But it was her mastery of the magic of clay and stone that was holding onto the day’s heat, and keeping the roof of the keep comfortably warm.

  The other nobles and knights had already arrived and begun scattering about into smaller groups, talking among themselves as they awaited the arrival of the baroness’ party.

  At Herewyn’s nod, the musicians — stringed groups scattered here and there, which made Aefric wonder how they coordinated — struck up a series of notes that grabbed everyone’s attention.

  “Your grace,” Herewyn said, turning to Aefric with a slight bow, “would you do me the honor opening the dance with me?”

  “The honor would be mine, your lordship,” Aefric said. And he tossed the Brightstaff into the air. At his will it flew over the crowd to stand on one corner of the platform, both out of the way, and still near at hand.

  The musicians struck up an Errantor rhythm then, which was a style of dancing where the women led and the men followed.

  Herewyn led well, and kept Aefric moving and turning smoothly around the roof. And everywhere they danced, more couples began to join in.

  “I don’t know how you do it, Herewyn,” Aefric said, as she gently spun him three times in place, before taking his waist and getting them moving once more.

  “Do what, your grace?” she asked, smiling and changing directions exactly on the beat.

  “You move with such refinement and ease that I feel like a clumsy ogre beside you. And yet, dancing, you make me feel graceful.”

  “Your grace is too kind,” she said, then lowered her voice. “And you exaggerate. You’ve obviously had training.”

  “I’m not talking about training,” he said. “What I’m talking about can’t be taught. It is a gift for movement from the gods themselves.”

  Herewyn’s cheeks actually flushed a soft pink.

  “Such compliments,” she said softly. “I might think your grace intends to invite me to his rooms tonight.”

  “I doubt anyone could dance with you and not be tempted,” Aefric said.

  The music came to a crescendo, and Herewyn dipped Aefric. For a moment, he thought she would kiss him. Instead, she smiled teasingly, and pulled him back to a standing position.

  “If your grace invites me,” she said softly, “I shall be most happy to accept.” She put one hand on his chest. “But I think my other noblewomen — to say nothing of my dear cousin — would accuse me of monopolizing your grace’s attentions.”

  Before Aefric could reply, Herewyn turned away to dance with one of her nobles.

  He chuckled and turned, to find one of his own knights standing before him.

  Vria. Small and pale, with golden eyes, hints of orange in her hair, and the perfection of features that left no doubt that some of her heritage was eldrani.

  She wore a simple, elegant gown of cobalt blue and adorned only one piece of jewelry. A cameo on a delicate golden chain.

  “Will you dance with me, Vria?” Aefric asked.

  “I would like nothing better, your grace,” Vria said with an impressively dazzling smile.

  After Vria he danced with Sighild, and then Onoalla, and Deirdre — who looked stunning in a gown of forest green — and then he began to lose track. Every time a song ended, there were women around who wanted the next dance. And Aefric felt it was his obligation, as duke, to dance with as many as he could.

  Still, after a couple of hours of dancing, he was more than a little grateful when Sighild suggested a small walk, rather than a dance.

  They made their way along the perimeter, arm-in-arm, and she was quick to steer them into the first nook they came across.

  It was quite nice in there. Private, with a wooden bench that looked fairly comfortable.

  “A wooden bench,” Aefric said with a smile, gesturing for Sighild to sit. “It’s a wonder Burrew allowed it.”

  “I think my cousin overruled her,” Sighild said, smiling as she sat. “With your grace in attendance, she’s been looking at the décor afresh, and thinking it may be time for floorboards and plaster. If only here and there, for variety.”

  “I agree,” Aefric said, sitting beside her. “Are you enjoying the dancing?”

  “I am,” she said. “Though your grace is in sufficient demand that I began to think the night would end before I had another moment of his time.”

  “I am the senior noble at the dance,” Aefric said, shrugging one shoulder. “Of course they want to dance with me.”

  Sighild cocked an eyebrow. “And how many of these noblewomen made clear their interest in sharing the noble privilege with your grace tonight?”

  “Likely about as many as the noblemen who made similar offers to you,” Aefric said. “And isn’t that the point of the noble privilege? To encourage the pursuit of bliss and discourage jealousy?”

  “Yes, your grace,” she said with a slight frown. “It’s just that, after the Feast I must return to my father’s lands. And then your grace leaves for Netar, and I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to—”

  Aefric’s attention was caught as a shadow moved to his left. He sensed no magic, but he was sure he’d seen movement among the bushes.

  “Wait,” he said, turning, moving one hand in front of Sighild to keep her from standing.

  Something flickered through the air past Aefric. Struck Sighild, who moaned softly and collapsed. Feathers, stuck to her chest just below the collarbone.

  A blow dart?

  “Assassin!” Aefric yelled, and raised one hand to call the Brightstaff to him. With the other he conjured a barrier. A sparkling transparent field that would block further such attacks.

  The real attack came from behind.

  It had been years since a blade had last entered Aefric’s body, but he’d never forgotten the sensation. Sharp, painful and surprisingly cold.

  And yet, following that moment of cold, this time he felt as though fire spread outward from the wound.

  Aefric could almost hear that fire, roaring over the chaos he’d caused among the dancers with his cry.

  Leppina and Temat rushed in, weapons drawn. But they were spinning.

  No. The world was spinning.

  No. It wasn’t. It was fading to black.

  Aefric collapsed.

  5

  So hot. But so cold.

  Now hot again.

  The world, a place of darkness.

  Darkness.

  Cold darkness.

  No. Hot darkness again.

  Now stabbing, painful brightness. Worse than darkness. Nothing to see, but that stabbing…

  Stabbing…

  Shivering hot. Sweltering cold.

  Twitching, twitching, twitching—

  Cramp. A word designed to describe a discomfort. A locked muscle. Didn’t begin to cover what those twitches became. They were, to cramps, what a great tsunami was to a ripple in bathwater.

  Heat returns. Blazing. His very bones sweating, sweating, sweating—

  Sweating icicles now. Solid block of blazing cold. Searing cold. Cold beyond…

  Cold beyond…

  Where did the cold go?

  Horrible cold it was. Fiendish. Surely proof that Aefric had sunk into one of the thirteen hells.

  The sixth? He thought it was the sixth that knew such cold.

  But he could think? He could number the hells?

  Did that mean a break in the cold? And the heat?

  But there were no breaks. The cold and the heat were all. Eternal, their war.

  If … if both were gone, what did that mean?

  Was this just the break afforded by some fell tormentor? Before visiting even worse tortures on Aefric?

  Wait.

  That sound. That rapid, fluttering sound…

  So faint. And yet…

  Something … familiar about it…

  Was that his heartbeat?

  Was he…

  Dare he hope it?

  Was he … alive?

  Aefric’s eyes dragged themselves open. Just a crack. No wider than slits. Still, the brightness of the room jabbed through his eyes. A sharp sting that ran to the back of his skull. Made him wince and groan.

  Well, all right. The groan came from more than just that sting.

  Aches.

  Oh, so very many aches.

  Now that he had some awareness of his body, Aefric realized that most of what he felt was stiffness. Painful stiffness. As though his body were encased in armor that had rusted into place, trapping him in an awkward pose.

  And there was a deeper ache spreading out from a place on his back. The left side. Just under the ribs.

  Everything about him hurt. Even his scalp.

  In fact, the only thing that came close to feeling good was letting out that first, loud, rasping groan. It gave some kind of relief to his chest and throat and jaw.

  “He’s awake! Your grace!”

  Deirdre’s voice, but his eyes still couldn’t make sense of the painful brightness that beat fresh pain through his skull with every rapid heartbeat.

  She sounded close, though. And someone with lots of rough calluses grabbed his left hand. Likely her.

  “Can you hear me?” Deirdre’s voice again, sounding worried.

  Wincing, and closing his eyes again, Aefric tried to nod. And from the way his neck muscles complained, he must’ve succeeded.

  Footsteps. Lots of them. Approaching?

  “Move back, please. Everyone. Move back.”

  Aefric knew that voice too. Bebara. His ducal physician, and a cleric of Nilasah, the goddess of compassion and the patron of healers.

  Deirdre released Aefric’s hand. He heard hushed whispers. And something else too. Something drumming and repetitive that wasn’t his heart. It came from outside his body.

  Rain?

  But that didn’t make sense. The skies had been so clear…

  Wait. Bebara was here? She’d come to Asarchai from Water’s End?

  Just how long had Aefric been unconscious?

  He felt the healer’s cool, strong hands. No calluses. Smooth. One hand on his clammy forehead, pushing him back down. Down onto a soft pillow.

  Her other hand ran slowly down his chest.

  His bare chest. He was naked. And he could feel sheets under him, but not on top of him.

  Bebara was whispering something in a language Aefric didn’t know.

  “Excellent,” she said. “We may need only one more effort.” Her tone sharpened a bit. “Your grace? Can you turn over?”

  Aefric coughed and cleared his throat, but still couldn’t get any words out. He settled for nodding again, though it was an effort.

  But rolling over? No. That was too much. He couldn’t even lift a leg or shoulder very far.

  “Beornric,” Bebara said.

  “I’ll help,” Deirdre said.

  Two pairs of strong, rough hands now, gently turning Aefric onto his belly.

  Wait. Aefric was naked on a bed. Deirdre was not only present, but physically moving him. Her hands on his naked body. And yet, she hadn’t made so much as a single joke or uttered a word of innuendo?

  Dear gods, he must be dying.

  Well, that would explain the sense of sheer tension in the room. He felt as though there were a dozen other people in there with him, and every one of them holding their breath.

  Well, not every one of them. Bebara was breathing. But she seemed to be the only one.

  The rough hands retreated, and the smooth, cool hands returned. Bebara gently pressed several different spots along his spine, as though testing something before touching the wound.

  None of those touches particularly bothered him. Was that good or bad?

  Her hands moved to the wound then.

  Frozen, those hands. Moving fragments of arctic ice. No, not just arctic. That sixth hell. Nerrazz.

  He jerked away by reflex.

  “Stay still, your grace,” Bebara said, then began murmuring in another language again, tracing her freezing fingers over that wound.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “One more treatment ought to do it. Delwit, hand me the pearl.” She clucked her tongue. “No, boy, the large one with the golden sheen. This is no mere concussion we’re treating.”

  Something hard and round on his back then. The pearl? If so, it had to be as wide as Aefric’s thumb was long. And it was warm, too. Especially after those hands.

  Why, compared to those icy, healer’s hands, the pearl felt a nice hot bath after a dip in freezing waters.

  Bebara began to roll the pearl back and forth. A short enough distance that there was no way the pearl ever completed a full rotation. And all the while, she kept up this low, soft chant.

  Aefric recognized only one word in that chant. Nilasah.

  Strange, though, the sensations he began to feel.

  It was as though something reached through the pearl into his body. Not painfully, though. Just a presence, moving through him. Spanning outwards to the limits of his skin, then sweeping back, though the wound, into the pearl.

  The presence had a soothing quality. All that stiffness and tension seemed to be eroding with each wave of presence moving through him.

  Sometime in there Aefric lost consciousness again.

  Aefric only realized he’d lost consciousness because he became aware of waking up again.

  This time was better.

  He was tucked into a bed. Warm. Comfortable. With blankets. He could hear someone breathing gently nearby. Little to hear beyond that, though. Maybe someone moving around, in the next room?

  If there had been rain earlier, it must’ve stopped.

  Slowly, tentatively, he opened his eyes.

  Bright sunlight came in through a wide, glass-paned window. Arched. And the walls and ceiling were plastered and painted white, with the Deepwater sigil done large on the wall facing him, near an open doorway.

  Was this Water’s End? The room was small and white and simple, but with a very nice red calinwood nightstand on one side — the Brightstaff standing beside it — and on the other, Deirdre sat in a solid calinwood chair.

  Aefric tried to speak, but his throat and mouth were too dry. All that came out was a choking kind of cough.

  “Your grace!” Deirdre said, turning quickly and taking his hand again, before turning to the open door and calling. “He’s awake!”

  Once more, Aefric heard boots rushing his way. Not as many, this time. And before they got there, Deirdre gave him a relieved smile.

  “Your grace gave us quite a scare.”

  He realized then that she looked exhausted. Wan. Her eyes puffy. And her long braid had frayed in so many places that loose hairs danced around her face.

  Aefric tried to say something about that, but those rushing people entered the room. Bebara in the lead. Ageless and vibrant Bebara, with her long, steely gray hair and her cleric’s robes of Nilasah yellow.

  At her heel, a shaven-headed youth in pale robes, who was doubtlessly an apprentice. Though that may not have been the word that clerics used.

  Behind them, Aefric thought he saw Beornric, Yrsa, and Karbin, but Bebara arrived first and demanded his attention. She shooed Deirdre back, and gestured for the apprentice to give Aefric a small cup of water.

  “Sip, your grace,” she said. “Sip slowly until your mouth stops absorbing all the liquid. Then try swallowing a little.” Louder, to everyone else, she added, “Stay back, please.”

  The water was cool, and sweet, and slightly minty.

  Aefric finished the whole cup without needing to swallow. His mouth had just been that dry. But Bebara didn’t seem surprised by that. She simply nodded once, and gestured to her apprentice for more.

  With the second cup, Aefric was finally able to swallow. The water soothed the whole way down his throat.

  “Please, your grace,” Bebara said, “recite your titles for me.”

  Aefric cleared his throat. Sipped a little more water.

  “I am Ser Aefric Brightstaff, Duke of Deepwater, and Baron of Netar. I want to say Knight of Armyr, too, to be complete, but I don’t think that counts as a title.”

  His voice sounded stronger than he expected.

  Bebara nodded once.

  “What do you remember about your injury?”

  The memories seemed to surface as he recited them.

  “It was the second night of the Feast of Dereth Sehk. I was at the dance, on the roof of Herewyn’s keep in Asarchai. Sighild and I had stepped into a nook for a little private conversation. We’d just sat on the benches when I saw a shadow move among the bushes.”

  He shook his head. “I tried to move Sighild back and investigate. But something flickered through the air.” He shook himself. “That blow dart. Is she—”

  “A sleeping poison,” Beornric said in calming tones. “Nothing more. She was fine by morning.”

  “Good,” Aefric said, relaxing. “I yelled a warning. Called the Brightstaff to me...”

  Aefric frowned, looking at it now, standing beside the bed. “How did it get here?”

  “It followed you, of course,” Karbin said, sounding like Aefric’s mentor again, amused when the student missed an obvious answer.

  “Please,” Bebara said. “No more questions, your grace, until the recitation is complete. Your grace called his weapon to him. What next?”

  “With my other hand” — Aefric raised his left hand, surprised at how easy it was to do so — “I raised a shield against missile weapons. But with my whole attention that direction, I was stabbed from behind.”

  “Tell me about the stabbing. Not the location or any of that drivel. Tell me what it felt like. Compared to other stabbings your grace has received, for I know this was not the first.”

  “Not the fifth, either,” Aefric said, pleased that he’d managed to sound droll. “Usually, the sensation of a blade entering my body is cold. And it was this time too. At first. But then fire seemed to blaze outward from the blade. Into me.”

  “You felt this fire,” Bebara said. “Did you sense it any other way? Did you see flames, for example?”

  “No,” Aefric said, frowning. “But I heard them.”

  “Good,” Bebara said, with a nod. “I read the poison correctly then. Your grace was stabbed with a blade that must have been dripping with dweomerbane.”