Guerrand often wondered if someone like him stood across the gray water looking north, contemplating where earth met sky. In all his nearly twenty years he'd never left the island of Northern Ergoth, had ventured little farther than Hillfort, not even ten leagues to the east. Once Guerrand had hoped to study in Gwynned, the capital to the north, but Cormac had forbidden it.

The memory of that age-old argument slowed Guerrand's steps. He settled himself on a boulder worn flat by centuries of slapping seawater. Guerrand was in no hurry to return to Castle DiThon. He felt no kinship with those cold stone walls. He looked to the east, to the promontory on which the centuries-old fortress rested.

The castle rose up between blue sea and green earth like a lone, wicked mountain of stone, as if the first DiThon meant to correct a mistake of nature. It seemed to Guerrand that there was no place he could go where the stone structure didn't dominate the view. It drew the eye as a flame draws moths. But, unlike a flame, the castle was cold and bleak even in the brightest sunshine.

Guerrand had never liked it, not even before his father, Rejik, died. Guerrand had been but nine years of age then. He scarcely remembered him, a distant bear of a man. Or perhaps it was that he confused the memories of Rejik with Cormac, who so resembled their father.

Nineteen full years Guerrand's senior, Lord Cormac of Castle DiThon had always seemed more a father than a brother to Guerrand, anyway. Their family tree had tangled limbs, which was not unusual, considering that childbirth and rampant disease took many so early in life. Cormac's mother, Rejik's first wife, had died of Baliforian influenza at thirty, with young Cormac just eight years of age. In the bleak isolation of Northern Ergoth, ten years passed before Rejik defied convention and married Zena, a local lass less than half his age and just two years older than his son Cormac.

Rejik's second family arrived seven months later with the birth of Guerrand. As soon as physically possible came a third son, Quinn. And then, at three and fifty, Rejik received the news of the birth of his first daughter and the death of his second wife in childbirth. Guerrand, Quinn, and Kirah's young mother had seen the seasons change only twenty-eight times. Rejik survived two heartbroken years without her.

And so it was that cold and distant, critical and demanding Cormac inherited his father's holdings in the summer of his twenty-eighth year. Having married at twenty and already the father of two, Cormac was not happy about taking on his father's young second family as well.

Unfortunately, Cormac had not inherited their father's business acumen. Thousands of hectares had been passed down from generation to generation. Even ten years before, the DiThon lands had stretched beyond where the eye could see, to within less than two leagues of the Berwick family's manor house at Hillfort. Guerrand remembered his father boasting that if he stood on the easternmost edge of DiThon lands, he could watch the uppity merchant Berwick sputter in anger and jealousy at his dining table.

It was not a boast Cormac could make. In fact, Rejik's eldest son was the one sputtering in jealousy now. Cormac had been forced to sell off parcels of land to pay the debts he claimed could be laid at the feet of both Rejik and the fickle gods. One of those parcels was the land their father had so coveted, the hilly coastlands and fertile grasslands that bordered Hillfort. The purchaser had been the merchant himself, Anton Berwick.

But Cormac had a plan to get that land back. In fact, his usual sour mood had been considerably lighter of late in anticipation of its return. Cormac had arranged a political marriage between Berwick's daughter and Quinn DiThon, Guerrand's younger, adventurous brother. The merchant was desperate for his daughter to marry a title, and Cormac wanted money. Cormac had negotiated as dowry the land he'd once sold. That the land would be in Quinn's name, not Cormac's, was a minor detail to the lord.

Still looking at the world across the Strait of Ergoth, Guerrand thought of his younger brother somewhere out there, a cavalier questing for experience. He hadn't seen Quinn in nearly two years. Only ten months apart in age, as children they'd been confused as twins until Quinn had begun to follow with a passion the vocation Cormac had chosen for both of them. Quinn is likely so muscular and bronzed after two years on the road that we scarcely resemble each other anymore, Guerrand chuckled to himself. He missed him sorely, missed the cheerful optimism Quinn's presence inspired at Castle DiThon. Everyone liked the charming Quinn-even Cormac, who seemed as willing to forget that Quinn was only half blue-blooded as he was possessed to remember it of Guerrand. Guerrand looked forward to Quinn's return at month's end for the marriage.

"Rand! There you are at last!" a young girl's high-pitched voice called above the pounding of the surf. The sound startled Guerrand, despite the fact that he recognized the voice. His head jerked up, and his dark eyes fell on his youngest sibling, twelve-year-old Kirah. A smile creased his face. She was one of only two people he allowed to use the nickname he preferred.

Poor, motherless Kirah. He'd heard it whispered in the dark and drafty corners of the castle by well-meaning servants. Blond and blue-eyed, as fair as the boys were dark, she was the only one of them to look like Rejik's second wife. Guerrand secretly wondered if the resemblance hadn't deepened the despair Rejik had felt, rather than offering comfort. Kirah was a living reminder that Rejik's second marriage was to a woman beneath his station, a pale-skinned, common "newcomer." Her family had settled in Northern Ergoth just after the Cataclysm, some three hundred years before. But prejudice ran high, especially among the nobility. Those who were not of the old, darker-skinned stock that had lived in Ergoth proper, before the Cataclysm split the region into two islands, were considered newcomers.

While Rejik had loved the fair-haired Zena, he never seemed able to hug the baby daughter for whom he'd longed. Seven-year-old Guerrand and six-year-old Quinn, who looked tanned enough to pass as blue-bloods, had supplied the affection to young Kirah. Cormac, with two pure-blooded children of his own by the time of Kirah's birth, suffered from his own prejudice regarding his half siblings.

"What are you staring at?" Kirah demanded now, filthy hands on her boyish hips. She pushed her stringy blond hair back from her face impatiently.

"You," he said, smiling in obvious delight. "You're a mess."

Kirah and I should not even get along, thought Guerrand. It was not in looks alone that they were different. Guerrand was cautious; Kirah was adventure itself. He was neat and organized; she looked like a walking whirlwind, everything about her askew. He was silent and contemplative; she was opinionated and outspoken.

"I'm always a mess," she said brightly. "But if anyone is to blame today, it's you. I've been running hither and yon looking for you. I followed your trail."

Guerrand chuckled. "I wasn't aware I'd left one."

Kirah playfully poked him in the chest. "For me, you did. You know you can't hide from me, Rand. I know your haunts. Besides, I asked Zagarus."

"I'll have to speak with that traitorous sea gull!" Guerrand laughed. "I wasn't trying to hide; I just wasn't in a hurry to get home. Why did you follow me, anyway?"

"Cormac wants to see you. He sent several servants out to find you. I thought I should warn you that he's lost much of the good mood we've all benefited from since he sold Quinn to that buck-toothed biddy from Hillfort."

"However did you get so cynical, child?" He ruffled her hair. "Cormac didn't sell him-he wrote to Quinn, who agreed to the marriage."