“Come, Lady Philomena, enough of sad thoughts,” said a young man as he pulled her up to dance. Soon she was laughing again and drinking wine. Her diamonds sparkled in the lamplight as she danced.

“It’s as well the boy is gone,” said the woman in green to another woman. “He was so odd. I’ve heard rumors of murder and worse things… perversion… in this very house. The royal inquisitors were on their way when the boy disappeared…”

Another dream came, too, and like the other, it seemed more real than any dream. I knew all the people, but they couldn’t see me.

Two men-peasant men-were running through one of the rocky rifts that cut through the heath north of Comigor. One of the men carried a little girl in his arms. The other, an older man with a gray beard, was bleeding from a wound in his leg. The older man stumbled on a stone and fell. “A curse on the House of Comigor.”

“Hurry, Father Castor, they’re coming. We can’t stop.” The younger man was frightened. Choking smoke filled the air, and the young man couldn’t stop coughing. The little girl whimpered, and the young man pushed her face into his shoulder. “Hush, Ceillitta.”

“Go on with you,” said the older man. “I’ll hold them here as long as I can.” He pulled himself up to lean on the steep bank, unhitching a scythe from his belt.

With a sad curse, the young man gripped the older one’s shoulder, and then ran on down the gully away from the castle. He didn’t get very far. Riders wearing King Evard’s red-and-gold livery galloped along the edge of the rift and shouted when they caught sight of the men. Two soldiers slipped off their horses, slid down the bank, and cut off the old man’s head before he could cry out. Another pair of soldiers caught the younger man and dragged the little girl away from him. The rest of the troop came up, their horses’ hooves swirling up dust to mix with the smoke. They were laughing and mocking as they dismounted. Two soldiers held the young man by the hair and arms, and the others threw the little girl on the ground, pulled up her dress, and fell on her, one and then the other. The young man cursed and wept and strained to get free, while the little girl screamed, “Papa, Papa.” By the time they were done with her, her scream was just a dry bubbling sound. The young man was about crazy.

“This is what happens to them as nurture sorcerers,” said the captain of the soldiers. “This is the evil they bring into the world. If you had given him up, you and the child and the old man would live.” Then he cut the little girl’s throat.

“A curse on them all,” the young man sobbed. “May they all burn.”

“Oh, they will. Never fear,” said the soldier. “You have the easier part.” And he stabbed the young man in the belly and threw him onto the rocks.

I climbed out of the rift onto the hillside. The smoke was terrible, choking, making my eyes burn and water. When I stumbled on something softer than a rock, I didn’t know what it was until I fell on top of it, and came face to face with Allard, the head groom. Only it wasn’t hardly Allard anymore since his nose and ears had been cut off, and he was dead. I jumped up and ran before I could get sick, and I came to the top of a hill where I could see all around.

Comigor was burning-the roof, the stables, the barracks, the fields-for as far as I could see it was burning. People were screaming. The soldiers cut down anyone who tried to run away. A few of the castle guard were fighting to clear a way through the main gate for a carriage, but they fell one by one. When the soldiers dragged Mama and Nellia out of the carriage, others were already sticking heads on poles.

“The devil’s dam-the witch! Where’s fire enough for her?”

I always woke up sweating and coughing about the time Mama started to scream. I told myself that these were only dreams, not things that had really happened. But they left me feeling sick and sad, as if I’d really seen them.

By the afternoon of the second day, Captain Darzid was tearing away rubble with his bare hands. I stayed out of his way. He said we would have to leave that night if he didn’t find what he was looking for. There were other ways to get where we were going, but a lot farther and more complicated.

“I’m going to get a drink from that fountain,” I said. The water in Captain Darzid’s flasks tasted like old boots.

“As you wish,” he growled, pulling more stones away from a buried hearthstone and cursing the avalanche of rubble that followed. I left quickly, before he could tell me to help him move the piles of stone that had undone his entire day’s work.

We were down to eating nothing but jack. Being so dry and salty, jack always made me thirsty, and we had used up all the wine in Darzid’s pack. I hadn’t told Darzid about my own supplies, because I planned to use them when I ran away from him. I had almost run away the previous night, but I hadn’t seen any towns or villages close by as we traveled. Besides, I didn’t relish picking my way through the ruin or the mud fields in the dark. I would have taken his horse, but the captain’s horse wasn’t nice at all. He was like Captain Darzid, bad-tempered underneath all his politeness.

The little stone girl was still smiling to herself in the corner of the courtyard, pouring water from her bottomless pitcher. I helped myself to some of the water and sat down on the rim of the basin, not at all interested in going back to help Darzid. The water was cool, not freezing like you might expect in the winter, and sweet, the best thing I had tasted in a long time. It seemed to clear my head a bit, too. For the first time since leaving Comigor, I had two clear thoughts together. The first thought was that this whole business of searching a ruin for the route to a friend’s house made no sense at all. And the second was that those very instructions were staring me in the face from the bottom of the basin.

“Captain!” I called. “I think I’ve found it.”

He was beside me before I could snap my fingers. “Where? Show me, boy.”

“There,” I said, pointing to the words carved in the bottom of the marble basin under the clear water.

Darzid looked very strange for a moment, then a smile spread slowly out from under his black beard. “Of course… I never thought of that. Tell me, young Lord, how do you read it? My eyesight is certainly not of the same quality as yours… no, not at all… in this dim light.” He grabbed a charred stick and drew on the white paving stones everything that I read from the bottom of the pool. I didn’t know the language, but the captain nodded his head as if he did.

“Now we can ride,” he said. “If this storm will hold off so we can see the moon, then by morning we’ll be safe in Zhev’Na.”

I was happy to leave. “What was the name of that city?” I asked, as we rode toward the mountain. “Who lived there, and why were they all killed and left like that?”

“It was called Avonar,” said the captain. “You’ll hear that name again. It was-and is-the home of your enemies, people of no vision, people of no understanding of the dimensions and possibilities of the universe. You’ll learn more of it when we’re safe. For now, you’ve had a tiring day. Feel free to sleep as we journey.”

And, of course, I did. I dreamed those terrible dreams over and over again, and when I next woke up, I was in a very different place.