Nepanthe drifted round the Winterstorm, as ever wonderstruck. Once Varthlokkur had filled her hair with those glowing symbols… Another memory she did not want to relive.

She turned to her husband. They had been at odds for months because he had been so determined to shield her from the pain of learning that her son Ethrian had become a monster. He had been that insecure.

Enough! She teetered at the brink of a slide into a hell that existed only in the bleak realms of What If? and Might Have Been. This was now. Now was here. They two had to act as one. Innumerable divinations were iron about that.

Varthlokkur left the Winterstorm. He was exhausted. He took a seat. Nepanthe moved in close, to support him with the warmth of her presence.

In a whisper, he said, “Every day I drive myself to the verge of collapse, trying to hold back the night. But I don’t do any good.”

“Let it go. Turn away. Focus on us and the children. The fire will burn itself out without you.”

“Am I resisting the tide of destiny? Are my efforts pointless?”

“It may take everything you have just to raise Ethrian and Smyrena to be marginally sane adults.”

Varthlokkur nodded. The children were in his thoughts always. All four, not just Nepanthe’s babes. “I wish. But bad things happened. Some were my fault. I can’t help trying to make that right.”

Nepanthe did not argue. There was no changing his mind, be his choices good, evil, or just stubbornly unreasonable. And it was true that he had unleashed some of the darkness stalking the world today.

She asked, “What’s the situation now?”

“They’ve moved Bragi to Throyes. He’ll never break out, now, and even I couldn’t get him away from this place.”

“And Haroun?”

“One day at a time. Still headed home. Still sheltered by the fact that nobody knows he’s alive.”

“And you’re helping.”

“Not so he’ll notice. He’s hard. He’s convinced that he can go anywhere any time because he’s a master shaghûn now.”

Today’s Haroun resembled Varthlokkur at a similar age. Prolonged observation left the wizard feeling an eerie déjà vu.

Haroun had no boundaries. He could kill or be cruel without thought, remorse, or regret. He did terrible things to people who got in his way and lost not a minute of sleep. He would do the same on behalf of his friends. Or to his friends if they became silhouetted against his destination.

Varthlokkur did not sleep much anymore, not because of demands on his time. There were long stretches when his body felt no need. But there were other times, for a week or two, when he would sleep twelve hours a day. At present he needed only the occasional nap.