Part 2

The birds were silent the day Erán Närgaard was born. He too was silent, a small, pale-haired child with round blue eyes that would later turn to a pale sea green in affirmation of his parentage. Serthesen had expected there to be noise; squalling or gurgling or whatever sound babies made, but his son remained silent.

He didn't pick the child up. He reached out a hand as if he would touch him, but then drew it back, tucked it away in the pockets of his greatcoat. He stood and stared, having nothing to say, and wondered what on earth he had done.

And Erán stared back. There was an awareness in the child's eyes that Serthesen knew was absent from all other babies; everyone knew to wait nine days before naming children, waiting to see if the soul of dead kin should return, but in this case, this was a new soul. And a fully-formed one. Serthesen shuddered.

The woman holding the child smiled dotingly on him, and looked up at the dour, silent mage. 'Won't you hold him? See, he has your eyes.'

'He has not my eyes,' answered Serthesen. Nonetheless, he bent his head dutifully, and peered at his son.

In his eyes Serthesen saw what the child would become, and he turned on his heel and walked away, never to look at his son again.

On the tower, the ravens watched, barely a feather stirring. Atreyu was already aware of Erán's existence, and saw what the mage had seen. But he saw something else, too – he saw that the boy would walk in shadow, and wear the troll-mark. And he knew that he would claim Erán's life for his own.

'I am going to the town across the dunes,' Soufien said. Hanna was sitting near the window, gazing out over Cartha, though there wasn't a lot to look at. Nothing but red dust, an entire flat desert of red dust. 'I forget its name, but there is a gypsy market new arrived. Shall I bring you anything, Hanna?' He wore the silver troll-rings on his fingers, long delicate filigree that covered each slim finger from knuckle to nail. Somehow, they made him look demonic, these confections of metal, like butterfly claws. He'd lately taken to wearing them, though she'd never seen them before.

Hanna looked about the tower room and its contents, and shook her head. He'd only been back a few days, from the last trip, and she couldn't imagine why he'd want to go off across the sands again so soon. And she had all she needed. There wasn't a lot to need, shut up in a hot red tower with a man who spoke about one sentence an hour. 'What things?'

'Anything, anything you like.' He spread his armoured hands, guilt flitting across his face for an instant then settling in his eyes, shadowed by long pale lashes. 'There must be something.'

There wasn't, but she named something anyway. 'A lyre.'

'You like to play?' He was surprised, and she almost laughed. In the weeks she'd known him, he had never once shown any inclination towards music. Not even a whistle.

But then, she thought, neither have I. Cartha is not a place in which to be musical. Oh, when can I leave here?

He nodded, said that he would bring her the finest harp he could find, and left suddenly in a whirl of red dust.

Hanna sighed, suddenly bereft of the one thing that kept her sane, cooped up in a tower that burned by day and froze by night. Soufien was strange company, but he was growing on her, day by day. Little more talkative than Käithenal had ever been, he nevertheless enlightened her on many subjects concerning magery, taught her card tricks, and occasionally told her stories from ages long past. There was, however, one thing he would not speak of – his own past. She riffled through his books and scrolls, hoping for clues, but found nothing. Either he'd never written anything down, or he'd been very thorough in destroying it. She thought the latter. Mages wrote; Käithenal wrote like a madman, about anything and everything, obsessively cluttering up his fortress with scroll upon scroll, shelf upon shelf of books. Nothing Soufien had could be considered any real use to a mage who knew his craft so well. Books her father would have scorned, or burned in his hearth, determined to get some use out of them. They were relics of a time gone past, artefacts from someone's earlier days...but whose, she couldn't guess.

She read them anyway; traced the neat, precise handwriting that marched across the pages with flourishes and embellishments. A woman's hand. Was that why he kept them? Who was she? The wife he'd spoken of days before, with a wistful shadowing of his eyes?

Jealousy stabbed her in the gut, and she slammed the book shut, shoving it back on the shelf with a loud sigh. He'd never part with his secrets unless he wanted to. Still, she couldn't help but imagine the mysterious ex-wife. Her imagination provided the woman with luminous dark eyes, and lustrous hair, curves to make a -

Serthesen landed in at the window with a yell and a crunch, then righted himself shakily.

'You're back then,' Hanna said impassively. She'd learned quickly that he hated sympathy and fuss. He nodded.

'Not staying,' he rasped, still fighting for control over the pain. 'Got to go to Vertland. Pack up, Hanna. I'll drop you off at the Eastern Seaboard. I consider your time here done and your father's debt paid. There is war at hand.'