Much later, when Tris found his way back to his own quarters, he found a warm fire and a fresh bottle of Cartelesian brandy waiting for him. He kicked off his boots and sprawled in a chair in front of the fireplace. The brandy, a belated birthday gift from Vahanian and Soterius, made his aching muscles relax. He let the fire warm him as he drifted off to sleep in his chair.

Tris, help me! He could hear Kait's voice in the darkness all around him, and Tris sat bolt upright. The cry rang in his mind, not from a dream, but from the netherworld itself. Tris closed his eyes and tried to concentrate.

Focusing his power, Tris cast his circle and drew his wards, plunging into the darkness after Kait's cry. In the gray world where only his spirit could travel, he slipped among the dead and the undead, steeling himself against their cries and petitions. With all his strength, he focused on the sound of his sister's voice. As he drew closer he could feel her pain, her fear, even as the image of her face, trapped in a glass prison, grew clearer in his mind. But before he could reach her, a wall of cold darkness drove him back.

Free her! Tris shouted to the darkness, but there was no reply. His feeling of dread grew steadily stronger. Kait's image grew dimmer, though her hand was pressed against the glass and her eyes begged for his help.

Show yourself! Tris demanded, but again, no answer came.

He found himself blinking at the light of Royster's candle as the librarian bent over him worriedly. The fire in the hearth had died, and Tris knew the night was far spent.

"You saw Kait again, didn't you?"

Tris realized that his hands were shaking. His shirt was wet with sweat, and his heart pounded. "It was so real. I could see her face pressed against the glass. I heard her crying for help." Haltingly, he found the words to recount the rest of the contact. Royster listened intently, frowning.

"It was real. I'm not a mage, but I'm sensitive to the working of magic. I felt the magic myself, that's why I came. You say that Arontala laid a spell over the palace to drive out the ghosts that protected your father?" At Tris's nod, Royster thought for a moment, then moved to the books that lay on a table in Tris's room. He set down his candle and paged through the yellowed volumes, muttering to himself. Finally, he motioned Tris to join him, and ran his finger beneath a passage in the diaries of the Obsidian King.

"Look here," Royster said. "This tells about how the Obsidian King, who was a great Summoner, started to draw on the spirits of the dead for power. At first, he drew from them to work magic that helped them. But later, as he turned to the darkness, he drew from unwilling spirits to enhance his own magic. At the end, he slaughtered captives, and then bound their spirits so that he could draw on them for a reserve. He fashioned a great crystal orb in which to capture souls and hold them until he could draw from their life force for his power."

"The Soulcatcher," Tris murmured, remembering the glowing red orb in Arontala's library that he glimpsed the night of the coup; the same red fire in the crystal pendant around Alaine's neck in the Citadel.

"When your grandmother fought the Obsidian King, the Mages of the Light opened a doorway to the abyss, so that Bava K'aa could drive him into the void, and he would be trapped in the abyss forever."

"But she didn't."

"No. Because of her love for Lemuel, for the mage whose body the Obsidian King possessed, Bava K'aa could not bring herself to destroy the orb. That orb is what you call Soulcatcher. Bava K'aa gave it to the sons of Dark Haven—the vayash moru—to guard. The currents of magic run strong below Dark Haven, and the Flow runs through the foundation of the great house itself. So the Obsidian King remained trapped in the orb, in Soulcatcher, on the edge of the Abyss all these years, waiting to be freed."

"Then Kait's spirit is in the orb, for the Obsidian King to feed on when he breaks free?" Tris asked, the horror of it dawning on him as he framed the words. "The spirits he's trapped in there with him, he's going to feed on them to get the power he needs—"

"To make the transfer," Royster finished. "Yes. That is why you must reach Margolan before the Hawthorn Moon. The Obsidian King was bound on the night of the Hawthorn Moon, and only on that night can he be set free. And may the Lady go with you."

" GO ON and have your fun—we'll hold the border." Harrtuck grinned and slugged Soterius in the shoulder. As the time came closer for Soterius and Mikhail to leave Principality, Harrtuck moved the mercenary companies to the Principality border. The refugee fighters and the professional soldiers regarded each other warily. But Soterius's stories of fighting the ashtenerath fighters had been enough to get the interest of the mercenaries, who doubled their evening guard.

"Just wait to open the new casks of beer until we get back!" Soterius rejoined, making an effort to cover his apprehension.

"Once the ashteneratb showed up, Staden's council certainly didn't mind deploying the mercs along the border." Harrtuck said, with a nod toward the mercenaries who were now camped between the refugee settlement and the Principality border.

"I'm still hoping we don't need your troops to move onto Margolan soil," Soterius said.

Harrtuck quickly sobered. "I'm with you, m'boy. If those fighters of yours kick ass they way you say they will, then I've got a cozy job coordinating the merc commanders. While Jared's expecting an attack, we'll keep his troops from 'wandering' into Principality territory."

They both knew the other half of the "if." If Soterius did not succeed in raising a large enough band of strike-and-hide fighters from among the deserters and discontented in Margolan, then it would be up to the mercs to engage Jared's army, and the effort to put Tris Drayke on the Margolan throne would move from stealth attack to open war. Should the Principality mercs be needed, Soterius knew that Isencroft would also deploy its troops, now held in readiness along its border. Dhasson, bottled up by Arontala's magicked beasts for months, had its own reasons to wage war against Jared the Usurper should the beasts be dispelled. Eastmark was unlikely to remain neutral when Kiara was the niece of Eastmark's king, daughter to his favorite sister. Nargi and Trevath were likely to enter any war as Margolan's allies. If the gambit to destroy Arontala and depose Jared by stealth failed, the alternative was war—and the specter of unrestrained blood magic through the power of a reborn Obsidian King.

In the two weeks since the last strike, Soterius had trained his refugee fighters hard. Tadrie and Sahila had recounted the attack of the ashtenerath. After all they had witnessed of the murders and atrocities committed by Jared's troops, the refugees believed Sahila's account of the ashtenerath without question, and with less terror than Soterius expected. Esme backed up Sahila's story, and when the healer was through explaining how Arontala created his ashtenerath, the shift in the refugees' attitude was palpable. Through their tears and grief at the thought of missing loved ones being tortured and altered into beast-like weapons, Soterius had felt a hardening of purpose. Almost overnight, the refugee camp became a base camp for the war. Any men healthy enough to train—as well as the strongest and most fit women—came forward to add to the numbers of Soterius's fighters.

The rest of the camp organized itself with the help of Sahila's and Tadrie's wives. The two women, already leaders among the refugees, used their skills to marshal the refugees. Old women and children mended the armor, tents, and packs Sahila purchased from the mercs. Others sewed the black tunics, trews, and cloaks that would provide camouflage. Blacksmiths set to honing the blades of sickles and knives, or to producing hundreds of razor-sharp arrowheads. Boys too young to fight made arrows, filling quiver after quiver, or willingly stuffing and restuffing the targets that the fighters-in-training used in their dawn-to-dusk training.