The docks were small, old, and worn. In places they badly needed repairs. There were only five piers, and from the size of the docks, there might never have been more.

  The town beyond had clearly been burned out and rebuilt. The construction was almost all new wood over stone foundations, and recently painted. Mostly single-story buildings, with a handful of two-story exceptions.

  Very little glass in the windows. Almost all merely shutters. In fact, the only building that looked to have glass in the windows was also the only building that stretched the three whole stories tall, somewhere about the middle of town.

  A half-dozen ships spread among the three center piers, so the Duke’s Hand joined the right-most one. Likely the captain didn’t trust the vacant piers, and Aefric couldn’t blame him.

  “Hello, Duke’s Hand,” someone called up, as deckhands were tying off the ship.

  “The harbormaster, your grace,” Captain Sikel said. “Henks. May I handle this for you?”

  “Please do, captain.”

  Sikel was a good man. He looked rough and weathered, and big enough to raise the anchor by hand, but he’d been sailing since at least Aefric’s street rat days in Sartis. Possibly even before Ser Beornric was serving page duty at his cousin’s castle.

  While his captain handled the arrangements and his knights organized the horses, Aefric retrieved his own luggage from below, which, to his chagrin, got him frowns from the deckhands.

  Apparently even here he wasn’t expected to carry things for himself.

  Nevertheless, he added his own luggage to Windsong’s saddlebags, strapped the Brightstaff to its sling, and was ready when Captain Sikel gave the all-clear to disembark.

  “Henks says he’ll have to send a rika to Duke Wylyn, saying your grace has come through,” Captain Sikel said. “But he wouldn’t make any fuss about searching your ship, or any nonsense like that.”

  “That’s fine,” Aefric said. “I’m not trying to hide that we’re coming. Thank you, captain. Shouldn’t be more than a few days, at the most.”

  “Well,” Captain Sikel said, frowning at the town, “if you don’t mind my saying, your grace, they look like they could use our custom in the meantime.”

  Aefric chuckled. “So long as your crew is fit to sail when I need them.”

  “Of course, your grace,” Captain Sikel said with a smile. “But then, no one survives long as a sailor if he can’t do his job hungover.”

  Ser Temat raised the Deepwater banner, and Aefric and his knights began their ride.

  While it was true that Aefric wanted to avoid Redport while his investigation into the slavers and smugglers was underway, it was also true that this was the fastest route to Castle Stormsent.

  By arriving just after the dawn, with a small group of good riders and horses, he could afford to take fewer breaks and reach Duke Wylyn’s castle before sundown.

  It helped, of course, that the days of summer were long.

  The winds were brisk off the Risen Sea that day, keeping the worst of the day’s heat at bay, and showing signs that a summer storm might be coming. A thought that made Aefric chuckle about Ler Osgood and his peppers.

  The lands he rode through, though, on the road to Stormsent, were no laughing matter. Aefric had seen scarring from the Godswalk Wars before, but not like this. What he’d seen down in Deepwater and the royal lands, that had been … normal.

  The sort of devastation from fire and warfare that might follow any major conflict, albeit on a larger scale than most.

  But what he saw around him that day…

  There were places were everything was fine. The land looked green and hale, if a bit browned from the summer heat. Farms, and small towns, largely intact.

  Other places, the kind of problems Aefric had expected. Former towns torn down, or burnt out, with no signs of rebuilding.

  But none of that was what made Aefric’s blood run cold on the long day’s ride to Stormsent.

  It was the sinkholes.

  Here and there, Aefric saw sinkholes large enough to swallow a farm.

  Three times, Aefric saw sinkholes large enough to swallow a town.

  And once, near a river, Aefric saw what he’d first taken for a valley. But it was not a valley. It was a sinkhole, miles wide, and even more miles long.

  And around every sinkhole, the land was dead. Sometimes for only a few feet. Sometimes for as much as a mile or more. Nothing but dry, flaky dirt that looked unstable, and certainly no good for crops.

  This was the damage wrought by the dybbungstad and their demon twins. Those sinkholes were where their troops came through to the surface, from their homes in tunnels far below.

  Which meant that … that new valley, that had to have been the main force of their army.

  It was a wonder Silverlake survived at all.

  Could even priests of the Green Lord help land so … devastated? Aefric didn’t know. But once those three disciples of Baron Osmaer’s finished their work in Deepwater, Aefric might offer to send them up here to help.

  If clerics of Halstaffur couldn’t restore this land, nothing could.

  As the afternoon wore on, and Aefric rode closer and closer to Castle Stormsent, he noticed he saw fewer and fewer of those awful sinkholes.

  Interesting. It suggested to him that the dybbungstad might have come to the surface in unpopulated areas.

  That was his hope anyway. Though he couldn’t shake the suspicion that every sinkhole represented an unprotected farm or settlement destroyed by the dybbungstad.

  Especially given the number of sinkholes visible from the road.

  Such thoughts made Aefric edgy and unsettled, but he felt as though turning his thoughts away would have been turning his back on the suffering those sinkholes had caused.

  This Dragonscar business. It seemed so small, beside the problems he was seeing. And yet, Aefric’s lands had been invaded. Spells cast. His own people wounded and killed.

  He could not afford to ignore that.

  If Duke Wylyn was behind it all, he would have to pay a price.

  Aefric wasn’t sure what that price would be. But as he thought about the devastation he’d seen that day, he hoped it wouldn’t mean another war.

  In heat of late afternoon, with the smell of fresh wheat in the air from nearby farms, Aefric and his knights were met among the hills about a half-hour outside of Stormsent.

  Which, according to road signs, was the name of the city around the castle, as well as the castle itself. Aefric found that naming convention a touch … narcissistic.

  But then, in his adventuring days, Wylyn had never been known for excessive modesty.

  The party that met Aefric was twenty strong, all knights, riding with lances in hand. They rode under Duke Wylyn’s banner, crossed black swords on a crimson background. But they carried another banner as well. A broad red X on a white background, which Ser Arras identified as that of Leofstan Ol’Laerallan, Baron of Mountain Home.

  Dusky-hued Baron Leofstan was a stout man, who favored golds and greens. He wore no visible armor, but the rapier at his side looked well-used, and the scars on his chin and the back of his right hand suggested he’d done his share of fighting.

  And he was carrying a token of magic. A bracer, on his left arm. Something protective.

  Introductions were made quickly, and Baron Leofstan began the conversation.

  “Your grace arrives with such speed,” he said, his voice a smooth tenor, as he bowed in his saddle. “We’d only just received your grace’s own rika, when a second arrived from Alimar’s Launch to tell us of your coming. Is all well?”

  “There is a matter of some urgency I wish to discuss with Duke Wylyn,” Aefric said. “It requires my presence, as well as my speed.”

  “And what matter does this concern?”

  “Meaning no offense to your lordship, the matter is for Duke Wylyn’s ears alone.”

  Baron Leofstan frowned. Gnawed at his lip a moment.

  “Does that present a problem for you, baron?” Aefric asked.

  “Well, your grace,” Baron Leofstan said. “It is only that this is … rather extraordinary. For your grace to come with so little advance notice. To arrive with a party of knights, insisting on speaking only with the duke himself…”

  “I am speaking to your lordship right now,” Aefric said. “And I travel with a party of knights as befits my station.”

  He made a show of looking around himself at the seven total knights of his entourage. Looked back at the baron.

  “Hardly an invading force, I should think.”

  “Does your grace swear that he comes in peace?”

  Aefric had to check his first answer to that. It had been a long day of riding through the heat, and he was already on edge from thinking about all those sinkholes and the lost and ruined lives and livelihood they represented.

  So he controlled himself through a long breath before he spoke.

  “I swear two things. First, that I have come only to exchange words on a topic that I suspect concerns your liege as much as it concerns me. Second, I swear that I am losing my patience with this ill treatment. I have done nothing to merit it.”

  “Well, your grace—”

  “My day has been long, and this delay grows tiresome. Is it your intention to put those lances to use?”

  “Well—”

  “I am done being challenged. Either escort me to your master, stand aside and let me ride my own way, or lower those lances and let’s have at it.”

  All around Aefric, his knights readied weapons while he himself pulled the Brightstaff from its sling, and ignited the yellow diamond at its tip.

  Baron Leofstan looked … irritated? Apparently Aefric wasn’t reacting the way the good baron anticipated. What was Aefric expected to do? Lay down his weapons?

  “I came here with peaceful intentions,” Aefric said. “But I will not yield to such as you.”

  One of the baron’s knights said something low and urgent.

  “There is no need for violence,” Baron Leofstan said at last. “I have come to escort your grace to Castle Stormsent, and see that he is made welcome.”

  “Lead on then,” Aefric said.

  Baron Leofstan had the gall to affect a puzzled expression. “Surely your grace will ride beside me.”

  “Under the circumstances I shall not,” Aefric said. “Nor shall I permit your knights to surround us.”

  “Your grace accuses me of subterfuge? Of dishonorable conduct?”

  “I accuse your lordship of nothing. Neither, however, has your lordship given me any reason to trust him. You and yours may lead, and we will follow. Or you may stand aside, and we will make our own way. There is no third option.”

  Baron Leofstan arched an eyebrow. “I could take offense at your grace’s words and implications.”

  “Then challenge me and have done with it,” Aefric said. “For I have already borne enough insults from you for one day.”

  Fury blazed in Baron Leofstan’s eyes. For a moment, Aefric thought the man might actually challenge him.

  That knight beside the baron spoke again.

  Baron Leofstan huffed out a breath. Gave a sharp bow with his head.

  “Your grace will have it as he wills then,” he said. “We shall lead.”

  He turned his horse around, while the rest of his knights did likewise. As they began riding, Aefric was certain he’d heard the baron say, “Adventurers!” as though it were a swear word.

  “That was probably excessive, your grace,” Ser Beornric said softly, as they started riding.

  “Do you think I was wrong?”

  Ser Beornric thought about that for a moment.

  “No,” he said finally. “Overall, you were quite restrained. The baron was more than a little rude, and everything you said and did was certainly within your rights. But you can bet he’ll have his say to Wylyn before you get to.”

  Aefric scoffed. “Duke Wylyn knows what kind of man the baron is. He might have sent him out here, hoping I’d do him a favor.”

  Ser Beornric snorted. “By killing him?”

  Aefric nodded.

  “You don’t really think that,” Ser Beornric said, but doubt was all through his voice.

  “Let’s just say I think it was one of the outcomes Duke Wylyn considered, and it likely wasn’t an outcome that would upset him overmuch.”

  Ser Beornric laughed aloud then, which got some of the Silverlake knights to look back, puzzled.

  Well, let them look. And let them take offense too. Aefric was getting tired of problems he wasn’t allowed to face down directly. A challenge or two while he was in Silverlake might just be a good thing.

  Not long after Aefric and his party met their “escorts” into Stormsent, he spotted the first watch tower. Made of stonework and standing three stories tall, it perched on the last tall hill before the approach to the city proper.

  “Odd that it’s not farther out,” Aefric commented. “From there they’ll lose sightlines along the hills.”

  “Those sightlines won’t hide an invading force,” Ser Beornric said. “Scouts, sure and small parties. But you can bet that the soldiers here know every blind spot left by that tower, and their own scouts watch them like hawks.”

  “Let me guess,” Aefric said. “They plan to draw enemies into those blind spots, where they likely have ambushes set up?”

  “It’s what I’d do,” Ser Beornric said. “It that was my watchtower. Find a way to turn those hills into a killing zone.”

  Once through the hills, Aefric got his first look at the city and castle Stormsent, as well as Lake Silver.

  Lake Silver was just south of the road, and in the late afternoon sun, Aefric though it looked more blue with hints of yellow, than silver.

  It also looked more like a pond than a lake. But then, Aefric had spent the last two seasons living beside the largest lake in Armyr, and one of the five biggest lakes in all of Qorunn.

  Beside Lake Deepwater, most lakes would look like ponds or puddles. This one, at least, was a pond.

  Both Castle Stormsent and the city around it looked squat and wide. Smokier, too. As though the homes and inns and taverns and such burned coal and coke, instead of proper wood.

  Either that, or Stormsent had more than its share of smithies, and those smithies were involved in a big project…

  Speaking of projects, Aefric saw the first signs of construction just past the last of the hills. Outside the boundaries of the closest farms, a long, wide trench was being dug.

  “Walls,” Ser Beornric said. “It seems the duke wants a wall to protect his farmers.”

  “With all the rebuilding they need?” Aefric shook off that line of thought. Duke Wylyn knew his needs and his resources. His decisions weren’t Aefric’s to question.

  Goodness knew that Aefric had enough on his plate already.

  Once past the farms, Baron Leofstan and his knights led Aefric’s party through the first of the already-standing walls. Stone, and twenty feet high by five feet deep, patrolled by soldiers in chainmail, carrying bows, not crossbows.

  The soldiers on the wall paid little attention as Aefric’s group rode through the open gates.

  Inside those gates, the city of Stormsent, and Aefric’s first thought was that it was dirtier here than he was used to. But then, the streets were narrow, and wound a bit as they passed between buildings full of curious eyes.

  Not just from the windows either — glass here, not just shutters as he’d seen in Alimar’s Launch — but many of the roofs were flat, and occupied by curious onlookers.

  Some waved, or called down greetings, but most simply watched.

  The baron’s route did not take Aefric through any town squares or marketplaces, or near to any impressive temples or other sights. In fact, if Aefric was not mistaken, he was being taken along a military route, and some of those corner buildings billeted soldiers, whose eyes were more watchful.

  Aefric could hear the sounds of a busy city. The hammering of smiths, woodworkers and other tradesmen. The hawking of peddlers. The shouts and cries and laughter and anger as people went about their days.

  He could hear these things. And he could smell the dirt and sweat, and cooking and baking food, and the coke of smithies and more burning coal besides.

  But he couldn’t see any of those people, except for the watchers along his route.

  “You realize, of course,” Ser Beornric said, “we’re getting the least interesting route he could possibly take us.”

  “The thought had occurred to me,” Aefric said. “Do you suppose he considers this my punishment for … whatever?”

  “Seems likely.”

  “Well, I hope it’s the shortest route then, so he can be rid of us.”

  If it was the shortest route, though, Aefric would have hated to see the longest. The sun had still been well above the horizon when he’d met Baron Leofstan out among the hills, but it seemed to be making better progress towards the Risen Sea than he was towards the castle.

  Another odd thing Aefric noted about this route. All the buildings along it were two stories tall. No single story houses or businesses — though he could see some in the distance, now and then, whenever they crossed a street — and nothing taller than two stories. Though Aefric was fairly certain he could spot taller buildings off in one direction or the other, as he crossed other streets.

  And the sameness of the buildings around him didn’t stop there. They were all painted the same dull, mud brown. They had windows and doors in the same places…

  “This whole route,” Aefric said. “I bet there are three or four others like it. All designed to confuse invaders.”

  “And here I thought I’d nodded off in the saddle,” Ser Beornric said. “Glad to know it’s not my mind that’s so dull.”

  “Oh, I bet there are points of strategic interest along this route,” Aefric said, “but good luck finding them if you don’t know where to look.”

  “Tell me you’re not thinking of doing this to Water’s End.”