Scorrel version of chants, draining these people too much, hoping I can mend them. Dewynne would not live another hour if I weren’t here, and he knows it!”

Binnesman was a kind man, a compassionate man. The kind who took pity on fledgling sparrows when they fell from a nest, or who would nurse a grass snake back to health after it got crushed by a passing oxcart. His sky-blue eyes studied Dewynne from under bushy brows.

“Can you save her?” Iome asked.

“Perhaps, perhaps. But I doubt I’ll save them all.” He nodded to the other Dedicates, who lay on their cots, some fighting for their lives after giving up an endowment. “I wish your father had hired that facilitator from the Weymouth school last summer.”

Iome understood little of the various schools of facilitators. The competing masters could be quite vociferous in proclaiming the superiority of their schools, and only someone well versed in the various breakthroughs and ongoing experiments in each school could really judge which was best on a given day. Some master facilitators excelled at processing certain kinds of endowments. Hyde was an excellent man for taking endowments of hearing and smell—endowments her father considered most valuable in a forest kingdom. But his work on major endowments—on taking stamina and metabolism in particular—suffered in comparison. At least, unlike some facilitators, he did not spend a fortune in blood metal to do research on dogs or horses.