The fight was stopped by our companions' intervention but my anger was much slower to dissipate. I found my breathing beginning to get ragged as I realized how close I had come to killing Charles. My heart beat in my chest like drum being played by a madman. I could feel another episode coming upon me like a storm on the horizon. Shaking, I made it to my tent and sat heavily on my stool and I began my breathing trick. Slow breath in through the nose, hold it for a count of five, slowly release the breath in my lungs, pause for a count of five and then repeat. I teetered on the edge of collapse, but the technique worked and my heart slowed down and the panic that had come out of the darkness deep in my own mind subsided and fled back to its cave.

"Barrim," Dmitri's voice came from outside of my tent, "can I enter?"

"Yes," I replied, although I would have preferred more time alone. My hands were still shaking, either from the near fight or from the attack, or perhaps both. Dimitri came carrying a wine sack and two wooden cups. He poured the red liquid from the skin into the cups and handed me one.

"You want to know if Charles and his sister are being kicked out of the party." I said that as a statement and not a question.

"We have had a bad day," Dimitri said. "What the boy did was foolish, but he has never seen death before and he was partial to the old dwarf. Godfrey is talking sense to him right now, as is his sister, but it is up to you if he stays or if he goes."

"Any reason to keep him around?" I asked.

"We need his sword arm," replied Dimitri, "although he is not impressive with a blade, he is dedicated to learning. We started short-handed, and that situation has only gotten worse. The girl is more problematic, unless she begins to master the Arcane Arts, she will be of little use."

"She is trying," I replied. "But I wonder if I am doing them right by having them come along. This journey is more perilous than I thought it would be. Perhaps sending them back would save their lives?"

"Maybe," replied Dimitri, "but there is no shortage of things that will kill you in this world. If we separated from them, our enemies might take the opportunity to kill them since they will not have our protection."

"True," I said as I drained the last of the wine in my cup, "but I cannot have mutiny in the party."

"I will be responsible for him and he will be informed," Dimitri answered, "if ever tries something that stupid again, that I will kill him myself."

"That is good enough," I said, "but only if he gives a sincere apology, and by that I mean one that you do not tell him to make."

"Fair enough," Dimitri replied as he nodded, his lips pursed in thought. A half hour later, Dimitri and I were still discussing strategies for defending our camp from further attack when we were interrupted.

"Boss," Godfrey said as he stuck his head in through the tent's flap, "Charles and his sister would like to speak with you."

I looked over at Dimitri and he gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. I knew exactly what he meant by that gesture after having campaigned together for so many years. He was waiting for fate to cast her die. We left the tent and the entire party was gathered around. Charles stood next to his sister in the semi-circle of people around the front of my tent.

"Mage Barrim," Charles said after his sister elbowed him, "in my anger and grief, I said things that were not true and that should never have been spoken. I truly regret having said those things, and I ask for your forgiveness and understanding on this day when we lost our companions."

I looked intently at the boy, who refused to look me in the eye and I could feel his shame and remorse, and some anger still, thanks to my amulet. Still, I had to make things clear to him.

"Charles, look me in the eye so you know I am telling you the truth," I said and Charles turned his brown eyes and pale face up to look into mine. "Trust must come from both sides, you may not trust me, but I know I do not trust you, now. I do, however, trust Dimitri. I will give you another chance, but know this, I am only doing so because Dimitri has taken responsibility for you. What you did today weakened the party with strife, making it easier for our enemies to destroy us. It may be that we gain each other's trust again someday, but if you do anything like this again, either Dimitri or I will kill you. A party such as ours cannot withstand division within itself, and I will not allow you to put the others at risk again. Am I understood in this matter?"

Charles nodded his understanding and I continued, "Do you wish to continue with this party from now on and fulfill the oath you gave to this party, or do you wish to take the treasures you have already received and depart?"

"Both my sister and I would like to stay with the party."

Helena nodded in agreement with her brother and I said to them, "Then you both may continue to travel with us. Now, it is getting late, and another attack may yet happen. Let us prepare as best we can for a renewed assault."

We got to work preparing for another attack, our enchanted lanterns were placed well out away from us so that we could see further and yet they formed a barrier of light that made it difficult to see us in the center where it was dark. We were down a crossbowman, but Helena, Godfrey, and Anton spoke to each other with much gesturing and pantomime. Soon they had a couple of tall forked sticks stuck in the ground and the dead man's crossbow was laid in the forks so Helena, who was not strong enough to hold the heavy the crossbow up long enough to aim it, now had a perch to set it that would allow her to load and fire the weapon. Good, she was using her head to make herself more useful to the group. Thanks to Lowen's gift, I only needed a few minutes to restore the spells I had cast and place in my mind some new ones for the morrow once that was done I sought out Helena, or more accurately, Helena's mind with the medallion.

She was in her tent, staring at the mandala and dealing with the first cold touches of a headache coming on. An idea struck me and I sought out her thoughts and how well she was visualizing the mandala, and I saw that she was having trouble keeping the complex pattern in her mind. I had long mastered the first level mandala, and I thought I might use the medallion to help her, so I projected my thoughts into her mind, overlaying my mental picture over hers. She gasped as the mandala suddenly came into clear focus in her mind and for the first time she truly understood what the symbol represented. This did not mean she could cast any spells yet, since that required the caster to mentally rearrange the symbols in the mandala to create the desired effect, but this was a good start. I backed my thoughts out and she held the image for a few moments, but then it began to fray at the edges, so I reinforced the image again for a few minutes and then let go. She held on to it for a few minutes more, but then it frayed and the mandala was lost. Still it was progress, and I could feel her satisfaction at the breakthrough.

I thought about what I had done, and I wondered if what I was doing was right? My dragon-gifted medallion allowed me to look where people should not be able to look. It is true, there exists spells that allow mages to peer into the minds of others, but I have never engaged in them. Such things seem wrong somehow, it was like peeking into someone's window to me, and I did not care much for it. The threat we were under made justifying peering into other's private thoughts easier than it should have been. The ability to feel emotions was less intrusive since one could usually decipher how another was feeling by other methods, and I decided to rely more on that feature than on actually looking into people's minds, unless it was an emergency. Of course, I would have to figure out what exactly constituted an emergency.

I stood up suddenly, tired of having to justify what I did and tired of having to worry about other people who died despite doing everything I could to keep them alive. Bitterly, I thought of my shop and my home and wished I was there for the hundredth time.

I left my tent and went out into the night air and listened. The cicadas and crickets sang their monotonous song and the Illios, the Star of Ill Omen, was approaching the Serpent constellation with relentless precision. That gave me an idea. You can roast a goose as well as a gander in the same fire, my old master use to tell me, and so I went down to the little stream and collected a bucketful of smooth white stones and brought them back to camp where I laid them out in a circle. Satisfied, I went to bed under a wagon and I searched the darkness around our camp for the thoughts of any who approached us in the night. I was still doing that when I dozed off and I did not awake until I heard Godfrey moving about getting our breakfast ready in the early false dawn of a new day.

After breakfast, when the sun was up and bright and the sky blue and clear we gathered around the graves of our friends once again. Using the Mud to Stone spell I had prepared, I changed the dirt around their grave cut to into solid stone, making it a tomb. Next, I used the Stone Shape spell to raise up a simple obelisk up about four feet (1.2m) high and eighteen inches (46cm) thick at the bottom. Using a variation of the Mage Mark spell, I wrote the following on the face of the obelisk:

KARL BREAKAXE OF THE FAR HEIGHS CLAN

AND

PETRIO VELAHIO OF VENETTI

THEY WERE TRUE COMPANIONS

The last thing I did was to cast a Continual Light spell on the very point of the Obelisk so their tomb would never know darkness.