“In Eldurath, at the summit of the palace. With King Hadrin.” Elyon diverted her down a side lane between tents, looking around. It was quieter here. Roark and the others remained at the end of the alley, singing loudly, directing anyone away who attempted to take that route. Elyon looked Marian dead in the eye. “Hadrin is dead, my lady,” he said. “Speared through the gut by a dragonknight. I was there. I saw. The Eye…I took it back, Marian.”

She blinked at him. “You…” Her face became a frown, words momentarily escaping her. It was a rare thing indeed, to shock the spymaster Marian Payne. But shock her he had. “You flew there? To Eldurath? You took it from under his nose, Elyon?”

Elyon smiled, basking in her reaction. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you so taken aback, my lady.”

“Do not get used to it, Elyon Daecar.” Her eyes hardened on him. “Tell me what happened.”

He did as he was bidden, telling her of his heist, of Hadrin, of how the Eye had yielded to him, when he feared it would not. He spoke too of Talasha, the Agarathi princess, who had said she would follow, but hadn’t. “She wanted to take Hadrin with her, but that spear in his belly put an end to that. I hoped…well I wondered if one of Hadrin’s cousins might be able to use it, my lady? Their blood is almost as rich as his. Many different Bladeborn can bear a Blade of Vandar. Is the same not possible with the Eye?”

She ran a finger along the line of her sharp jaw, the set of her eyes suggesting she did not have a definitive answer. “The Blades of Vandar are one made five, Elyon. Fragments of a god’s heart. The Eye is whole. As with the Hammer of Tukor, it may require a direct blood-link to bond it. Hadrin was Thala’s heir by primogeniture, an unbroken line going back thousands of years. The cousins…” She shook her head. “I’m not sure. It may well be that one or another could peer through the pupil, but what they see beyond may be too blurred and indiscernible to be of use. And that is assuming any of the cousins are still alive. For all we know, they may all be dead.”

Elyon felt a little deflated at that. He had hoped for something more. “You’ve had no word?”

“What few reports we’ve had from Thalan suggest there are survivors, that some semblance of order is being restored to the city, but that’s all. Nothing about the cousins. Or Amilia Lukar. You were interested in her well-being before.”

He nodded. “For my brother’s sake.” Amilia would have been his good-sister, had certain events not transpired. And certain Shadowknights not appeared. Elyon had asked that Marian check in on Amilia through a spy she had installed in the palace, though they’d heard nothing of either the spy or the princess since Thalan’s fall some months ago. “I still intend to fly there, find out what has happened to her,” he went on. “And learn of these cousins. But…”

“But you have more pressing matters to see to.”

“Yes. My father must hear of what I’ve learned, my lady. If I fly to Thalan now, I won’t get back to King’s Point for days. I can’t let him wait that long.”

“I understand. Returning to him is the priority. In the meantime, I will see what else I can learn here. Of the cousins, and the Eye.”

It was all he could ask of her. He turned his eyes down the lane, to where Roark and the other soldiers were standing. Sir Karter had joined them now, and was waiting patiently for Elyon to finish so he might escort him to his lord father’s keep, across the bridge in the city proper. He looked less than comfortable with all the singing. “I should go, my lady. Sir Karter seems like he could do with saving.”

“The world could do with saving, Elyon Daecar.” She smiled at him, then turned to walk away.

He wondered if he was up to the task.

11

“How much further?” Amron Daecar asked, as they stalked through the dim and dreary woods. The trees were wet, the canopy dripping from a heavy rainfall that had racked the forest for a full two hours, before finally beginning to relent. The skies looked clearer above them now, but the rains were still dribbling through the leaves, soaking into their cloaks and hair, tapping against their armour.

“Not far,” growled Vilmar the Black, brushing aside a fern.

You said that an hour ago, Amron thought. “And you’re certain you’re leading us the right way?”

Vilmar stopped in his tracks, looking back at him in a way few others dared, eyes narrowed to the point of slits. “You may be lord of this realm, but I’m the lord of these woods. Every wood, every mountain, every bog where there’s a monster, I’m king. This is my world, not yours. Do not question my skill, Amron.”

Amron sighed. The huntsman had always been ungracious, ill-mannered, churlish, but utterly without equal in his field, so he forgave him these moments of insolence. Still, Rogen Whitebeard didn’t much like it. “Mind your tongue, huntsman,” he rasped. “Remember who you’re talking to.”

Vilmar glowered back at him. “I remember, ranger. I remember a time when he was nought but a squalling babe, pink as a piglet, all wrapped up in swaddling and suckling at his mother’s teat. King of Vandar now, aye. But still just a babe to me.”

Whitebeard grunted an unintelligible response, and Vilmar kept on going, pushing through the ferns and the bracken and the brambles, leading them deeper into the woods. After a short time they reached a stream, shadowed by a great leaning oak with several drowsy willows standing sleepily nearby. On the northern banks was a large boulder, grey and glistening with rainwater. Amron looked at that boulder, wondering. “Is that…”

“No,” Vilmar growled, turning sharply on him once more. “Not big enough. And you see the moss? The way the grass grows about its edges? Does it look like that boulder has just settled here, Amron?”

The man spoke as angrily as ever.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“No,” Vilmar agreed. “It doesn’t.” He jabbed a leather-gloved finger into his rutted old forehead. “Think. Use this before you speak. And you, ranger,” he said to Whitebeard. “Stop giving me that foul look.”

“I’ll give you whatever look I please, hunter. If you have a problem with that…” He drew a few inches of godsteel, steel scratching leather. “We can settle it like men.”

I knew this was a bad idea, Amron reflected. Vilmar and Rogen were far too alike, and had clashed a few times during their journey from Varinar too, arguing over who was the better tracker, who had been to the more dangerous lands and slain the more dangerous beasts. It was a good contest, and one that Walter Selleck had, of course, enjoyed tremendously. But now wasn’t the time for their bickering.

“Put the blade away, Rogen,” Amron commanded. “And stop being so truculent, Vilmar. You snap at every question.”

“Every stupid question,” the huntsman growled.

“Valid questions,” Amron came back, his patience thinning. “We must be seven or eight miles from the city by now. And there are Agarathi in these woods, if you haven’t forgotten. How long is this going to take?”

“As long as it takes,” the hunter said. He turned and kept on going.

Another ten minutes passed, the skies above darkening once more with rainclouds black as tar. Every so often, Vilmar stopped to turn his eyes about, sniffing like a bloodhound, listening. His garb was wool and fur and leather, all black, scratched and stained, his face almost entirely lost within the great forest of a beard that had grown wildly from his cheeks and chin, and the thick shock of hair that summited his dome. Two dark eyes peered out from that great thicket, resting above a nose scarred and torn by a dozen savage beasts.

“We’re close,” he said, in that monotone growl of his. “Keep quiet, and stay behind me. These creatures can be shy.”

Another five minutes went by, then several more, and no sign of their quarry materialised. Amron was trying not to express his frustration, though it was difficult. Rogen had no such inclination to remain quiet.

“I should take the lead,” he said. “Your nose is failing you, old man.”

“Still young enough to put you on your backside, ranger.”

Rogen Strand snorted loudly, causing a few birds to burst from an old oak tree, flapping away noisily into the skies.

Vilmar could not have looked more furious. “How did you ever survive in the Icewilds? You’re loud as a broadback in must.”

“Silent as a shadow when I need to be. A challenge. We part here, you go left, I go right. Walk a hundred paces. First to creep up on the other wins.”

“Accepted,” Vilmar said at once, entirely forgetting their mission.

Rogen grinned - a rare thing indeed - taking that as some sort of victory. “No man of confidence is so easily goaded. You know I’m the better tracker, Vilmar. You’d not survive in the Icewilds for more than a week or two alone.”

Vilmar opened his cloak, closing fingers around a savage hunting blade, the steel black as night, misting shadow. He had a dozen other daggers and knives and little axes on his person, hanging from belts and straps that criss-crossed his chest and torso like a lattice. “I would open your neck for that, boy.”

“Boy? I’m forty-one winters worn, old man.”

“A boy to me. In age and skill both.” A growl rumbled from Vilmar’s heavy chest. “We’ll settle this one day. With blood. That I promise.”

“No, you will not,” Amron said firmly. He was tiring of them, tiring of this. When Rogen and Walter entered their little verbal sparring contests, at least there was some humour to it. With the ranger and the huntsman it was just bitterness and bile, a member-measuring contest that Amron could do without. Vilmar was like a bear, Whitebeard a wolf, two bloody animals growling and snapping and circling one another. He’d had all he could take of it. “If either of you makes another challenge to the other, I’ll have their tongue out. Might give me a bit of bloody peace.”

“Challenge?” Vilmar repeated, with growling laughter. “This child would be no challenge to me…”

“Enough!” Amron bellowed. “Gods damn it, Vilmar, enough!” His voice stirred another flock of birds from the branches, screaming and flapping as they fled. “I’m going to give you another ten minutes. If we haven’t made contact by then, then I will have no choice but to turn back. I’m starting to feel like it was a mistake coming out here.”