I shook my head. “No ill word from the Circle.” As far as we knew the Lords had not yet noticed our most powerful sorcerers taking up positions on the boundaries of the Vales, ready to form an expanding ring of impenetrable enchantment around the healthy lands of my adopted world. “As of yesterday, Ce’Aret had almost two hundred in place. And we’ve had no news of our agents in Zhev’Na, but, of course, we’ve no way to know if they’ve been taken. Maybe that’s what this is - the notice of their failure.”

We both knew it wasn’t so. The elimination of Jayereth and her work was no blind strike of retaliation, but clearly aimed. Someone knew what she had discovered and knew that she’d not yet passed on all of her knowledge. Only six people in the universe knew the secret - and to any one of them I would entrust my life.

Gar’Dena lowered his massive bulk to the floor and with the gentlest of hands straightened Jayereth’s tortured limbs. With a plump finger and a soft word, he smoothed her face into peace, masking blood and charred flesh with a delicate tracery of illusion. “She was just the age of my own Arielle and destined to be the greatest Dar’Nethi sorcerer in a thousand years. Ah, my lord, I could not comprehend it when you pulled her from my gem shop and raised her so high in your councils. When you showed us what you’d seen in her, I wept at my lack of vision. Which of us is vile enough to have done it?”

I rested my back on the charred wall and rubbed my aching head. “If I knew, that one would already lie dead at her feet.”

There had been a time when such words coming from my mouth would have caused me an hour of self-reproach, of castigating myself for abandoning the ideals of my youth, the tenets of my people that said there was no gift more sacred and more untouchable than another’s life. But justice, too, was an ideal worth serving.

Gar’Dena bore Jayereth from the study in his thick arms, laying her in the palace preparation room as if she’d been brought in from outside. Our custom required us to let the dead lie undisturbed for half a day, lest the departed soul find its way back to its body before it crossed the Verges into the afterlife. But no one could be allowed to know the assault had taken place in the heart of the palace, not before we discovered the culprit. The news of such penetration by our enemies would cause panic. And I already knew that Jayereth wasn’t coming back.

I remained in my private sitting room, slumped in a chair doing nothing until Bareil tapped on the door to let me know that T’Vero had arrived. A short, sturdy man, painfully young, his eyes wide and wary at this early summoning, followed the Dulcé into the room. “My lord Prince,” he said, bowing halfheartedly. “Where is my wife? She never came home last night.”

I did as I had to do, grieving with the young husband at Jayereth’s side until he had taken into himself the wholeness of his sorrow. After giving him my promise, as I had Jayereth, that their child would want for nothing I could provide, I left him alone to stand vigil with her. When the time was completed, he would take her away.

My belly sour, my eyes like sandhills, I returned to my study to await the reports of my Preceptors. The Preceptorate was a body of the most talented, most powerful sorcerers in Gondai, charged with teaching and guiding our people, including their sovereign, in matters of sorcery. In effect, the Preceptors served as my council of advisors in everything of true importance. Treachery and cowardice had left four of the seven seats vacant when I had taken up my duties in Avonar four years ago. Taking the time to learn my way around the politics and personalities of Gondai, I had filled only two as yet. Now one of those was vacant again.

Over the next hours each of the remaining four came to me to report that nothing could be discovered of unwarranted entry into the palace, of surreptitious enchantments or openings of portals that could allow a villain’s escape. I did not scrutinize the content of the reports so much as each messenger, looking for the nervous twitch or the cast of an eye that would tell me where I had been wrong.

First the acid-tongued Balancer, a woman who had given ruthlessly in the war against the Lords of Zhev’Na for seventy years, sacrificing her family and home and exhausting her physical strength.

Then the irascible old Historian who never took his piercing eyes from my hands, judging their works by the exacting standards of Dar’Nethi history and his own peculiar view of our destiny, whose open distrust and unyielding criticism dismissed any belief in hidden treachery.

Next the exuberant giant of a Gem Worker whose meaty hands had held the fragile secret of my safety and Seri’s while I was imprisoned in Zhev’Na, the faithful steward whose stubborn strength had held Avonar together until I returned.

And last, the newest of my counselors, the unpretentious Word Winder who could create the most complex enchantments from the nuances of spoken language, the gentle teacher of the Way, the friend who could challenge me to a debate about the ethics of healing and then in the next breath set me laughing at a bawdy song.

The door of my private sitting room clicked shut behind Preceptor Ven’Dar, leaving me alone. A breeze whispered through the open casement, stirring my hair as I sat staring at the white lights that blossomed through the city in the deepening blue of the summer evening. Crowds of people in jewel-colored garb filled the streets, calling greetings and laughing at the merry enchantments of street entertainers, laughing, even after a millennium of war in which nine-tenths of our world had been ruined and three-quarters of our population had perished or been enslaved. Always before, even on the most difficult of days, I had been able to find solace in the beauties of my new home and the strength of my people. Not on this night.

On the mirror like surface of a small table next to my chair sat a red lacquered box. Only Bareil and I knew what lay inside the box: a small triangular pyramid of black crystal, set in a plain iron ring. Simple enough. Yet its simplicity belied its history. At the age of thirty-two I had been executed - burned to death, the penalty for being born a sorcerer in the mundane world beyond D’Arnath’s Bridge. But before my soul could cross the mysterious boundary we called the Verges, the border between this life and the life that follows, the Dar’Nethi sorcerer Dassine had reached out with his enchantments and ensnared me, binding me to this simple artifact until he could return me to life in the body of his violent, soul-dead prince. Now, my finger’s touch upon the black stone’s surface would release me from this body I’d been given and transport me to the realm of the dead where I belonged.

Unbidden, my hands took the red lacquered box that held my mortality and turned it over and over, my thumb rubbing the smooth simplicity of its lines. What life I had was a gift, given not to correct the misfortune of my too-early death, but in hopes that I might find some way to heal a universe ripped apart by evil. I already had ample reason to question Dassine’s belief that I was capable of such a task. Now, things had grown far worse. Here was a simple dilemma, and I would have given a lifetime of sleep not to have to consider it.

Treason. Murder. I could not attach the words to any of the four Preceptors. Not even a Word Winder as skilled as Ven’Dar could do that. But unknown to my four counselors, I had shared Jayereth’s news with two others, and it was the thought of that indiscretion that threw me into such great agitation as I gazed into the failing light of this villainous day. The Preceptors didn’t know of my venture across the Bridge the previous night, when loneliness had sent me running to Seri for a brief, sweet hour. Thus they didn’t know I had told her of Jayereth’s news. Yet their respect for my extraordinary wife was so great that they would never touch her with a trace of suspicion. Even Ustele and Men’Thor, who constantly reproached me for my “unseemly attachment to these uncivilized, untalented mundanes,” spoke of Seri with admiration.