The form spoke again. His voice seemed weakened by distance, hollow like words spoken through a tube. For all the unearthly tone of them they were frank in a way that slapped Thaddeus like an open hand. “Thaddeus Clegg, you dog, I have words for you.”

Thaddeus stared at him, stunned. How was this possible? He tried to show with the ridged scorn of his lips his disdain for the man’s intrusion, no matter the sorcery by which it was achieved. It was an instinctive reaction, but the expression was hard to hold because the glow of the man’s eyes was most mesmerizing. Why did he not shout for the guards? He knew it would be easy to do so, yet something held him back, trapped him within the spell of those eyes. He had first to identify this being. That was the key, he thought. He sensed a name was poised at the back of his throat, already known to him. It just needed to be spoken to become real.

“Hanish?” he asked. The other man smiled, seemingly pleased to have been named. The expression was enough to confirm that the guess had hit its mark. “How is this possible?”

“Through dream travel,” the form said. “You are asleep and not asleep; I am awake in spirit and far distant from my sleeping body. I can feel the pull of it even now, trying to wrest me back inside the familiar. Our spirits do not like to leave our bodies, Thaddeus. It is ironic considering that from their cursed undeath my people want only to escape these burdens of flesh, but it is true. I am as surprised as you that we are speaking. We have never been near enough before, nor did I know if you had the gift. Not everyone does, you know. Between my brothers and me there was always silence. It is not possible to understand the order of the things…”

Hanish faded into darkness and then flickered back into view a moment later, burning more brightly. “I am glad that you know me so quickly, but I have not come to you for casual conversation.”

Something in the tone of Hanish’s voice struck Thaddeus as strange, enough so that he focused not just on his words but also on how he said them. It was difficult to read the man through the distortions of distance, but there was a man at the other end of this discourse and Thaddeus had ever been a reader of men.

“Are the children safe?” Hanish asked. “The children? You need not fear the children. They are no real threat to-” “You have not harmed them, have you?” Hanish asked, a note of concern in his voice.

As the chieftain dimmed and flickered for a moment, Thaddeus had a few moments to think. From looking in Hanish’s eyes, he could see that the chieftain was hiding something. He was not lying exactly, but there was desperate import behind his words that he did not want Thaddeus to grasp.

“Of course not,” he answered, once Hanish was bright before him again. “I have kept them here, close to me, safe in every-”

“It is important that they live. Understand? Their lives mean a great deal to me. I am here to tell you once again that when you deliver them to me, you will be rewarded. We will talk about it in quieter times, and I will do right by you. Believe me about that. I am no silver-tongued Akaran. I speak the truth. My people always have.”

Thaddeus felt the sharp impact of a realization pierce through his thoughts. He understood what Hanish was hiding. It was there behind his claim that his people had always spoken the truth. This was not a boast. It was a declaration of national pride. The Meins had always claimed they had been banished to the north because of speaking out truthfully against Akaran crimes. And, they believed, not only had they been banished but also they had been cursed. The Tunishnevre…That was what Thaddeus had not yet considered. It was but a legend to Acacians, but perhaps it was more than that to the Meins themselves.

Previously, he had thought only of the Meins’ ancient hatred of Acacia, of how much they coveted these gentle lands, how rich they would be in ruling them, and how gratified they would be to finally win against their centuries-old enemies. But he had not reached far enough back into Hanish’s desires. He had not understood until now that this was not just a war for earthly things. The Known World was the battleground, but the cause for which Hanish fought crossed into other planes of existence. He must believe his ancestors were trapped in unending purgatory. He wished to break the curse placed on them during the Retribution and free the Tunishnevre. This feat, legend said, could be accomplished only in one way. Remembering it, Thaddeus thought that either Hanish was a madman or the world was a place of greater mystery than he had acknowledged.

These thoughts passed through the chancellor quickly, and Hanish did not seem to notice the change in him. “Gather them together,” he said. “Keep them for me. If anything happens to them, I will make your existence one of unending suffering. This is a gift I can give you. Do not doubt either my generosity or my wrath.”

“I doubt neither,” Thaddeus said. “Be assured that I await you here, the children with me.”

The light in Hanish’s eyes dimmed. His form shifted and dispersed like vapor stirred by a gust of wind. Thaddeus felt himself dropping back toward his body. He came to rest inside his shell, slipping into his skin and feeling it around him again. He had not, he told himself, decided to obey. He was not a servant. He was free to act as he wished…

He said this again and again as he felt the pull of earthly slumber settling into him, afraid that he would remember one portion of the night and not another, afraid lest he wake and err in his actions. He demanded of himself that he wake and remember his revelation, for it changed everything and it was this: Hanish believed he could end the curse on the Tunishnevre by killing an heir to the Akaran dynasty. Only drops of the purest Akaran blood could awaken the life inside his cursed ancestors. If Hanish had his way, the children that Thaddeus loved-the four he had coveted all his life, that he wished were his own and upon whom he had showered the affection he would have given to his own offspring-would be splayed out across a sacrificial altar, cut open, and bled to slow deaths. If it turned out that Tinhadin’s curse was a real thing instead of a myth and if it could be reversed, twenty-two generations of Mein warriors would be pulled back from death. They would walk the earth again and their retribution would turn the world upside down.

This realization made up Thaddeus’s mind for him. He could not grasp power as the ogre inside him imagined. Nor could he allow Hanish to unleash a new hell on earth. There was, however, one whose entreaty he would follow. He should have done so all along. This much he knew with a certainty more complete than any other belief within his conflicting and crosshatched allegiances. He had already determined the children must be sent away. Now he would put into place the plan Leodan Akaran had dreamed up for his children if calamity befell him before they were grown to maturity. Thaddeus knew the plan and had the power to initiate it. Only he in all the living world could do this. Not even the children dreamed of it. Nor could they be told the truth of it in preparation. Aliver would hate him for it. He would likely dread it as the worst of possible fates and think him their betrayer.

Fitting, Thaddeus thought. Horrible and fitting: a truth and a lie.