Shadowfane

PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF JANNY WURTS

Janny Wurts builds beautiful castles in the air…. Every detail is richly imagined and vividly rendered. —Diana Gabaldon

Astonishingly original. —Raymond E. Feist

It ought to be illegal for one person to have this much talent. —Stephen R. Donaldson

With each new book it becomes more and more obvious how important Janny Wurts is to contemporary fantasy. —Guy Gavriel Kay

Like the best of J.R.R. Tolkien, Ms. Wurts’s worlds are bursting with the primal force, brimming with unforgettable characters, infused with magic both dark and glorious. —Eric Van Lustbader

Stormwarden

Outstanding … This is one of those do-not-put-down-until-finished books, of which there are all too few. —Andre Norton

A fast-paced, wonderfully textured story, with gritty down-to-earth details. —Charles de Lint, Science Fiction Review

The Master of Whitestorm

Powerful … Janny has created a superb hero in Korendir and a truly remarkable heroine in Ilarith. —Anne McCaffrey

The Cycle of Fire

Full of action, splendid scenes of magic (including some terrifying dreams) and engaging secondary characters. —Publishers Weekly

Shadowfane

The Cycle of Fire • Book 3

Janny Wurts

For Raymond E. Feist

true friend, talented author,

and (my influence to the contrary)

an incurable enthusiast of

jazz and the Chargers

Acknowledgments

The finish of a series requires a great deal of thanks to the many individuals who helped the author along the way. In particular my appreciation goes to the following individuals, for efforts that made all the difference:

Terri Windling, for seeing three books between the lines of two, and asking gently to make it happen;

Virginia Kidd, for her tireless efforts of negotiation; and Jonathan Matson and Abner Stein, for the same, but overseas;

Soni Gross and Fern Edison, whose contributions above and beyond the normal call helped make the start a success;

Peter Schneider, for off-the-cuff assistance with promotion;

My parents, who put up with a lot of unreasonable dreams;

My friend and former landlord, Daniel P. Mannix, who for eleven years gave me guidance and a roof under which to create;

Beth Fleisher, my editor, for sharing my passion for sailing and twisted plots;

Gene Mydlowski, art director, for belief in an author who happens also to paint;

Elaine Chubb, copy editor, whose unfailing devotion to detail is a mystery and a miracle all by itself.

For this edition, my most sincere thanks to Ben Camardi and Brian Uri, and the Open Road Media team: Betsy Mitchell, Laura Tomenendal, and Mauricio Díaz.

Prologue

THE SEERESS of the well in Gaire’s Main woke gasping in the straw of the stables where she sheltered. She shivered, blind eyes milky in the moonlight that spilled from the loft. The visions that had broken her sleep racked her still, bringing terror beyond anything mortal. The seeress stirred ancient joints and rose. Clothed in scraps of knotted leather, she groped down the dusty ladder and made her way past stall and grain stores, then out into the waning autumn night.

Beyond the barn lay a crossroad and a trough awash with muddy puddles. The folk of Gaire’s Main presently used the sacred spring as a watering place for beast and household; to them the seeress was a senile beggar woman given to strange outbursts and mumbling. But tonight no confusion blurred her movements. She knelt on the chill ground and scrabbled through pig droppings until she located the stone that founded the mystery of her craft.

The slab was black, laced with metallic streaks of gold, and rinsed clean by overflow from the spring. Tears brimmed from the seeress’s lashless eyes as she laid her palms against the talisman. Energy welled from the contact. With a cry of agonized relief, she surrendered her burden of dreams to its current …

In the wind-whipped darkness of an ocean roiled by the aftermath of a gale, a boat with tattered sails rolled hove to in the swell. There a black-haired man dressed in the cottons of a fisherman reached out to an injured Thienz-demon who clung to a drift of timber in the waves. Neither kindness nor compassion prompted the man’s action; his spirit was not human, an evil sensed palpably across the fabric of the seeress’s dream.

The rescued demon was not to survive its deliverance from the waves. As its toadlike fingers closed upon the man’s wrist, the seeress sensed its agony, the burning sting of salt splashed into its gills. Poisoned beyond healing, the demon endured only long enough to deliver its death-dream, which held intact the death-dreams of others who had perished earlier, in a backlash of forces brought about by no natural means.

These memories the Thienz impressed directly into the mind of the human in the boat, for their significance to mankind’s enemies offered proof that an artifact of paramount significance still existed. Untempered and entire, the death-dream of the Thienz seared like magma through the young man’s awareness. When he screamed, the seeress screamed with him, and the well-stone beneath her hands relayed the dying demon’s legacy to mankind’s most ancient defender …

On an islet far distant from Gaire’s Main, the old woman’s sending cut like the cry of a dying doe across a grove of enchanted twilight; there an entity known as the Vaere received her images with an understanding not given to mortal men. The news promised grimmest consequences. The dying Thienz had stumbled upon a secret centuries old. When that knowledge reached the demon compact at Shadowfane, its full import would be rccognized. Then would the wardenship of the Vaere itself become threatened. Now the untried talents of the sorcerer’s heir but recently come to sanctuary offered the only expedient. If Ivainson Jaric failed to master his father’s talents, if he failed in the Cycle of Fire while the compact unriddled the mystery of the Vaere, mankind would suffer extinction at the hands of demon foes …

The seeress broke contact with a quivering sigh; and silence ominous as the calm before cataclysm settled over the grove of the Vaere.

I

Riddle

COLD CAME EARLY to the wastes beyond Felwaithe; frosts rimed the lichens and traced a madman’s patterns on the bare rock of the hills. Here, far north of Keithland’s border and the lands inhabited by men, a single lantern burned in a hall of bleak stone. Within its circle of light, Scait, Demon Lord of Shadowfane, sat upon a chair fashioned from the bones and the hides of human victims. He pared his thumb spurs to needlepoints with a penknife, while an immature Thienz ornamented with beads crouched at his feet, froglike limbs folded against its loins.

Scait flexed scaled wrists and paused in his sharpening. His upper lip curled over rows of shark-like teeth as he addressed his groveling underling. What has occurred that Thienz elders send a hatchling to trouble my thoughts? Speak, tadpole! What tidings do you bring?

The Thienz cowered against the icy stone floor. The sovereign of Shadowfane quite often killed out of temper, and this youngster brought ill news of the worst import. It flapped its gills in distress. Most-mighty, I bring word of the boats sent into Keithland to capture Ivainson-Firelord’s-heir-Jaric. Your servants have failed. Jaric has reached sanctuary on the Isle of the Vaere.

Scait hissed explosively. "Seed-of-his-father, accursed! How did one wretched boy slip past five dozen Thienz elders?"

Beads chinked against stillness; the Thienz battled an overwhelming instinct to flee, yet the flash of displeasure in its master’s sultry eyes did not metamorphose into blows. Its crest flattened in reluctance against its blunt head, the youngster prepared to offer images of storm and death, and the wreckage of the fleet that had failed in its directive to take the gold-haired son of Ivain Firelord.

But the sovereign Lord of Shadowfane refused direct sharing. Instead he twisted the blade of his knife and pricked at the stuffed human thigh that comprised the throne arm. I would know the particulars of Jaric’s escape from one who is senior, and experienced. Fetch me Thienz-eldest, for no other will suffice.

The young demon bobbed hasty obeisance, then scuttled from the dais, its discharge of fear and relief a palpable stink in the air. Once clear of the steps, it spun and fled around the mirror pool set into the floor beyond. Scait watched with slitted eyes as it vanished into the gloom of the doorway; rage born of frustration bristled the long hackles at his neck. He had hoped to capture Jaric, enslave and manipulate his Firelord’s potential for the ruin and sorrow of humanity. Now this recent failure by the Thienz invited terrible risk. Ivainson Jaric might survive the Cycle of Fire; then would humans gain another Vaere-trained sorcerer, one powerful enough to free Anskiere of Elrinfaer from his prison of ward-spelled ice. The paired threat of Stormwarden and Firelord would pose a serious inconvenience, if not a direct impediment, to the conquest planned by the demon compact at Shadowfane.

Scait paced, knife clenched between spurred fingers. He ground his teeth in agitation until the Thienz elder he had summoned presented itself before the dais.

Lest an underling of no consequence sense his distress, the Lord of Shadowfane smoothed his long hackles and sat. As the elder completed its obeisance, he scraped one spur across the bared edge of his knife and demanded, How did Ivainson-Firelord’s-heir-Jaric come to reach the Isle of the Vaere?

The Thienz replied in words, the barest ruffle of its crest hinting defiance. Ivain’s-get-Jaric arranged the release of a weather ward of Anskiere’s. Offered the clear, precise image of a storm-falcon’s feather, and the blue-violet shimmer of sorcery that had released a ruinous gale across the southwest reaches, Scait bared his teeth.

The Thienz hastily continued. Storm-death did not bring the bane of all Thienz-cousins sent hunting. Another hazard entirely prevented their closing with the prey. The Thienz closed tiny eyes and sent the death-dream salvaged from a failing survivor by Maelgrim Dark-dreamer. In precise, empathic images, the Lord of Shadowfane shared the last memories of three Thienz who had huddled in drenched misery aboard a boat many leagues to the south.

Only moments before death, they whimpered among themselves, their shared thoughts riddled with terror. The storm that lvain Firelord’s heir had caused to be unleashed had bashed and capsized and drowned the crews of seven companion vessels. The Thienz who sailed aboard the last boat trembled, fearful their own doom would follow.

Scait hissed. The dagger dangled forgotten in his grip as the doomed creatures’ vision filled his sensors. At one with the memories of the Thienz who had crouched afraid in that-boat-sent-to-apprehend-Jaric, he, too, beheld the roiling and spume-frothed crests of gale-whipped ocean.

Suddenly the air seemed to shimmer. Sky and swells rippled, blurred, and shifted into pearly mist; then fog in turn dissolved, transformed to a prismatic chaos of energy, all shattered bands of color and light. The display lasted only a moment before cruel fields of energy blistered the Thienz’ bodies. They fell, crying curses, the agony of their dying accompanied by wood that popped and steamed, and canvas that burst sullenly into flame.

The dream ended. Scait’s lids snapped open, unveiling irises hard as topaz. Needle rows of teeth gleamed as he framed words in speculation. Tell me, lowly toad. What memory does that death-dream call to mind?

Possessed of the eidetic recall common to all demons, the Thienz squirmed uneasily upon the carpet. This death was the same as that dreamed by ancestor-among-the-stars who died, trapped by the expanding field of a time anomaly when a ship drive malfunctioned. But such interpretation is questionable. Keithland’s humans have lost all memory of technology.

Not entirely. Scait snapped his jaws closed. Delicately he stroked his dagger across the arm of his throne. Veriset-Nav, he mused triumphantly. "This dream gives proof beyond doubt. The navigational guidance module must have survived the crash of star-probe-Corinne-Dane-accursed. We have only to find it, and recover the unit intact, and our exile from home-star will be ended."

The Thienz wailed, its crest flattened against its earless skull. "Lord-highest, you suggest the impossible. Where can we seek? Corinne Dane’s emergency systems capsule plunged into ocean, destroyed." The Thienz paused to whistle soulfully, its tune an expression of knowledge lost.

But Scait ignored its protests. Preoccupied, he arose from his chair. Wire ornaments jangled against scaled knuckles as he paced the dais.

Like an ill-sewn frog puppet, the Thienz twisted its blunt head to follow its master’s steps. Mightiest, Set-Nav is lost, still.

Perhaps not. Scait jerked to a stop. He leered down at the Thienz. I say all along that Set-Nav may have hidden behind a persona called the Vaere.

At this the Thienz rocked back on webbed feet, snorted, then burst into croaking peals of laughter. Mightiest, O mightiest, you surely jest! We know the Vaere! Human superstition, brought forward from earliest, most barbaric remnants of old Earth culture. All in the compact knew that Tamlin originated in a tale conceived by primitive ballad singers; funny indeed, if mankind might be witless enough to mistake the most sophisticated technology its people ever created with a make-believe creature of faerie!

Silence! Scait’s short hackles lifted in warning. Be still, one-who-forgets.

The demon beneath the dais quivered at the insult. It rolled whiteless eyes as Scair leaned over and thrust the knife toward its chin. "Myth or not, facts are these: Tamlin of the Vaere reputedly trained our greatest foe, Anskiere, and also Ivain Firelord. And, one-who-forgets, remember that humans possess no senses to differentiate between the dream-state and reality experienced! Recall that Corinne Dane’s Set-Nav guidance unit came equipped with mindlink modules."

Such machines could induce a man to dream for years, and still preserve his body. The Thienz blinked, jolted to sober reflection. The time-differential field of the star drive neatly accounted for the unnatural aging that afflicted those mortals who received their sorcerer’s training from the Vaere.

Scait shot to his feet, eyes ablaze with excitement. Now, one-who-forgets, let scornful laughter pucker your tongue with the taste and the texture of excrement. For I think humankind does not know its sorcerers are guided to mastery by technology its people once possessed.

The Thienz whuffed its gills, silent, while Scait subsided back into his chair. Strangely, terribly, the Demon Lord’s reasoning suggested truth. Man might have forgotten his vanquished empire among the stars; yet an electronic guidance system endowed with intelligence, self-repair, and the logic to master the bewildering mathematics of interstellar navigation would never lose its loyalty, or its mission. As killers and imprisoners of creatures with paranormal endowment, Stormwarden and Firelord might indeed continue the starprobe Corinne Dane’s original directive: to discover means of defending mankind against the psionic warfare of aliens.

Curled in idle malice upon his chair of human remains, Scait qualified the Thienz’s thought. Toad, you misjudge. Deliberately Set-Nav may have cloaked its identity as Tamlin, that the compact might overlook its existence.

The Thienz twisted the tiny fingers of its forelimbs and moaned, while in abrupt agitation the Demon Lord stabbed the dagger to the hilt into stuffed human upholstery. O toad, the death-dream of your companion brings promise of triumph-and-trouble. We must unravel the riddle of Tamlin, for time is precious. Ivainson-cursed-sorcerer’s-heir-Jaric escaped us. Now, surely as stars turn, a firelord could emerge to balk us. If so, we might face the hatching of the Morrigierj unprepared.

The Thienz stiffened. It raised, then lowered its webbed crest, and a tremble invaded its limbs. The memories-of-ancestors knew Morrigierj, that grand-master entity spawned each three thousand years to bind the collective powers of the Gierj into a single force; of all sentients sworn to the compact of Shadowfane, the mindless Gierjlings owned a latent capacity for destruction that intimidated even the strongest demon. With a squeak of apprehension, the Thienz fled the chamber; it slid with a scrape of claws around the doorjamb and scuttled like a dog down the stairwell.

Scait laughed at its flight. His threat had been a lie designed to intimidate; when the silly Thienz paused to think, it would recall that no grand hatching could occur without maturity of a Morrigierj spore. Since his predecessor’s death at Anskiere’s hand, the Demon Lord held power against the machinations of ambitious subordinates; at best, his supremacy at Shadowfane was precariously secured. With his current plot to defeat mankind thrown into setback, underlings must be kept cowed to discourage rivals; for challengers there would be, unless Scait found means to counter the threat posed by the possibility of a new firelord. The discovery of Set-Nav, though of paramount significance, was of secondary importance to politics and power within the compact.

Scait thought bitterly upon Jaric. Once he had glimpsed the boy’s aura; demon-perceived clarity had sensed the ringing patterns of energy that mapped a gifted human’s aptitude for mastery of Sathid-bonded forces. Never until then had any demon imagined that humans, even rare ones, might hold so much latent affinity for power. Untrained, such individuals could easily be enslaved and turned to the detriment of their own kind; the loss of Jaric’s talents stung doubly. Scait bristled his hackles in frustration. Humanity bred and proliferated like pest parasites. Except for the wizards inhabiting the towers at Mhored Kara, most were blind to the psychic energies of the mind. Perhaps among Keithland’s teeming towns, other children born with such gifts were overlooked.

Scait blinked and shifted in his chair. If such children existed, they might be taken and exploited. Yet members of the compact could not cross into Keithland to explore without drawing notice. Subterfuge would be necessary.

The lantern suddenly flickered; in its failing light, Scait’s teeth flashed in a leer of wild excitement. There existed one for whom such restrictions would not exist. Maelgrim Dark-dreamer’s talents were already controlled by the compact; through him, a way could be found to conduct such a search undetected. Excited now, Scait reached in thought for the mind of the Thienz elder who had recently departed his presence.

Where is Maelgrim now?

The image sent in reply was prompt, but clouded with a resentment most probably effected by the ruse concerning the Morrigierj; Scait chose forbearance in his lust for information. All of Maelgrim’s Thienz crew had perished of salt poisoning; alone in a boat severely battered by the aftermath of the storm set loose by Jaric, the Dark-dreamer currently struggled to patch tattered canvas, that he might sail for Shadowfane and the north. Scait clicked his spurs in irritation; his new plan must wait until the boy-slave-human returned, a delay that might extend through several months, since winter’s inevitable gales would brew up weather unfavorable for passage. Forced to patience, the Demon Lord brooded upon the possibilities presented by rediscovery of the Veriset-Nav computer. Hours passed. The lamp flickered out and predawn gloom infused Shadowfane’s empty hall. Spurred fingers stroked the dagger left embedded in cured human flesh, while, outside, wind wailed like a funeral dirge across the frost-blasted fells.

Twenty-seven generations after the fall of the probe ship Corinne Dane, the navigational computer that had calculated courses between stars analyzed its latest acquisition, a sorcerer’s son who aspired to undertake the Cycle of Fire. Small, lean, and callused from the rigors of the storm that had delivered him to the fabled isle, Jaric was remarkably like his sire, Ivain; except here and there lay clues to differences that extended beyond mere flesh.

The boy’s sun-bleached hair and seafarer’s tan seemed oddly misplaced under the red-lit glimmer of the control panels. His clothing had been meticulously mended with a sail needle, before being torn again. His rope belt was not tasseled, but perfectly end-spliced; only his bootlaces revealed haste or impatience, one being tied with sailors’ knots, the other whipped into tangles that the mechanical arms of the robots unsnarled with difficulty. The body beneath the clothing proved bruised and abraded, the legacy of hardship and stress.

The father had chosen his path to mastery in far less agony of spirit; unlike his son, he had arrived upon the isle with a companion at his side, his passage uncontested by hunting packs of Thienz. Much hope or much setback might arise from Jaric’s experience. Unaffected by sentiment, the guardian of mankind’s future reviewed his candidacy for the Cycle of Fire with precise and passionless logic.

The boy under scrutiny remained unaware that the creature he knew as Tamlin of the Vaere was an entity fabricated by a sophisticated array of machinery. Taken into custody from the woodland clearing where he had succumbed to drugged sleep, and bundled by robots into a metal-walled chamber hidden beneath the soil, Ivainson Jaric presently rested within a life-support capsule that once had equipped the starship’s flight deck.

Servo-mechanisms labored over his body, completing hookups that in the past had enabled human navigators to interface with the Veriset-Nav’s complex circuitry. Like every human visitor before him, Jaric would experience only dreams during his stay upon the fabled isle.

The Vaere had kept its true form secret since the crash of Corinne Dane. Ejected intact from its parent ship, the unit retained power generators and drive field; but with Starhope fallen to enemies, a distress flare would draw attack rather than rescue. Set-Nav found itself shepherd to refugees incapable of defending its data from aliens who could reprogram its functions for their own use. Even as the germ plasms of earth-type flora and fauna had survived and altered the face of Keithland, so had the guidance computer changed, adapted, and evolved, cloaked in a guise of myth. Despite time and attrition, its primary directive remained. Set-Nav even yet sought means to end the predations of psionically endowed aliens that mankind now called demons.

In its latest, most effective offensive, Veriset-Nav trained psi-talented humans to mastery of a double Sathid-link that gained them direct control over the elements. Jaric was the latest candidate for a procedure fraught with danger.

Of countless human subjects, only Anskiere and Ivain had survived to achieve dual mastery; but their success had justified the deaths of their predecessors. Paired crystals had granted them power enough to eradicate some species of demons and imprison others. The task of freeing Keithland from threat had begun. But talent capable of training for such feats was sparse, ever difficult to obtain; Ivainson, whose life was already sought by demons, possessed potential both precious and rare.

A switch closed. Lights flickered green over the access console, tinting Jaric like a wax figure while programs designed for complex navigational mathematics exhaustively mapped his potential. The Vaere matched the crippling self-doubt of this boy’s childhood against his determination to achieve a Firelord’s inheritance. It tallied strength, weakness, and raw potential and completed its model with direct observations shared by the Dream-weaver, Taen. Information streamed into the data banks, then transmuted, meshed and interwoven to a sequence of intricate probability equations. Inflexibly logical, the Vaere calculated Jaric’s potential to survive the dual mastery that comprised the Cycle of Fire.

The conclusion was disturbing. Never in Keithland history had the Vaere detected such raw potential for power in the mind of a man; yet the latent ability Jaric possessed proved coupled with a personality sensitive to the point of fragility, balanced upon a selfhood newly and precariously established. Considered alone, this analysis might have disqualified the boy from training; but now, with demons aware of the origins of the Vaere, the slimmest opportunity counted.

An access circuit closed. Alongside Jaric’s statistics the Vaere added the composite analysis of Keithland, then an estimated projection of the Dark-dreamer’s acquired power. The forecast proved bleak. Maelgrim’s mastery derived from a Sathid already dominated by Thienz-demons; his talents would be like his sister’s, but reversed. Where Taen wove dreams to heal and defend, her brother would spin visions to destroy. She could influence individuals; but with the combined might of Shadowfane’s compact to back him, Maelgrim might instigate wholesale madness, corrupt governments, or incite soldiers to war against the very cities they were armed to protect. Before such an onslaught, even the defenses at Landfast might topple.

The Vaere sequenced scenarios of possible countermoves for days and nights without letup. At the end, only one held hope. Shadowfane’s invasion might be deterred if the Stormwarden, Anskiere of Elrinfaer, were freed from the ice. That task required a firelord’s skills. Time was too short to seek an alternate for the Cycle of Fire, even should a second candidate exist within Keithland’s population.

Had the Vaere reacted as a mortal, such a quandary would have caused grief and trepidation; being a machine of passionless logic, it executed decisions within a millisecond. Jaric must be placed in jeopardy; after a brief training period, the boy must attempt Earthmastery. If he retained control after primary bonding, he must go on to attempt mastery of a second Sathid matrix, the most difficult challenge a sorcerer could attempt. He must endure and survive the Cycle of Fire. Should he fail, if the Sathid entities he must battle for dominance conquered his will, both he and Anskiere would perish. Then the defense of Keithland would rest upon a Dream-weaver’s frail and inadequate resources.

Lights blinked and vanished, and the consoles went dark beside the amber glow of the life-support unit. Veriset-Nav initiated an entry command, and the circuitry that cross-linked the master navigator’s capsule shifted status to active. Monitors winked to life, glowing blue over a boy framed in a nest of silvery wires. The heir of Ivain Firelord stirred in the depths of his sleep, even as the guidance systems from Corinne Dane induced the first of a series of dreams designed to prepare him for the trials of a sorcerer’s mastery.

Unaware his senses were subject to illusion, Jaric believed that he roused to twilit silence in the grove of the Vaere. He opened his eyes to grass and flowers, and to the same enchanted clearing where he had earlier fallen asleep. A chill roughened his flesh. Nothing appeared to have changed, and that unsettled him. His hands still stung with abrasions from muscling Callinde’s helm against stormwinds. Both clothing and skin glittered with salt crystals, crusted by spray upon his person. Puzzled, for he had expected some sign of great magic, he blinked and pushed himself erect. The soil felt cool under his palms. Overhead, the trees arched in the silvery half-light like a congregation of leaf-bearded patriarchs. Irritated to discover that his body had stiffened during his rest on damp ground, the boy stretched, then froze with his arms half-raised. Tamlin of the Vaere sat perched on the low gray rock at the center of the grove.

An insouciant grin crinkled the tiny man’s features. His beard tumbled in tangles over his fawn colored jacket. Beads and feathered bells sewn to the cuffs jingled merrily in rhythm with his booted feet, which swung idly above the tips of the flowers, and the pipe in his hand trailed smoke like braid through the air.

Jaric raked back mussed hair, wary of the lightless black eyes that watched his every move. How long have you been here?

Always, and never. The Vaere made no effort to qualify his oblique statement, but bit down on his pipestem, drew, and puffed out a perfect smoke ring. Are you going to ask why?

Jaric tucked his knees within the circle of his arms and frowned. Would you answer?

Tamlin laughed. Feathers danced on his sleeves as he lowered his pipe, yet his mirth dispersed with the smoke ring. I have no answers, only riddles. Do you still desire a firelord’s mastery?

Aware his integrity was under question, Jaric chose his reply with care. I wish Keithland secure from demons. He rose, too nervous to keep still any longer.

No difference, then, son of Ivain. The Vaere leaped from his perch and landed in grass that did not rustle; full height, he stood no higher than Jaric’s hip. To spare your people, you must conquer all weakness, then master the skills that were your father’s. Are you prepared?

No. Jaric waited, tense down to his heels. Hemmed in by the eerie stillness of the grove, he shied from remembering the demons, and the fate that awaited the people and the woman he loved if he failed. Is any man born prepared to suffer madness? I can do nothing more than try.

You say! Bells clinked briskly as Tamlin took a step forward. "You cannot survive the Cycle of Fire without first mastering the earth. For that, your resolve must be unassailable. Is it?"

Jaric swallowed. With a bitter heart, he pictured Taen Dream-weaver’s smile, bright as the song of the woodlarks in Seitforest; he remembered the banners flying free over the towers of Landfast, and the Kielmark’s wild anger when Cliffhaven stood threatened by armies with demon allies. These things he treasured, and longed to protect. But it had been the wild clans of Cael’s Falls and their sacrifice of thirty-nine lives to preserve him from demon captivity that had irrevocably sealed his resolve to attempt the Cycle of Fire. Nothing short of death could deflect Jaric from his decision, though the passage to a firelord’s mastery had worked upon Ivain a total annihilation of identity: a vicious, irreversible insanity that caused people across Keithland to fear him. Years after the morning he had ended his misery with a dagger thrust through his heart, Ivain Firelord was remembered with curses. The mention of his name caused folk of