Into the Broken Lands

by Tanya Huff

Genres: Dragons & Mythical Creatures; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

From sci-fi and fantasy master Tanya Huff comes a new epic fantasy saga set in a land of dangers and mysteries

Shattered by mage wars, the Broken Lands will test the bonds of family and friendship, strength and sanity. To save their people, the Heirs of Marsan have no choice but to enter, trusting their lives and the lives of everyone they Protect, to someone who shouldn't exist, who can't be controlled, and who will challenge everything they believe about themselves.

 

Read more

Release date: August 23, 2022

Publisher: DAW

Print pages: 464

Sample

NONEE.NOW

“Nonee! Nonee!”

Darny’s cry shattered the silence wrapped around Arianna’s deathbed. Squatting close beside the bed, cradling the thin hand of her first friend, she raised her head at the call, shifted in place, and winced as her bulk caused the bed to rock. All but one of Gateway’s inhabitants called her Nonee, and had for long enough she’d accepted it as her name. It wasn’t the name she’d given herself, but other people wore the names they’d been given, why shouldn’t she? Only Arianna refused to use it.

“Nonee!” The timbre of Darny’s voice changed as he entered the herbarium and grew louder as he approached the private rooms at the back. “Nonee! They’re coming!” He rocked to a halt in the open doorway. “Oh. I forgot. Is she dead?”

“No.” Barely louder than her labored breathing, Arianna’s voice held as much conviction as it ever had. “I’m not.”

Not yet. Nonee carefully tightened her grip around loose skin and swollen joints, holding on. Not ever, had there actually been gods who listened.

Darny kicked the threshold. “Sorry, Healer. Sorry, Nonee. But they’re coming!” He lowered his voice when Nonee glanced over and frowned, resenting the need to shift her attention from Arianna even for a moment. “They’re coming like you said they would.”

“Now?” She could hear the anger in her voice.

But Darny had known her for his entire life and merely blew out an annoyed huff of air. “No, I just thought I’d practice running and yelling. Of course now!”

Of course now. When all she wanted to do was be with Arianna, to sit beside her bed and guard her from the inevitable. She needed . . . She shook her head. She needed to be here, but she also needed information. There’d been four of them the last time. This time . . . What if they’d come with an army? What if there’d been enough change at the other end of the road that they’d come to try and dig destruction out of the ruins?

This was not the time!

Arianna nodded when Nonee’s gaze returned to her face and her slack lips twitched, the closest she could come to a smile. “I’m not . . . not going anywhere yet.”

She searched for a clever response, something Arianna could answer with wit or sarcasm, a moment’s banter to delay the inevitable, but Arianna had too few words left to waste any on foolishness. “How many?” she asked Darny without turning.

“Seven riding. Four in leather and scale, two in fancy clothes, with like embroidery and stuff. The seventh isn’t in a uniform and he’s not so fancy dressed as the rest. And they have two people wearing all blue riding in a wagon. They’ve got round hats on, sort of like what Mam wears in the sun but not really, and the hats are the very same blue. So,” he declared after a moment, “nine I could see.”

“A wagon?” That was unexpected. They might have come for trade if they came with a wagon.

“Yeah, hard to miss. And I only saw two people on the wagon, but it’s big and covered over so there could be more soldiers hidden inside.”

“Guardians.”

“What?”

“They call their soldiers guardians. Why do you think they’d hide guardians inside the wagon?” she asked, as Arianna’s lips twitched again. Their arrival had given Arianna a chance to smile twice. For that, Nonee might forgive the interruption.

“They could want to sneak more people inside the wall. People that we didn’t know about, to take us by surprise. It’s a big wagon,” he added defensively. “With two big horses!”

Except for the hand cradled in hers, the clever fingers still and damp and so cold it was clear they’d never be warm again, Nonee might have smiled as well.

A long, long time ago, when Arianna’s hair crowned her head in a gleaming tangle of chestnut curls, when her eyes were bright, when she could beat all challengers in a footrace, Garrett, Heir of Marsan, had stopped at Gateway on his way to the Broken Lands with his ancille, his best friend, and his best friend’s ancille. The ancilles had been barely more than boys, boys from the Five Thousand learning to be men at the side of those older and possibly wiser. “A small party can move fast enough to survive,” Garrett, Heir of Marsan, had said. “The smaller the party, the faster it can move.” Nonee looked down to see Arianna’s eyes dancing and knew, the way she always knew, that Arianna was thinking of the heir as well. The healer had disapproved of Garrett Heir in the beginning, but had come to like him well enough by the end.

Arianna’s

fingers twitched. “He brought you . . . here.” After so many years together, teaching and being taught, living in each other’s head went both ways.

He’d have mocked a party of nine. Maybe he had mocked it. Arianna and he were of an age, he could still be alive.

Garrett Heir hadn’t brought a wagon, but he had brought the only one of the six great mage-crafted weapons to survive the war. This new company riding—and rolling—up the Mage Road to the Broken Lands would want to claim it.

She could hear Darny’s bare feet scuffing against the worn stone floor. “So, are you coming, Nonee?”

“No.”

“But you need to talk to them! You know they’re gonna want . . .”

“Later.”

“Not long . . .” Arianna sighed.

She could feel Arianna’s pulse fluttering in her wrist like a small bird throwing itself against the bars of a cage. Would it help if she thought of Arianna’s spirit fighting to be free of the cage that age had made of her body?

No.

“Much later,” she said.

Arianna managed to find the energy for both a snort and an eye roll.

“Much later,” Nonee repeated. Belief wouldn’t slow the inevitable. For all her familiarity with death, for all she was, for all Arianna and others had taught her over the years, she couldn’t stop time. But she refused to surrender.

“So what do I tell the gate guards if you’re not coming?” Darny demanded.

“Has the council been told?”

He snorted dismissively. “Well, yeah. Shalla was hanging around, so they sent her to tell Sa Oryn while I ran for you.”

Oryn Archivist would be the easiest of the council to find; some nights he slept at the archive. “Go to Oryn Archivist. Tell him the council should stay clear until we have more information, that they should send Gils Trader to deal with them. He’ll know how. Then go to the gate. Tell the guards Gils Trader is on his way and that he has the final word on whether or not they open the gate.”

“You mean I should tell Sa Oryn that Nonee says to send Gils? And then tell the guards that Nonee says Gils has the final word? And then run around the walls because I’ve run out of other places to run to?”

“

Darny.” She rolled his name out of the depths of her chest, the sound as much a rumble of displeasure as a word.

“Fine. I’ll run. I’ll tell them.” She heard him turn, pause, return. “Nonee? I’m sorry Ari’s dying.”

She closed her eyes. Heard him turn again and leave. Opened her eyes a long moment later.

“Everyone dies,” Arianna murmured. “I shouldn’t have to . . . tell . . . you that.”

Nonee carefully brushed a thin strand of brittle, white hair back off the high arc of Arianna’s forehead. “Not you. You don’t die.”

“Also . . . me.” A shallow breath struggled to lift the sunken chest. “Come . . . closer. Don’t make me . . .”

A group of children ran past the herbarium, shrieking with laughter.

“. . . come up . . . there and . . .”

Off to the east, a cow bawled for her calf.

“. . . get you. You know I . . . will.”

The remains of Arianna’s imperious expression pulled Nonee in until they breathed the same air. The dying woman’s breath smelled faintly of vinegar as her body devoured itself. They held the position for what seemed like a year or two, although Nonee knew it couldn’t have been more than a moment.

Another labored breath. “Clo . . . ser.”

“Ari.”

“Don’t be . . . a . . . afraid of your . . . self. I trust . . . you.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“You can’t . . . refuse it . . . now . . . stubborn one. Last re . . . quest.” Fingers twitched within the cage of Nonee’s hand, brushing against her palm like the wings of a mayfly. “Closer.”

She closed the distance. Felt her heart shatter as the first person to ever care for her gave her one last gift as she died.

RYAN.NOW

“Do you know who I am?” Ryan yelled up at the two archers on the battlements. “Do you?”

“Said you were the Heir of Marsan,” replied the taller. She turned and added something quietly to her companion, who laughed.

Ryan stiffened in the saddle. His horse stepped back two paces, dark ears flat. Forcing himself to relax before Slate scaled up his objection, he scratched at a dapple-gray shoulder and reminded himself he was used to laughter. First from his brothers, then while trying to take his brothers’ place. But these people were laughing at the Heir of Marsan. At the title, not at him. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

It wouldn’t have happened to Donal.

“It’s like they’re not glad to see us.” Keetin moved Thorn, his gelding, in close enough for the two horses to bump haunches, the contact calming Slate enough that he stopped shifting in place.

“I don’t care how they feel about us,” Ryan muttered. “I just want them to open the flaming gate.”

The gate should have been opened to the Heir of Marsan.

The gate remained closed.

He lifted his chin and met the archer’s gaze. “How long do we wait?”

She glanced to the west and shrugged. “B’in fore dark.”

The sun showed red between the trees. Daylight lingered in midsummer, especially this far north, but dusk had crept closer than expected.

“Before duck?” Keetin muttered. “What’s duck got to do with it?”

“Dark.”

“No, she said duck.”

The local accent made shared words sound like another language. Ryan dragged the reins across Slate’s neck, wheeled the horse around to the left, and charged back toward the wagon. Slate complained about the sudden start and stop by bucking before he settled, but it was a perfunctory protest at best.

When he became Lord Protector, he’d expand his influence north. Gateway had been a traders’ town, according to the Captain’s Chronicle, a point of contact between the mages and the greater world, with scholars and artisans and merchants gathered together to create a city of unparalleled beauty and advancements. Most of the Five Thousand who went south with Captain Marsan were from Gateway: five thousand survivors of the Mage War who’d had brains enough to realize they couldn’t live in the wreckage.

Those who’d stayed behind, like the ancestors of the archer, had been too stupid to realize their lives had irrevocably changed. They’d clearly bred that stupidity into their descendants.

Slate danced sideways. Ryan forced himself to relax. The guards on the gate were being cautious. It wasn’t personal. No matter how it felt.

Lyelee was standing when he reached the wagon, ready to dismount. He’d gotten used to seeing her in regular clothes, but during a quick late afternoon stop, before they’d started out to cover the last bit of road before Gateway, both scholars had dressed in full regalia. Robes. Stoles. Even the ridiculous flat hats. She was no longer his family—the two of them closest in age among the cousins so expected to get along in spite of differences—she was a scholar novitiate.

The scholars didn’t answer to the Lord Protector and they certainly didn’t answer to the Heir. According to their Charter, they were directed only by scholarship and were above the day-to-day distractions of commerce and politics. They were to be scholars before anything else.

No one had expected the Lord Protector to give them permission to take the Mage Road north. Scholars were revered, venerable, wise, not sent into certain danger. In the end, for that permission to be granted, they’d had to agree that safety would overrule scholarship until they were back in the Scholar’s Hall. During their travels, the Heir of Marsan would have the last word.

Ryan hadn’t yet tested the strength of the agreement, and he was well aware that Court and the Scholar’s Hall had both assumed the last word would actually come from Captain Yansav.

“Lyelee . . .” He paused as her brows rose and she twitched a fold from her robe: a fabric reminder that she had an audience now. He stifled a sigh. “Scholar Novitiate Marsan, please remain in the wagon.”

“Why?”

He

 glanced at the streaks of orange above the horizon. “We need to be ready to move when they open the gate.”

“How long do you think it takes me to get back into the wagon?” she demanded.

Scholars never asked rhetorical questions. If they asked a question, they expected an answer. Over the last twenty-eight days of travel, the non-scholars in the company had learned they could be knocked off the scent with a return question, and on the days the scholars had been particularly scholar-like they’d taken a petty pleasure in winding them up until annoyance turned to affronted silence. “Do you want to have to scramble back on board when the gate opens? With that lot watching?”

Head tipped back to lift the angle of her hat, she glanced past him, up at the archers, and he hoped the need to been seen as in control would outweigh a scholar’s need to be right every single time. He breathed a sigh of relief when she sat.

“So.” She shot him a narrow-eyed glare from under her hat. “What are we waiting for?”

“Possibly a duck.” Keetin reinserted himself at Ryan’s side.

Lyelee glanced between them, frown deepening. “A duck?”

“A sacrifice perhaps,” Scholar Gearing suggested from the other side of the wagon seat, back straightening, the chance to lecture easing his exhaustion. “Some primitive peoples read entrails when they require . . .”

“There’s no duck!” Ryan snapped. Slate bucked again. He shifted his weight into the movement and used it to turn the horse to the left until they faced Captain Yansav and the three guardians at the rear of the wagon. “Gateway wants us to wait,” he announced, pitching his voice to carry over the scholarly discussion on what exactly constituted entrails and why they couldn’t be referred to in the singular. “As we haven’t much choice in the matter, we wait.”

They needed to enter Gateway. They needed the weapon. Both the Lord Protector and the Heir’s Chronicle—the record of the trip the Lord Protector had made sixty-three years earlier—had specifically said that no one could enter the Broken Lands without the weapon and expect to survive.

“Not that the weapon guarantees survival.” The Lord Protector had blinked rheumy eyes more or less in Ryan’s direction. “Raises the odds though.” He’d coughed, spat, and added, “To about fifty-fifty.”

Even with the weapon, half the people

had been able to bury that number and the terror it evoked under the monotony of the road. Riding, walking, eating, sleeping, then doing it again and again and again had made the concept seem unreal. Here and now, off the road, with night approaching and the Broken Lands in sight, he used the irritation of being kept waiting, of not being acknowledged as Donal would have been, to shove it aside.

Donal would face it, acknowledge it; he’d do what he had to to keep moving.

Captain Yansav narrowed her eyes and studied the archers on the wall, her expression suggesting she, not they, had the advantage. “Do you expect trouble?”

“No.” He could recognize asshole behavior when he saw it, flame knew he’d seen it often enough. “But we should stay alert in case that changes.”

“Sir.”

Promoted out of the Lord Protector’s Guard, Captain Yansav could have taken advantage of her position with the new, inexperienced heir, and everyone in the Citadel was aware of it. Half the Court expected it, and Ryan hadn’t helped by spending the first days after being publicly declared heir in a near panic, looking to her for orders. She’d finally broken him of that during their first ten days on the Mage Road by forcing him to make every single decision no matter how inane until he’d ordered her to stop. He may have continued to ask himself what would Donal do, but as she hadn’t known, it hadn’t mattered. During the next ten days, he’d learned she wasn’t a morning person, her first name was Coree, and she’d been driven from her native land by a political coup. That Shurlia had also been Captain Marsan’s native land had no doubt been a factor in her choice as the new Heir’s Captain.

Also, his brother’s captain hadn’t wanted the job.

Ryan thought both he and the captain had made the best of having been pitched into not just the unexpected inheritance but the sudden departure for the Broken Lands. At this point, given a choice between Captain Yansav and an officer he could choose himself, he’d stick with the captain. He wanted to believe the captain would stick with him.

He didn’t. Not entirely.

In creating the new Heir’s Guard, Captain Yansav had ignored guardians who’d been in service to his oldest brother, not giving them their captain’s chance to refuse, and had chosen the guardians to accompany them from outside the political appointees serving at the Citadel. All three had at least ten years on Ryan. Vaylin Curtin-cee had nearly fifteen. Curtin and Calintris Servan-cee were of the Five Thousand—the formal “cee” matronym, dropped after introductions but never forgotten. Borit Destros and the captain were not. All three were 

decent shots, but Servan was the best archer Ryan had ever seen. On the road, her bow had supplemented dried and salted meats with ducks, geese, rabbits, and once, a yearling buck.

None of them had bonded or children back in Marsanport, which said more about the captain’s understanding of this trip than Ryan found comfortable.

“Sir?” Harris appeared from behind the wagon. Cloud, his mare, stopped a body length away and shot Slate an eloquent don’t try anything look. “Do we consider this a rest stop?”

Do I light the kettle and make tea?

Ryan took another look at the angle of the sun, half inclined to have Harris boil some water and show Gateway how little he cared about their insult, both to him and to Marsanport. “No need,” he said instead, turning Slate back toward the wall and raising his voice. “We won’t be out here long.”

The two archers had been joined by two more. At least he assumed they were archers from the similarity of clothing. If they had bows, they kept them out of sight.

The lower levels of the wall had been cobbled together from the rubble left behind by the Mage War—described in the Heir’s Chronicle as the result of panicked survivors piling the stone from shattered buildings into a barricade. The upper levels, built sometime in the last sixty-three years, had a familiar silhouette. It looked as though Gateway had copied the wall surrounding the Citadel, although Ryan had no idea how. Only a single family of Marsan traders had been allowed contact. Traders, not masons or artists.

Seven people now watched from the top of the wall.

Eight.

Nine.

That was more people than he’d seen in one place since they’d left Marsanport. His back ached, and he wished he could relax the rigid posture the Heir of Marsan was expected to maintain in public.

They wouldn’t have made Donal wait.

Donal would have been there eleven days earlier, into and out of Gateway, and into and out of the Broken Lands by now.

According to the Heir’s Chronicle, it had taken seventeen days to ride from Marsanport to Gateway. Seventeen. Ryan’s company had been held by the wagon to the same pace as Captain Marsan’s walking wounded, who’d taken twenty-eight days to limp, stagger, and crawl from the destroyed city to Marsanport after the war.

The Court had protested the time the wagon would add when the Lord Protector granted the ridiculous petition from the Scholar’s Hall to study the Broken Lands, but the Lord Protector

, in full possession of his mind for that moment at least, had swept his gaze around the chamber, locked eyes with Ryan, and dismissed the protest with a curt, “They go for the good of Marsan.”

For the good of Marsan.

The scholars sought knowledge.

Knowledge was power. Everyone knew that.

Knowledge traveled too flaming slowly.

When he became Lord Protector, the scholars would stay in the Scholar’s Hall.

Yeah, he didn’t believe that either.

“Sir.”

Captain Yansav’s quiet voice stopped his spiraling thoughts and drew his attention back to the wall in question. Two of the nine archers were gone; four of the remaining seven leaned far enough out to look straight down.

The door cut into the left half of the gate opened.

The man who stepped out had straight dark hair, cropped short, and a full beard braided with copper beads that glinted in the sun. He was darker than Lyelee, but not as dark as the captain or even Ryan himself; the heavy black lines of tattoos spiraling around both arms were visible at a distance. He didn’t have the heavy muscle of a physical job, the bearing of a guardian, or the confidence of a politician. He wore loose trousers, a sleeveless tunic, and sandals—all in shades of brown.

Except for the beads, he could have stepped through the gate from a working-class street in Marsanport. Ryan picked at a loose thread on the edge of his saddle. To be fair, beads might be popular with the working class in Marsanport. He wouldn’t know.

The man didn’t look like a fighter, but the archers above the gate meant he didn’t have to.

He knew the crest on Ryan’s tabard, his eyes drawn to it before his gaze rose to Ryan’s face. He frowned. “Your pardon, but I’ve seen the heir and you are not he.”

Grateful that the man spoke slowly enough to be understood, Ryan moved Slate up beside Captain Yansav. “When did you see the heir?”

“Six years ago, when the Lord Protector granted me permission to remain in Gateway.”

A lot had changed in six years.

A lot had changed since the Water Moon.

“You saw my brother Donal. He died. As did my brothers Corryn and Josan. They drowned. All three of them. Together.” When it rained and the water ran into his eyes and his clothing

 got soaked through, he could hear his father howling as croppers pulled the bodies of his three oldest sons from the lake, the lake pulling back at their sodden clothing.

“Apologies, Lord Marsan. And my condolences on your loss.” He raised his right fist to his chest and bowed his head. “I am Gilsin Yeri-cer.”

Yeri. The trader family. Emphasizing their weak connection to the Five Thousand by using the patrilineal cer. Had the Lord Protector inserted Gilsin Yeri-cer into Gateway as a spy? Six years ago the Lord Protector’s mind had still been sharp. Had he planted one of his own within Gateway to keep an eye on the weapon? “We’re not here to trade . . .” Repeating the patronym would mock the trader’s weak lineage. Donal had excelled at mockery. In this instance, Ryan realized, he didn’t care what Donal would have done. “. . . Gilsin Yeri.”

“I’m aware of that, my lord.” The beads flashed when he smiled. “You’ve come, as the Lord Protector did when he was Heir, because the Black Flame’s fuel is nearly spent and, before you enter the Broken Lands, you need the weapon. And, very probably, to receive a report on how conditions in the Broken Lands have changed over the last sixty-three years.” He paused and asked, “You’ll be trading for supplies?”

“We will.” Ryan knew he sounded defensive when he should have sounded assertive.

Gilsin Yeri didn’t appear to notice. “Any chance you’ve brought anchovies in oil? Love the little buggers and I always run out before my family returns.” He smiled so broadly the corners of his mouth disappeared into his beard. Then he stopped smiling. “I’ll need to have a look at the wagon. This close to the Broken Lands, we have to be careful of what we allow within the walls.”

That seemed too reasonable for Ryan to deny him. Too reasonable for Ryan to ask him what wasn’t allowed. Or should he assume the answer was obvious, given Gateway’s proximity to the Broken Lands?

He rapped his knuckles against both water barrels, and dribbled a thin stream of water onto his palm and then onto the ground. He examined the underside of the wagon . . .

“Mage Road’s easy on the rig, I’ll give it that.” He winked at Harris, who rolled his eyes.

 . . . then untied and flipped up one of the canvas sides. Even with the trade goods, the scholar’s supplies, bedrolls, cooking gear, and the like, the wagon was nearly empty.

Ryan could see the questions as Gilsin Yeri stepped back. “It was full when we left Marsanport,” he said. “Food. Grain for the horses. Other things we might need on the road.”

“Looks like you needed all of them.”

“We’ve been traveling for twenty-eight days,” Gearing snapped, having apparently heard insult rather than observation.

“It’s always twenty-eight days, Scholar,” the trader/possible spy said flatly. “It’s a mage road.”

“It is?” Sarcasm dripped from the question. “Would that be why they call it the Mage Road then?”

“Yes.” The scholar seemed taken aback by the flat answer and hadn’t yet recovered when Gilsin Yeri added, “It takes twenty-eight days because they built a full turn of the moon into it.”

Keetin nudged his horse forward. “The Lord Protector took only seventeen days.”

Within the depths of his beard, Gilsin Yeri’s mouth twisted. “I’ve read the Heir’s Chronicle.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Lyelee’s scowl looked capable of physical damage. Beside her, Gearing seemed to have sucked the overhang of his mustache into his mouth.

“It means that the Mage Road always takes twenty-eight days from Marsanport to Gateway, Scholar.”

Like everyone in Marsanport, Ryan had been taught that scholars always had, always would have the last word. Both of them would have plenty to say in response to the lack of respect, and Ryan had been raised to let them say it. But they needed to be behind the wall before dark. He’d opened his mouth to try and stop the lecture before it began when Gilsin Yeri leaned back far enough to get a better angle on the battlements, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “I speak for the Heir of Marsan and his party, Clea. Open the gate.”

Metal groaned behind the slabs of wood.

At Slate’s shoulder, far enough away he’d clearly taken the horse’s measure, Gilsin Yeri met Ryan’s gaze. “The Trader’s Hall is being prepared, my lord. Beds made up, kitchen stocked. If you’ve been traveling since your evening meal, you’ll want a bite. There’s stabling and a turn-out for the animals once the sun’s up again.” He cocked his head at Ryan’s frown and added, “It’s late. Representatives from the council will meet with you tomorrow.”

“Of course.” He’d assumed they’d do it all tonight—resupply, accept the weapon, collect information—and leave at dawn, but admitting that would be admitting how little he understood what was happening. Donal would’ve known.

“Follow me.” The trader/possible spy turned toward the open gate. “And stay on the road. We’re almost positive we’ve located the last of the cellars, but we’d rather you not risk it.”

No

need to ask what Donal would have done. Donal would’ve taken insult at being commanded by a mere trader. He’d have sent someone to find a cellar just to prove who was in charge. Ryan, who’d been told how dissimilar he was to his stronger, smarter, better-prepared-to-be-heir brother half a hundred times his first day in the Citadel, preferred not to fall into a cellar.

He settled back into the saddle and met Captain Yansav’s eyes. Did she know the spy? Had she been assigned to him to keep him from accidentally giving Gilsin Yeri’s position away? Would she tell him the truth if he asked? Would it matter? He already missed the monotony of the road, where he’d come to know the answers. Was this a trap? No, that was a stupid overreaction. Gateway wanted trade with Marsanport and they’d agreed to help when the Black Flame flickered. “We follow the trader, Captain, and we stay on the road.”

“Sir. Curtin, take point.”

“Captain.”

The guardian passed so close, Ryan could have effortlessly clapped him on the shoulder, and it was luck as much as skill that kept their knees from cracking together. Suspicious by nature and raised to believe in guilt by association when it came to mages and mage-craft, Curtin wouldn’t be distracted.

accompanying him would die.

Four of the eight.

Ryan