Light shone from several of the windows in the Western Keep. It had been Redden's first clue that something was amiss. If the boys had succeeded against Astos, they would not have stayed; the Keep would be dark. If Kane and Jack had failed, why would one man alone require so much light?

Redden waited, lying in the deeper shadows of a hillside as the evening set in, half submerged in the muck of the Rot west of the old castle. He tried not to grind his teeth as his stomach churned, sensitive to the blighted aether, but better to feel a little ill than to be vulnerable to any scrying spells coming from inside the Keep. Any mage hunting for him in the Rot would have to know exactly what he was looking for.

It was only because he himself was on high alert that he sensed Orin's return, the barest whisper of careful footsteps against the soft ground as the Vanished monk approached. "Well?" Redden asked.

"The Keep holds several emissaries of the Brotherhood. There is no sign of your son, nor of master Ashward; I have reason to believe they escaped without attracting the ire of these men."

Redden sighed, feeling a knot in his chest ease at this news. "And Astos?"

"Dead. His body lies in the throne room, apparently where he fell. The Brotherhood do not seem interested in granting him a proper burial, only in ransacking his treasures."

Redden frowned. Naturally, if there was anything of value among the books and artifacts Astos had collected, Redden did not want the Brotherhood to have it, but he was not a strong enough mage to know what the cultists might consider important.

The ground beside him squelched as Orin sat down, still invisible, but Redden knew that beneath the invisibility, the older man was coated in a thick layer of sludge. "You are sure their aether sight cannot see me through this rotten mud? They seem to have no other defenses in place. I believe we could make quick work of them."

"No," said Redden. "No, let's watch them first. Watch and listen. When we know what they plan and what they want, then we kill them."

"Very well."

He heard the monk rise, saw a bit of ground shift as he walked away, back toward the Keep. Redden rubbed his hands through the muck, through the Rot, spreading more of it over his already filthy clothes and body. He shuddered at the feel of it, but forced his revulsion down, Vanished himself, and followed.

Someone shouted down from the crow's nest - the one called Leo, Jack thought, though he was too busy at the moment to pay attention.

"Ease off," said the captain at his back. "We're near enough."

He nodded, pulling his focus back from the orb, letting the wind die down. Some of the crew cheered as the taut sails slackened somewhat. But only the younger ones, Jack noticed. When presented with the evidence that black magic could make a three day trip in only two days, the younger men had been quick enough to overcome their fears. They haven't feared black mages as long as the others.

Jack released the aether reluctantly, feeling more keenly the toll the magic had taken on him without the power of the orb to buoy him up. Thad's orb hadn't made him more powerful, but had somehow acted as a lever, as a self-contained ritual circle, allowing him to shift more aether than he would have been able to on his own - more, in fact, than he ever would have imagined - but only for working the winds. He'd had a little time the night before to study the two orbs - his mother's red one and Thad's green - but had found nothing to indicate the little charm he carried with him held anything like what he'd seen in Thad's. He still had no idea what the little spheres were capable of. Now, though, thanks to Astos, he thought he knew what they were: aetherite.

He turned, and Captain Gabbiani nodded to him, acknowledging his work, but Gus, at the ship's wheel, flinched away from him still. Jack didn't mind frightening this one, at least - though Lena had forgiven the bulky pirate for his part in the Pravokan attacks, Jack remembered how he'd seen Gus attack her on the bridge heading into town. He suspected the pirate knew he remembered; Jack was sure it showed in his gaze. "Anything else?" Jack said to the captain.

"We'll take it from here," said Gabbiani.

He took the few stairs down to the main deck and relaxed on the bench beside the door to the captain's cabin, watching the crew trim the sails. They'd swept around Cornelia's eastern coast, aiming for the bridge that led north out of the kingdom. Gabbiani believed it was far enough from the city to avoid unwanted attention from the Cornelian guards, and Jack knew he could find Matoya's cave from there.

Setting his hat in his lap, he let his head fall back against the cabin wall and closed his eyes. Less than one full day to the cave if I don't stop at that lagoon, Jack thought. Another day back. Two more days sailing. Perhaps more, unless his reserves recovered quickly, for as exhilarating as it had been to control the winds, it had taken a lot out of him. How many days does the prince have? How many days can Lena keep going? Gollor had told them she was tired, had said she had trouble completing her healings by the end of the day. How long until she can't anymore? His thoughts were disturbed by the sound of a clearing throat. When he looked, he found Thad sitting on the bench beside him.

"Can I have my orb back now?" the boy asked, holding out a hand for it.

Jack passed it to him.

Thad slipped the long chain over his head, letting the orb hang outside his shirt. "I'm going to learn to do that someday, you know."

"I don't doubt it," Jack said.

"I mean it," Thad said. "I saw the aether lots of times while you and Kane were gone. I'm this close to being able to see it on command." The boy held his hand up, thumb and forefinger no more than an inch apart. "This close!"

Jack grinned at that. His scarf covered it, but the boy grinned back in any case.

While Thad held the orb in front of his face, squinting at it with first one eye and then the other, Jack sat, eyes closed, revelling in the opportunity to sit still for once, to not have anything pressing he needed to attend to. Such moments had become few and far between since he'd begun this journey, wrapped up in the prophecy of the Warriors of Light. He wondered again if the gods had made a mistake.

There was another shout from the rigging, alarmed this time. Jack looked up and saw Leo, leaning forward as he pointed. Several of the men ran to the front of the ship, looking out across the water toward a pass between two great cliffs. Thad leaped up immediately and went after them; Jack followed.

The pirate crew stood murmuring at the railing, not even seeming to notice when Jack elbowed his way between them to stand beside Thad. He didn't know what he was looking for at first, but then Thad said, "It's gone!" and he knew: these were the cliffs north of Cornelia, but where Jack and his companions had journeyed from that kingdom only a few weeks ago, there was now nothing but a jagged chunk of stone ending in empty air. The once-repaired bridge was broken again, fallen into the sea.

"Another quake?" one of the men said.

"Has to be," said another.

"Enough gawking!" the captain snapped. "We've a ship to land. Aim for that stretch of coast there."

The crew brought the ship around, laid anchor, and lowered a little boat to take Jack to shore. Cole and Felder, Kane's friends, did the rowing. Thad sat in the front of the boat, bouncing in excitement. "Are you sure you want to come, Thad?" Jack said. "I would have thought you'd opt to stay on the ship."

"I've been stuck in that elvish castle for two weeks! Why would I want to stay on the ship?" said the boy.

"He knows if he stays with us, we'll put him to work," Felder said.

As the shore drew closer, the two young pirates leaped into the waves to pull the boat in and stood watching on the beach as Jack and Thad walked north. The land sloped up, away from the water, into hills and stony ridges. Within an hour, Jack recognized the rocky pass where they had stopped their first night out of Cornelia, but now it was strewn with several stones, some quite large, that had fallen down from the slopes above them. "There really must have been another quake," Thad said, eyeing the stones suspiciously. "I wonder how the city's doing?"

Jack only shrugged.

The forest beyond the pass was worse. The earth itself had shifted. Huge swaths of trees tilted in places where the forest floor had cracked and split. "Wow," Thad breathed. "Is it safe to go through here?"

"I suppose we'll find out," Jack said, stepping forward to test his footing against a fallen tree. When he settled his weight on it, it groaned ominously. He could both feel and hear movement ahead of him as he disturbed some delicate balance he could not see. Unstable, he thought, relying on his aether sight as he squinted into the dark undergrowth, searching for a way to proceed.

"What happens if there's another quake while we're in there?"

Jack stepped back, knowing it was too perilous to try. "It would end badly," he said. He considered every spell he knew, but none seemed useful in this situation except perhaps Teleport. He did calculations in his head. It took half a day to get to the cave through all that forest. How many miles could it be? But even as he contemplated it, he looked inward, measuring his reserves, and found them lacking.

He removed his hat long enough to rake frustrated fingers through his hair, and his head felt colder without it. He felt cold all over, actually, without his coat. As if he hadn't enough to worry about, he realized he had only a matter of hours before the ice troubled him once more. He would need to settle his emotions before that happened. Unless I draw aether off of someone else, said a small, traitorous voice inside him.

Thad stood off to one side, peering curiously into the trees, his green aura glowing with vibrant energy.

"Thad," Jack said, not knowing what he intended to say. Even as the boy looked over at him, he wasn't sure what he meant to do next. When the words came, it was as if they were being spoken by someone else. "Listen, we can't go in there. I can try to Teleport us past the forest, but I don't have as much power as I did last time - I used it controlling the winds to get us here. If I do this, it's going to feel… unpleasant."

"Unpleasant, how?" Thad asked.

"A bit draining," he said, as the back of his mind screamed, Am I really doing this?

The boy cocked his head, pursing his lips in thought. "Picking our way through this mess would be draining too. And it doesn't look very safe. We'd probably save time." He shrugged his shoulders, as if coming to a decision. "Go ahead. I trust you."

Thad's faith in him nearly changed his mind. He could wait, wait however many hours it took for his own aether to replenish, rather than take from Thad. But then what? he wondered. Would he have to wait as many hours again to Teleport them back? The ice would surely return by then, made worse by the power he'd stolen from Astos. When Lena is safe, he promised himself. I will learn to control it again as soon as she's safe. But for now, I have to do this.

"Alright," Jack said. "Take a breath." He stood beside the boy, putting a hand on Thad's shoulder, trying to fix in his mind an image of the beach in front of Matoya's cave, then, quickly, he drew from Thad and from the raw aether at the same time.

In the instant before he finished the spell, he heard Thad's breath catch, felt the boy tense against the sudden pain. He immediately regretted his actions. Never to harm my fellow man… What am I doing? I knew it would hurt. And then his knees nearly buckled as he found himself on a sandy beach rather than a leaf-strewn forest floor. He clung hard to Thad's shoulder for a moment as a purple haze filled his vision but it cleared as soon as it came, leaving him with a pounding headache and a yawning hole where his reserves had been. He was shocked at how close he'd come to emptying himself, something he hadn't done since he was a child barely in control of his abilities. How many hours might I have lost then? he thought, breathing heavily. "Thad?" he said.

Thad bent over and vomited on Jack's boots. Jack stepped back carefully, unsteady on his feet from his own exertions, and waited at a respectful distance as Thad gasped and heaved long after his stomach was empty. "I'm sorry!" the boy choked out. "I didn't mean to do that! You said it would be bad! I should have been ready!"

"No, I deserve that," Jack said, finding a clean patch of sand where he could sit down. The aether sight made his head hurt worse, but he checked Thad's aura before he let it go and found that the boy was fine. Jack hadn't pulled much from him, only what he'd needed to finish the spell. Unpleasant though it might have been for him, Thad would recover much faster than Jack.

The boy straightened, panting, looking down the beach, and Jack followed his gaze toward the forest they'd passed over. There was evidence of the quake even on this side, trees fallen or tilted, with perhaps a change to the shape of the hills in the distance. Jack couldn't be sure. We really had no choice, he thought, though he knew, deep down, he had had the choice to wait, the choice to tell Thad the truth.

"Jack?" Thad said, and when Jack looked toward him, he found the boy's eyes locked not on the forest south of them but up the beach to the north, toward the cave, and he turned his own eyes that way.

"Oh, no," he said, stumbling to his feet.

The front of the cave had fallen in, huge stones marring the once-smooth floor at the cave mouth. The two of them climbed clumsily over them, both weak. It was dark inside, but Jack hadn't the aether left to light the torches. If I pulled from Thad again- that traitorous voice said, but he cut the thought short, gritting his teeth. No, never again. There was daylight enough to see the door that led to the room where the old witch made her home.

"Matoya!" Thad cried, scrambling past Jack and throwing the door open. "Matoya!" There was a soft scraping sound, as of someone running into a sentient broom, and Thad cursed.

"I'm here," the old witch called, laughing. Jack had a glimpse of her eyes glowing blue-green in the darkness, and suddenly a few candles sprang to life.

The room was overturned. Literally, overturned. Her many tables were upside down, their contents arrayed across the floor. Nothing was broken, her various bottles and boxes all lay on their sides as though she had known they would fall over if she left them standing. A fire rose from the spot in the middle of the room where Matoya's cauldron had hung before; the cauldron sat on the floor beside it, also upside down. Beyond it, Matoya sat in the only upright chair, hands folded gracefully in her lap.

"You're alright!" Thad said.

The witch smiled jovially, showing her few remaining teeth. "I'm fine, though I thank you for your concern."

"You saw it coming," Jack said.

"Hard to miss, handsome" she said. "Biggest quake yet. I suspect Cornelia may be pretty bad off just at the moment. Please excuse the mess. I'd have tidied up for you, but you two are earlier than I expected." She squinted her blind eyes at them, the corona sharpening. "Did you Teleport here?"

"Part of the way," Jack said.

The old woman chuckled. "That's a very aether-intensive spell… must have taken nearly all of your reserve."

"I'll recover," he said flatly.

"Yes, I'm sure," Matoya said. "And you, boy, come closer. Let me get the bearing of you."

Thad obligingly approached the witch's chair, stopping in front of it as she ran her knobbly old hands over his face. Jack shifted uncomfortably; there was no way she could fail to notice that part of the boy's reserves had been used. She said nothing about it, only scrutinized the boy through her aether sight for a long moment.

"I've seen the aether!" Thad said, wriggling somewhat impatiently. "Three times!"

"Have you? Seems to me you've had a right adventure since last you came this way."

"We did!" Thad said, smiling.

She held her hands out in a way that invited Thad to take them, then said gently, "Why are you here?"

"Can't you tell?" Jack asked. "You can guide us to Pravoka, you can predict an earthquake, but you didn't know we were coming and you don't know why we're here?"

"I never said I didn't know you were coming. But I didn't know you were coming today. And, no, since you asked: I don't know why."

Jack had trouble believing that. He waited for what seemed an interminable amount of time, but the old woman only stared at him with her glowing eyes. He cut to the point. "You have an ochu. We need it."

"Out of the question," she snapped, so fiercely that Thad jerked away from her. She didn't appear to notice, focused as she was on Jack.

"That ochu may be all that stands between Cornelia and a hopeless war," he said.

"Oh, it's to save Cornelia, is it? The kingdom that outlawed my kind and turned me out? Still no. I'm disappointed, handsome. I would have expected this from your stocky friend but not from you."

Jack struggled to keep his voice from rising. "I don't have to be Cornelian to see the merits of avoiding an unnecessary slaughter!"

"If you were Cornelian, you'd know they have it coming," said the witch.

"Please!" Thad said, stepping forward to take the old woman's hands in his, squeezing them earnestly. "Lena's in danger!"

Matoya cocked her head at that. "The white mage girl?"

Thad nodded. "She's trying to break a curse! She can't leave until we bring her the plant thing!"

The witch turned her head toward Jack, eyes glittering. "Which is it, handsome? Are you saving Cornelia or are you saving the girl?"

"We don't have time for your games," Jack said. "Please."

Matoya rose from her chair and tottered over to a corner where a pot Jack hadn't noticed before growled and lurched at her approach. The old woman waved a hand at it, and Jack recognized the effects of a sleep spell. "The girl is important. You four are important." She stood over the plant, her head tilted down as though she were looking at it, though she couldn't have been. "Do you know what I went through to acquire this sprout?" she said, sighing. "Elixir was my last hope."

Jack didn't know what to say. He waited, teeth clenched, unsure how to handle this sudden change in the witch's behavior, but Thad spoke, his voice full of child-like concern. "Why did you need elixir? Are you sick?"

Not everything can be fixed, she had said when Lena tried to find the cause of her blindness. Jack patted his pockets, hoping, relieved to find what he was looking for was still there. "Elixir won't Cure your eyes," he said.

"Don't you think I know that, you wicked boy?" Matoya said, bitterly.

"That's not what I meant," he said, stepping closer to her. He clutched at one of her hands, pulled it up, and set the Leifenish seeing stone in her open palm. "I can't Cure your blindness, but would you trade the ochu for the ability to see?"

She gasped, and Jack could see images in the seeing stone. The view flicked rapidly about the cave, inside and out, lingering on Thad briefly, and on himself a bit longer.

"Oh," she said, and Jack saw tears running down her face. "Oh… to see!"

"Will you trade?"

The witch ignored him, focused on the seeing stone.

"Matoya?" Jack said after several minutes waiting, desperation edging into his voice.

Matoya swatted at him. "Impertinent whelp! Let me enjoy the moment!"

"It's just that we're in a bit of a hurry."

The witch growled in her throat. "Always about you, isn't it? You should know, I see a future where this trade causes disaster for one of your friends."

I don't care, as long as it saves Lena. "We'll handle it," he said. "Please, we have to go back."

"I will trade." She shook her head, as if coming out of a daze, then pocketed the seeing stone and looked up at him through her aether sight once more. "Take your prize and go. But don't say I didn't warn you."

Jack sighed in relief, motioning for Thad to pick up the sleeping ochu in its pot. "Thank you," he said. "Goodbye, Matoya." He was halfway to the door when he realized the boy wasn't with him. He turned back, to see Thad standing unmoving beside the old woman. "Thad?" he called. The boy didn't so much as twitch, motionless, without even the rhythmic stir of breathing. Somehow, Jack's eyes were drawn to the fire, an orange glow that neither moved nor flickered.

...It was as if time had stopped.

The attack came then, a force pushing against his soul, ready to draw, but Jack had had enough of that for a lifetime. With all his will, he grabbed the force that drew against him and he drew back. It was instinctive, unconscious, and it wasn't until Matoya cried out in pain that Jack realized he had drawn from her. "No!" he shouted.

The old witch laughed bitterly. "So you are one of us, after all."

"You?" he said, unable to think clearly. "Why?"

"Would you have told me if I had merely asked?"

"You're a dark mage," he said, but there was no certainty in his voice.

"I am, just as you are."

He had questions, so many questions, but suddenly his mouth was too dry to speak. "Can you… Can you control it?"

"I never tried." She wandered back toward her chair. At a wave of her hand, another chair righted itself nearby and she motioned for him to sit. He glanced nervously at Thad, but the boy still hadn't moved from his place near the corner. Jack sat, and when he was settled, Matoya continued. "No one seemed to notice it, you see, the way the aether flowed into me and through me, altering time as it went. I heard tell of a girl from the countryside who couldn't help but draw attention to herself: everything she touched turned to stone. Me though, I was never late to any engagements, always had time for my studies, for my various pursuits. What does it do to you, handsome?"

"Ice," he said, staring down at his lap. "Matoya, you were right. I'm no fire mage. If I don't concentrate every moment of every day…"

"It's better that you do," the witch said, nodding. "We try to be black mages, but we're not. We're more like white mages than anything else."

Her words were like a slap in the face. He'd tried so hard to live as a black mage, to ignore what he was. "How do you figure?"

"Because white mages draw their power from the purity of their own souls. And we dark mages draw ours from the purity of everyone else's."

Jack scowled. Never to harm my fellow man… "I can't live that way. I won't."

"Listen, boy. The raw aether is impure. Every foul aura - every evil deed - going back through the history of mankind survives in the aether. Black mages can filter them out. We can't. If you let the aether in, those impurities come with it. I went years, decades, before I noticed the effects, before the corona burned out my eyes."

Jack remembered the poisoned aether at the ruined temple where they fought Garland, and how sick he was after he used it, how his eyes ached. He remembered the dead mage they found outside. "Aether burn… Do you mean to tell me you survived aether burn?"

Matoya nodded. "It only afflicts dark mages. That's why it's so rare."

Jack's heart pounded, as though he were afraid, but he buzzed with the aether he'd stolen from the old woman and though his emotions roiled, the ice did not come.

Matoya gazed at him through a corona gone purple. "It isn't the end of the world, handsome. Not yet. Not while the Warriors of Light are still fighting for it." She leaned forward to rest her hand on his cheek, on top of his scarf. "I'm glad to know one of the prophesied Warriors is like me. Who better than one who has known darkness to understand why light is worth fighting for?"

For the first time since Cornelia, the weight of the prophecy seemed too heavy. "I don't know how to be a dark mage."

"You are a dark mage. It's not something you know. But you have been avoiding your dark magic far too long. Some spells come easier to dark mages, you know."

"I do well enough for myself."

"You really don't. Watch closely." She waited, seeming to know the exact moment he was ready, and then snapped her fingers. The aether reshaped itself around her like a group of dancers in a ballroom. It turned, and Jack turned with it. There was a sensation of rushing movement, and he could hear Matoya cackling as he fell backwards, as he was Teleported away but his chair was left behind.

He could feel time rushing back in around him as he landed softly on the sandy beach where Cole and Felder had deposited him and Thad only that morning - their footprints were still there. The boy stood blinking beside him, holding the potted ochu in his arms.

"What?" Thad said, looking up and down the beach in confusion.

Jack shook his head, rising to his feet. He heard a shout from across the water - someone on the ship had spotted them. Thad waved out to sea, but then the sleeping ochu stirred and growled. Thad squealed, holding the pot as far as his arms would stretch.

Jack cast Sleep on the creature, realizing only afterwards that his reserves were not approaching empty as they had been when they reached the cave: he still had the aether he'd drawn from the old woman. But… But that means she Teleported us all this way on only a fraction of her power...

Oh, gods. I really don't know how to be a dark mage.

Author's Note: 9/30/16 - In my author's note for chapter 21, I mentioned that I basically had to re-do my outline for the entire Elfheim section. Here's the scoop: We're far enough in that I can talk about this without spoiling anything, but, yeah, Jack is a dark mage. If you go back and reread from the start, it's probably obvious in hindsight, but I hope at least some of you were surprised.

Anyway, originally I wasn't going to blatantly state that Jack was a dark mage until he had to draw off of Astos to save Kane. All the flashbacks (which confirm that he's a dark mage) came after that. But I can't stress enough for you how much chapter 21 WAS NOT working until I ended it with Gollor talking to Jack, with the fact that he's a dark mage being heavily implied. Suddenly I was able to start chapter 22 with the first flashback and it really, really seemed to work well there. It meant I had to rip up the original outline and tape it back together in a different order, but now I can't imagine doing it the other way.

In other news, I don't know how kosher it is to fangirl over your own story, but, guys, the fact that I have fit a baby, potted ochu into my plot just fills me with joy.