It’s hard to remember much about my escape with Captain Darzid. I held on to his waist and kept drowsing off as we rode through the cold night. It didn’t make sense that I could hold on for so long or that the horse could go for days without rest, but when we made camp somewhere on the far side of the Cerran Brae, several days’ travel from Comigor, I couldn’t remember having stopped even once.

The weather blocked the way. We came down from a pass through the mountains and were traveling north when the snow and the wind became so fierce that the horse refused to go further, even when the captain whipped him. When I buried my face in Darzid’s back to keep from freezing, I could hear the curses rumbling through his bones. “Perdition to this weather and this world and all lazy, sniveling beasts.”

We dismounted in a clearing, and I sat stupid and numb on a fallen tree while Darzid started a fire. “Come on,” he said, kicking a log close to the fire and jerking his head toward it. “No need to freeze. The weather’s a nuisance, but perhaps our pursuers will run into something like.”

“Pursuers?”

“Your mother has sent out search parties, of course. Those who murdered your father and your nurse are likely among them. But we have a good day’s start.”

One would think that with all the sleeping I had done on horseback, I’d be wakeful once we stopped, but it wasn’t so. The rocks and trees and sky all had blurry edges, and my mind seemed to slide off of anything it tried to settle on. That worried me, for it would be easy to make a slip and show Darzid that I was the very thing he was trying to protect me from. The captain gave me two blankets to wrap up in. The wind was howling, and even so near the fire, my hands and feet felt like ice.

While I wandered in and out of sleep, Captain Darzid was talking to himself. “Do they even suspect? Fate has rewarded our patience… We’ll need to be quick. They’ll be on our heels. The test of parentage will be the key… Everlasting night, to be home again, to reclaim what’s mine!”

Somehow all these things got mixed up with dreams of the strange old man from Grandmama’s garden and the words he’d spoken to Seri on that day. My own voice kept repeating his words over and over.

Then it was morning. The sun was blinding on the snow, the sky was bright blue, and the wind had died away. I was colder than ever, even when I drank the cup of hot wine the captain put in my hand. “Time to move on, young Lord,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“To a place of safety. I have friends-powerful friends- who have a fortress in a land far from Leire. You’ll be safe there, even from such dangerous enemies as you have. There you can grow strong and plan your revenge.”

“Revenge?” I still felt thickheaded and stupid.

“For your father’s murder and that of your friend, the nurse. I heard you swear to avenge them. I assumed your sworn oath would be as unbreakable as your father’s… but, of course, you are so young. Perhaps I’ve misjudged…” He lifted my chin with his black-gloved hand and stared into my eyes…

Lucy was rocking in her chair, smiling and cheerful, waiting for me. She held out her hand, but it wasn’t to me. She looked curious, then scared, because the hand that held hers wouldn’t let go. The person that wasn’t me raised a knife, a silver knife that gleamed so bright in the lamplight that it made it hard to see anything except the crest engraved on the hilt. The knife cut into Lucy until the blood ran out all over the front of her. She tried to scream, but of course she had no voice, and she fought with the person that held the knife, but he was much too strong. She was crying and held her hand to her apron, trying to stop the bleeding. The one who wasn’t me pulled her other arm away from her and cut her on that one too, and then held her in her chair until she stopped struggling. I carried her over to her bed and laid her down, but when I looked at her face again it wasn’t Lucy, but Papa. He was lying on the floor of a huge chamber full of clouds and fire that was dark and cold instead of bright, and he was bleeding from a terrible wound in his belly. Before I could say anything, before I could tell him that I was sorry I was evil, his eyes got wide and scared. He shuddered and blood ran out of his mouth. Dead. On the floor beside him was a bloody sword, marked with the same crest as I’d seen on the knife that killed Lucy. The dark fire burned its way into my head, until I was full of it…

“Yes!” I shouted, startling the dream away. “Yes, I want them punished. They murdered the two best people in the world, and I don’t care what I have to do to make them pay for it.” I was full of such hate and anger that I thought Captain Darzid would see right away how evil I was.

But he just smiled and said, “That’s more like it. I’ll help you grow strong enough that you can do whatever you want… even to men as powerful as Seri’s friends. Trust me. I know you don’t as yet, but I served Tomas faithfully for seventeen years, and I’ll do far, far more for you.”

“Help me avenge Papa and Lucy, and I’ll give you whatever you want,” I said.

“Exactly so,” said Darzid. “Come along now. The road to our safe haven will lead us through some strange places.” He pulled me up behind him on his great black horse, and we turned onto a road that was a ribbon of unmarked snow. My face felt hot, especially when I thought about Papa and Lucy, but inside all the rest of me was cold, and I didn’t think I’d ever be warm again.

“What is this place?” I asked the captain when we rode across the mud fields toward the bare white walls.

“This is the destiny of those who do not know their place in the universe.”

I didn’t understand him. It was an awful place, a burned-out ruin of a city, every building charred and broken, bones and skulls everywhere, even hanging from posts stuck in the ground. I’d seen ruins before. Papa had taken me to Vaggiere, a day’s ride east of Montevial, and to Mandebrol Castle, both destroyed by the Valloreans a long time ago. But those ruins had never made me feel sick and wretched like this one did. The bones were part of it. Anyone left alive-even if they were prisoners or wounded-would bury their dead. But then, not a blade of grass or a weed or a vine lived there, not a bit of moss, not a bird or beast or even so much as a spider or an ant creeping around. That made me think that maybe there had been no one left alive in that city.

We left our horses in front of what had once been a fine house, almost a palace. You could tell by the amount of stone fallen in on it and the broad steps that opened onto a grand commard-huge and round, paved in marble, with tall columns all around it. Lots of posts with skulls on them stood beside that house, and I tried not to look at them. The walls of the house were cracked and broken, some fallen away altogether. Charred roof timbers had crashed down into the middle of it. At least two people had died in the foyer, several more on the curved staircase that ended halfway up to the second floor.

“This was the lord of the city’s house. A sad place, is it not? I need to find something here before we can be on our way.” Captain Darzid’s boots clattered on the stone floor as we walked in, and his voice was very loud. I wanted to tell him to be quiet. It didn’t seem right to make noise in that house. But I didn’t say anything, lest he think me a coward.

We stepped over fallen pillars and tramped through frozen mud and dirty snowdrifts into a large courtyard in the center of the house. Lots of trees and plants had once grown in the courtyard-all dead stumps now, of course. Several statues had toppled over. Once I stepped right into a giant stone hand. From one corner of the cloister came a trickling sound. A small fountain was still running-the statue of a little girl emptying a pitcher of water into a shallow round basin. The pinkish color of the marble made her look almost alive. A stream of clear water ran from the pitcher to the basin of the fountain, and there was not a mark or a crack or a chip on any of it. The girl had a little smile on her pink marble face, like she knew she had escaped whatever happened to the rest of the city.

“Come along,” said the captain, when I stopped to look at the fountain. We climbed up steps that went nowhere, peered through doorways that had nothing on the other side of them, and pushed into dark holes under the fallen walls. “I’m looking for something like the little fountain back there, something that’s not burned up or ruined, but that has writing carved on it.” In and out we went until we must have covered every step of the house.

“It has to be here,” said the captain, kicking aside a charred timber. “They wrote it in stone, protected it with power, so it couldn’t be destroyed. Curse all Dar’Nethi bastards!”

Two days we searched that awful ruin for whatever it was Captain Darzid wanted. He said we were looking for writing that described a shortcut through the mountains to his friends’ fortress. I thought that surely we could have gone the long way around by the time we would find what he was looking for. We camped in the courtyard of the great house. I slept a lot of the time and had terrible dreams. Well, I called them dreams, but they seemed real. One was about Comigor, a vision so clear that I could smell the dry grass…

The tenants were tilling the fields. I could see them through the paned window on the stair landing. Nellia and James and the other servants were at their daily work. Nellia was singing. She always sang “The Warrior’s Child” in her rusty old voice when she sat with her sewing. I called out to say good day, but she didn’t answer, and the footman in the dining room looked right through me when I walked past him into the drawing room. Mama was there. She was very beautiful, dressed in white and wearing her favorite necklace-the one with the circles of diamonds all strung together. A harper played in the corner, and Mama was talking with her friends.

“Was there truly no trace of him ever found?” A woman in green with a crow’s face leaned toward Mama’s ear.

“None at all,” said Mama. She dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “The sheriff from Graysteve says that as no one has demanded ransom, we must assume he’s dead, I’m going to leave this wretched place forever. My poor lamb was such an unhappy child. It’s a comfort, in a way, a kindness that fate has saved him the pain of long life.”