Corec galloped toward the line of archers, cursing himself for not having a lance. He’d finally given in and bought a crossbow, but he’d never had need for a lance in real life before, not having used the bulky weapon since training with the knights. He’d have to make do with his sword. He detached the weapon from the harness on his back and tossed the sheathe aside after drawing the blade.

He cast his combat spells as he rode—shield spell, armor spell, and strength spell. Then, without thinking about it, he cast the spell to enhance his weapon. Just as he finished, he remembered that Venni had said she’d stopped using that one once she’d found Dart, her own enchanted sword. A blue light, matching the runes on his arms, slowly traveled up the blade, replacing the green light that normally shone from it.

The sounds of fighting erupted behind him, but he couldn’t spare the time to turn and see what was happening. The archers had to be stopped—archers could turn the tide of any battle. Katrin, at least, was wearing the padded overcoat she’d bought in Snow Crown, which would provide some protection. But she didn’t have a helmet, and most of the others didn’t wear any armor at all. They were all at risk until the bowmen were dealt with.

Luckily, the archers didn’t attempt a third volley, probably not wanting to hit their own men. As Corec drew close, they parted ranks to avoid his charge, tossing their bows to the side and drawing melee weapons.

He wheeled his gray warhorse—who Katrin had named Felix, after deciding it looked like her uncle—toward the nearest group, scattering them. In the confusion, he dismounted, not wanting to risk the animal in battle. A full set of armored horse barding was too heavy and expensive to be practical outside of warfare, but without it, any well-placed blow could cripple or kill the beast.

The nearest target was within sword’s reach. Corec swung his glowing blade in a wide arc, decapitating the man. Then a spearman appeared, wearing brigandine armor and a helmet. He hadn’t been one of the archers, which meant he’d stayed behind to protect them. That suggested that some thought had been put into the ambush.

Corec ignored the spear as it bounced off his barrier shield. He swung down at an angle toward the man’s neck, aiming for the gap between the armor and helmet. He hit the shoulder instead, his magic sword cutting through the armored plates and padding of the brigandine, and then into the flesh and bone. The spearman dropped his weapon and staggered back in shock.

Sarette arrived then, her staff-spear crackling with energy. She jumped from her saddle, somehow landing on her feet, then swung her weapon straight into a man’s head with a flash of blue light. He collapsed, his face a burned mess. Another of the ambushers snuck close, carrying a flanged mace.

“Behind you!” Corec yelled.

Sarette leapt up, backwards, over the man’s head. She landed behind him and thrust her blade deep into his back. There was another flash of light and he fell to the ground.

Corec was sure the lightning magic was overkill. The wounds were deep and the men would have been out of the fight magic or not. But then her next opponent was one of the guards wearing brigandine. Rather than trying to stab through the armor, Sarette simply touched her staff-spear’s blade against it. The man screeched in pain, his body twitching in place before falling. The crackling energy faded from Sarette’s spear.

She joined Corec and they fought back to back as more of the enemies surrounded them. Without their bows, the archers weren’t difficult opponents, seeming more like hunters than trained warriors. The armsmen were trickier, at least for Sarette. With the magic gone from her spear, she had to face them as one soldier to another, and her weapon was better suited for offense than defense.

A competent leader would have ordered the armsmen to protect the archers as they retrieved their bows and withdrew to a safe distance, but no one was issuing any commands.

It didn’t take Corec and Sarette long to come up with a system to switch places when one of the armsmen got too close. Between his plate armor and his defensive spells, Corec was in little danger from their weapons, and their armor and shields couldn’t stand up to his enchanted and bespelled sword. The hardest part of the fight was making sure Sarette was directly behind him before he swung his sword out to the side.

Suddenly, three small darts of light struck Corec in the stomach, stinging despite his armor. He looked around, confused. Had Ellerie missed her target? Then he saw a man in a black robe who’d been standing well clear of the battle. The man’s lips moved and he raised a hand, pointing at Corec. A wizard.

“Mage!” Corec yelled to Sarette before charging. As he ran, he cast the spell that let him move faster in armor. It wouldn’t be enough to get him there before the wizard finished his own spell, but the darts didn’t seem to have done any lasting damage the first time. Perhaps once more wouldn’t be a problem.

Then a wide beam of light shot from the wizard’s hand. It wasn’t the dart spell. The beam hit Corec’s chest with a burning unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He stopped in his tracks.

“Corec!” Sarette shouted.

A lighting bolt struck out of the clear sky, knocking the wizard onto his back.

Corec dropped to his knees, staring down at the hole melted through his breastplate. His vision went black as he collapsed.

A voice called out before he lost consciousness. “Treya! We need help!”

#

Treya’s horse panicked when the men rushed them. She hopped off the saddle before the beast could run away, then quickly glanced around. Despite the chaos of the sudden battle, none of her friends appeared to be hurt. Shavala was already calling out to the animals, trying to calm them.

With a tingling of her senses, Treya dodged to the left, barely evading a battle axe that swung through the space she’d just been occupying. She twisted around to see a huge, gap-toothed man grinning evilly at her. He lifted the axe up for another swing. Without thinking about it, Treya called on her second blessing. Her hands blazed with white light, and she thrust her palm against the man’s chest. He flew off his feet, landing twenty feet away in a broken heap. He didn’t move.

Stunned, Treya could only stare at what she’d done. It wasn’t supposed to work like that. Shana had insisted that transferring kinetic energy in that way required intense concentration, and doing so in the middle of a fight was difficult. The glow on Treya’s hands faded back to its normal level. Had her divine magic interfered with her mystic abilities?

Shaking off her surprise, she ran toward a group of ambushers to her right, finding Josip there before her. He threw his hand axe at one of the men, splitting his head open, then waded into the fight with his pickaxe in one hand and a belt knife in the other.

The man nearest Treya wasn’t wearing any armor, so she struck at his radial nerve. With his arm numb, he couldn’t swing his weapon. She punched him in the throat as hard as she could and he fell to the ground. The next man backed away, staring at her glowing fists in fear. Treya planted her right foot and spun around, kicking his jaw in. He fell to his knees and she kicked him again, this time in the temple. He collapsed.

She moved on to the next man but one of Shavala’s arrows suddenly sprouted from his chest, and then Ellerie’s beam spell took the head off of another. Josip had already killed the last one in that group. Farther out, Boktar had dismounted, bashing one man down with his shield while hitting another in the knee with his warhammer. A third ambusher approached him from behind but suddenly burst into a pillar of flame, screaming as he died.

Treya’s friends had things under control here, and Kelis and Shana had always insisted that, tactically, archers should be eliminated first. Treya turned and ran after Corec and Sarette, who’d reached the line of bowmen and dismounted to fight them. Reaching deep inside herself, she called on a reserve of power and found herself moving faster than she’d ever run before.

She soon caught up, but most of the enemies were already down. Still running, she barreled into a man who was facing Sarette, knocking him to the ground. She straddled his chest and hit him in the face, her magic-powered strikes knocking his head from side to side.

Then there was a flash of light and a thundering boom.

Sarette shouted, “Treya! We need help!”

Corec was collapsing onto his side. Treya rushed over to him.

“There was a wizard,” Sarette said. “It was one of those beam spells Ellerie uses.” She thrust her spear out, keeping the last two men at bay.

Treya rolled Corec over onto his back, not sure she wanted to see the injury. She knew what Ellerie’s beam spell did to a person, and she couldn’t control the wave of fear and sorrow that washed over her. Treya had come to look forward to the future she and Corec had discussed, building a life with Katrin and Shavala as the four of them decided what being a warden meant to them. If Corec died, would that future die with him?

And it was her own fault. Priest Telkin had told her about a magical protection spell, but she hadn’t managed to cast it yet. She’d learned the spells to protect against flame and lightning first, thinking they’d be more useful, but even with those, she had to touch the target first. She hadn’t taught herself the right spell, and she hadn’t learned how to cast anyof the protection spells in a way that would actually be useful in the middle of a fight.

There was a wide hole burnt through the center of Corec’s breastplate, the edges still glowing red. Beneath it was a mess of still-molten metal and shredded padding. Ellerie’s beam spell was pure magical energy, and the damage it caused wasn’t due to heat, but the result was similar to burning—or in the case of metal, melting.

Treya’s healing senses told her Corec was still alive, but she wanted to see the damage with her own eyes. She scraped away the remains of his armor and clothing, healing her fingers as they burned from the hot metal. His chest was red, with angry scorch marks where the metal had burned into the skin, but there was far less damage than she’d expected. Had this other wizard’s spell been weaker than Ellerie’s?

She healed the skin, then dove deeper with her senses. There was more damage underneath—not any one specific injury, but general trauma to his body. That was what had caused him to fall unconscious. She lost track of time as she set about healing him bit by bit.

#

Ellerie pulled her rapier from the blond man’s stomach, then stabbed him in the heart for good measure. Dismissing him as a threat, she spun to look around the battlefield, but there didn’t appear to be anyone left to fight.

“Is it over?” she called out to Boktar.

He nodded, then shouted, “Nedley, I’ve got a live one here. Bring me some rope!” The boy limped over to one of the pack mules that hadn’t run away.

“I’ll go after the animals,” Shavala said, then whispered to her horse before the two of them trotted off. She’d managed to stay seated during the battle.

Strangely, Ellerie’s own horse hadn’t panicked with the others, and was now standing calmly but alertly near Boktar’s warhorse and the smarter of the mules. Ellerie pulled a rag out of her saddlebag to wipe off her rapier so she could sheathe it.

“Somebody help me!” Marco called out, holding his left arm. His sleeve was bloody. He hadn’t been in the fight, and Ellerie had never seen him carry a weapon.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“One of those lunatics stabbed me with a knife! Were they bandits?”

“No,” she said flatly. “How did you get away?”

“Oh, Bobo was there. If they aren’t bandits, who are they?”

Bobo, still carrying his heavy walking cudgel, shrugged and rolled his eyes when Marco wasn’t looking. That at least explained where Marco had been—Bobo had stayed back with Katrin and Leena to keep out of everyone’s way. Nedley had been with them too, under orders from Corec and Boktar to protect Katrin. At least the boy had done what he was told, but Ellerie had heard Katrin singing during the battle just before several of the enemies ran away. It had probably been Katrin who’d done most of the protecting.

Ellerie ignored Marco’s last question. “We need Treya. Where is she?”

“She went after the archers,” Razai replied, patting dust out of her clothing.

Ellerie saw Treya’s form in the distance, kneeling over a man in plate armor. Was that Corec? Katrin must have seen them, too—she was already running that way. Ellerie froze for a second, then checked the warden bond in her mind, finding Corec still alive. She breathed a sigh of relief. It had been less than a year since she’d wanted to kill him herself, but things had changed in the Storm Heights. She’d gotten used to him.

“Boktar, will you watch over things here?” she said. “I’m going to go check on them. Bobo, take a look at Marco’s arm, will you? Treya’s busy.”

By the time she reached the others, Corec was sitting up, but he was leaning back against Katrin and his eyes were unfocused. There was a gaping hole in his breastplate.

“Are you all right?” Ellerie asked.

He tried to look up at her, but turned away when the sun got in his eyes. “I … uh …” He trailed off.

“He will be, but give me a few more minutes,” Treya said.

“There was a wizard,” Sarette added. “It was one of those beam spells, like yours.” The stormborn woman was standing over one of the archers with her staff-spear, keeping him from running.

Ellerie’s eyes grew wide. “That’s impossible. He’d be dead.”

“His armor protected him,” Katrin said.

“No, you don’t understand. Armor wouldn’t have helped at all. Look at what it did to his breastplate. Are you sure it was the same spell?”

Sarette shrugged. “I don’t know. It looked like what you did to the pirate ship.”

“Maybe he had some way to stop it,” Treya said. “Like those protection spells I’ve been practicing. Maybe he learned a new spell of his own.”

Ellerie nodded. She didn’t know of any arcane spell that could block direct magical attacks, but it wasn’t impossible. She’d heard of one that could deflect them.

“Not a new spell,” Corec murmured, then had a coughing fit. “Or maybe there was. I don’t always know right away when I learn one. What happened?”

“You went up against a wizard, apparently,” Ellerie said.

“Oh. Right.” He looked down at himself. “Shit. That’s a waste of an expensive suit of armor. My father won’t be happy.” He scratched at his chest. “It itches. It got my mail, too?”

“Be glad your armor is all it got,” Treya said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

“What happened to the wizard?”

“He’s dead,” Sarette said.

“Good. Help me up.”

Treya and Katrin helped Corec to his feet. He stooped to pick up his sword, which immediately began glowing with a green light. As he held it, the green was replaced by blue, moving down the blade from the hilt to the tip.

Corec walked unsteadily over to the kneeling man Sarette was holding prisoner and kicked him in the chest, knocking him onto his back. Then he stomped on his stomach. The man exhaled with a wailing grunt.

“Talk!” Corec ordered, pointing his sword at the archer’s face. “Why did you attack us? Who sent you?”

The man glared at them but didn’t speak.

“I don’t think he can understand you,” Katrin said.

“Bloody hell. Where are Marco and Josip?”

“I’ll get them,” Ellerie said. “And Boktar captured another one.”

In short order, everyone had gathered together other than Shavala, who was rounding up the horses and mules, and Nedley, who’d gone to help her.

“Are these the only survivors?” Corec asked. He’d removed his armor and pulled on a clean shirt from out of his saddlebag, but was holding onto Katrin’s shoulder for support.

“Some of them ran away, and there are a few wounded that Treya might be able to heal,” Boktar said. “These are the only two that are conscious.”

Corec nodded. “Ask them who they’re working for,” he told the translators. “Why did they attack us?”

Marco did the speaking. The archer, kneeling under Sarette’s watchful gaze, replied first, repeating the same phrase over and over until he was screaming. He frothed at the mouth and spasmed, his arms jerking around. Then he fell back and his body grew still, his eyes staring blankly up at the sky.

Even the second prisoner—one of the better armed men—looked shocked. He backed away from the first man.

“He just kept saying a snake will protect me from the infidels,” Marco said, his voice wavering.

“Not a snake,” Josip contradicted. “Just snake.”

Marco shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

“I think he was poisoned,” Treya said, standing up from the body. “I’ve never sensed a poisoning before, but I can’t think of what else it might be.”

“What about the other one?” Corec said.

Marco prompted the second prisoner again. The man replied quickly, still staring at the dead archer.

“He’s a mercenary,” Marco said. He pointed to a dead man in a black robe. “That one over there hired him to stop a group of bandits that he claimed were attacking the local villages.”

“How do we know he’s telling the truth?” Boktar asked.

Razai growled. “Who cares? He tried to kill us. Slit his throat and leave him with the rest.”

“Well?” Corec asked Marco. “Is he telling the truth or not?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think he is,” Josip said.

“Then we’ll let him go,” Corec said. He ignored Razai’s exasperated sigh. “First, make sure he understands we’re not bandits. I don’t want him leading another group back to us. Let him know he was the one working with bandits.”

“They weren’t bandits,” Ellerie pointed out.

“No, but let’s make sure he believes they were.”

“Who were they actually?” Bobo asked.

“I don’t know,” Corec said, giving Ellerie and Boktar meaningful glances.

Ellerie got the message—Corec was worried Rusol had sent them, but didn’t want to discuss it in front of outsiders.

“Did he mean a snake was going to bite him?” Bobo asked, still pushing for answers. “Is that what poisoned him? I didn’t see a snake. Does infidel mean the same thing in Nysan that it means in Western?”

A new voice spoke up. “I think they were after me.”

#

Leena forced herself to look everyone in the eye when they turned to her.

“What do you mean?” Ellerie asked. “Why would they be after you?”

Leena held up the knife she’d found after the battle, with the snake etched into the handle. “Men with these knives attacked my clan in Sanvar. That’s why I came here.”

“You knew about this?” Marco said.

“I only knew I was supposed to come here; I didn’t know they’d attack us. I didn’t even know I’d still be traveling with you. I thought I would … well, it doesn’t matter now. There are more of these knives over there.” She pointed back to the main ambush.

“Why were you supposed to come?” Ellerie asked.

“I can’t let them attack my people again. The Seeking sent me here to find a way to stop them.”

She was about to explain what she meant by that when Corec spoke up. “You’re a Seeker?” he asked.

There were looks of recognition on some of the faces. They knew of her people’s abilities? Corec didn’t seem angry with her, but she hadn’t had much interaction with him before.

“A Traveler and a Seeker, but I never finished my training. I went to Tyrsall because I know someone there who has a friend who can help me learn, but when I got there, the Seeking sent me here instead.”

“The person in Tyrsall who can train you—what’s his name?”

“Her name. I think it was Yelena. The man I met is called Sarlo.”

Corec shared a concerned glance with Ellerie. “Sarlo’s the Seeker,” he said. “Not Yelena. Did he tell you how she was going to train you?”

“Wait,” Marco said. “Are you talking about the duke’s wizard? That Yelena? What’s a Seeker?”

Leena couldn’t control her surprise. Tyrsall was even larger than Sanvara City. What were the chances they’d know the people she’d gone there to find?

“Umm, I don’t know who she is,” she said. “I never met her. Sarlo didn’t really say she could train me. He said she had a way to help me learn.”

“I think I know how,” Corec said. “I could—” He stopped abruptly.

“We knew you were a mage,” Ellerie admitted. “You didn’t seem to want to talk about it so I didn’t ask, but if we’d known that you knew Yelena and Sarlo, we’d have said something.”

They’d already known she was a mage? Leena glanced at Razai, who shook her head discreetly. The demonborn woman hadn’t told them.

“I’m sorry,” Leena said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’ll go.”

“No,” Corec said. “They weren’t after you. They wouldn’t send this many men for one person. If they’d just wanted to kill you, they could have done that easily enough back in Tir Shar, or once we reach Aencyr. They were after all of us.”

“Why?” Marco asked. “Senshall’s never had any trouble in Bancyra other than the occasional bandit.”

“We’re obviously not a Senshall caravan. Maybe these fellows don’t like what we’re doing here. Leena, do you know who they are?”

“No, none of the Zidari camps recognized them. Other Seekers are looking for them too, but they hadn’t found anything by the time I left Sanvar.”

“Why did they attack your people?” Ellerie asked.

“They came after the Travelers. They killed as many as they could before we fought back.”

The others stared at her blankly, and Leena realized what had happened. It was the same problem she’d had when speaking to Gylvaren in the elven outpost in Terril Forest. In trade tongue, the word Traveler was indistinguishable from its mundane counterpart.

“Travelers,” she repeated. “They can move from one place to another with magic.”

Ellerie nodded as if recognizing the concept. “You said Traveler earlier, too. That’s why you think they’re after you?”

“They’ve come for me before.”

“Then you need to leave,” Marco said.

“No!” Ellerie replied. “We’re not going to leave her out here alone!”

“Besides,” Corec added, “I told you, they’re after all of us. If Leena’s run into them before, she may be our best chance at finding out why.”

Boktar said, “Maybe one of the others will tell us something. Treya, I can show you where the wounded ones are. Marco, we’ll need you to translate.”

“I’ll come too, if you can wait for me,” Corec said. “I’m not up to moving too quickly just yet.”

As the group split up, Ellerie stayed nearby. “Boktar distracted Marco so I could speak to you privately,” the elven woman murmured. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know how you’d react,” Leena said. Ellerie’s mood had remained mercurial as they’d traveled—sometimes she was friendly and sometimes she was distant, focused on the task at hand. “I only came with you because the Seeking told me to, and I wasn’t sure when I’d have to leave.”

Razai had taken a spot not far away, ostensibly helping Sarette guard the remaining prisoner, but keeping a watchful eye on the conversation.

“We can make sure they don’t hurt you,” Ellerie said. “You had to fight them before?”

“It wasn’t really a fight. I was in Matihar, outside Sanvara City. They caught me alone, and I Traveled to get away. I ended up in Larso. It took me months to get home.” Leena didn’t mention her parents’ deaths. She’d told Razai—eventually—but she wasn’t ready to open up about it to Ellerie.

“Why not just … Travel back?”

“It’s dangerous, and I quit my training before I could do it safely. I met Sarlo on my way home and he taught me a few things, but I still have to be very careful or I’ll end up somewhere I wasn’t expecting. I’ve fallen twice and I broke my arm both times. Once, I ended up in the ocean.”

“Oh. That’s why you were looking for Yelena?”

Leena nodded.

“Will you stay with us?” Ellerie asked.

“Do you really want me to?” Leena’s Seeking was still sending her in the same direction as the group. She could move faster on her own, but what if she got to Aencyr and the magic wanted her to return to the others?

“Yes. We can protect you, and maybe Treya and Marco will find out who these people are.”

“Then I’ll stay for as long as I can.”

#

Ellerie led the group through the streets of Aencyr, trying to find a better view. As they’d approached the city, the Skotinos Mountains had loomed in the distance. She’d grown more and more hopeful, exchanging meaningful glances with Corec and Bobo, who were both familiar with the design on the amulet.

“Where are we going?” Marco asked her. “What are you looking for? We’ve passed a dozen inns.”

They’d been wandering eastward into the city for three hours, leading the horses and mules, but Ellerie refused to stop. Not when she was so close.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” she said.

Aencyr rivaled Tyrsall in size. While it wasn’t near the sea, it stood in approximately the geographic center of Cordaea, with major trade roads to the north, south, and west. Waterways provided another trade route. Two parallel rivers bracketed Aencyr to the north and south, merging together just southwest of the city and continuing south to the ocean. River barges floated downstream, and were then towed back upstream by draft horses following a towpath.

The city was filled with rotundas of gleaming white stone, complete with towers, domed roofs, and gilded spires, as impressive as anything back in Terevas. The buildings obstructed most views of the mountains, but there were enough glimpses to lead Ellerie in the right direction. She pushed through the crowd, wishing she was taller—humans and stoneborn alike wore conical hats that blocked her view. The men’s hats had brims to keep the rain off, while the women’s trailed colorful scarves behind them. She had to wait for gaps between groups of people to see what she was looking for.

Finally, she came to a stop in front of a massive temple to Allosur, its huge domed roof towering over them.

“This is it,” she said. “If the temple wasn’t blocking the view, it would be a perfect match. Aencyr is Tir a Tir.”