Haroun could not follow their dialect well but did figure out that their main motive was a need to please their father, who was a hetman and wanted them to come home with proof that they had done something brave.

Haroun’s own people were nomadic in the main. They enjoyed similar traditions.

The boys finally worked themselves up. They didn’t have to take foolish chances. They could tell the truth when the old men asked about their efforts to count coup. For that was what this was. Not really robbery but boys wanting to mark their transition into manhood.

Had an experienced warrior followed them? Probably not. A guardian angel would stand out on the plain.

The essence of the rite of passage was that the candidates had to do for themselves.

He gave them ten minutes, then entered their camp. They were not fastidious. He placed a gold coin in each of their leather jacks, then readied their horses. One gentle spell kept the ponies quiet. He led them to the trace that passed as a road headed into the desert kingdom.

The villain who had given up those coins would not object to them passing on to boys who needed something good to happen.

Haroun wished he could be a fly buzzing round when they, absent their ponies, returned to their people carrying gold enough to buy a herd.

Varthlokkur had restrained his darker nature in order to spend an afternoon with the four strange children who constituted his makeshift family. Only Smyrena was his own get. Ethrian was his grandson.

Even to him it seemed odd to have a grandson so much older than his daughter. But it was a bizarre world. He had added a few bricks of strange himself.

Ethrian was a thin, dark youth. In his best moments he had haunted eyes. Madness was his relief from memories of being the Deliverer, a monster managed by a revenant evil that considered itself a god. The Deliverer used its armies of the dead to punish the wrong people for injuries he imagined had been done to him. The revenant had misled him.

Escaping had cost Ethrian love and sanity, a price not yet fully paid.

Some days he did nothing but lie curled in a ball. Others he sat and rocked, eyes vacant, an age and countless miles away. His mind held millennia of memories not his own. He was never sure what was then and what was now.

The wizard did what he could to keep the boy anchored. He had no faith in the boy’s chances for recovery, yet did his best for Nepanthe’s sake. She would not concede any chance that Ethrian could not be saved

Smyrena could be a spooky little beast, normal one moment, possessed the next. She did not cry. She seemed too alert and attentive for an infant. She enjoyed the presence of the Unborn. Varthlokkur found that dreadfully unnatural. Radeachar was an instrument. It ought not to have friends.