No Strange Land

by elwisty

It was going to be a short trip to a familiar place, and she'd be back in time for dinner tomorrow... A complete story in nine chapters and one epilogue.

9. Part 8: Long Time I Wished to See

Part 8: Long Time I Wished To See

The night grew deeper and deeper. Every hundred yards, Lila had to put down Elanee, and count to twenty-five, as some strength flowed back into her arms. After an hour of alternately walking and resting, she passed the entrance to the road to Highcliff, which she knew to be four miles from the Keep. At her current pace, assuming she didn't faint at the side of the highway, she'd reach home at dawn.

There was a noise on the road behind her. At first she thought it was hoofbeats, but then the sound grew muffled. Nothing but the creaking trunks of beech trees, or a stream somewhere in the woods running over pebbles. That was what she told herself. A few moments passed, and the sound emerged again, louder and clearer. It was hoofbeats.

Her first thought was to hide and see who came past, but none of her enemies were likely to travel on horseback. That meant it was probably an ally, and if she waited underneath the trees at the side of the road, the riders might have galloped on before she could attract their attention.

She walked stiffly to the middle of the road, and turned to face the approaching clatter. More than one horse, fewer than ten. That was her best guess. She set her feet apart, and waited.

The drumming of the hoofbeats rounded the corner. Six horses with lightstones fixed to their bridles. The glow didn't quite illuminate any clothes or faces, but did throw a weak glimmer on the honey-coloured hair of the foremost rider. Without seeing more, she was certain that the hair would be parted and crimped as if tended to by an architect's draftsman.

"Halt! In the name of Neverwinter!" she tried to use her full Knight Captain voice, and found that it was still lost somewhere in the dales. All that came out was a feeble croak. Feeling more resigned than fearful, she wondered if she was about to be ridden down by the emissaries of her liege lord. Better use her Harbour voice instead. How would Wyl Mossfeld have put it? Oh yes.

"Hold your fucking horses, you bastards!"

They heard her that time. A great deal of rearing and neighing ensued; when the party had their horses under control again, they were five yards away from her. Peering into the gloom, she counted three Greycloaks, a squire, and a knight unknown to her, and Sir Nevalle himself. The way they were squinting at her, she suspected that the lightstones hindered rather than helped their night-vision. Very ornamental though, much as Nevalle undeniably was.

"We are on urgent business from Lord Nasher. Clear the road!" said her colleague from the Neverwinter Nine. Definitely not great night-vision.

"Tell me what your business is," said Lila, taking pains to speak clearly to make up for her lack of volume, "and I'll consider letting you pass." She couldn't hold Elanee up much longer; in other circumstances, this would have been a situation to relish.

The knight at Nevalle's side muttered something that sounded like insolent ruffian.

"This is no matter for sport," said Nevalle. "Remove yourself from the highway, or I will regretfully have to ask my men to remove you." He used nicer words, but the overall thrust seemed to have much in common with those of his companion knight. Still, this theatre had to end.

"Really, I'm doing you a favour by stopping you. You're wasting your time going to the Keep-" she took a few steps forward "- if you're supposed to be talking to me." She smiled upwards, allowing the lightstone on Prince's bridle to fall across her face.

Nevalle's eyes widened. The speed with which his manners changed from implacable to effusive took her aback, though she'd seen it happen before.

"Knight Captain! By all the heavens, what happened to you? And that – is that the little elf druid?"

He jumped off Prince, and stepped towards her with outstretched arms, as if planning on taking Elanee from her. She stepped back. Behind Nevalle, his escort hurriedly slid off their own horses in less athletic imitation.

"Yes," she said. "It's Elanee. She's in a bad way. Do any of you have any healing abilities? Any potions? Anything at all." A stomach knotted in suspense. If they had nothing, she thought she might break down.

The squire shot a nervous glance at the knight that had called her a ruffian, and another at Sir Nevalle. Whatever else Nasher's man might be, he wasn't stupid or unobservant. He raised an eyebrow at the squire, and nodded him forward.

"Your ladyship – I mean, Knight Captain, ma'am -" he babbled through a series of titles, apparently hoping that one would be right.

"- yes?"

"If it please you, I am a disciple of Lathander. Um... Not a very advanced one. But my Lord grants me some powers of healing..." He ran his fingers through his hair, and shuffled his feet.

Lila hesitated. He might have powers of healing, but could that cause more damage if he lacked the understanding of their application? Elanee was fading fast...there was no guarantee she could survive long enough to be tended by the experienced battlefield healers at Crossroad Keep.

"Have you treated headwounds before?" she demanded.

"Yes, Knight Captain. Well, twice. And I've observed them being treated many times." He was all she was going to get. At least he looked dependable, in a nervous sort of way. She liked Lathanderites; Brother Merring had been one. And this squire seemed strong too. Without ceremony, she deposited Elanee in his arms.

"Do your best," she said. She turned to the nearest Greycloak. "Help him make her comfortable." If Nevalle was annoyed that she was commanding his men around, he was sophisticated enough to keep it hidden.

"Let me relieve you of your other burden, Captain," said the unfamiliar knight in unctuous tones. He meant the haversack. Idiot.

She tilted her head to one side, and gave him a long, measured look. He read her expression correctly, and blanched.

"Not necessary at all, my dear knight," she croaked sweetly, after a moment's pause. Then brought out the fakest of her fake smiles. "So, Sir Nevalle. What's this news of yours?"

"You want to discuss this – now?" Nevalle made a gesture that encompassed the horses, the night, and the men tending to Elanee in the grasses at the roadside. In fact, she really wasn't interested in his message for the present, but it felt important to keep him off-balance, so that he wouldn't be able to oppose her. His vision of what should happen next could be very different to hers.

"Of course," she said. "You did say you were on urgent business from Lord Nasher."

Nevalle blinked. "Well, yes. Any business for Lord Nasher is urgent – all the more in these difficult times." Difficult times had been endemic in Neverwinter for the last five years.

"Ah. Naturally." She hoped no sarcasm could be read in her voice. "Is all well in the city?"

"As well as it could be. Captain Brelaina has moved into the second stage of the evacuation. Now the common folk are being encouraged to leave for the villages and camps. That was part of my message."

"And the rest?" she asked.

"Lord Nasher wishes you to send Sir Casavir with a company of Greycloaks to hold Fort Locke." She kept her expression completely blank. Nevalle mostly looked blank anyway, when he wasn't licking someone's arse.

"Isn't General Callum down there already with part of the eastern army?"

"They're being recalled. Callum is needed to supervise the massing of the troops at the city." Nevalle sounded a rather piqued that his master hadn't thought considered his own skills sufficient to the task. Or perhaps that was her imagination. She wasn't sure he had enough real emotions to feel piqued.

She misliked the idea of sending a score of Greycloaks and Casavir on what could be a suicide mission...she didn't like the idea at all. Consideration of how to handle that would have to wait.

"And that's all?"

"Yes, that was all the news Lord Nasher charged me with. Now what -"

"-there are two things I require," said Lila, cutting across him before he could try and organise her. "First, water. I would be much obliged if one of you would give me their water flask."

Nevalle's attendant knight fumbled in one of his saddle-bags, and drew out a leather flask. Before drinking, she sniffed at the unstoppered mouth.

"Well water?" she asked.

The knight looked faintly horrified. He possibly hadn't expected the Knight Captain to be a paranoid, wild-eyed woman dressed in sopping wet rags. Some knights succeeded in living very sheltered lives, despite their armour, their heraldry, swords and lances.

"It's from the well at Helm's Hold," the squire called from where he knelt by Elanee. Being occupied with a serious task seemed to have cured his shyness.

She forced herself to stop after three long gulps, conscious that she had an audience. It hurt to swallow.

"Thank you," she said, making no move to return the flask. She smiled. "And the other thing I need is a very fast horse." She pointed at Prince. "That one will do."

After recovering from his first shock, Nevalle began to protest. "Knight Captain, you can't be well enough to ride – wait here and I'll have a litter sent back for you and the druid."

She'd already put a foot in the stirrup. It stung – the sole had been scraped by rocks more often than she could count over the last day – but she ignored the pain and swung herself up into the saddle. Prince behaved himself, in that he didn't immediately throw her off.

"I'm very grateful for your aid, Sir Nevalle. You see, I have to consult with Seneschal Kana and my associates at the Keep. Urgently. Regarding developments in the east. I will have healers and a litter dispatched to you as soon as I arrive, I promise." She paused. A soft pink light had bloomed from the hands of the squire several times in the course of her exchange with Nevalle. "How is she?"

"Better, my lady. Much better." The squire looked rather surprised at his success. "Though I will be glad to see her examined by one of your specialists."

"Thank you," she said, and meant it. She smiled at him for his sake, and for the sake of Brother Merring. Then let the smile fall. "You may let go of the bridle now, Sir Nevalle."

He obeyed.

As she trotted down the road on the milk-white back of Prince, she raised a hand in farewell without turning to look at the stunned group of knights and soldiers. She drained the rest of the flask of water in a single draught, then nudged the stallion into a canter. He did as he was told. Crossroad Keep's stables and pastures were full of mares, whom he no doubt was eager to reacquaint himself with. Or he could sense the buzz of power in the steel torque, and knew which way his bread was buttered.

She threw the empty flask of water into the trees, and, after a precarious fight with Prince's bridle, detached the lightstones and dropped them too. The night closed round thicker than ever. Had she been rash? But then, the moonlight shone out, her eyes adjusted, and she could see well enough to discern the cracks between the paving stones. This part of the road had been laid by a work party from the Keep; she trusted it completely. Prince seemed to as well, for he put on a burst of speed.

The last stretch of her days of journeying went past almost stupidly quickly. She spotted flickering light in the distance, and chided herself for thinking of the lanterns at the crossroads – the first of many in a procession that accompanied the track that wound up to Crossroad Keep. And then Prince was galloping past the light, and it was a lantern, a fine one made of glass and well-wrought metal with a beeswax candle alight inside, and it was followed by a chain of many more.

All at once hardly able to breath, she stared through the night, past the lights that zig-zagged up the road. A black mass on top of the hill loomed out of the darkness. Here and there within the mass where small flames where torches had been lit on the outer wall.

Prince's neck was damp and his sides heaved, but he did not slacken his pace as he carried her up the track. A horse like him would be ashamed to slow down for fear of a little steepness. She reined him in as the ground grew flat over the last few hundred yards.

It was still there. Everything seemed in good order. Torchlight glinted on the helmets of sentries on the wall. The air in the fields was cool and sweet, as it should be. A hint of woodsmoke rose from the chimney of a little bakehouse that had been constructed outside the walls without her permission. She forgave the owners after discovering they could make good bread in large quantities.

The only detail that sent of stir of disquiet through her was the Keep's main gate. It was standing open. Why? At this hour it should be closed and barred. And there were figures moving about in the bailey.

One of the gate guards raised his lantern to get a better look at her. Surprised, he drew himself up, and gave her a sharp salute, then dropped his lantern as he fumbled in reaching for his trumpet.

She put a finger to her lips. Cut off in his apparent plan to wake the whole castle, he allowed Prince to trot unheralded into the bailey. It was not crowded, but the twelve or so people there all had a kind of focus about them that flowed into all the available space, in the way that a good actor could fill the Neverwinter playhouse with a sense of his presence, just by standing still.

She spotted Kana, Khelgar and Neeshka hovering at the bottom of the path up to the Keep itself. A few stable hands, including Kipp, were holding the reins of six horses between them. In the centre of the bailey, Casavir stood conversing with Light of the Heavens. Not slain by orcs, as Elanee had nightmared. Two Tyrran acolytes and two Greycloaks were clearly waiting for them to finish their discussion. They kept shooting impatient looks at the horses.

It was Neeshka who saw her first. "Hey, you lot! Look who it is!" The tiefling grinned and waved at her with both hands as Khelgar charged across the cobbles.

Lila slid from Prince's back, and staying leaning on him as a swarm of faces and voices surrounded her.

"Isn't that Sir Nevalle's horse?"

"What have you been doing to yourself, lass?"

"Knight Captain, we feared you were dead."

"What happened to your clothes? You look awful."

She clapped Khelgar on the shoulder, grinned back at Neeshka, winked at Kipp, allowed her hand to be shaken by Light of the Heavens, acknowledged Kana's salute, and nodded to Casavir. Prince celebrated his homecoming by trying to bite one of the acolytes.

As Kipp moved forward to lead the bad-tempered horse away, she realised that this could be a problem. Prince was the reason she was standing up.

"Khelgar? Neeshka? Lend an arm, will you?" She propped herself up between the two of them, one arm linked in Neeshka's, and her right hand on Khelgar's shoulder.

"You need to be inside," said Neeshka, giving her a worried prod in the bicep. "You look like you've spent three days falling down a mountain."

Lila gave a choked laugh. "Not quite that much, but not completely wrong either."

"Come on – we'll get you to bed," said Khelgar.

She shook her head firmly. "Can't yet. What's been happening here? Why are you out in the bailey past midnight?"

"We were preparing to search the Neverwinter Road for you, Lila." Casavir had not spoken till then. His air of melancholy was so strong as almost to be an aroma. "At dawn yesterday, six of your Greycloak escort returned on foot to the castle, after walking through the night. They reported that a major attack on your camp had taken place, and they thought it likely you'd fallen there after ordering them to run.

"Then, a few hours ago, a messenger arrived from Fort Revier. She reported that two more of your men had appeared at the fort; they refused to explain their mission or say why they had been carrying the head of an old statue in their horse's saddlebag. And they said that they'd last seen you alive some five miles east of the fort."

Lila swayed. She felt light-headed with relief. Luan and Eyepatch were alive, and they'd made it to safety with the statue-head. Good lads, great lads. Luan had done her and himself proud.

"Lila – Knight Captain – I must know..." Casavir closed his eyes. "You went into the hills with four people. You are here. Two are accounted for...what about...?" He didn't seem able to complete his question.

Unfortunately, she knew what he meant, and had been dreading it. "I'm so sorry, Casavir..." That was a mistake. She could see how he immediately drew the wrong conclusion; his face became a frozen mask. She hurried to explain, "Elanee was injured, but she'll be fine. I left her with an adept of Lathander. But Sergeant Katriona is dead. Murdered by our enemy."

Kana shook her head in dismay. "The Keep has lost one of its greatest assets!"

Lila hadn't turned away from Casavir. It was to her regret, for it showed her a moment of vulnerability that she should never have been privy to. Relief and happiness shone briefly in every line of his face, almost as if he had been granted a vision of his god; then the light was quenched, and he looked sick with guilt.

"My colleague will be hard to replace," said Light of the Heavens with a shake of her long hair. She sounded full of sincere regret. Lila wondered where the urge to shake her and shout came from. From the same place that made her want to shake her fists at the upper planes, maybe. Stupid. It wouldn't do any good.

Khelgar and Neeshka added a few words of their own to the meagre pile. Quiet lingered in the bailey for a little while, until Kana took up the account of events where Casavir had left it. She spoke in a soft voice, like someone at a funeral.

"The news that you'd been seen not far from Fort Revier was a surprise to use. You were over twenty miles from where we expected you to be. So after some discussion-"

"- yeah, discussion -" Neeshka echoed ironically, making no effort to imitate Kana's whisper.

"- shouting was what I heard," said Khelgar in corroboration.

"- after some intense discussion," Kana continued, "we agreed that Casavir would go with Light of the Heavens and a few of the acolytes from the temple to search the Neverwinter Road. And then ride to Fort Revier for more information if the search failed."

Intense discussion. The main instigator of intense discussions at the Keep was a notable absence from the group around her. She scanned the bailey in case he was watching with folded arms from one of the darker corners around the guard tower, or the curtain wall.

"Where's Ammon? I was expecting him to have said 'I told you so' a few hundred times by now."

Casavir and Kana exchanged looks.

"He left the Keep early yesterday morning on horseback," said Kana. "Sentries saw him on the Great East Road."

She leaned harder on Khelgar's shoulder. Like many dwarfs, he was built of packed muscle, and didn't even twitch under the extra weight. "He went alone? That road could be full of shadows and gods know what else."

"He took Qara and Sand with him. Sand managed to leave a short message with Aldanon's secretary-"

Neeshka smirked. "Harcourt let me see it. Well, he left it on his desk. It was all "being kidnapped for suicide journey east. If not returned by tomorrow, dispatch rescue party for rescue party." They'll be okay, Lila – don't worry about them. We'd know if they'd run into trouble – the sky would've caught fire."

"True enough," said Lila. Her friend had been speaking lightly, but if Qara was part of the group, then the flames of her spells really would be visible from the Keep. "But Qara and Sand – together?" That was almost as bad as no escort at all. Qara had become more...unstable...recently, and Sand was no more inclined to bridle his tongue than before. Without Shandra around to help manage them, Lila had been keeping the two apart. "Did no one try and stop him?"

"Didn't give us a chance, the bastard," growled Khelgar. The rest of us had got together in the war room to decide what to do, when the zerth noticed we we missing three spell-casters." He scowled. "Ruddy warlock. Wish I'd done the same thing. Would have saved me an hour of talking round in circles."

"I'm glad you didn't," said Lila. Khelgar's khelgarness could still tempt her to smile at times when a smile was not the Knight-Captainly thing to do. "The ambush was – terrible. Beyond anything I've seen so far. No one should be out on that road now."

She knew she couldn't carry on much longer: she might burst into tears, or collapse in hysterical laughter. But there was still so much to do.

"Light of the Heavens," she said, looking abruptly at the aasamir warrior. "We need to recall the three of them from the East Road as soon as possible, but I don't want to send anyone else after them. Go to Startear's tower, and get him to use his magic to send them a message. Don't take no for an answer. You can pay him up to three thousand in coin if you have to. Any more, and wake me for the authorisation."

"As you wish, Knight Captain." The woman looked less than enthused with instructions; she could well have some distaste for the archmage from Sigil. Lila hoped it would not interfere with her ability to complete her task.

"And Kana?"

"Yes, Knight Captain?" The seneschal stepped forward.

"I left Elanee with Sir Nevalle and his escort about four miles north on the Neverwinter Road. Elanee will need a litter and a healer who knows something about head injuries. Sir Nevalle will need a fresh horse."

"I will see to it," said Kana, already poised to begin.

"One more thing," Lila added before Kana could throw herself into organising a litter and attendants. "Lord Nasher wants Casavir to lead a company of our Greycloaks to relieve Callum at Fort Locke." She was alarmed to see Casavir straighten, looking ready to spring onto the nearest horse and gallop straight to the embattled fort. "But don't start the preparations until Nevalle has reached us here, and he's been told about the trouble in the north-east. He can belay Lord Nasher's orders if he thinks it necessary."

Kana saluted. Turning away smartly, she started rapping out orders to the Tyrran acolytes, Greycloaks and stable hands.

"Reckon you can make it to the Keep?" Khelgar asked.

"Yeah," Lila said. She moved a foot forward. Everything hurt. "Slowly. Very slowly."

"That's good. I was going to leave you propping up the stable door otherwise," Khelgar remarked with good humour.

"Wouldn't be the first time!" Neeshka added.

"It was a barn door, and it was in Port Llast. Port Llast doesn't count." The reply came to her without needing consideration. It was an old joke between them.

Before they could reach the Keep doors, Casavir intercepted her. The earlier storm of emotion had stilled, his manner of calm focus returned.

"Lila – do you have any orders for me? If I'm not to depart for Fort Locke at once, then I hope I can be of assistance in some other way."

She tried not to frown at him. The words get lost and let me go and lie down snapped through her consciousness. Of course, she couldn't say them. She raffled through her thoughts, what was left of them. "The litter isn't going to get to Nevalle's group till dawn most likely. What about riding ahead so he knows help's coming? In case he thinks I've forgotten him. View that as an order or as a suggestion."

Casavir nodded. She thought he might have let slip a shred of warmth at being ordered – or suggested – to visit his sweetheart. His expression revealed nothing. No doubt he had much else on his mind.

"So what do you think?" Neeshka demanded as they entered the main hall.

Lila stared around at the austere stone chamber. "It looks...just like it did when I last saw it?"

"Exactly!" said Neeshka in triumph. "You left me in charge, and – see? – even the tapestries are the same."

"You know," said Khelgar, "when you said the fiendling here should be in charge, I reckoned you'd been having some of whatever Grobnar's on. But even I've got to admit that she's not done a bad job."

"Aww, thanks Khelgar!" The pitch of Neeshka's voice soared upwards in unfeigned pleasure. "So you see, if Khelgar thinks I was good at Knight Captaining, I must have been. Now, how about a bonus?"

They'd reached her bedroom door. Her eyelids drooped. "What kind of bonus are you thinking of?"

"To never, ever make me your deputy ever again. I couldn't even go to the privy without finding Kana waiting outside wanting me to decide something." Neeshka shuddered.

"Maybe you should have set fire to a few tapestries?" said Lila. The bed was ahead of her. On bad nights last year, it had looked vast, cold, and comfortless. Now it promised a soft, downy paradise. "You could have used it as an excuse to not be me in the future. And they're really boring tapestries anyway. But since you did a good job..." She shook her head, and tutted.

She dropped the haversack that she'd carried so far onto the bed, and threw herself after it. Neeshka and Khelgar were still talking, but she couldn't make out the meaning. Resting an arm around the haversack and pulling it towards her, she allowed her eyes to close.

She slept.

For a long time it seemed she was walking through the corridors of an enormous old farmhouse. Whichever door she opened led into another identical corridor. When she climbed the staircase of heavy black wood to escape the maze, a board creaked under her tread. She knew that the sound had alerted a deadly creature to her presence, and that now it would hunt her down. She ran through more corridors, knowing that a monster was on her heels, and not daring to turn around.

Blood poured in a stream from a room ahead of her, whose door stood open. She did not want to see what was inside, but at the same time she knew that there was no other way to escape the pursuit.

She ran through the doorway, and woke up. Relief surged through her. She was at home in her own bed. Her silk sash hung over a mirror nearby, and her books were on a shelf. Piled next to them were the fire clubs she'd bought from Galen.

Then Bevil walked in. He was wearing the armour and cloak of a Neverwinter soldier. That felt wrong, somehow.

"Come with me. Quickly."

"Is the village under attack?" she asked. He didn't reply. His face was set, and cold. She quickly slid from the bed, and threw the cloak she'd won in the Harvest Fair around her shoulders. She ran to the door, but it was indisputably wrong.

Instead of the stairs that led down to the hall in Daeghun's house, she was standing at the top of a stone staircase. At the far end of the stairs, there was nothing, except blackness. But before that, there were people that she knew looking up at her from the left and right, leaving a central path free. Amie. Daeghun. Kipp. Tarmas. Georg. Lorne Starling was there, and Cormick too, and many others from West Harbour.

"It's time, Lila. We can't put it off any longer." Tarmas gestured towards the waiting darkness.

"We're grateful for what you're doing for us," said Amie.

"You'll save us all," added Cormick. His sharp eyes seemed sunken, and their whites were shot through with red.

She shied back. "...I'm not sure..."

Hands on her back and shoulders shoved her forward down the stairs. Cormick grabbed her wrist, and pulled her at the same time. She looked for help, but every face she saw did not show the kind of compassion she needed. The kind that intervenes.

"It's too late to change your mind," said Tarmas. "Much too late."

And then she was right on the edge of the blackness. Lorne was next to her. A garrotte dangled from his neck. His massive hand held a billhook with a reddened blade. He raised it, just as she was shoved out into the nothing beyond the stairs.

Her heart thudded painfully. A thin bar of light came from the single window in the bedchamber. Jars of undying magelight on the shelves and desk provided the remaining illumination. She was in the Keep. She was safe.

Pushing herself up against the pillows, she ran her fingers through her braids. They were damp with sweat, as was her brow, and her breast. Her heart was still racing. It had been a dream. Only a dream.

Something yawned next to her, and made a snuffling, groaning kind of sound. It smelled canine. Either she'd invited a handsome werewolf to spend the night with her, or Roly had found a way in.

"Ach, Roly – this isn't your bed. Bad dog." She scratched the deerhound behind the ears. His tail thumped on the mattress. In theory, the long grey dog was the property of the armourer Edario. In practice, he spent his days following his chosen people around in the expectation of sausage, and sleeping on whatever bed he fancied.

The door to her bedroom was closed, so someone must have let him in. They'd better hope Kana didn't find out about it.

She gave Roly another scratch, and felt better. A dog like him looked, and smelled, so down-to-earth that he could only exist in the waking world. Stretching, she noticed that her shoulders had been bandaged. Drawing back the sweaty counterpane, she found bandages around her feet too. She was wearing one of her long nightshirts. The torn clothes she'd passed out in the night before were hanging up on the wardrobe door. Both shirt and hose were beyond repair.

The weight of the coming days pressed down on her; the weight of recent events too. Everything that had happened or might happen felt tangled and fuzzy, as if she'd woken up after a solid week of boozing. It was lucky there was no wine or apple brandy stored within reach; they would have sorely tried her resolution to abstain.

Groaning, she stretched again. She didn't want to lie abed any longer, brooding over the events on Deramoor. Still, all her muscles were sending her warnings that movement was going to be painful. They were right.

She pulled off her nightshirt, and tottered with exasperating slowness across the floor to the ewer and basin. Before reaching for the soap, she examined herself in the mirror. Apart from the sunburn on her upper arms, and the bandages on her shoulders and feet, she looked none the worse for wear. Strange. And yet, that was how it had been many times before. Something horrendous happened, and her outside carried on just as usual apart from a few cuts and bruises, regardless of what the inside might be feeling.

After washing herself, and rubbing apricot oil into her braids and skin, she hobbled over to the wardrobe to choose fresh clothes. She grabbed her light cotton hose, soft moccasins, and - sod it, why not? – one of her precious silk tunics.

Now she was ready to start her day, whatever the time might be. Ready to go and find Kana, and catch up on whatever developments she'd missed. The thought made her cringe. There would be decisions, and arguments, and unpleasant surprises. Surely they could wait a little longer? There was work she could be doing here, as well as out in the middle of things. If the Keep was attacked, Kana could be counted on to send her a memo.

Her desk looked orderly to her, though whenever Sand saw it he winced, and his fingers twitched towards the piles of paper as if he was yearning to offer them comfort and a thorough cataloguing. The paper uppermost on the pile nearest her chair was a list of the Greycloaks that Kana had recommended for the mission to Arvahn, apart from Chantler and Draygood, whom Lila had personally requested.

Idly, she scanned the list. Most of the men were referred to by one name only, as was common enough in the deep country, away from the Neverwinter Road and Neverwinter bureaucracy. Eyepatch was not mentioned, though there was a fellow called Rees Carl Veirs. A surname from the days of the old oligarchy. No wonder Eyepatch kept it quiet – his brother soldiers would be able to extract hours of fun from going on patrol with an apparent scion of the aristocracy. Hopefully he'd keep his leg, whether it was a blue-blooded one or not.

She turned the page over, and tipped a little water into the inkwell. At the top of the blank side, she scribbled 'needs to be done soon', underlined it, then paused, tickling her chin with the tip of the goose-feather quill. Finally she wrote:

East Rd. Message. Startear? Ride out self?

Spk to Cas.

Deramoor – who famly? Rltns?

Chantler – chldrn? Wf?

After that the list spread quickly downwards until she had sixteen separate items. She was considering adding a seventeenth when there was a soft knocking at the door.

"Come in!"

Howel the steward entered carrying a tray; he was a shy half-elf with gentle manners. She both liked him, and knew nothing about him except that he was kind enough to occasionally bring her food that the cook had been nowhere near. She was sure this was the case because food from Howel had never been boiled till it squeaked. Today, he'd brought her a jug of freshly-drawn water, and a plate with rye bread, new white cheese, and wild strawberries. He set it down in front of her without needing to ask if she would prefer to eat at the desk or table.

"Do you want anything else, Knight Captain?"

"No – thank you, Howel. But...do you know how late it is?"

"Mid morning, Captain. The sun's not so high yet." He paused. "Ivarr will be surprised to see that you're up and dressed so soon. He recommended that you spend the day resting." That was Howel's restrained way of warning her that she'd need to sooth the priest's ruffled feathers if he found out she'd ignored his advice.

"I'm feeling much better," she said. It wasn't a huge lie. Howel bowed and retreated, taking the old jug of water with him.

Roly jumped from the bed and padded over to her as she was still contemplating the plate in front of her without feeling the least stirring of appetite. Was that healthy? She hadn't eaten properly for almost two days. She should be starving.

The deerhound stared at the plate, then at her, wagging his tail uncertainly. She gave him a piece of ryebread. He looked so delighted with his gift that she felt ashamed at her own lack of interest. She forced herself to eat first one little strawberry, then another. At the third, something changed, and she realised that she was very hungry indeed. Soon, she'd demolished everything, and was left picking up tiny crumbs and sipping water from her glass. Could she eat the plate too?

"I want my piece of bread back," she told Roly. He wagged his tail.

And what now? She knew she should track down Aldanon and Harcourt in the library, and give them the statue head, but that would almost certainly involve being waylaid by Kana. And she wouldn't have the nerve to plead indisposition. Not when she was – clearly – fine.

A walk was in order. Or a lurch. She needed to clear her head before doing anything else. Sighing, she went to pick up the haversack. She could leave it locked in her bedroom, but after carrying it so far, her instincts rebelled against the idea from parting from it. She removed the hilt of her broken sabre though, and left it next to her pillows.

First, she opened the main door to her bedroom, and pointed at the hall beyond, until Roly trotted away, looking dejected. Closing and locking it after him, she headed for the much smaller door in a corner of the room that was hidden from view by the wardrobe. Behind it a cramped flight of spiral stairs wound up to the next floor.

She had to duck her head to climb them, height sometimes being a disadvantage in a castle designed by gnomes, and used the rope bannister to pull herself up. She'd never bothered with it before, but today she was not at her best. Emerging into a wide airy passage, she stopped and locked the staircase door.

Most of her friends had their quarters up here, but she wasn't planning on visiting them this morning. The buoyancy of Khelgar and Neeshka especially would be too much for her. Even assuming that Kana hadn't decided to extend Neeshka's deputyship by another day.

The end of the passage ended in a heavy door, and another flight of narrow stairs, though these led into a quiet corner of the bailey. The bulk of the Keep and the scattering of buildings meant that it was partially screened from the busiest area around the main gate. From the bailey, more steps took her up onto the north wall.

A couple of sentries saluted her. She returned a half-hearted salute, and was surprised to see that the bigger of the two soldiers was Brockle, who'd been the watchman on the northern heights during the ambush. He was back on duty early. She straightened, and abandoned the salute in favour of a respectful nod. There were dark rings under his eyes. She'd have to speak to him soon, but not just now.

Putting as much of her weight as she could on her arms where they rested on the battlements, she surveyed the world around her. The still forest and hills to the north, the lively chaos at the western end of the bailey, the many-turreted sides of the Keep, and above everything a heavy charcoal sky that seemed to be pressing down on a field of tawny light; the strange glow stretched from horizon to horizon. Well, it was not such a surprise. The broiling weather couldn't have continued much longer; she didn't need to be a farmer to realise that a summer storm was on its way. A big one too. No ships would be sailing out of Neverwinter today.

Her rescue party had better make it back or find shelter before the sky broke open. She should go and speak to Startear, but her body let her know that it much preferred to stay leaning on the wall. The country to the north looked benign; more as if it needed protecting from the imminent thunder and lightning than how it was in her very recent memory: a nightmare land full of shadows and the murdered dead.

A flurry of activity at the gate caught her ear, and she turned to stare through the gap between the Temple of Tyr and Deekin's store. A little procession was crossing the forecourt. At its head was the knight who'd called her a ruffian last night. Next followed two Greycloaks leading two carthorses, a litter slung between them.

Elanee was on the litter. The top of her head was wrapped in bright white bandages, but she was propping herself up with her elbow, looking more irritated than invalided. Lila smiled to herself, and wondered how her escort had contrived to get her in the litter in the first place; the druid must have at least a few grizzly bear summoning spells back at her disposal.

After her came the nervous squire, and a pack of Tyrrans. Nevalle and Casavir rode in last. As soon as Lila caught sight of the honey-blonde hair, she turned around and leaned forward so that her head was between the battlements. She told herself that she wasn't hiding from Nevalle; that would be childish. It was merely that having to deal with him might set her recovery back by hours, if not days.

And what was Casavir doing hanging back with Nevalle, when Elanee was right there, obviously bored and in need of diversion? Did the man realise how useless he was, or was that the kind of thing that was only obvious to a third party? She half wanted to march over there and demand he explain himself. Shandra would have done it; tact hadn't played much of a role in her short life.

She waited until the noise died down before straightening. Brockle and the other sentry gave no sign of having noticed her behaviour. Still, she had no particularly good excuse available for loitering on their patch of wall. She should go and do some low-level Knight-Captaining, starting with taking the statue head to the library.

When she considered how much she'd cursed the thing, and what it had done to her shoulders yesterday, it seemed madness to be lugging it around wherever she went. Harcourt would already be in the library; Grobnar would be working on the Construct; Aldanon would be having a very leisurely breakfast in the dining room, probably describing his collection of nude antique bronzes to a bewildered Greycloak. The examination of the head could start without Sand.

A damp nose shoved itself against her palm. She looked down. Edario's deerhound wagged his tail at her. "You're wasting your time up here," she told him, rubbing his jowls anyway. "Try the kitchens."

She looked once more northward to Deramoor. An amber-shaded heat haze hung over the hill tops. As she examined the low clouds around Arvahn and the centre of the dales, she felt that someone was standing behind her. There'd been no sound of footsteps climbing the stairs. Even though she knew she wasn't alone, it was hard not to jump when a voice broke the quiet.

"Clearly you're alive. That's more than I expected when I last saw you."

She kept her eyes on the north as she answered him. "Clearly I am. When did you get back?" She was glad she didn't have to face him yet. Her pulse felt ready to gallop; the haze on the dales seemed to have drifted into her brain.

"If you'd not been hiding from Nevalle -" the tone made the words that louse unnecessary "- you'd have seen me arrive after he went into the Keep."

"Staying at a safe distance from Nasher's man?" she asked, teasing.

"No more than is advisable for someone that's been dead for twenty-four years," he said, adding as a scornful afterthought " -and preferable."

She felt the air shift, and from the corner of her eye she saw him move to take up a position about a yard away; he leant on the wall, looking north as she had been doing.

"You chose the wrong side of the Keep," he remarked. "The King of Shadows lies to the south. Watch for him there, if you insist on it." The implication was that hanging around on fortifications was a tremendous waste of time, unless one was in the process of actively repelling an invading army. She had doubts born of her latest experiences about the precise location of the King of Shadows. If she mentioned them now, the preamble would end, and she'd have to answer a string of questions about what – or who – she'd seen. So she let it rest, for the present.

"I was watching for you," she informed him, then felt the blood flood into her neck and cheeks as she realised what she'd said. She really hadn't meant to be that sincere. Appalled, she added some hasty embroidery to fill out the bareness of her first sentence. "I was expecting fireworks on the Great East Road – or a small volcano. I can't believe you took Sand and Qara with you. Tell me, are they both still alive?"

She turned to face him, finally, hoping that she'd schooled her expression into something appropriately sardonic. She had a shock. For a start, the left half of his patchwork armour was covered in dried mud. And then there was the haversack he was carrying over on shoulder that in every respect seemed identical to hers.

He was observing her carefully, following the movement of her pupils. There was a trace of a smile at the corners of his lips, and in his eyes – just a trace.

"They're alive. The elf will no doubt be in the library airing his grievances against me to whomever he finds there. Qara is returning with your supply wagon."

She raised an eyebrow. "There were still supplies in it?"

"Armour, food and potions. Yes. And now two corpses."

"Two?" One she had been sure of. The second – well, there was one Greycloak unaccounted for if only six had returned to the Keep. She glanced round Ammon to where Brockle was still at his post. "Describe them," she said, lowering her voice.

Ammon frowned in suspicion or disapproval, but matched her lowered tone. "We almost rode over the first one. He was lying face-down in the road not far from your camp. Grey hair. I've seen you talking to him before." She nodded. Chantler.

"And the other?" She didn't want to hear any more about Chantler – not how he'd been lying in the road, not whatever his expression had looked like when his body was turned over.

"I came upon him a few miles south of the road; he was lying near the edge of a stagnant pool. Whether drowned or another victim of the shadows, I couldn't tell." He paused, remembering something. "He was wearing a talisman around his neck: an eye of Tyr, cast in bronze."

"A black-haired man, was he?"

"Yes."

"That was Medir. A Cormyrian. Thank you for salvaging their bodies."

He shrugged. "Leaving them would have been foolish. Akin to leaving weapons behind for our enemy. No other choice was possible." And yet he could simply have told Qara to burn the corpses. It would have been over in the blink of an eye. The fire-mad sorceress had probably even suggested it.

"Their families will be glad," she said gently, "to have the bodies returned." If they had families. Ammon didn't agree, but he didn't give her one of his withering looks either. "Now," she said, "what else did you find?"

She had the impression that he'd been waiting for that question. There was certainly more than a hint of smugness in his manner as he unslung the haversack from his shoulder, rested it on the wall, and pulled back the canvas.

The third of the ritual statue heads was inside. Its gaze of serene disdain reminded her of Nevalle. She supposed she should be happy that the magicians, scholars and divines of the Keep would have an extra chance to unravel and mimic the enchantments their Illefarn forebears had once worked. But the sight of the statue remnant only took her back to the night of the ambush. She remembered Chantler's pale face looking at them, then letting himself slip from the horse into the dark throng below. Had it happened like that? Her memories of the last two days were already becoming skew-whiff, out-of-focus.

"A fluke," Ammon was saying. "For once in my favour. Look." He pointed across the bailey to where a couple of horses were tied up, awaiting the care of the stable hands. A brown mare next to a black, with white markings on her legs. Her Sorrel. "Your horse broke from the forest as I was returning. This was still bound to her saddle."

She examined him as he examined the statue head, pressing the tips of his fingers against the script that had been engraved in the form of a thin circlet around the goddess's brow. If she'd worked out the times correctly, then he'd been on the road for over a day. He looked well, but then, at the deepest points of his obsession, she knew his habit was to work until he almost passed out in any case.

It would have been a pleasure to stay and watch him, follow the movements of his hands, the tension in his jaw. He was almost peaceful like this. Still, lingering on hard stone blocks was overtaxing her. She needed to rest again, or at least sit down.

"I'll take my own piece to the library – see if Aldanon's awake yet."

"Yes. Do that." Ammon was holding up the statue head to the louring sunlight, apparently trying to glare it into revealing its secrets.

"Three lives for three faces of a very dull goddess that no one here worships anymore," Lila murmured as she prepared to go. "It had damn well better be worth it."

She was half-way down the steps to the bailey when he caught up with her. "What do you mean, three heads? I thought you'd lost the third."

"Two of the Greycloaks are keeping it safe at Fort Revier. It's not lost. I'll send an escort for them as soon as I can spare the soldiers."

"Spare them now. It could be too late tomorrow. This is more important than patrolling a field of sheep. What have you done to your legs?" he demanded from close behind her. There wasn't enough room for two people to walk down the stairs abreast, and he sounded impatient.

"I walked on them," Lila deadpanned. "A lot. If you're in a rush to get somewhere, just push me off the side. I can take it."

"Don't be absurd. I merely want to know what happened." She was familiar with his 'merelies', and suspected him of never using the word correctly in his life.

"We were ambushed," said Lila, reaching the ground and turning to face him. If it had been a duel, this would have been a miscalculation. They were the same height, but now he could look down on her. "There were too many to fight, so we ran away. In the hills I met a young man who appeared to be the King of Shadows. Sergeant Katriona was murdered. I walked, floated then rode back to Crossroad Keep. That's the outline."

Ammon frowned at her. She met his gaze calmly.

"This is nothing to joke about." Narrowing his eyes, he scrutinised her as if she was a particularly obscure manuscript. "But you're not joking."

"No. Unfortunately not."

"You need to tell me everything. Every detail you remember."

"That could take hours," she warned him.

He made a dismissive gesture. "Then so be it. We should meet in the war room - but first, give that to me. It serves no purpose there on your back."

"Both of them?"

"Yes," he replied with a distinct flavour of obviously, idiot. "Both of them. Though if you insist on limping there yourself, you are welcome to waste our time as you see fit. Knight Captain."

She took a step back, and held out the haversack at the same time. His step forward to accept it brought him onto the cobbles of the bailey, so they were on the same level again. Not that she'd engineer something so trivial deliberately.

Before he could stride away, she threw in, "So – since you're running errands for me now..."

"What?" She tried not to grin at his raised eyebrows, and thought she mostly managed it.

"Guyven, the halfling explorer that overwintered here -"

"- well? What about him?"

"- he always used to interrupt me before I could even get to the end of a sentence. Just think of all the marvellous things he could have learned if he'd waited long enough to let me get to the point -"

"- knowledge would have been of no use to him had he died of old age to acquire it," the warlock snapped back.

She shrugged cheerfully. "I'll grant you that one, but I handed you the opening on a silver platter." Their eyes met briefly. He wasn't angry, even if he was pretending to be. His real anger was quite different, and involved less sarcasm and more death.

"What were you going to say?" he said.

"Guyven gifted me some very fine maps. They're on a shelf of their own next to my desk. The one I want is the third from the right. It shows the land north of the Great East Road in detail."

She took the key from the pocket of her tunic, and offered it to him. He snatched it from her hand with bad grace, and stalked off. Roly looked from him to her, then bolted towards the pens where the goats were being given their rations for the morning. She shook her head. On her own for the next few minutes, she had a chance to refocus herself, at least until the warlock reappeared and set everything in disarray once more.

The forecourt was packed with people, animals, and carts being unloaded. A dwarf was pushing a trolley full of fresh bread up from the bakehouse. It smelled like the upper planes might smell, if the celestial beings there were permitted to enjoy the carnal delights of good bread, butter and cheese. Had she not been avoiding attention, she'd have begged a loaf for herself. Veedle and a couple of his assistants were inspecting the inner wall, Light of the Heavens was drilling recruits, and Sal was sitting outside the Phoenix Tail chatting to passers-by; any of them might fall on her with questions, demands, or suggestions.

She lurched round the crowds, and up to the main doors. The guards saluted. One of them looked vaguely familiar: a recruit from the Mere, perhaps.

"Is Kana in at the moment?"

"She's inspecting the stables, Knight Captain. Do you want me to send a runner for her?"

"No, no, not necessary," she said swiftly. "Thank you."

She forced her legs to hurry though the main hall and into the adjacent set of rooms before any petitioners could spot her and call her back. Nevalle was nowhere in sight, to her relief. It seemed more than a little ridiculous to be sneaking around her own castle. Not the first time though. And she needed to go through what had happened in the hills, and draw out what was of consequence to the war. If any of it made any sort of sense.

Ammon was the best person to speak to; he had knowledge and concentration, and it wouldn't occur to him to offer sympathy. If she talked it through with Zhjaeve, she'd get tangled up in the doctrines of Zerthimon and the panoply of her people's spiritual superstructure. Sand was her first resort for potions, magical theory and cutting remarks, but this – was some distance outside his area of expertise. Probably.

The warlock caught up with her as she reached the war room door. He had the map. Wordlessly, he handed the key back to her.

"Did you find Aldanon?" she asked, noting that he'd managed to change out of his armour and into a long tunic and surcoat in the time it had taken her to cross the bailey and main hall. Gods, she was slow.

"Yes. The gnome as well. He does occasionally have – useful – insights."

"True. Often by accident."

They were facing each other beside the door to the war room, standing closer than usual. Close enough for her to notice the very faint ribbon of freckles that ran under his eyes and across the tops of his cheekbones. The glowing tattoos that bisected each side of his face must have stopped her from registering them; after all, she'd barely registered there was a human beneath the tattoos at first. That might be why he wore them.

Hurriedly she pushed open the door. It felt as if she had been staring, but in reality she knew the moment couldn't have lasted longer than a heartbeat.

A couple of members of the garrison were in the room already, sitting at the large round table to play draughts.

"Wolf. Dory." The children looked up. At this time of day, they should have been running errands. Wolf looked a little bashful; Dory never looked embarrassed about anything. "We need the room."

"Can't we just finish this game? I've almost got him beat..." said the girl.

"You have not," said Wolf. "I won the first nine rounds." As much as she approved of their progress from thin, calculating street urchins to rather plump, calculating castle urchins, she occasionally wished she'd sold them to slave traders instead of letting them live with her. Now they could see her gripping the back of a chair impatiently with a warlock looming by her shoulder, and carry on playing draughts.

"Out," said Ammon flatly.

"Yes – I've just got to – " Dory licked her lips as she lifted another piece.

"Now," said Lila.

The children went. Dory flounced out with an angry shake of the hair. That settled it: the war would have to be won before Wolf's collection of street children reached puberty. It was bad enough that Kipp was already taller than Bishop, and still growing.

She pulled back the chair she'd been gripping, and slumped into it. Resting her forearms on the table, the let the coolness of the polished wooden surface press through her silk sleeves.

The war room was as imperfectly lit as everywhere else on this level of the Keep. There was a single oriel window, which for some odd reason a previous castellan had ordered glazed with stain-glass. Its main purpose seemed to be to cast strange chequered patterns over the floor, the table, and the faces of anyone who stood in its light. For a workable level of brightness, the room relied on bespelled lanterns around the walls.

Ammon unrolled the map on the table to her right, and weighted its corners down with a jar of magelight and several draughts counters. As his fingers brushed across the painstakingly drawn landscape, he stiffened.

"Remarkable, isn't it?" said Lila quietly. "What Carolo is to painting, Guyven is to map-making." She put her fingers on Trigoron, and immediately she saw a bare summit of rock and bent thornbushes unfurl at her feet, all rendered in lines of black ink. The mountain was one of the few in Neverwinter territory that she hadn't climbed over or round, but she trusted Guyven: what his strange map showed her was true.

She lifted her hand, and was back in the war room. A tapping on the lone window announced the first drops of rain: the weather was breaking.

Ammon looked at the map sceptically. "He gave you this for nothing?"

"Not quite. He wanted to hear about anywhere unusual I'd seen on my travels."

"I suppose you told him about my Haven," said Ammon with no more than his usual harshness. He seemed absorbed in tracing the line of the Dardeel from source to mouth.

"I got Neverwinter for your Haven," replied Lila. She tilted her chin. "Not a bad bargain."

"No," he said. And that definitely was a fleeting smile at the corners of his mouth, she was sure. "Not a bad bargain. Assuming Nasher never orders his spies to search your room. In that case you would be supplying him with leverage to use against you."

"I doubt it will come to that." It was illegal to make or own a map of Neverwinter, but a long role in the city's politics wasn't a central feature of her hopes for the future. Still, it didn't escape her that at least one of her friends might benefit from having a mediator in that world after the war, however distant – almost unthinkable – the idea of there being an 'after the war' felt.

"You should be more careful." Ammon shifted so that he was leaning against the table, facing her. The man was free to just sit next to her, but that would have been too egalitarian. "Why do you want to speak to Casavir?"

She leant back in the chair, and narrowed her eyes. There was no point being angry. Of course, he'd looked at the papers on her desk. Had there been anything incriminating on the list? She didn't think so. Nevertheless, she made a mental note to expand it to point eighteen: learn a script that the warlock can't read.

"Nevalle wants Casavir to take a company down to Callum at Fort Locke. Apart from that, Katriona – the sergeant that died yesterday -" she clarified for him "-was a friend of his."

"Refusing to allow Nasher to waste your men on a doomed mission would be a more profitable use of your time."

"I'm not sure you've grasped how the chain of command works." She waved a placatory hand before he could bite her head off. "But yes, I agree with you. I'll try and talk Nevalle round this afternoon."

A blast of wind carrying heavy raindrops blew against the window. The ruby and emerald light had turned to shades of garnet and jade. Outside, people would be darting across the bailey with their heads down; the geese would be locked into their huts; Sal would have retreated back into the Phoenix Tail along with all the itinerant tradespeople, bards, and spies.

"Where you do want me to start?"

"The ambush." Ammon had been looking at the window, as distracted as she was by the storm. Now he gave her his full attention. She concentrated on returning enough of his stare to seem undaunted, but not so much as to give the impression that she appreciated what she saw.

"Very well." She placed her index finger on the map, where a thin black line snaked away from the East Road. An ink and parchment landscape rose up around her. There were the elm trees, the glade where they'd made camp, the ferns where Luan had found the carved stone. "At sunset on our second day away from the Keep, I was woken by trumpet calls from the east where Chantler was standing sentry..."

She went through the events of the night, the attack, the soldiers stranded in the road, the loss of Chantler, Elanee's spell and their flight to the north as methodically as she could, while stripping out irrelevant information such as 'I was really fucking scared' or 'and that's when Luan threw up'.

Ammon didn't tell her to stop wasting time and focus on what was important, though she had expected him to. On the occasions when she lifted her finger from the map and the room faded back into her sight, he was still watching her unerringly, seeming almost spellbound. With the wind and the rain hammering on the window, and the magelight swirling in its jar, it felt like an echo of those nights in West Harbour when she'd told ghost stories to the village children. When he commented at all, it was to press more detail out of her.

"This face in the Selverwater. You said you'd seen something similar before?"

"Yes – Luan found a carved boulder near our camp. It was old, and not carved in a lifelike way at all. Oversized face, heavy brow, and four big fingers holding something. A harp or a shield."

She was sure it was a shield, now. Ammon's eyes flashed, but he made no further interjections until she tried to skip over the walk across the limestone ridges and Katriona's folktale.

"Stop. The sergeant was native to the area?"

"More or less. She was brought up on a farm in the eastern dales."

"Then tell me what she said." He had taken a seat across from her now, so at least she didn't have to look up at him. After reciting the story of the boy who was torn into many pieces by the Giant King, she paused, and rubbed her lips.

"You think -?" she started.

"Perhaps. The old families have long memories, even if they mistake their histories for legends as one generation replaces another. Continue."

And she did, speaking until her throat was hoarse, and her attempt to describe their arrival on Deramoor resulted in a coughing fit. Ammon actually deigned to bring her a jug of water and a glass from a side table. As a complementary service, he muttered a spell over it that included the word gwenon – poison. Hopefully the rest of the incantation meant detect and not generate.

"If I defeat the King of Shadows," said Lila, once her throat was feeling better, "will you bring me a glass of whatever wine I ask for?"

"Assuming you survive, and I do," he retorted, "I will grant you whatever you ask of me." His tone of voice didn't deviate from an indifferent drawl, nor was there any flicker in his expression to let her know what kind of requests he might be anticipating. A glass of Amnish dry, a merciful death, a kiss. It could be any one of them.

"I'll remember you said that," she warned him

"Remember when the war is won." He leant forward abruptly and refilled her glass. It seemed as if he'd been on the verge of saying something else, and interrupted himself. "Now, you reached the plateau." He leant back, and folded his arms. "What then?"

This was the part of her tale she'd been most averse to recounting. That her audience barely blinked as he followed the contorted thread of events on the lands around the old farm did little to help. Not that anything would have. He made her describe her conversation with the lost shepherd three times; every word, every look – the warlock wanted to know it all.

That set a worrying precedent for what was to come, but to her relief, he insisted on no more than a curt summary of the string of disasters that followed. If she'd tried to tell him more than that, she wouldn't have been able to go on with the remainder of the account. And she wanted to see it through to its end, as if only by talking herself back to her starting point could she confirm that she really had returned home. As if otherwise she might wake from a pleasant dream to find herself in the meadow on Deramoor again.

Someone knocked on the door. "Knight Captain? Sir Nevalle wishes to speak to you." After a few moments, she recognised the voice of the squire from the road last night. Before she could answer, Ammon had opened the door, not wide enough for the squire to see inside the room, but quite enough for him to be scared to death by the warlock blocking his view.

"She's not here. Try the crossroads. She said she was going to inspect the defences of the watchtower there."

"There's a watchtower at the crossroads?" stammered the squire. "I didn't -"

"- You know now." He closed the door sharply in the squire's face. Lila winced. The young man had made a good impression on her; without him, Elanee might not have survived long enough for help from the Keep to reach her. If he had any sense, he'd check with Kana before heading out into the storm.

As Ammon returned to his seat, she noticed that he'd undone the collar on his surcoat – not much, but enough to show the scar tissue on his neck, and the mottled, half-melted flesh around his breastbone. Not something she was going to ask him about.

The rain outside had died down, freeing up a space in the sky for the thunder to move into. It rumbled ever closer. Sheet lightning filled the war room with red and green diamonds, which shone then vanished, though did so a few heartbeats after the brilliance beyond the window had subsided. She spoke above the thunder as well as she could.

"There was a wheel," she said. "It's not on the map now, but it was there. A vast wheel on the side of one of the hills. It looked impossibly huge – the cranes on the docks would have looked like toys stood next to it. When I saw it, it was just a...shadow... of itself. Not quite real. I can hardly believe that it was ever real."

"Nevertheless, you should. The Illefarn built it to propel the machines they used in their mining. Beneath the surface, those hills are little more than a labyrinth of tunnels and mineshafts."

"You've been there?"

"Oh yes." He sounded almost warm. She waited to see if he'd fill the silence, and was ready to give up, when he spoke again. "Imagine a soldier returning home on leave from campaigns in the Sword Mountains. Most would spend their pay in the taverns and other such places in Neverwinter. But his soldier instead decided to take his younger brother walking and hunting in the hills east of Highcliff."

He paused. He was addressing his recollections to a space to her right, not making eye contact. "The wheel must have fallen from its axle many centuries ago. But in the last decades of rule by the Council, it was still possible for someone – a twelve year old boy, say – to trace its outline in the grass."

She cast around for a response. Whatever she said or did was likely to be shrugged off at best as Ammon's usual persona reasserted itself, but she didn't want to let the moment pass unacknowledged.

"I wish," she said carefully, "I'd had such a brother."

"One can never keep such people long. For all their bravery and pride." His mouth turned downwards in anger or grief. Angry grief. Well, she knew that feeling herself, though more as a traveller than a sojourner. His eyes were redirected at her from under lowered lids; she'd expected him to order her to carry on, and make it sound as if it was her fault that he'd remembered his brother once existed.

She brushed a stray braid back behind her ear, and took another sip of water. She let the thunder sound twice more before continuing the story. As she spoke, she kept catching herself playing with the torque around her wrist, or staring at her hands, as if she couldn't quite believe the weight they'd born across that long afternoon.

He took the news that his brother's sword had been smashed by the night walker better than she'd feared.

"It was broken before, and more than once," was his only comment.

"I brought back the pieces," she said. "Jacoby could reforge it."

Ammon gave a kind of one-shouldered shrug, indicated that the suggestion, while plausible, was of no great relevance to him; he'd come back to himself. Or retreated.

"You said you conjured a version of Gith's sword into your hand when you faced the avatar." His tone was highly sceptical. Given that he'd accepted without demur the idea that a shepherd revenant could walk on earth with a heron's wing instead of an arm, and ghosts for faces, and then turn into a monster from another plane, she thought his doubt was unfair.

She closed her eyes. Blocking out thoughts of failure, she imagined herself back in the valley of the Dardeel. It was a completely different kind of weapon she was dealing with now. Just as it would have been stupid to expect her sabre to remake itself and return to her intact, it was stupid to believe that this sword couldn't. The Silver Sword's qualities, shape, its weight, its location – all were limited only by the force of its owner's imagination. Without hope or doubt, only certainty, she opened her hand, and closed it round the hilt.

"Believe me now?" she asked Ammon. She was sweating. Clearly what she'd done had some physical cost. Yesterday she must have been too burned and exhausted to notice.

He reached out and ran his fingers along the hilt. She tensed as his fingertips brushed against hers. Although half-entranced, he had enough residual sense of self-preservation to stop before touching the blade. When he let his hand fall, it was his turn to look at the jug of water as if wishing it contained something stronger. "How did you do it?"

She breathed out, letting the sword vanish. There was probably a way of explaining it to him without sounding like Zhjaeve; with a few days of quiet and practice, she might even figure out what it was. "Desperation," she said, for the sake of saying something.

"I find that unlikely in the extreme," he remarked sourly. "If desperation sufficed, Neverwinter would be overflowing with silver swords."

"Most people in Neverwinter wouldn't recognise a silver sword if they impaled themselves on one. They certainly haven't been carrying a splinter of astral silver around in their chest their whole lives." Was that why she could do it? Her chest didn't burn, or give off a white light when she summoned the sword.

He looked as if he was going to argue the point further. She cut in. "Perhaps you could learn how to do it. I could try and teach you." She wasn't sure how serious she was; it might work, or it might not. But the suggestion had its intended effect: he was taken aback, and the intensity of his gaze diminished.

"You could try. I expect you would fail."

"Your choice," she said. He made no reply. Was he disappointed that she hadn't tried to persuade him further? She wanted to; still, her own understanding of the trick was limited, and she'd spent weeks avoiding the real artefact. Before dragging him into treacherous ground, she should find a solid path herself.

"There's not much to add now. After the night-walker vanished, I took Elanee in a boat down the Dardeel. Met Nevalle on the road, borrowed his horse, and rode back to the Keep." She stretched out her legs, and crossed one ankle over the other. At first the pains shooting up her tendons told her she'd made a mistake. Soon, though, they lessened. She felt almost normal. "So you see, I wasn't joking when I told you I met the King of Shadows in the hills. And it was him, wasn't it? It can't have been anyone else."

"Of course it was him. Or an aspect of him," said Ammon. "More pressing questions are 'why?' and 'how?' Surely it occurred to you to wonder how a being whom we believe is unable to leave his stronghold in the Mere could be at large in the hills, fifty miles to the north?"

"You know, it occurred to me every fucking step of the way," she retorted at once, though without heat. "But it also occurred to me that, according to Aldanon, there's an Illefarn scholar of some ability living here at the Keep." She watched his face, and just managed to catch the flare of amusement in his eyes before another lightning flash broke across the room.

"You saw the King of Shadows, and spoke to him. Despite all the years of studying the Illefarn Guardian and hunting down his servants, I never had that...experience. The closest I ever came to him was the fight against his avatar in West Harbour. So first, tell me what you thought he was."

She shifted in her seat as she considered her answer. In truth, her impression of the shepherd had been moulded in feelings, not thoughts. Not that she would admit as much to Ammon.

"It didn't make any sense," she said. "Annaeus and the other spirits all seemed clear that what they did to him stripped him of his individuality. But the man I met in the hills was no faceless golem. He seemed to know who he was, and where he was, even if I'm not sure he knew when he was."

In the hall outside the war room, she could hear voices, and footsteps pacing up and down. It wouldn't be long before Kana or Nevalle appeared to haul her away. What she'd seen yesterday had implications that reached beyond the running of the castle, and here in this room she felt she might be able to parse them out.

Ammon had heard the sounds outside too. He straightened in his chair, and rested his hands flat on the table. In low tones, he spoke rapidly. "I know little more of the ritual than you. The Illefarn took their secrets concerning the creation of the Guardian with them to the grave and beyond.

"When I first became aware of the threat to Neverwinter, I searched through every record and history of Illefarn that I could acquire to learn more of the Guardian and his creation. The effort was futile. The Illefarn had carried out an act of damnatio memoriae, and done so with a thoroughness that the likes of Nasher could scarcely comprehend. They burned their own writings from the decade before the rite, and defaced any engraving or statue that might have indicated who their saviour was, or the nature of the ritual he underwent. They even worked a geas to prevent their own people pronouncing his name."

"If you know about the geas," she said, "then they can't have erased everything."

He inclined his head. "They could control knowledge within their own borders. But their rivals took great interest in events to their west: Netheril made records, and even the most powerful spells of the Illefarn enchanters were unable to destroy all of them."

"He was a refugee from the heart of Netheril. That much I know. By blood and birth, he should have been the Illefarn's enemy. The account I saw called him a traitor."

Various elements clicked into place. She'd already had a sense of them, an instinct, but it was like the difference between hearing a tune, and seeing it notated on the page.

"But he wasn't a traitor," she said. "When he fled west across the border, he was just a boy – probably orphaned."

"A boy that grew up to sacrifice everything for his adopted land, yes." Ammon paused, and eyed her. Deciding how much to say? "My studies once took me through Rashemen to – a place of interest to me. At the same time the Illefarn Empire was at its height, the shamans of Rashemen had a curious practice. One viewed as barbaric by the land's current inhabitants." An ironic quirk of the lip showed his attitude. Either he thought the moderns were weak, or he thought they were hypocrites.

"When they captured a particularly fierce wolf or bear, they had the art of keeping the animal alive and capable of sensation as, with great ceremony, the shamans cut it into a hundred pieces. A ritual vivisection. Afterwards they buried the pieces at sacred sites across their territory. This was supposed to bind the spirit of the creature to the service and protection of the land."

She felt nauseous. If she'd been the spirit of a wolf that had been tortured slowly to death, the first thing she'd have done would be to eat the shaman that murdered her. Assuming – the grotesque thought struck her – assuming that the animal was allowed to die at all. Was the heart still beating as it was lowered into the ground?

"And you think this is what the Illefarn did to him?"

"It's possible. Illefarn was famed for the achievements of its enchanters, its engineers, its priests. Not its necromancers or transmuters. There is nothing in the histories of the early empire of anything analogous being attempted. Illefarn should not have been capable of such a work. But if they borrowed the elements of the rite from elsewhere, and refined them to suit their own purposes...then their success appears more feasible."

"Success?" Lila echoed, still feeling sick. Her nightmare rose up from the shadows at the back of her memory. Lorne and the reddened billhook.

"Illefarn endured another hundred years. One hunk of flesh in exchange for a year of existence for the whole empire was a small price to pay."

"If they'd put as much effort into driving back Netheril as they did into defeating the Guardian after his fall, they would never have needed to entrap a gullible boy into letting himself be butchered for their sake." She was surprised at her own venom, and more surprised that she'd given it voice. It wouldn't do; certainly not around Ammon Jerro.

"He was a man when he met his fate." Ammon was looking at her in an odd way: not quite hostile, but the muscles in his jaw had tightened, and his eyes had narrowed. "So you call him gullible for his choice? Some would call him a patriot."

Ah. She understood the expression now. It wasn't possible to pretend she hadn't heard the question; on the other hand, a straight answer would only send the conversation spinning off into an argument. They'd already had plenty of those.

"I think I would have liked him," she said, "if I'd known him as he was before the rite." Her answer was both true, and deeply evasive.

The warlock raised his eyebrows at her to show that he hadn't failed to notice what she was doing. She smiled ruefully, then grew serious again.

"He was afraid, Ammon. When I saw him by the lake, he was so afraid. Whatever he chose long ago, he wanted to unchoose it then." It was strange. It felt as if she'd failed the shepherd in that instance...though gods alone knew what she could have done to stop the transformation from swallowing him. Nothing, probably. "All this time, we've talked about defeating the King of Shadows, getting the better of him through force of arms." She hesitated; she was thinking aloud now. "Could there be another way? Could the rite be broken? I mean – if there's enough left of him to be afraid, there could be enough left to be saved."

He didn't dismiss the suggestion at once, or sneer at her for being less than eager to destroy the King of Shadows in pitched battle. His grip tightened on the arms of his chair.

"I tried once. Long before I acquired the Sword of Gith, I tried to reverse the ritual. The consequences were...unpleasant." He touched the scar on his neck. "My amateurish attempt may even have worsened the threat. It angered him, and after that he was aware that his power was not unopposed.

"The man you saw," he continued, "...it is unlikely to be a coincidence that you came upon him at noon on midsummer, of all days. Midsummer was the most important day in the Illefarn calendar; it was their day for new undertakings, amongst much else.

She clasped her hands together. "They began the rite on midsummer's day." What had the shepherd said? 'They took me into the dark. They took me into the cold and dark forever'.

Ammon nodded. "They would have chosen no other. I don't know whether your shepherd was truly part of the King of Shadows, or simply a kind of...restless memory summoned back by the land. If the latter, freeing it from the rite would have no bearing on our position. We would still be under the threat of the corrupted Guardian. If the former...to undo the rite could require us to wait another year...and have access to much knowledge which the Illefarn did their best to annihilate."

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking tired for the first time that day. "Lila, we do not have another year. The night walker gave us until harvest, and that may well have been a ploy to make us relax our guard."

A new set of footsteps approached up the hall. Crisp, neat steps – the heels of the boots went clink as they touched the paved floor.

"Nevalle," she said. Ammon scowled, and stood up.

"We'll finish this later." It wasn't that the Commander of the Neverwinter Nine didn't know exactly who the warlock was, and where he could generally be found; it was more that he avoided acknowledging his existence. She encouraged Ammon to facilitate that.

There'd been one conversation late last summer in which Nevalle had indicated that Lord Nasher was deeply concerned that a certain person might have been seen in her vicinity who may or may not have been a former retainer of the Neverwinter court, but that as long as this person continued usefully in her service he could be permitted to remain at liberty but not at licence, and that should any further misdemeanours come to light while said person was in her charge, she could expect to be held fully responsible etc. etc.

"Can you vanish me along with you?" she asked.

"No," said the former retainer of the Neverwinter Court. He raised his arms, and disappeared.

She sank back in her chair. Her glass of water was empty. She pressed it to her forehead, enjoying its slight chill, as Nevalle rapped on the door.

"Farlong, I must speak to you urgently." She sighed, replacing the glass on the table.

"The door is open, Sir Nevalle," she called. "I don't think it's actually fitted with a lock." More's the pity.

When the knight stepped into the view, he seemed his usual self. Handsome, cool, so neat that a drill sergeant would have told him to relax a bit. Judging by his use of her surname, she was about to be told off, but there was no way to ascertain that from his appearance: it was the same as always.

"Thank you for the loan of your horse. It galloped back to the Keep like a champion," she said, giving him a wide smile before he could begin.

He ignored the comment. After frowning at the empty chair opposite her, he went straight to business. "Why is Sir Casavir still here? You were aware of Lord Nasher's orders last night, but have done nothing to further them. If Fort Locke falls because you delayed, it may be time to reconsider your command."

She spread her hands palm-upwards in appeasement. Perhaps she should start carrying a scroll of invisibility around with her for emergencies. Like this one.

"Be reasonable, Sir Nevalle. I respect Casavir's abilities as much as anyone, and I admire General Callum too. But – first – you told me that Casavir with one company would be replacing Callum's troops altogether, not reinforcing them. That suggested no great hurry. Second, Fort Locke is a stockade. As the enemy extends his reach, it's not a question of if, but of when it falls -"

"-Your orders from Lord Nasher are clear, and they are to provide reinforcements for General Callum-"

"-but when he gave those orders," she interrupted, refusing to be cowed, "- he had no idea there'd been an ambush on the Great East Road. The shadows have already broken out of the bounds of the Mere. I need Casavir and those soldiers here to defend our position, and keep the roads open for as long as we can."

He hesitated. Was that doubt in his eyes? But when he continued, his voice was calm, and completely unmoved. "From what I've heard, the incident with the shadows was localised. There have been no reports of similar attacks elsewhere. Due to the excellent work of Callum at Fort Locke and the assistance of Waterdeep to the south, the enemy is still pinned down in his swamp." Fen, Lila thought. It was a fen. With areas of saltmarsh and bog. "Either you will give the necessary orders, or I will."

Her temper frayed. She shoved herself up from her chair, and leant on the table. Nevalle was well over six feet tall, and could still look down his nose at her, but at least she felt less like an invalid on her feet. "I will do as I am told, Sir Nevalle. This time. But when Casavir and the company are all slaughtered for no purpose, you can find a rag yourself to wipe the blood off your hands."

"This time?" said Nevalle, latching onto the detail rather than the thrust of her comment. "I sincerely hope you mean 'this time and at all times to come', Knight Captain. Neverwinter doesn't need any more traitors -" he looked around the room once more "- or murderers. Tyr guide us."

He left, walking out with a parade-ready swing of the arm.

No, she thought. What Neverwinter really needs are more obtuse, holier-than-thou arseholes in expensive blue tunics and vinegary aftershave. She'd lost that fight. Gracious loserdom didn't come naturally to her. Instead, she seethed. What a skincher, what a scafe the man was.

Addressing the space next to the window, she said, "That went about as well as I expected."

"You reported the facts of the situation," said Ammon's voice. The rest of him appeared soon afterwards. The amber light in his eyes had intensified; the scent of struck flint reached her nostrils; if she hadn't known the anger was focused on Nevalle, she would have considered retreating to the other side of the castle. "He had already decided what he wanted to believe. I had the same argument with one of his predecessors many years ago."

"How long did Fort Locke last afterwards?"

"Two weeks. The garrison simply...fell asleep. And woke as shadows."

Having Ammon so openly on her side for once made her question her own behaviour. Had she created this mess by not dealing with Nevalle correctly in the past? Needling him too much, and compensating at best with deeply insincere formal politeness? She scratched the bridge of her nose. It was barely afternoon, and she already felt tired enough to sleep for the rest of the day.

"I owe you an apology," she said to Ammon. It was easier to apologise to him than to Nevalle, though she wasn't sure whether she owed the knight anything at all, beyond what Sand would describe as the abrupt application of motor force to the ischium.

"Really?" He folded his arms, and waited.

"You told me it was idiotic to go off east with just Elanee and the Greycloaks. Events proved you right. I should have listened. I got three people killed, and was nearly killed myself."

Ammon let his arms fall to his sides, and crossed the room until he stood within a few feet of her. For a moment, she forgot the pain in her legs. "I confess, that was not the apology I expected. If you think three deaths in the ranks of your allies is a mark of failure, you will have to adjust your expectations before the battles to come."

The light in his eyes dimmed. He briefly looked down at the floor, before meeting her gaze again. "You did what you set out to do. Not only that, you returned with new knowledge of our enemy, and of the Sword of Gith. Your mission was a success, by any standards."

"It was a fluke," she said. "A series of lucky escapes." The blood rushed to her neck again. Her skin was too dark for him to notice it, but the feeling of shame and pride warring inside her was still deeply uncomfortable.

"Say rather, the chance of war." They had both been moving slowly towards the door. She had to find Kana and Casavir; Ammon probably wanted to learn if any progress had been made by the researchers in the library.

She frowned suddenly. "Hang on, so what were you expecting me to apologise for?"

They paused in the doorway. From his expression, she thought he was going to tell her to mind her own business. When he did answer, she wasn't sure if he was being honest, or improvising to close down the line of questioning.

"For not asking me to go with you." He pressed her shoulder, and then stalked away towards the main hall. It took a minute of leaning against the door jamb before she was ready to continue. In part, due to tiredness. And in part bewilderment. She touched the shoulder of her tunic where his hand had been.