From the inside, the great hall looked much as it had in my father's day, since I'd been firm on keeping the granite where it didn't show inside. The wall with the family curse written on it had taken the most time. Finding the correct stones and setting them in proper order was somewhat more taxing than the court ladies' puzzles, since each of the pieces weighed over a hundred pounds, and several stones had been smashed when Hurog fell.

My uncle thought I was foolish to work so hard on it, since the curse, which predicted Hurog's fall to the Stygian Beast of mythology, had already been broken. My brother, Tosten, said I did it because I'd been instrumental in breaking the curse. But I hadn't realized, until I saw Oreg's face, that I'd done it to protect him from the too-rapid changes of the past few years. When you're over a millennia old, change, even for the better, is a hard thing. And it was he, as much as I, who had broken the curse.

I touched the wall lightly with one hand and bent to pick up a grout bucket. For the past few weeks, we'd been working on the floors. One of the Blue Guard, an Avinhellish man, was the son of a mason. He'd taken one look at the cracked mess left on the floor of the great hall after the keep fell and declared it unfixable. If I'd known then the amount of work the stupid floor was going to be, I'd have timbered it, or even just left it dirt. It took us months to get the floor level enough for our mason. I think he took covert enjoyment in giving me orders.

The main doors of the keep were awaiting hinges capable of supporting their great weight, so there was nothing to slow the boy who barreled into the great hall. He stopped in front of me and opened his mouth, but he couldn't get a word out for lack of breath.

"Take it slow, boy," I said. We waited for a long moment and several false starts before he could speak. Meanwhile, I examined him for clues to his identity.

He was clothed rather well, even for a freeholder's son. The woolen trousers were newly dyed, and the shirt was linen—a cloth that had to be purchased, as flax didn't grow in our climate. The boy looked like Atwater's get, tall with dark eyes that swallowed the light.

"Sir, there's bandits, sir. Down by Da's farm. He sent me here to get you."

He was covered in sweat, and once he'd gotten his message out, he had to give his all to breathing again.

"Atwater is your father?" I asked, and he nodded.

I always knew when there was trouble brewing on Hurog land. Oreg said it was because I was tied to it by blood right, and told me that several of my distant ancestors had the same tie to the land. Hurog spoke to me—when I listened.

A swift touch of magic showed me that there was no fighting near Atwater's farm now, which meant that the bandits had been driven off. If Atwater or one of his family had been killed, I'd have known about it. They belonged to Hurog in a way that had nothing to do with law and everything to do with blood.

"Don't fret, boy," I said. "Atwater's been fighting bandits longer than I've been alive. Let's get my horse, shall we?"

In the end there were three of us following the boy. He plainly thought we needed more; I thought we could do with less. Rides with Oreg and my brother were always more interesting than pleasant.

My brother, Tosten, rode his new roan war stallion, a gift from our uncle, and came with the excuse that the animal needed exercise when he found me saddling my own horse in the stables.

Tosten was never going to be as tall as I was, but the past four years had given him a man's face and a fighter's body. He looked cool, competent, and clever (as some court woman said in my hearing). Competent and clever, I agreed with. Coolness might come with age—maybe in fifty years or so.

While I waited for Tosten to saddle his horse, Oreg showed up and, without a word, took out his own gelding. Except for his dark hair and half a head in height (Tosten was taller), he and Tosten looked enough alike to be twins.

"Bandits," I said in answer to Oreg's look as I mounted and lead the way out of the bailey.

"My brother spied them near our farm and Da sent me here for help." There was a hint of accusation in the boy's tone. Three people, it implied, would not be much help.

The air was chill with the coming winter. We'd taken the last of the harvest in this week. Oreg said he thought it might snow soon, but today the leaves still clung to the branches of the rowan and aspen in bright clumps that stood out against the dark greens of the pines and firs. Pansy, my stallion, snorted with pretended fear and shied violently when a falling leaf fluttered too close. In battle, not even a heavy blow would cause him to step to the right or left without my request, but outside of serious work, Pansy loved to play.

The shortest path to Atwater's farm skirted the edge of the mountains where the land was too rocky to plow. The farm was isolated in a hanging valley away from the other cultivated fields of Hurog. That isolation had lured bandits into thinking it was a target before, but none of them had ever managed to take anything from Atwater. I didn't think that was going to change today.

The turf was still soft enough that the steady trot I'd set was unlikely to cause the horses much stress. People were another matter entirely.

"We need to hurry," said the boy for the third time. I'd had a gentle mare found for him, but I needn't have. He sat her bareback (his choice) and was impatient with the rest of us for holding him back.

"Never arrive for a fight breathless," snapped Tosten.

"If they overran your farm, we'd smell smoke by now," I reassured the boy, shooting Tosten a repressive look. "They might not have seen the farm, or your father may have driven them off or killed them. Either way we don't have to hurry. There can't be very many of them, or I'd have heard about it before they made it this far onto Hurog lands."

"Don't worry about Tosten, boy," said Oreg cheerfully. "He's as impatient as you are."

Tosten sank into silence. Oreg, in contrast, was unusually lighthearted, teasing the boy until he smiled—at which point my brother let his stallion speed past us. With a glance at me, the boy sent his mare cantering after my brother—obviously hoping I'd hurry after both of them.

"I wish you wouldn't bait Tosten," I murmured to Oreg.

Oreg just smiled, though his eyes didn't light up the way they did when he was really amused. "Your brother has had plenty of time to decide that I'm no threat to him. Time he grew up. If I choose to tweak his tail a bit—that's between him and me. He doesn't need your protection anymore, Ward."

I rolled my eyes. "You encourage him," I said.

"I frighten him," Oreg corrected, and even his mouth was serious. I must have looked unconvinced, because he shook his head and said, "I'm no threat to his relationship with you, and he knows that. It hasn't been about that for some time." Oreg smiled again, but this time it was a genuine one. "Poor lad's fighting dragons."

It was an old Shavig saying about someone who was displaying rash bravery impelled by fear. The ironic twist to Oreg's tone was because in this case it was literally true. Oreg's father had been half-dragon. Oreg could take dragon form when he wished, and considered both the human seeming and the dragon his true forms.

I weighed what Oreg had said. Tosten was the only one who knew the whole story about Oreg. As my heir and as my brother I thought I owed him that. Perhaps it would have been better if I'd stuck to half-truths.

Atwater's boy waited for us at the top of the trail, though Tosten was still ahead.

"Tosten told me it is magic that lets you see there's nothing wrong at my home. There's a lot of folks who are frightened by magic."

It sounded like a personal observation, and I looked at him sharply. He colored up, but his eyes met mine squarely.