Dassine sighed and leaned his chin on his white cane. “I know you think me cruel to have imprisoned Karon’s soul for so long, and wicked to have arranged D’Natheil’s mortal injury. And so I may be. What I do with him now is painful and exhausting as well. Every memory I give him must live again. Every sensation, every emotion, every sound, every smell… the experiences of days or months compressed into a few hours until his senses are raw. I press him hard, for though we have this interval that he won for us by his actions at the Gate, I don’t know how long it will last. ”

“Your war is not ended, then?”

“The assaults on Avonar have ceased-a blessing, of course. But our peace is uneasy and unaccustomed. No one knows quite what to do. The people of Avonar rejoice that the Heir of D’Arnath lives, and they know that he was somehow changed by his journey here in the summer and his victory at the Bridge, but they’ve not yet seen him. He has managed to put off the Preceptors with a brief audience, but their patience is wearing thin. And the Lords of Zhev’Na… our enemies, too, wait… and we do not know for what. I must use this time to bring back our Heir to lead us.” Dassine rapped his stick on the frozen ground as if some Zhid warrior were hiding under the snow. A rabbit scuttered out from under the bench and paused under a fallen trellis, twitching indignantly. “But I’ve no wish to kill him. He needs an hour’s respite… and someone other than his taskmaster to share it with.”

“What must I do?” I said.

“Follow my instructions precisely. Say nothing of your acquaintance and marriage. Nothing of your friends. Nothing-absolutely nothing-of his death. They are not his memories yet, and to mention them could do irreparable harm. If he speaks of himself-either self-then let him. As far as he knows, you are a friend of mine and know his history, but have met him only this year.”

“Then what can I say to him?”

“Be a friend to him. Ease him. You were his friend before you were his wife. Now go. He thinks I’m here to consult an old ally, but, in truth, I’m tired and plan to take a nap.”

Before I could ask even one of my hundred questions, Dassine leaned back, closed his eyes, and vanished. There was nothing to do but walk toward the end of the path.

He stood motionless, solitary, bathed in winter sunlight, facing a gnarled, bare-limbed tree that creaked in the cold. The white hood masked his profile, and his arms were folded into his white cloak, so that he might have been some strange snowdrift left in the garden by the passing storm, something only an enchanter could transform into human shape. I didn’t even know what name to call him. “Good morning, Your Grace,” I said, dipping my knee.

He bowed to me in answer to my greeting, but said nothing and did not raise his hood to reveal his face. He remained facing the tree.

“The tree is a lambina,” I said, “native to lands well east and south of here, lands less extreme in their climate. In spring it flowers, brilliant yellow blossoms as large as your hand, their scent very delicate, like lemon and ginger. When the flowers fade in early summer, they don’t fall, but float away on the first breeze like bits of yellow silk. Then the tree blooms again, almost immediately, small, white, feathery flowers with bright yellow centers, each in a cluster of waxy green leaves. It’s very beautiful.”

“I’ve seen it,” he said, so softly that I almost didn’t hear him. “The leaves turn dark red in autumn.”

“This one hasn’t bloomed in many years. I’m hoping it’s only dormant.”

With movements spare and graceful, he stepped across the snowy lawn to the tree and laid a hand on its gnarled trunk. “There is life in it.”

Beneath my warm cloak, the hairs on my arms prickled. “I’m glad to know that.”

“You’re Lady Seriana, Dassine’s friend.” So strange to hear the disembodied voice coming from the shapeless robe and drooping hood. I strained to hear some trace of the person I knew in the quiet words.

“He said you might like someone to talk to while he was about his business.”

“Please don’t feel obliged. It’s cold out here, and you’d be more comfortable inside. I’ll await my keeper as he commanded. He knows he needn’t set a guard on me.”

“I don’t consider it a burden to speak with you.”

“A curiosity, perhaps.”

“I’ll ask no questions.”

“And answer none? Dassine’s not very good at it- answering questions, that is. I can’t imagine he would permit someone else to answer things that he would not.”

I smiled at this wry disgruntlement, even as I blinked away an unwanted pricking in my eyes. “I’ll confess that he’s asked me to be circumspect.”

“Then you do know more than I.” His curiosity tugged at the conversation like a pup.

“About some things.”

“It sets quite a burden on an acquaintance when one knows more than the other.” The note I detected in his voice was not anger. Nor did it seem to be resentment that kept his countenance hidden under his hood. I felt the blood rush to his skin as if it were my own. Earth and sky, he was embarrassed.

I shook the crusted snow off a sprangling shrub, and the branches bounced up, showering me with ice crystals and almost hitting me in the face. “I think this could be considered an interesting variation of acquaintance,” I said, brushing the chilly dusting off my cloak. “And, as many things have happened since I met you last, we should start again anyway, don’t you think?”

“I certainly have no choice in the matter.” His tone demonstrated a most familiar irony and good humor. My heart soared.

“All right, then. We shall ignore all past acquaintance and begin right now. You may call me Seri. I am thirty-six years old, and I live in this hoary edifice you see before you. A temporary situation, though there was a time- Ah, I forget myself. No past. I am a poor relation to the lord who rules here, though circumstances have placed me in charge of the household-not an inconsiderable responsibility. I am well educated, though not as up-to-date in many areas as I’d like, and I have a secret ambition to teach history in our kingdom’s center of learning. Now tell me of yourself.”

“I believe you already know who I am.”

“No, sir. If I must begin again, then you must do the same.”

“It is required?” His voice was low.

I let go of my teasing for a moment. “Only if you wish it. I am not Dassine.”

With another bow, he turned to me and lifted the hood from his face. His eyes were cast down, and his cheeks were flushed as I had known they would be. “It seems I have several names. You must choose the one that suits.”

“Aeren,” I said without thinking. Tall. Fair hair grown long enough to tie back with a white ribbon. Wide, muscular shoulders. Square jaw and strong, narrow cheeks that might have been sculpted to match the fairest carvings of our warrior gods. Wide-set eyes of astonishing blue.

At the time of his death, Karon had been thirty-two, slight of build, dark-haired and boyishly handsome, with high cheekbones and a narrow jaw. The rough-hewn stranger who had dropped into my life on Midsummer’s Day looked nothing like Karon. I had called him Aeren, for he had no memory of himself except that he shared a name with the bird-a gray falcon-that screeched over Poacher’s Ridge. I had learned that his own language named him D’Natheil, but this man was not D’Natheil either. I felt no scarcely restrained menace from him, The threadwork of lines about his eyes, the strands of silver in his fair hair, the air of quiet dignity stated that the one who stood in my mother’s garden was older, wiser, more thoughtful than the violent twenty-two-year-old Prince of Avonar. But he was not my husband… or so I told myself.

“As you wish.” Even as he accepted my judgment, he glanced up at me.

My breath caught. In that brief moment, as had happened four months ago in an enchanted cavern, I glimpsed the truth that lived behind his blue eyes. This was no one but Karon.

I started to speak his true name, to see if those syllables on my lips might spark some deeper memory. But no light of recognition had crossed his face when his eyes met mine. Patience, Dassine had said. You were his friend before you were his wife. He looked very tired.

“Would you like to walk?” I said. “There’s not much to see in this garden, but walking would be warmer as we wait.”

“I’d like that very much. I can’t seem to get enough of walking outdoors.”

Inside, I danced and leaped and crowed with delight; Karon had never gotten enough of walking out of doors. Outwardly, I smiled and gestured toward the path.

My boots crunched quietly as we strolled through the frosty morning. Karon broke our companionable silence first. “Tell me more of yourself.”

“What kind of things?”

“Anything. It’s refreshing to hear of someone who isn’t me.”

I laughed and began to speak of things I enjoyed, of books and conversation, of puzzles and music, of meadows and gardens. He chuckled when I told him of my first awkward attempts at growing something other than flowers. “Jonah couldn’t understand why his plants produced no beans, until the day he found me diligently picking off the blooms. I told him that my gardener had once said that plants would grow larger if we didn’t let them flower. Poor Jonah laughed until tears came, telling me that until we could eat the leaves I had best leave the flowers be. I had ruined the entire planting, a good part of their winter sustenance. It was devastating for one so proud of her intellect as I, but it was only the first of many gaps in my experience I was to discover.”

“This Jonah sounds like a kind gentleman. He was not your family, though, for if his crop was a good part of his winter sustenance, he was not the lord of this manor.”

Careful, Seri. Careful. “Jonah and Anne were like parents to me. I was estranged from my own family at the time.”

“But now you are reconciled?”

“They’re all dead now, my mother and my father and my only brother. The lord of this house is my ten-year-old nephew, and the lady is his mother, a somewhat… self-absorbed… young widow.”