Tuorel’s face was cold and expressionless. “I may have agreed to let you have your price, but why should I help you to collect something I also have use for?”

The wizard stopped packing and whirled on the baron.

“We have a bargain, damn you! You still need me if you want this war to be a quick one. Otherwise, you’ll be years in taking the Mhor and breaking his resistance.”

Tuorel smiled. “Aye, I still need your services,” he said quietly.

“Very well, I’ll have my spies set on Gaelin. Chances are he’ll try to return to Mhoried when he hears of the war. We’ll catch him as he gallops home to the rescue.”

Bannier held the baron’s gaze a moment longer, and then smiled himself. “Then I must be going, my lord. Stand ready to lead your troops into Shieldhaven tomorrow.” With that, he turned and strode off, his rucksack slung over his shoulder.

Tuorel watched as the wizard seemed to shimmer, and then appear somehow farther than he should have been, moving faster in a determined walk. In a matter of moments Bannier had disappeared toward the north. Tuorel’s jaw tightened as he considered the wizard’s words, and with a scowl he turned and joined his army.

Gaelin was dreaming.

He was standing in a place of darkness and power, a great citadel of jagged battlements and iron doors. Ash and smoke hung in the air, drifting over the stone and metal that surrounded him on all sides. Although he’d never been there in his waking life, in his dream he knew the place: Kal-Saitharak, the Battlewaite of the Gorgon’s Crown. He wandered from turret to turret, lost in the cyclopean maze of walls and gates. Something waited for him in the center of the fortress, something unspeakably ancient and evil. Each step Gaelin took only brought him closer to the master of the dark place. Even as he finally found the escape he sought, redglowing eyes appeared in a gaping black arch before him. The eyes transfixed him, tearing will and thought away from him, leaving only terror and dark madness as the monstrous creature stepped forward into the fiery light…

Gasping, Gaelin awoke, his heart hammering in his chest.

It took a long moment before his mind registered the fact that he was lying in a cold, damp sleeping roll beneath a stand of cottonwoods, somewhere along Alamie’s fog-shrouded riverlands.

He rolled over onto his elbow and surveyed the nearby darkness. The horses dozed a few yards away, hobbled together to keep them from wandering away. They shifted and sighed heavily, a reassuring sound. Ruide and Madislav lay nearby, each wrapped in his own blankets. The small fire in the center of their camp had burned down to embers.

Sitting up, he rubbed his hands across his face and stare d out into the darkness. “The Gorgon,” he muttered to himself.

“That’s an ill omen, to say the least.” For fifteen centuries, the Gorgon had been the deadliest enemy of the Anuirean lands – all of them, not just the wreckage left behind by Michael Roele’s death and the fall of the Anuirean Empire. The monster was the most powerful of the awnsheghlien, creatures who carried sinister bloodlines of power derived from Azrai, the Face of Evil. The Gorgon’s lands lay north and east of the Anuirean heartlands, in the impassable mountains known as the Gorgon’s Crown. Gaelin recalled hearing that a dream of the Gorgon presaged mischance and ill fortune. Shuddering, he tried to banish the images from his thoughts.

One of the horses nickered in wakefulness.

Gaelin carefully reached over and set his hand on the hilt of his sword, stilling his own breathing to listen for any suspicious sounds. For a long time, he heard nothing, but then the horses shifted nervously, and he heard the muffled clipclop of a horseman approaching their camp. “Madislav,” he whispered. The Vos grunted and turned to face him. “Someone’s coming.”

Madislav fell silent, cocking his head to listen. “A rider, alone,” he said a moment later. He rolled quietly out of his bedroll and rose, taking hold of a short-handled throwing axe. Gaelin stood as well, moving carefully to avoid pulling his injured stomach. “Is middle of the night,” the warrior whispered. “No honest man is abroad now.” He stepped over to nudge Ruide awake with his toe and gestured for the valet to remain silent.

The footfalls grew louder, although the heavy mists had the curious property of muffling sound. Gaelin peered toward the old river road, a ribbon of gray barely visible in the darkness.

They had made their camp about seventy or eighty yards fro m the track; a low hillock screened their fire from anyone passing b y. As he watched, a dark shape emerged from the mists, edging closer to their camp, a cloaked rider on a gray charger.

Madislav glanced at Gaelin, his eye raised in an unspoken question: hail the rider, or stay quiet and let him pass?

Gaelin shook his head. Let him pass by, he thought. But at that moment, one of their horses stamped and snuffled. The rider stopped, listening, and then turned his steed toward their camp and walked forward. Gaelin slid his sword from its sheath, deliberately allowing the metal to rasp against the wood and leather, and called out in a low voice: “That’s close enough, stranger. What brings you to our camp?”

The cloaked figure paused, then replied, “Prince Gaelin Mhoried?” It was a woman’s voice, high and clear, musical in quality.

“You are making mistake,” Madislav growled. “There is being no one here by that name.”

The woman paused. “I bring him tidings. Are you certain?”

Gaelin stepped forward, sliding through the shadows until he stood by Madislav. “Who are you?” he called.

The rider paused, and then drew the hood of her cloak fro m her face, shaking out a fiery red mane of hair. Her face was pale, and she seemed to glimmer in the cool darkness. Beneath her cloak, she wore a blouse of white cotton tucked into long riding pants. Gaelin noted the slender Brecht-style rapier at her hip.

“I’m the master bard Erin Graysong,” she replied. “Is Gaelin of Mhoried among you, or not? I’ve been riding all night, and if he’s not here, I’ll go my way and keep looking.”

“You’re speaking to him,” Gaelin said. Cautiously, he stepped out into the open and met Erin’s gaze. Her features were sharp and well defined, with high cheekbones, a delicate slant to her eyes, and subtle points to her ears. He realized with a start that she had the blood of the Sidhelien, the elven folk, in her. Ignoring Madislav’s suspicious scowl, he continued, “We were to meet you in Endier, Lady Erin. What brings you here?”

The bard sighed and slid from her horse, taking the reins in her hand and approaching. “I’m afraid I have ill tidings for you, my lord prince,” she said. “I learned today that Baron Tuorel has invaded Mhoried. Riumache has fallen already, and the goblins of Markazor are attacking the northern lands.”

Madislav barked bitter laughter. “Is impossible! Tuorel would need days to bring his army across the Maesil! And Riumache can hold him for weeks.”

“Impossible or not, it’s true,” Erin said. “Yesterday morning, the Maesil froze solid. Tuorel’s army crossed in an hour.”

“The Maesil hasn’t frozen in years!” Gaelin protested.

“Look, you can see it from here. There’s no ice on the river!” He gestured at the mistbound river.

Erin shrugged and looped the reins of her steed over a nearby branch. She looked at him, her face unreadable. “Maybe it only froze farther north. You’re a hundred miles or more from Riumache. My sources are reliable, Prince Gaelin – Tuorel crossed in a single day because the river was frozen.”

She knelt by the campfire and carefully prodded it to life with a shiver.

Gaelin slammed his sword back into its sheath and took a seat across the fire, while Madislav and Ruide followed suit.