Fergal sat quietly beside Mel, who chattered on to all those around her, whether they could hear her or not.

When the festivities came to a close and most guests filed out to teach classes or attend them, Lord Fiori handed Karigan his message for the king. It was sealed with gold wax imprinted with a harp.

“My message to the king as promised,” he said. “If we find the book, I shall send it to him directly.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Lord Fiori gave her a dazzling smile. “May your journey bring success, and no doubt we shall be seeing you in song.”

“What? What?” But he had already moved off to speak with one of the remaining masters.

Rendle came forward then with two messages of his own. “This first is to Captain Mapstone on behalf of all of Melry’s instructors.”

Mel overheard and her eyes widened. For once she was speechless.

“And this other,” Rendle continued, “is for Arms Master Drent.” He did not explain further, but he said, “May the gods bless your journey. I’ll miss your help with my classes, and I enjoyed having Fergal here, too. Keep working with him—he’s learned much during his short stay.”

Fergal stammered his thanks, and Rendle squeezed his shoulder.

Before Karigan could stuff the new messages into her satchel, Mel gave her a letter to her mother as well.

“You couldn’t let me see what Rendle’s sending her, could you?” she whispered.

Karigan tsked. “You of all people should know better. A Green Rider would never open a message intended for someone else.”

“I know, I know,” Mel grumbled. “Not allowed to break the seal and all that.”

Karigan laughed and hugged her. No doubt Mel would pester Master Rendle for details about the messages for days, if not weeks.

On the front steps of the Golden Guardian’s house, Karigan bade everyone farewell, and gave Estral a final hug.

“Never fear,” Estral whispered, “your secret will remain safe with me.”

“Thank you.”

Karigan and Fergal mounted their horses and set off, leaving the Golden Guardian’s house and the campus behind. As they rode through the streets of Selium, Karigan speculated that perhaps the most pleasant part of their journey was now over.

TYING KNOTS

Grandmother sat beside the fire tying knots, the insistent winds numbing her fingers and the cold sun providing absolutely no warmth at all, but she could not pause, not even to warm her hands. Hawk Hill was no place for her or her people to be with the winter coming, and soon they’d have to disperse into the countryside. Some would seek shelter with members of other sects of Second Empire, and the rest would move into one town or another to start their lives over. Captain Immerez and his men may have survived winters up here, but families with little children were another thing.

Grandmother’s pouch had been done for a while now and it lay in the basket at her feet. She struggled with this new piece, and tried to block out the sound of hungry wails from Amala’s baby in a nearby tent so she could concentrate on her knots. He was a strong, healthy little boy and his parents were justifiably pleased. He had Amala’s eyes and the roundness of his father’s face.

Concentrate, old woman, she chided herself.

This was delicate work. She chose the brown yarn for it, because it was the color of the earth, and the spell would be used underground. The words she spoke as she knotted were ancient, dark, almost freezing upon her lips. She had not dared attempt the spell at night, when that which was already dark deepened in the shadows. The time was now, in daylight.

The yarn fought her, tried to slip the knots and her mastery. She used all the authority she could muster, drawing on the voices of her ancestral mothers to tame the yarn.

She tightened a knot for awakening.

The end of the yarn tried to wriggle free from her fingers.

A knot to call.

A loop slipped around her index finger and tightened in an attempt to cut off circulation.

And a knot to rise.

A force flung her hands apart so she could not finish the complex sequence, for her spell was one that perverted the natural order of the world, but she bore her whole will into it, and as she tied off the last knot, wind blasted the summit, bending trees and ripping needles and leaves off limbs, and sending sparks and ashes from Grandmother’s fire into her face. Tents braced against the wind and her people hid their faces from it. An angry wind, it was, and she fought to control the knotted yarn in her hands that came alive, distorting, growing, and shrinking as she murmured still more words of power.

As she spoke, the power sipped the life out of dormant plants around the summit. A hare, its fur mottled in the midst of its change from summer brown to winter white, dropped dead in its tracks. The heart of a stag browsing somewhere below the summit stopped. These little lives fed the knots.

The power she worked crept about the summit, and she fought to keep it out of the encampment. It took the life of a fox in its den. Ravens flushed from a pine as they sensed the power’s encroachment, but the last was not fast enough. Needles of the tall, strong pine they had perched in yellowed and dropped, swirling in the wind.

The power oozed closer to the encampment, voracious in its need. She fought to ward it off, to redirect it. A clutch of chittering squirrels silenced and plummeted from a tree to the ground. A grouse fell limp, never to thrum for a mate in the spring again. Raccoons, a stand of aspen, sheep laurel…

Grandmother built shields to protect her people, but it was like trying to grasp a wave with her hands. The power could not be tamed and it leaked through her commands. It slithered along the summit, seeking only one more life, and it knew which it wanted.