Verminaard lunged at the fireplace, whipped the blade through the chilly air. He wasn't listening.

"I know it isn't Huma's lance," Aglaca objected. "It's a small thing, and its magic is small as well. But it isn't a toy. It's … it's …"

"It's a fine knife," Verminaard said. He glanced at Aglaca cautiously. "Thank you," he said abruptly.

Aglaca smiled. "Now come over and look out the window. If you lean just a little and peer as far as you can down toward the west… what's that pass called?"

"Eira Goch. It means 'red snow' in the old tongue."

"Really?" Aglaca asked, extending his hand once more. "Well, if you look down to the mouth of that pass, you can see my father's campfires. Let me give you a hand up to the top bunk."

Verminaard regarded the other boy warily. It was the first time he remembered anyone except Abelaard reaching out to him. But, despite strong misgiving, he took the offered grasp. For a moment, before he hoisted himself onto the bunk, risking a fall and his dignity to the questionable intentions of this hostage, he tested the boy's strength, pulling Aglaca toward the edge of the bed.

Aglaca gritted his teeth and braced himself, recovering only when he dangled dangerously above the larger lad, who pushed him back onto the bed.

Good, Verminaard thought. I am stronger.

Then, with a deep breath, he climbed onto the top bunk, boosted by his new companion. Together they stared out the window into the uninterrupted darkness and saw the faraway gleam of torchlight. Verminaard did most of the talking, explaining to Aglaca the landmarks visible from the heights of Castle Nidus.

Fifty feet below and across the castle yard, in the shadows of the eastern battlements, the dark mage Cerestes leaned toward the ancient walls and placed his

ear against the stones. There the words of the boys- innocent words, but words they believed to be unnoticed and unheard-tunneled through mortar, through rock, and by a devious magic, into the dark chambers of Cerestes' mind.

Chapter 4

It would be the first hunt of a cold, difficult spring, and the first centi-core hunt for either lad. Ancient custom had ordained, since both Verminaard and Aglaca had turned twenty in the snows of the previous winter, they must both hunt this spring. Yoked together by age, education, and rivalry, the two had passed from boyhood to the edge of manhood- to the time of testing in the wilds.

Since Aglaca's arrival at Castle Nidus, Verminaard felt he had come to know him well. Their eight years together had bound them, though the bonds were neither warm nor comfortable. Neither lad thought now of friendship: They had realized that possibility had come and gone even before they met. After all, Verminaard was too cautious and suspicious for friendship, especially with

someone whose presence reminded him constantly of his absent brother Abelaard. And Aglaca was a hostage, all but imprisoned, quartered in Castle Nidus against his wishes. But the lads had become well acquainted, like weathered, familiar rivals in the shaky truce of the gebo-naud, and with that acquaintance, outright hostility had become as difficult as friendship.

During long hours of instruction, when Verminaard sat on his stool in the northwest tower and nodded at Cer-estes' lectures on spellcraft and alchemy, he had seen out the window where Aglaca wandered through the gardens north of the walls. The gardens were still immaculate despite the ten years' absence of Mort, the gardener who had left this spot when Daeghrefn's temper turned. In this sanctuary, Aglaca would stoop to examine a sprig of cedar, to smell a flower, then vanish altogether behind a blue stand of evergreens.

Why, the boy is only a gardener at heart, Verminaard thought scornfully. A floral fool.

And Verminaard would return to his lessons, delighted when the smoke rose from the palm of his hand, or when a brief, clumsy incantation drew water from the dark wall of the castle.

He did not realize that, from the gardens, Aglaca had also glimpsed his hulking shadow at the window of the tower. Nor did he suspect that Aglaca knew of his secret envy, the envy any prisoner of scholarship feels toward those who are free. Whenever Verminaard watched, Aglaca ducked behind the big stand of aeterna to practice his other studies. There he would mimic the movements of the mantis, standing with his arms poised above him in a grotesque, almost silly position, then bringing his hands down suddenly, repeatedly, tirelessly, in deadly accurate blows.

The months passed, and his reflexes quickened.

Once the mantis had taught him speed, he picked up

the sword he had hidden amid the blue-needled branches. And in what remained of Verminaard's mother's rose garden, he would wheel and dance, his feet stepping lightly and harmlessly between the roses, his deft hands whirling the sword above his head. Then suddenly, violently, as though taught by nature and blood for a thousand years, he would bring the blade whistling down to the tip of a rose petal. The metal edge would shear in precise halves an iridescent, predatory beetle, but leave the blossom intact, untouched even by the wind from the blade.

Verminaard never saw Aglaca's private schooling, but the Solamnic lad did not go unobserved. Under orders from Daeghrefn, the seneschal Robert would watch from behind a blue topiary, marveling as the youth grew in wisdom and stature and grace.

Nor did Aglaca always study alone. Since a month after he took up residence in Castle Nidus, a cloaked woman would meet him in the garden's seclusion. There she taught him herb lore, self-defense, and a muted, rudimentary magic. Robert would crane through the blue branches to overhear the both of them, and the woman's voice, tantalizing at the edge of hearing, charmed him with its music and lilt.

And its familiarity. The seneschal had heard that music before. On one sunlit day in midspring, the woman had turned toward him, looked right at him through the network of branches . . . Auburn-haired and tall and dark-eyed. He remembered the face at once. L'Indasha Yman smiled and winked at Robert. For a week afterward, the seneschal slept fitfully. The druidess was somehow spiriting herself onto castle grounds, and he wondered if she were treacherous enough to betray him or reckless enough to risk her life and his by these visits in broad daylight. Yet daily he saw her, and there was yet no alarm from the keep, no

midnight summons from the Lord of Nidus.

Robert breathed more easily, until the day he saw Daeghrefn himself in the garden.

Aglaca and L'Indasha were bowed over a rose, and the druidess was lecturing the Solamnic youth about Mort the gardener. He was a sturdy, warmhearted man from Est-wilde who had weathered the surliness of Daeghrefn while planting lilies and roses throughout the keep. But in Verminaard's second year, the patience of the gardener had vanished, and soon afterward Mort himself had disappeared.