He snorted, and the smaller borog snorted a moment later.

  “They want to prove themselves first,” Ser Beornric said, looking surprised. “I can respect that.”

  The other knights nodded, and seemed to regard the borogs a little better after that.

  The borogs did eat, at least, though not nearly as much as Aefric expected, given their size. Of course, that was for the best, since they’d only brought so much food, and the hunting here didn’t look good.

  After dinner, Ser Arras stood and sang for a while.

  She didn’t sing often, which Aefric considered a pity. Her voice was as beautiful as her face, and she had the looks to give credence to the rumors that she was Duchess Arinda’s bastard child, conceived and born while Arinda was traveling abroad.

  She tried to minimize the comparisons by keeping her own black hair cut short. Though from what Aefric had been told, the hazel of her eyes was almost identical to that of the late duchess.

  The song she sang was one Aefric had never heard before. It told the story of a dragon that had come to Deepwater through the lake, from the other side of the world.

  It was a dragon with sixteen legs and four wings and eyes like crescent moons.

  The dragon perched on the Threepeaks Mountains and cried a challenge to all comers. Threatening to raid if not satisfied in battle.

  The way Ser Arras sang the tale, scores of knights and wizards tried their best, but all fell before the beast.

  But then a young squire, the bastard son of the king, went up to the dragon on his own. No weapon in hand. No armor to protect him.

  He climbed the mountain not to fight the dragon, but to sing to it.

  The young man, it seemed, had a voice whose beauty would make the stars weep. And he sang to the dragon of his people. Of their goodness. And of how they loved life.

  The dragon was smitten. Fell straightaway in love with the young man.

  The young man stayed up there with the dragon, and sang to it every night. He lived on food brought up by others and left as offerings.

  For decades, the man sang to the dragon every night. But men live shorter lives than dragons. And one day, the man sang no more.

  The people who lived at the foot of the mountain where the dragon had made its home, they shook with fear when they heard silence one night where they’d expected the echoes of the man’s songs.

  They began to send messengers to the nobles, begging for warriors and wizards to come and save them. For surely now that the man was dead, the dragon would come for them.

  And the dragon did come.

  After three nights of silence, the dragon took to the air and swooped down on its four mighty wings.

  But the dragon did not come to raid. The dragon flew past the village, out over Lake Deepwater and set the dead body of the beloved man gently on an island in the delta where the lake flowed into the river Haven. And then the dragon went back into the lake, and was never seen again.

  But the man was buried where the dragon set him. And a castle was raised on that spot. And a city built around the castle.

  Both city and castle were named for the man.

  Behal.

  When she finished her song, Ser Arras sat again. But the smaller borog stood and sang.

  Aefric couldn’t follow the song. Didn’t speak enough of the language. But it sounded poignant.

  He was trying to puzzle together what he could about it, when he felt a ringing sensation through his bones, and an urge to turn his head to the side.

  The sensations of an incoming message spell.

  A moment later, he heard Karbin’s voice.

  “Swift Wave secured. Few losses. Second wizard captured. Wizard in green was passenger, not crew. Still investigating. Will update tomorrow.”

  A passenger. Why would smugglers carry a passenger? And why would a passenger have been ready to cast exploding fire in defense of a smuggler crew? Why not simply surrender and claim innocence?

  Nelazzi. The wizard in green had to be a connection to Nelazzi. Maybe along to ensure they did her bidding?

  Aefric found himself contemplating different possibilities there, as he drifted off to sleep that night.

  But he was dreaming of Princess Maev when the call to arms rang out.

  In Aefric’s dream, Maev’s large, soft gray eyes were smiling down at him. The curve of her lips and set of her fine jaw looked smug.

  He’d been out hunting in the woods near Water’s End. Separated from his guards, as he’d crept along a deer trail.

  Which, of course, was when Maev had pounced on him.

  He hadn’t known she was there. No surprise. She wasn’t just any scout, but a fully trained forester, comfortable in any remote environment.

  She was good enough that he could have been standing right next to her, and never seen her.

  Instead, she and her forest lynx, Sylkanis, jumped down from the branch of a tree. Sylkanis landed beside him, but Maev tackled him to the ground. Knocked the bow from his hands, and pinned his wrists to the pine needles and dirt beside his head.

  She was wearing her buckskin clothes, which in the dream hugged her slender curves even more than they did in waking life. And Aefric was very aware of how she sat astride him.

  “Caught you at last,” she said, voice teasing. “Right where I want you.”

  Aefric was pretty sure he’d been about to say something about how glad he was to be caught, but his guards must’ve seen her take him down, without recognizing their princess.

  “To arms!” someone shouted. “Wake and ware! To arms!”

  Wake and ware? Why would…

  The dream dissolved into the starry sky and brisk cold of night in the Dragonscar. The air still smelled of the sea, and of the roast chicken stew they’d had for dinner.

  The fire burned low, but shed enough light for Aefric to make sense of the commotion he heard.

  Knights donning armor. Soldiers grabbing pikes.

  The clash of weapons.

  But something sounded wrong. Not the clash of metal on metal. More like metal on … stone?

  No. That didn’t make sense. He must still be sleep-addled.

  Aefric kicked aside his blankets and came to his feet. He still wore that quilted tunic of Deepwater gray, but beyond that he had on only undergarments. And he didn’t want to waste time putting on pants.

  The Brightstaff leapt to his hand.

  “Guard your eyes,” he yelled, and flared the yellow diamond atop the Brightstaff to light up the night like daytime.

  He heard hisses and groans from a few others, who hadn’t looked away in time. But that was a small price to pay for the chance to see what was going on.

  The camp was under attack. And the defense wasn’t going well.

  Already he could see six of his soldiers on the ground, wounded or worse. While others were doing battle with…

  Four men.

  No. Not men. They were simulacra of men, formed from the same brown rock as much of the Dragonscar. Like statues, given life.

  And the pikes of his soldiers were doing nothing to them. Neither were the arrows shot by the archers, kneeling to the sides of the fight.

  Aefric took to the air, seeking a better vantage point for his part of the battle.

  Just then, the two borogs charged.

  They were unarmed and unarmored. In fact, they wore nothing more than that sack cloth with rope belts that the slavers had made them wear. And yet, they’d split off to opposite sides of the camp, lowered their horns, and charged.

  They charged the same simulacrum. Hit it from both sides with their horns.

  Chips of stone flew. The simulacrum hit the ground.

  Aefric blasted it with lightning from the Brightstaff.

  The simulacrum barely looked scorched, and didn’t so much as slow its movements.

  This wasn’t good. His soldiers couldn’t hurt those things. The borogs had done some damage, but not much. The one they’d taken down was already rising to its feet. Fists raised to do battle.

  And two more of his soldiers had fallen, while Aefric had accomplished nothing himself.

  Fear gripped his guts. Not for himself. No. The fear he felt was for his soldiers. Flinging themselves into the hazard, while their comrades fell about them, and their own weapons seemed to do nothing.

  Those men and women would all be dead soon. Unless Aefric thought of something.

  But what?

  The attackers were made of stone. Maybe if dropped from a great height, they’d shatter.

  Aefric reached out with magic to grab one of the simulacra and yank it into the air.

  He tried.

  He strained.

  No good.

  The spells that made those things also bound them to keep contact with the chasm floor.

  And while he wasted effort, more soldiers fell before the fists of the simulacra.

  Damn it! There had to be a way.

  But trying to move those things with magic was like trying to move the chasm itself.

  Wait.

  Like trying to move the chasm itself.

  And striking those things. That was like striking the chasm itself.

  What if that was the answer?

  These were creatures of stone. In fact, from the look of them, creatures of the very stone of the Dragonscar, where they were fighting. Perhaps they couldn’t be defeated while touching the stone from which they’d been forged?

  But his magic couldn’t pry them loose.

  Perhaps an impact could?

  “Throw to sky,” Aefric yelled, in Borog, which got a snort from both the two borogs currently locked in a kind of boxing match with one of the simulacra, and not doing well.

  The two borogs fell back several steps, each to the opposite side. The simulacrum turned to go back to fighting easier prey — the soldiers.

  The borogs charged again. But this time, the small one came in low and the big one came in high.

  The simulacrum turned back at the sound of the charge. Faced the big borog. Lowered its weight, and spread its arms in challenge.

  The borogs struck.

  The simulacrum grabbed the big borog by the waist, even as its feet came up off the ground.

  The big borog snapped his horn up, and the simulacrum lost its grip.

  The simulacrum went airborne.

  Not by more than a few feet. And it was already reaching out for the big borog.

  But Aefric was ready.

  This time his bolt of lightning blasted it apart.

  “Get them off the rocks!” Aefric called down. “Get them airborne! They’re vulnerable when they’re airborne.”

  Before he was finished talking, he heard the hoofbeats of a charging horse.

  Ser Yrsa. She blasted three notes on a whistle, and all the soldiers before her parted like a crowd making way for the king.

  She lowered a pike as though it were a proper lance. Caught a simulacrum in the head.

  The pike snapped. But chips flew. And so did the simulacrum.

  Aefric blasted it.

  Two down, two to go.

  Whoever built the simulacra hadn’t designed them to adapt to changes in their enemies’ tactics. Once the other knights grabbed up pikes and made their own mounted charges, the battle was over in moments.

  Still, it had lasted too long. Ten of Aefric’s soldiers looked dead, and at least six more were wounded. Aefric suspected that the borogs were wounded as well. But they weren’t bleeding, and they refused to acknowledge anything worse than being winded from the effort.

  Whoever created those stone simulacra had a lot to answer for. And Aefric knew just where to start looking for answers.

  The smell of the midnight sea wind was too clean. Too clean for Aefric’s mood. It should have smelled of death and decay, to reflect the soldiers who’d died at the hands of the simulacra.

  He couldn’t allow himself to become distracted by such thoughts. He had work to do, and time might be of the essence.

  Aefric left Ser Yrsa to sort out the troops while he went over to inspect the remains of the simulacra.

  By the light of his Brightstaff’s diamond, the bits of shattered simulacra looked almost identical to the rocky floor of the chasm. Even their shapes were harder to discern now. They looked less like pieces of sculpture and more like bare rock.

  Fortunately, he could still feel the magic that had given them something like life.

  With that sense of lingering magic to guide him, he waved his hand and gathered the bits of fallen stone men together.

  So much easier to move them that way, now that they weren’t up and fighting. No active spell to overcome.

  And the traces of that spell that lingered were already starting to fade.

  Aefric stood the Brightstaff in place, its yellow diamond still turning the nighttime to false morning. With a stick of red sealing wax in one hand and flame in the other, he dribbled a circle around the components, then sealed it with a word of power.

  The red wax kindled with ghostly white flames.

  Those flames trapped the fading magic within the circle. It wouldn’t escape him now.

  With another wave of his hand, Aefric brought his pack winging to him through the air, high enough that it wouldn’t get in anyone’s way.

  He dug out a blank sheet of parchment. He fed it a small pulse of the power that flowed unendingly through him.

  The parchment quivered. Quickly, Aefric slid it through the ghostly flames and into the circle, so that the parchment was bathed by them on its way in. Purifying the little dribble of power Aefric had given the parchment.

  Once it lay flat on the ground among the fallen bits of simulacra, Aefric began his working.

  This was not some quick spell, to be over and done with a word or a gesture. Or even a properly channeled thought.

  This was his own spin on the technique taught to him by that order of wizard-knights known as the Iron Wands.

  All magic came down to three elements: an understanding of the interrelationship of forces, applied logic, and a touch of artistry.

  The technique in question, as the Iron Wands performed it, never worked for Aefric. Their approach relied on the laws and logic of magic. Which might have been fine for wizards.

  But though most of the world thought him a wizard, Aefric was a dweomerblood.

  The logic side of magic often failed him in ways that had driven to distraction his wizardly teachers — including Karbin and the great Kainemorton himself.

  But Aefric had an artist’s flare with magic, in ways they would never understand.

  So where the Iron Wands would have sifted and strained the dregs of a spell to distill what they could about the magic-user who’d cast it, Aefric instead whispered magic to those dregs.

  He offered them the coherency they craved, and the perfection of completeness.

  And so the dregs of the spells that had given life to those simulacra came together on that piece of parchment in patterns of lines, curves and colors.

  They did not form a symbol or sigil, such as the Iron Wands would have produced.

  Instead, the results of Aefric’s working had produced a pattern that would evoke a sense of identity in him when he regarded it.

  He broke the circle then, and took up the parchment.

  The magic-user had been a wizard, as opposed to some other kind of spell-slinger. The work was too technical for … say … a warlock.

  The spell was not more than a year old, at the most. Possibly had been cast as recently as two seasons ago, which would have been wintertime.

  That was all Aefric could tell right then. But if he ever met the wizard, or saw another of that wizard’s spells, he would recognize them at once.

  Aefric was still studying his interpretation of that wizard’s identity when Ser Beornric brought him pants and boots.

  Oh. Yes. That brisk, midnight wind was cold, wasn’t it? Aefric realized he was shivering, and his bare legs were covered in gooseflesh.

  He donned his leather pants and the boots, and as he finished tying the laces, Ser Yrsa approached as well.

  “Final count,” she said grimly. “Eight dead. Three who might not live to see sunup. Four who will, but won’t be leaving this chasm under their own power. Six more, mobile, but hurt too bad to fight again anytime soon. And maybe a dozen others took a few lumps.”

  “More than half our soldiers gone in … what … a few minutes fighting those things?” Ser Beornric shook his head. “What were they, your grace?”

  “More important,” Ser Yrsa said. “When should we expect more of them?”

  “They were creatures carved from stone and given a semblance of life by magic,” Aefric said. “Got to be guarding something, but I don’t know what. Or where they came from.”

  “Aur,” the smaller borog said, but the big borog snorted aggressively.

  “Grek,” the smaller borog said, apologizing. “You chief. You … speak.”

  “Go on,” Aefric said. “What do you mean about gold?”

  “Me…” The smaller borog turned to the larger one and they exchanged a few Borog words faster than he could follow.

  The smaller one pointed to his — her? — horn.

  “Me … nose taste … gold.”

  “Smell?” Aefric asked, then made a show of flaring his nostrils wide in a deep breath.

  The borogs both worked at nodding.

  “You can smell gold?”

  They nodded slowly again. As though not sure they were doing it right.

  “I’m sorry,” Aefric said, kicking himself for not having done this sooner. Apparently he had habits of bias that he wasn’t aware of. “What should I call you?”

  The bigger borog stomped his foot. “Ge’rek.”

  The smaller borog stomped his or her foot. “Po’rek.”

  “And, Po’rek, are you telling me you smell gold? Right now?”

  “Kre,” Po’rek said, by way of agreement. Pointed farther down the chasm and to the right. “Much.”

  “Hard to be certain,” Ser Yrsa said, “but I’m pretty sure that’s the direction the stone men came from.”

  “All right,” Aefric said. “So it sounds as though someone’s found gold, and doesn’t want anyone else finding it.”

  “So someone’s watching us?” Ser Beornric said, trying to spot a lookout.