He found her beneath a slender ithayatree on the edge of the grove where the Mournish had made camp. A tincture of coral colored the horizon; dawn was coming, but not yet. She turned when she heard him approach, her smile glowing in the dimness.

“ Beshala,” he said softly. “What are you doing out here so early?”

“Taneth was fussing. I didn’t want him to wake you.” She cradled the baby in her arms. He was sound asleep, wrapped snugly in a blanket sewn with moons and stars.

Sareth laid a hand on the baby’s head. His hair was thick and dark, and when they were open, his eyes were the same dark copper as Sareth’s. However, everything else about him—his fine features, his rich ebon skin—was Lirith’s.

The baby sighed in his sleep, and Sareth smiled. Here was another wonder before him. For so long, Lirith had believed herself incapable of bearing a child. Years ago, after her adoptive parents were murdered by thieves in the Free City of Corantha, she had been sold into servitude in the house of Gulthas. There she had been forced to dance for the men who paid their gold—and to do more than dance. Countless times a spark of life had kindled in her womb, only to go dark when she consumed the potions Gulthas forced all the women in his house to drink. Finally, no more sparks kindled.

Lirith had wept the night she finally told Sareth these things, thinking that once he knew what she had been in the past he would turn away from her. She was wrong; her revelations only made him love her more fiercely. That she could endure such torture, yet remain so good, so beautiful inside and out, showed there was no one in all the world more deserving of love than Lirith.

Besides, even if she could have conceived a child, he could not have given her one. Or so he had believed. When the demon below Tarras took his leg, it had taken something else—something intangible, but no less a part of him. He could love Lirith with all his heart, but he could not makelove to her.

Worse, both of them had dreaded the day when the laws of his people would sunder them, for Sareth could only marry one of his clan. Then, not a month after Queen Grace destroyed the Pale King, they feared that day had come when the Mournish arrived at Gravenfist Keep. Though they were great wanderers, never to Sareth’s knowledge had the Mournish traveled so far north. What brought them there could only be of the greatest importance.

It was.

“She is of our clan,” his al-Mama said, touching Lirith’s cheek with a gnarled hand.

“How?” Sareth had finally managed to say.

The old woman let out a cackle. “I am old, but I am not blind. I saw the look in your eyes when you gazed at her. But the laws of our people are clear, and you are of the highest blood of ancient Morindu. You above all must not marry outside our clan.” Her gaze softened. “Yet I would not see you be in pain. I studied the cards for long hours—more precious time than these old bones should spare—and at last I saw the truth.”

They listened, amazed, as al-Mama told the tale she had pieced together by gazing at the T’hotcards and speaking to elders among the various bands of Mournish. Twenty-seven years ago, a band of Mournish from the farthest south were run out of the Free City of Gendarra by an angry guildmaster. He had purchased a love potion from one of the Mournish women, and it had worked as she said it would, granting him the love he deserved. However, this had not been the love of the beautiful lady he admired, but rather that of a sow who merrily trotted after him everywhere in the city. For as a selfish man he deserved no better.

Enraged, the guildmaster sent his mercenaries after the Mournish, and they were waylaid. Most escaped, but not all. One wagon was caught and burned, and the young Mournish couple within died. They had had a baby, an infant girl, and it was believed she perished with her parents. Only it was not so, and al-Mama’s cards had revealed the rest of the tale, which no one had known until then: how the infant had been thrown into a thicket of bushes when the wagon toppled, and how a day later she was found by a tradesman on his way home to southern Toloria. He took the baby with him, for his wife had always wanted a child.

Thus Fate had taken Lirith away from the Mournish, and Fate had brought her back—to her people, and to Sareth.

When the Mournish departed Gravenfist Keep, Lirith had traveled south with her people and her husband, and life had seemed joyous beyond imagining. Then, one night a little over a year ago, as the two of them lay together, they had discovered one more wonder wrought by Lady Aryn’s spell. Their bodies had become one, and they had laughed and wept with a pleasure neither had thought themselves capable of. Over the moons that followed Lirith’s belly had swelled, and here now in her arms was the greatest wonder of all: little Taneth, dark and sweet and perfect.

Lirith sighed, turning her gaze toward the east.

Sareth touched her shoulder. “Are you sure it was because of Taneth you came out here, beshala? Is there not another reason?”

She gazed at him, her eyes bright with tears. “I don’t want you to go.”

So that was what this was about. Last night, a young man from another Mournish band had ridden hard into the circle of their wagons, bearing ill news.

“I do not wish to leave,” Sareth said. “But you heard the message just as I did. A dervish has come out of the desert, or at least one who claims he is a dervish. He must be seen.”

“Yes, someone must go see him. But why must it be you?”

“I am descended of the royal line of Morindu.”

Lirith’s dark eyes flashed. “So is your sister, Vani. She is the one who was trained at Golgoru. She is the T’gol. It is she who should be doing this thing, not you.”

Sareth pressed his lips together; he could not argue that point. Three thousand years ago, the sorcerers of Morindu the Dark had destroyed their own city lest its secrets fall into the hands of their foe, the city of Scirath. The Morindai became wanderers and vagabonds, known in the north as the Mournish.

After their exile, the Morindai forbade the practice of blood sorcery until Morindu was found again. However, there were those who defied that law. Dervishes, they were called. They were renegades, anathema. The silent fortress of Golgoru had been founded to train assassins who could hunt down the dervishes and destroy them with means other than magic.

Sareth moved to the edge of the grove. “My sister is gone, and the cards reveal not where, though al-Mama has gazed at them time after time. I know of no way to find her—unless you think Queen Grace may have heard some news.”

Lirith shook her head. “You know I have not Aryn’s strength in the Touch. I cannot reach her over the Weirding, let alone Grace. They are too far away.” She frowned. “Indeed, it seems my ability to reach out over the leagues grows less these days, not more. I can hardly weave the simplest spell of late. The Weirding feels . . . it feels tired, somehow.”

“Perhaps it’s you that’s a little tired, beshala,” Sareth said, touching Taneth’s tiny hand.

She smiled. “Perhaps so. Still, it is strange. I will have to ask Aryn about it the next time she contacts me.”

While Sareth did not doubt Lirith was happy living among the Mournish, he knew she missed her friends. The Mournish had journeyed to Calavere—where Aryn and Teravian ruled as king and queen over both Calavan and Toloria—only once in the last three years, and they had not returned at all to Gravenfist Keep, where Queen Grace dwelled. Still, the three witches could speak from time to time, using magic, and that was a comfort.

An idea occurred to Sareth. “Why don’t you and Taneth go to Calavere, beshala? It will not take you long to journey there, and the roads are safe. Aryn is to have her own child soon, is she not? I am certain she will enjoy seeing our little one. And when I am finished with my work in the south, I will send word.”