“I can send someone to pick a basket.”

Jhesrhi took a deep breath. “I also… you know that when we try, it’s easier when there aren’t other people around.”

He smiled. “It’s private in the pavilion.”

“But people would see us go in alone. I’d hear them moving around outside. They might hear us too.”

He stood and thought for a moment. Then he said, “Whatever my lady wishes,” and they walked out among the trees.

She risked one quick but hard look in the direction of the hills, peering not just with her eyes but also with her wizard’s intuition. She couldn’t sense anything coming. That wasn’t surprising. There hadn’t been any way to arrange the trick on anything approximating a precise schedule.

So she allowed Tchazzar to take her hand in his. Then he used a fingertip to caress it. She assumed that was supposed to be erotic, although it simply made her skin crawl.

“Is that all right?” he asked.

“It’s nice,” she said, straining to keep revulsion out of her voice.

She understood why he was so intent on bringing her to his bed. Partly it was because it had been she and Gaedynn who’d freed him from Sseelrigoth the blight wyrm. But he also saw her as a challenge. Abuses she’d suffered as a child had left her with a horror of being touched. To increase her sway over him, she’d led him to believe that out of all the males in the wide world, he alone could cure her affliction and teach her the joys of physical intimacy. Now she was paying the price for that deception.

After a while he left off fondling her hand and started caressing her face instead. His fingertip brushed her cheeks, her lips, her eyelids, the side of her neck and the whorls and lobe of her ear.

That was worse. It was like a centipede crawling on her. But she endured it and hoped that he mistook her twitches and shudders for signs of excitement.

Then he snapped around and looked to the south. Jhesrhi did too. She still couldn’t sense anything, but she suspected he had. Even in human guise, he often seemed to possess a dragon’s sharp senses and, always, a dragon’s instincts.

“Perhaps we should go back,” he said.

She took a breath to steady her voice. “Why, Majesty? Did you hear something?”

He hesitated. “I… no, apparently not. But people will wonder what’s become of me.”

She sighed. “That’s a shame. I was enjoying this. Truly.”

He smiled. “So was I.”

“But I was enjoying it so much that I thought that perhaps this was the moment for the next step.”

He studied her. Then, moving slowly, still entirely gentle, he put his forefinger under her chin and tilted her face up. Then he pressed his lips to hers. Bile burned in the back of her throat.

She imagined he was Gaedynn, but that didn’t help. She’d never been able to bear the archer’s touch either. All she could do was command herself not to throw up.

Once Gaedynn had delivered word that the procession had arrived within reach of Alasklerbanbastos and Meralaine’s sorcery, he had no reason to linger, nor any desire to. Back in camp, Jhesrhi was trying to make a fool of Tchazzar, and her friends should be close in case the attempt went wrong.

He glanced down at the harness that secured him to the saddle, making sure the buckles were still fastened, and drew breath to give Eider the command to fly. Then, evidently sensing his intent, Oraxes said, “Wait.”

“What’s wrong?” Gaedynn asked.

“Can you stay until we’re certain the magic is working as it should?” Oraxes asked.

Gaedynn raised an eyebrow. “Do you have some reason to think it won’t?”

The adolescent shrugged. “Not exactly.”

“And you understand that I’m no sorcerer. I wouldn’t know how to fix a spell if it did go awry.”

“I’d still appreciate it. I… have a feeling.”

Gaedynn sighed. He still wanted to return to camp, but he also liked Oraxes. Maybe it was because neither of them knew when to hold his insolent tongue. And more importantly, he’d come to trust the boy. There was more to him than the slouching street tough he’d initially appeared to be.

“I’ll stay a few more moments.” He started unbuckling the straps. There was no reason to make Eider bear his weight while they were on the ground, even though it wouldn’t actually trouble the sturdy beast.

As he swung himself out of the saddle, Alasklerbanbastos took up a position at the far end of a flat stair step of a space partway up a wooded hillside. According to Meralaine, somebody had massacred somebody else on that very spot a long time ago. Even when he’d visited the place in the daylight, Gaedynn hadn’t noticed any sign of it, but he assumed the necromancer knew what she was talking about.

Alasklerbanbastos growled rhythmic words of power. Gaedynn couldn’t understand them, but each was like a prod that made him want to flinch. Eider screeched and started to unfurl her wings. He stroked her head and told her everything was all right.

Cera watched the dracolich with her golden mace dangling from the leather loop around her forearm and the phylactery cradled in her hands. Keeping an eye on Alasklerbanbastos was all that she could contribute. She had her own magic, and it was powerful stuff. But the cleansing light of the Keeper of the Yellow Sun was antithetical to the tainted power of necromancy.

Meralaine drifted aimlessly, or so it seemed, across the level ground. She was a tiny, snub-nosed pixie of a girl, and even knowing her arcane specialty, Gaedynn rarely thought of her as sinister. But her expression, somehow intent and empty at the same time, made the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. And even though he could barely hear it, her murmuring made him feel bereft, like everyone he’d ever cared about had died.

He grinned and shoved the irrational emotions out of his head. His friends were very much alive, and even if it had been otherwise, he’d learned early on to value those worth valuing but never to need anybody but himself.

Meralaine extended her arms and twirled back and forth as she moved, commencing a languorous dance in time to her and Alasklerbanbastos’s interwoven incantations. Shadows shifted on the ground then boiled up into the air to glide with her for a moment, their murky fingers brushing hers. Some phantoms were simply near-formless silhouettes. Others showed a gleam of phosphorescent eyes or a glimmer of bare ribs or a naked skull.

Gradually the shapes became more persistent, floating, seething, and flickering in the night air, even after Meralaine abandoned them for her next partner, until finally there were… dozens? It was hard to tell in the dark or to keep track of them all from one moment to the next.

Her eyes all black pupil, wide and unblinking, her face a white mask, Meralaine danced a last measure, reciting the remaining words of her spell in time with the final steps. But the deep, steady drumbeat of Alasklerbanbastos’s incantation continued. Evidently it was his task to give the conjured spirits their marching orders.

Suddenly Meralaine gave her head a shake, and animation and dismay flooded into her face. “That wasn’t the plan!” she said just as the phantoms raced away down the hill.

Gaedynn didn’t understand all that was happening, but it was plain that Oraxes’s premonition hadn’t misled him. Things were going wrong. He reached for an arrow; then fingers so cold they burned grabbed him by the wrist.

Jhesrhi recognized that Tchazzar was only pressing his lips lightly to her own. And, of course, nothing was covering her nostrils. Still, her heart pounding, her stomach churning, she felt as if she were choking.

In another heartbeat or two, she’d absolutely have to push him away and pray he couldn’t tell how sick and fouled she felt. She would pray, too, that she could somehow hold him there a little longer, even though it would be obvious the kissing and fondling were over for the time being.