Y’Dan nodded, puzzled.

“Once we’re done here today, you may take Preceptor Gar’Dena and his spy with you back to Avonar,” said Gerick. “I charge you particularly, Master Exeget. Question them and dispose of them as you wish.”

“But my lord, she is your mother,” said Ce’Aret. “What harm-?”

“She is nothing to me! If she wanted honorable concourse, she would have presented herself to me in an honorable manner… told me the truth…”

Exeget bowed. “This is shocking news, Your Grace. Was the woman acting alone?”

Gerick turned his back to them. “Her conspirators are dead. I had them killed. All discovered. All dead.”

Take me back to Avonar… conspirators… I didn’t know what to say. In an instant, everything was uncertain. But my eye was on the Preceptor I had noted before. There it was again. Sorrow… so brief. Devastation. He had waited for over a year and had brought with him whatever glimmer of hope he and Gar’Dena had been able to maintain. But they didn’t need to see the gold mask to know we had failed.

“My lord,” said Madyalar, soothing. “Let us proceed with our business so we may return to Avonar and give your people the glorious news of their new hope. We have been without an Heir for too long.” She urged her colleagues forward. “Come, you old fossils. The young Prince has come of age. He has been proved.”

Why didn’t they see? Why didn’t they stop? I needed to warn them, yet something-enchantment, uncertainty, caution?-kept me silent. Something else was happening here. I watched and waited.

Exeget motioned to the others to form a half-circle, and in his pale, manicured hand he held a small round box made of gold. He removed its lid and stared at its contents. “Silestia,” he said. “It grows in only one spot on the highest slopes of the Mountains of Light. The white flowers bloom only on Midsummer’s Day, and it is said their fragrance fills the air for a league in any direction. From each flower we can extract only a single drop of oil. So rare and precious is it that this tiny portion I carry is the product of twelve years of gathering, since the last was used for young D’Natheil. To think-”

“We agreed we would perform no elaborate ritual,” snapped Madyalar. “Since this is a private ceremony, there is no need.”

Exeget looked up. “Is that your wish, my lord?”

Gerick nodded, but seemed scarcely to be paying attention. He stood staring at me, his arms wrapped tight about his stomach as if he were going to be sick.

“So be it,” said Exeget. “The heart of the rite is, of course, quite brief. In the mundane world, the head of the ruler is anointed, and as the head rules the body, so does the king rule his subjects. But it is the hands of D’Arnath’s Heir that are anointed, for the hands serve the body, supply its sustenance, defend it, build up the works of beauty that its soul creates. So does the Heir serve his people, sustain them, defend them, and exemplify and encourage the beauty they create. We do not know you, young Prince, yet we must entrust you with this responsibility. Some among us say we should wait and judge your worthiness, to learn of your protectors and your schooling to be sure you are the Prince we believe. But I am the head of the Preceptorate, and I say we know enough.”

Exeget dipped his finger into the gold case. Madyalar, Ce’Aret, Ustele, and Y’Dan knelt before Gerick. Gar’Dena had turned his broad back, sheathed in red satin, to all of us, his shoulders quivering. I believed he was weeping. But tears would do no good. Gar’Dena should be crying out a warning. Madyalar and the others didn’t understand the truth. Why was he silent?

Exeget reached for Gerick’s extended hand. “Great Vasrin, Creator and Shaper of the universe, stand witness…”

I couldn’t believe he was going to go through with it. Exeget surely knew the identity of Gerick’s “protectors,” but I no longer believed he was a traitor. Exeget’s face had blanched along with Gar’Dena’s when he saw me revealed, and Exeget’s expression had shown defeat when he heard my allies were dead. He could not allow Gerick to become the anointed Heir. Madness and frustration boiled in my heart… until Exeget glanced at me… and I knew… Earth and sky! They were going to kill him.

“Exeget, do not!” As if my own voice had burst forth in an unaccustomed timbre, a shout rang out, echoing on stone walls and dark columns and glass floor hidden behind this seeming of a room. Deep and commanding, that voice pierced my cold heart like a lance of fire. “Neither anointing him nor assassinating him accomplishes any purpose whatsoever-not while I live free.”

A man appeared at one end of the room as if he had parted the plastered walls and stepped through. Tall and lean, his sun-darkened skin ridged with scars, he wore the collar, gray tunic, and cropped hair of a slave and the face of D’Natheil. One glance told me everything necessary. Recognition, completion, understanding… he was Karon my beloved. He was whole. I clasped his unspoken greeting as a starving child holds her bread.

Exeget lowered his hand and bowed to his prince, the corners of his mouth twitching upward in a half-smile, transforming… illuminating his proud face. “Never have I been so happy to see a failed pupil, my lord.”

Gar’Dena whirled about with speed and agility unexpected for one of his girth. “My good lord!”

“V’Saro,” whispered Gerick, staring at Karon. “They said my servants were dead. I commanded it… before I listened to you… before I knew…”

The remaining Preceptors looked from Exeget to Karon to Gerick, bewildered… except for Madyalar who stepped protectively toward Gerick. Now I saw the puzzle solving itself.

“What treachery is this?” boomed the voice of Ziddari from every direction at once, echoing through the light and shadows, causing the floor to shudder, the homely room to seem fragile and false, and joy, relief, and hope of no more durance than dew in the desert. “How comes this slave here?”

“The anointing must proceed,” said the voice of the woman, Notole. “Why do you pause in this most important duty? Continue.”

“Did you not hear, mighty Lords?” said Exeget, closing the lid of the gold case with a snap. “Anointing this boy accomplishes nothing. You may bathe him in the oil of silestia, but it will gain him no power. The anointed Heir of D’Arnath yet lives in Gondai, in full possession of his power, and before you can make an Heir of your own, you must deal with him.”

“D’Natheil is decaying in his grave,” shouted Parven. “No impostor will delay our triumph.” The air grew heavy with anger… with danger… The lamplight dimmed.

“I would recommend that you get back through the portal, good Preceptors,” said Karon, waving Y’Dan and the two old ones toward Gar’Dena and Exeget. He approached Gerick slowly, locking our son’s empty face in his gaze while he called over his shoulder. “Can you hold the way long enough to get all of us out, Master Exeget?”

“You will have to hurry, my lord. A moment’s earlier arrival and I would have been able to serve you better.” Exeget’s puffy face had crumpled into a gray ruin, as if time had leaped forward fifty years. But the Preceptor raised his clenched fists and closed his eyes. The rectangular doorway appeared in the shivering air. “Ce’Aret, Ustele, hurry,” he said, gasping. “Y’Dan, Gar’Dena my brother…”

Gar’Dena shoved the Preceptors through the portal one by one. “My lady!” he called, gesturing for me to come. But I could not go. Not yet.

Karon gazed down at Gerick. “You must come with us.”

“Why? So you can execute me?”

“To set you free. You don’t belong here.”

“You’re wrong.” And Gerick let his false image dissolve and with it the walls and the hearth and the trappings of ordinary life. He stood in the stark, black hall of the Lords, his truth revealed, his diamond eyes glittering in the darkness. “There is no going back, even if I wanted. This is exactly where I belong.”

Karon did not flinch or falter. “It doesn’t matter. Not even this. Nothing… nothing… is irrevocable. I, of all men, can bear witness to that. Come with us who care for you.”

“I’ve freed the woman,” said Gerick, folding his arms across his breast. “Take her away quickly or I’ll end up killing you both.” Then he turned his back on us and walked slowly toward the dais where the black thrones sat vacant.

From the opposite end of the hall where a tall, wide doorway broke the line of the colonnade, running footsteps entered the vast chamber. “My lord,” cried a familiar voice, echoing in the empty vastness. “Three Zhid warriors right behind me!” A youth wearing Drudge’s garb burst through the gaping door, his arms laden with belts and scabbards bristling with swords and knives. He sped across the black, mirrored floor into the light, shooting me a cheerful grin. “We’ve come to rescue you.”

Paulo dumped his bundle of armaments on the floor beside Karon. “I come by these from the guards’ stores. Thought you might have need.”

Karon wrenched his gaze from Gerick’s back and smiled at Paulo. “You are irreplaceable, my friend.” Dragging a sword and a knife from the tangle, he took up a position between the door Paulo had just entered and the portal where Gar’Dena was disappearing into the council chamber.

“Does the young master have a sword on him-or might he want this one?” Paulo called after Karon, pulling a blade from the pile and gesturing at Gerick’s back.

“I don’t think he needs one. You and Seri, get through the portal. I’ll wait for Gerick.” His gaze embraced me, and he waved his sword toward the enchanted doorway. “Go. I’ll bring him. I promise.”

But before I could convince myself to leave, a nauseating wave of dark power pulsed through the vast chamber. With a thunderous boom, the portal vanished. Exeget cried out and slumped to the floor. The little gold case of silestia fell out of his hand, clattering across the dark surface. At the same time, three Zhid warriors burst from the far end of the room, swords drawn and Karon stepped forward to meet them.

While Paulo, hands on his waist, looked uncertainly from Karon to Gerick and back again, I ran to the fallen sorcerer. “Can I help you, Preceptor?” I asked, searching for some wound or hurt to ease. Sitting with his head drooped between his knees, he was bleeding from his mouth and nose, and wheezing like unoiled bellows.