"What happens after I wake up?"

"When you awaken you can be on your way," the Sister replied, turning to go.

"Wait!" Kiara called after her. "How am I going to know what to seek at the Library?"

"What you need will come to you." Without additional comment she turned, leaving Kiara and Jae alone.

Kiara watched the door close, then dropped onto the bed as Jae flew a small circle in the room, hissing skeptically.

"I know, I know," she moaned to her companion. "I feel the same way. It's bad enough leaving in the middle of the night and getting assigned a Journey, but, Goddess, we're in a Citadel of the Sisterhood!" she exclaimed while the gyregon gurgled his reply. "We're in the thick of it now, and there's no going back," she said. "Even stopping a dark mage sounds better than marrying Jared!"

With a sigh, Kiara sat up, stirred by the smell of warm biscuits and hot tea. A thick potage simmered under a silver lid. She was delighted to find a bowl filled with bits of meat for a gyregon meal, and Jae settled down across from her on the table to feast, gurgling contentedly as he gulped his bounty. Between mouthfuls, she thought aloud to the little dragon.

"I remember a legend about Westmarch," she murmured. "I think it was supposed to be near the borders of Dhasson and Eastmark, upriver on the Nu," she recalled, spreading out the map between herself and the gyregon.

She frowned. "Cam and Carina went toward the Sisterhood's cloister in Valiquet, the palace city in Dhasson. I'm more than a month behind them." Her finger traced the most likely routes. "Westmarch is almost two months' ride from here," she said thoughtfully. "That's if I take the quick route, right across the top of Margolan, through the Borderlands just below the sea. And pray for good weather." She grimaced. "I don't know which is more dangerous—taking my chances with bandits in the Borderlands or hoping that Jared doesn't notice that I'm sneaking across his kingdom." She thought for a few minutes and looked up at the gyregon, who had finished his meal and rocked back and forth on his hind claws, burbling contentedly.

"That route is still at least three weeks north of Margolan's palace at its closest point," she mused. "And Jared has to suspect I'm there to look for me. The closer we get to Westmarch, the longer it will take his guards to catch up to me, even if he does hear."

She set the map aside and cradled a hot cup of tea. "Maybe Carina will find what she needs from the Sisterhood, and be on the way back to Isencroft before I return," she mused. "Or maybe, the Sisterhood will send her to the Library, too. I don't understand how wizards think! Why can't anything be simple!"

She stood up, stretching, and set the items on the bed to one side, turning down the ample covers. "Well, at least we know we're safe to sleep for tonight," she said to Jae. She climbed into bed and the gyregon made himself comfortable on the chair next to her, wrapping his tail around himself with a contented hiss. "Enjoy it," she said sleepily as she extinguished the candle. "I don't think we'll sleep well until we're home again."

Jonmarc Vahanian headed into the Boar's Inn with caution. Inside, a motley clientele packed the greatroom. Toward the hearth, four merchants drank together over steaming trenchers heaped high with food. A small group of priests huddled near the wall, in quiet conversation over a bottle of wine. Three of the local baron's guardsmen laughed raucously near the fire, uproarious over a joke and a large jug of ale.

Altogether unremarkable, he thought, scanning the crowd. Ploughmen and merchants drank together, while near the fire, a bard sang to a small audience. Vakkis was nowhere to be seen. Vahanian ordered his food and a Cartelasian brandy to wash it down. He caught himself tapping his foot, and frowned. Long ago, he'd learned to listen to himself, to the instincts that kept him alive. He was nervous as a cat tonight, without good reason.

Arrestingly blue eyes locked with his. He froze. The blond man had not been there when he first scanned the room. The man was about Vahanian's own age, with an aristocratic mien and hair the color of flax. He was thin, with a pallor that suggested he did not work in the sun. He regarded Vahanian with a mixture of curiosity and jadedness that sent a chill down the mercenary's back.

"Here's your brandy," the barkeeper said, setting down Vahanian's order with a thump. "Five skrivven if you please," he said, pushing a trencher of steaming food next to the heavy glass tumbler. Vahanian dug for his coins and paid the innkeeper, then turned to find a table.

The flaxen-haired man was gone.

Vahanian found a seat with his back to a wall, perfectly positioned to watch the inn's clientele, nodding at the table's other occupants as he squeezed into an open space. He looked back to where the blond man stood just an instant before, to assure himself that the man was indeed gone. Vahanian's misgivings increased as he sipped his brandy. He should have seen the man pass on his way out. Vahanian was facing the stairs to the rooms above, so if the man had simply retired for the evening, Vahanian should have seen him leave by that way, too. The door to the kitchen was behind the bar, and the inn's large windows were shut against the chill night air. The man should still be in the tavern. But he was not.

Forcing his mind away from the flaxen-haired stranger, Vahanian surveyed the room once more. He had purposely chosen a table near the thick of the action, where he could hear as well as see. Three burly guardsmen in nondescript livery finished up their ale at a table near the fire. The red-haired one looked familiar, but Vahanian could not place him. Over the years there had been too many run-ins with too many guards in too many places. By rights, he thought as he sipped his brandy, half the guardsmen in the Winter Kingdoms should look familiar.

He let his attention move from one overheard conversation to the next. The priests at the nearby table were from Nargi, but no arcane religious matters concerned them. The disappearance of a young noblewoman, possibly waylaid by slavers, consumed their conversation, morbid speculation mixing with what appeared to be genuine concern for the young woman's welfare. Not much chance for that, Vahanian thought as he tore off a piece of the warm bread. He had encountered slavers once before, enough to last him for a lifetime. They preferred less traveled byways through disputed territories, where neither king nor noble was likely to bring arms against them. Some mountain passes were nearly unusable because of them, for any but a large armed party.

If slavers were on the prowl again, perhaps a warning to Linton might be in order, Vahanian thought, letting the brandy burn its way down his throat. Across the room, the woeful strains of the bards' songs reached him, a mournful tune about a young woman whose love for an Immortal doomed them both. It was an old tune, with as many variations as there were taverns, and when the guardsmen's laughter drowned out the last chorus, Vahanian found he could fill in the last verse from memory.

"Gettin' so that it's not safe no more, trav-elin'," his companion to the right commented. "First the bandit gangs, as if common highwaymen weren't bad enough," his tablemate lamented. "Not like the wolves or the weather warn't enough of a problem. But now, it's worth your life to journey north. If the magicked things don't get you, slavers will."

"Maybe the magicked things will get the slavers and save us the bother," Vahanian replied. His tablemate grunted. "Huh. You'd think so, but there's enough profit to be made, I hear as soon as one slaver disappears there are four more to take his place." He leaned over conspiratorial-ly. "Though I did hear that there were remains found, up on the Joursay Pass, that curdled even slavers' blood," he added in a rum-soaked wheeze. "Naught but pieces of beasts, like they'd torn themselves to bits battling over what was left of some poor Goddess-forsaken group of travelers. Heard tell that the beasts warn't nothing ever seen by nobody round here before, since the Great Wars. Magicked things, bless the Mother and Childe, straight out of the Tales."