took the position of high defender. To violate that vow, here at the final stronghold before the Lost Citadel, would betray all magic and all mages-everything that I stand for. I can't do it, even for you, Lyim.'
Lyim regarded the profile in the gray-black wall with an uncontrollable sneer. 'You were my last remaining hope, Rand.'
'Have you petitioned the Council for entrance?'
'Those three help no one but themselves,' snapped Lyim. 'Your master promised to find a cure for my hand.' He held up his mutated right limb; the snake sputtered and hissed above his head. 'You can see the result of his promise at the end of my arm. Justarius knew there was only one cure for my hand. If he had been willing to let me recreate the portal to the Lost Citadel, he would have suggested it himself.'
'Perhaps they'll make an exception to their rule, considering your heroism at Stonecliff,' Guerrand suggested. 'I'd be willing to petition them on your behalf.'
Lyim could see the pity in Guerrand's silvery face, could hear it in his tone. It angered him more than Guerrand's refusal to let him into the stronghold. 'A supreme sacrifice, I'm sure, from the man whose life and family I saved.'
Lyim exploded in helpless, caustic laughter. 'It occurs to me that once again I play the fool in this friendship. I thought you were the one person who wouldn't let me down, if only out of a guilty sense of debt.' Lyim's hysterical laughter hiccuped to an angry sob. 'Seems your ambition is greater than your guilt these days.'
'This isn't about such transitory things,' Guerrand said coldly. 'My position has taught me that Bastion's purpose is far more important than one man's guilt- or another's hand. It's about the survival of magic, of life. I won't make a choice that puts that in jeopardy.'
'Everything is a question of choice.'
'Petition the Council,' Guerrand urged more strongly.
But Lyim scarcely heard him. Once again, he realized that he was the only one he could rely on.
'I'll help you any other way I can, Lyim.'
Lyim vaguely heard Guerrand's voice through the fog of his bitterness. 'There is no other way,' he responded, low and threatening.
'Then I'm truly sorry.' Guerrand's rubbery profile disappeared from the surface of the mercury wall.
'Not as sorry as you will be.' In a vessel-bursting fury, Lyim dispatched himself from the Ethereal Plane with a magical wave of his left arm. Guerrand DiThon might be safely back in the confines of his precious Bastion, but Lyim Rhistadt was far from through with him.
Chapter Six
Bram DiThon picked his way carefully between the potholes and ice patches on the road to Thonvil, wishing the soles of his boots were not four years thin. The usual freeze-and-thaw cycle was in full swing, dawn ice turning to afternoon mud. Sometimes Bram wondered if spring would ever truly come to Ergoth's moors. The dark-haired young nobleman drew his winter cloak, heavy as a sack of coins, closer as he headed for old Nahamkin's cottage for some promised seeds.
Bram had been hoping the eighteenth day of Misha- mont, his twenty-first birthday, would find him with new boots. He was not terribly surprised when they didn't appear. His mother Rietta was too busy struggling to maintain the image of the lady of the manor. His father-well, Cormac was someone Bram didn't like to think about. Besides, not receiving a present from his family was a small price to pay for the freedom of neglect.
In fact, Cormac's neglect of all of his responsibilities had given Bram's life purpose. It was his ambition-his obsession, even-to restore Castle Thonvil to the productivity and prosperity of his grandfather's time. Due to lack of coin, Bram's mother had been forced to abandon her aspiration for him to become a Knight of Solam- nia, so he had been free, at sixteen, to inconspicuously assume the day-to-day duties of a castle's steward.
Unsurprisingly, Cormac's overtaxed tenants had long ago fled. It had taken Bram almost five years of working alone from dawn to dusk to resuscitate Castle DiThon's demesne and get the family's personal lands producing food again. That had been no small feat, considering he hadn't horse or ox to plow with.
Bram had not yet had time to attend to the castle;tself, which looked run-down enough to be abandoned. Besides, crumbling stone walls just weren't as interesting to him as the perennials that would be popping up soon: Lady s mantle, foxglove. He'd already seen hope- rul lavender poking through the last crusts of snow. Bram supplied many of the villagers with dried herbs, Ьчт the winter had been a bad one for minor influenzas, and Se was running low on the more common medici- aa-s. Fortunately, the end of the season of sickness coin- ntini 'T*h the beginning of the herb season.
Bran’s eyes were on the small village ahead when he caught movement in the grass to his right. Startled, he looked out then let out a slow sigh. A snake. He'd seen at least two handfuls of them alreadу in the gardens. Their exodus from the cold earth seemed to have came earlier this year. He watched the long, black pillar with the golden diamond pattern on its head moving swiftly through the still-brown roadside grasses. What’s your hurry?' Bram thought. The snake fell the stock-still briefly, then sprang on an unsuspecting mole and gobbled it down in one gulp. The nobleman's shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
Bram hastened toward the village, which boasted no gates or other symbols to mark its entrance. It was too small, too unassuming, too poor. No neighboring lord in his right mind would care to storm Thonvil now. These days the village was no more than an unimpressive collection of dilapidated houses and small shops grouped together out of apathy and convenience. Anyone of youth or ambition had run off to the capital city of Gwynned in the last five years, when the economy had turned sour alongside the lord's fortunes.
The exodus had included members of Cormac's own family. Most recent to leave was Bram's sister Honora, who had married beneath her station to the seneschal of a small estate in Coastlund. The family had neither seen nor heard from her since, which was no burden for Bram, who found he had just enough tolerance for haughtiness to deal with their mother.
The first to leave, of course, had been Uncle Rand. Bram frequently pondered the shadowy memory of the man. Cormac had forbidden anyone to even speak Guerrand's name in Castle DiThon for more than a half decade. Was he still alive? Not even Kirah knew, or at least his aunt wouldn't say.
The notion that the spindly little blonde was his aunt always made Bram laugh. She was two years younger than he. But then, the branches of his family tree were as tangled as the limbs of a hagberry bush and just as susceptible to wind damage. And what a wind had blown through the DiThon family seven years before, when Guerrand had defied Cormac and left to pursue the study of magic.
Bram came to the long, half-timbered building whose ground floor housed the baker's shop on the right half and the only remaining carpenter in Thonvil on the left side. A narrow flight of wooden steps hugged the area between the baker's front door and the right wall, and led to the room let by his Aunt Kirah.
She had been the second member of the DiThon family to leave for Gwynned. Bolted, in fact, when Rietta had tried to marry her off to a toothless old man thirty years her senior. To everyone's surprise, Kirah had slouched back into town but seven months later, a different person, and not the better for it. While it was true she had already changed from the carefree, outspoken scamp she'd been before Rand's leaving, this was different. Worse somehow. She was skittish and withdrawn, like a reclusive old woman, though barely possessed of nineteen years. Something awful must have happened to her, but she refused to talk about it.
Bram had no notion of how Kirah paid for the room she let from the baker, or why she'd returned to a village she'd always professed to hate. She had explained to him once that it was not the village but the castle she hated. Rietta would never have welcomed her back at the castle anyway.
Nevertheless, Bram stopped by to see her whenever he came to the village. He took the stairs two at a time and knocked on his aunt's door. When no answer came, he pushed the door back gingerly, calling, 'Kirah?'' It’s me. Bram.'
He stepped full into the spartan room and saw that rope bed was made feather tick fluffed into place, but he was alone. Some objects on the wooden table under the small street-side window caught his eye. A quill and ink pot were next to a note with his name neatly lettered on the front. He picked up the parchment and caught his bottom lip between his teeth; Behind the note was a pair of boots quite obviously too big for he diminutive aunt.
