Orraen shifted stances, tense now, wary, hand drifting toward the cattan Lotaern assumed was hidden beneath the cloak. His hood turned to one side, as if he were scanning the distance. “Who? I thought this meeting private. We should not be seen together. It is too soon to be revealed.”
Lotaern frowned. “You are too paranoid. The other will come cloaked and hooded, as you are. In fact, he has already arrived.”
Orraen turned as another figure appeared farther down one of the twisted paths, joining them, his boots crunching in the crushed stone of the walkway. He halted on the far side of the circular stone table, hood shifting back and forth between Lotaern and Orraen. Perhaps a hand taller than Lotaern, he carried himself with utter confidence, and when he spoke, his voice growled with age and unquestioned authority.
Lotaern wondered briefly if Orraen would recognize Lord Peloroun’s voice. He should. He’d heard it used often enough on the floor of the Hall of the Evant.
“You have news? Something worth risking our presence in Caercaern so early?”
“I do.”
“Did you know that Lord Aeren has also arrived early? If he discovers us here, weeks before our scheduled arrival, it will raise his suspicions. We have managed to keep our alliance secret thus far. I would hate to have it compromised for something trivial.”
Lotaern did not acknowledge the threat in the deep voice, nor the lacing of contempt. “This is not trivial. I believe we may finally have something to use against the Wraiths.”
He reached into his left pocket and pulled out the small leather pouch. Releasing the drawstrings, he removed the fine metal mesh wrapping the object inside and set it on the stone table. Unfolding the mesh, he revealed the wooden-bladed knife.
Both lords leaned forward for a closer look.
“What is it?” the younger Lord Orraen asked.
“A knife forged of heartwood, soaked in the ruanavriell, and tempered in the fires of Aielan. It was created with the sole intent to kill the sukrael and the Wraiths.”
“Does it work?”
Lotaern tried not to react to the doubt in Peloroun’s voice. “It was forged by Shaeveran, and it has killed. I can provide witnesses to attest to this fact, members of the Order of the Flame.”
“And Shaeveran gave this to you willingly? We all know where his loyalties lie.”
“Its sole purpose is to fight the sukrael and the Wraiths,” Lotaern said harshly, “and that battle falls to the Chosen, not Lord Aeren.”
Peloroun leaned back from the knife, his gaze falling on Lotaern. The Chosen could feel it, even though the lord’s face was hidden. He wondered if the lord could read the guilt inside him, if he could see how Lotaern had started at the slightest sound for days after Vaeren returned with the knife in hand. He’d expected Shaeveran to arrive, unannounced, at every waking moment since then, the human’s figure blurring into existence before him, demanding the return of the blade. He’d been so afraid that Shaeveran would take it that he’d kept it on his person ever since, even sleeping with it, starting awake at odd hours of the night, his heart pounding in his chest, terrified, until his hands closed on the fine mesh beneath his pillow.
But Shaeveran hadn’t come. Not yet. He’d begun to believe that the sukrael-tainted human wouldn’t come, that he’d finally seen the logic behind allowing the Order control of it.
Lotaern simply didn’t believe it completely.
“With this,” he said, swallowing back his doubts, “and with the Order of the Flame, we can bring the Wraiths to heel. Once they realize that they are not invulnerable, that they can die at our hands, we can control them. They will not be able to threaten Alvritshai lands again.”
“But we need them,” Orraen protested. “We can’t gain power in the Evant without them.”
“Agreed,” Peloroun said. “But what the Chosen is offering us is a way to limit their power once they have helped us achieve our goals. That has always been what has stopped us before. We’ve needed their strength, to break the Evant and drive the Alvritshai to us, but that strength has never had a leash.
“The knife, along with what the Chosen has promised his Order of the Flame can accomplish, may be that leash. A thin leash, granted, but a leash.”
“We need only trick the Wraiths into donning the collar,” Lotaern said.
“Leave that to me,” Peloroun said, his voice soft.
12
Jayson Freeholt spat a curse when he heard the fifty-pound bag of barley grain slung across his shoulder begin to rip. He spun and swung the bulk toward the wall of the mill, but the burlap tore even as he moved. The weight of the half of the sack pressed against his back suddenly lifted as grain sloughed to the wooden floor with a hideous hiss and scattered, the small seeds skittering into cracks and crevices and pattering against his legs.
He stood stock-still for a long moment, listening to a last few escaping grains as they fell and bounced across the floor, then his shoulders slumped, the weight of the front half of the barley still heavy against his chest.
It had been one of those days.
“Corim!” he bellowed, letting anger tinge his voice. “Corim, where in Diermani’s bloody Hands are you?”
“I’m on the meal floor!” The shout was muted by the grinding of the stones of the grist mill on the floor that separated them. “I’m tying off th-”
The rest of the young boy’s sentence was lost, but Jayson didn’t care. “Leave it and get the hells up here! And stop the bloody mill on your way up. We’re done for the day!”
Spitting another curse, he carefully shifted the remaining weight of the bag clutched to his chest, wincing as more grain escaped. The barley crunched beneath his feet as he hauled the half sack to the wall, grabbed a length of twine from a hook, and tied it off for tomorrow. As he snatched up a broom and wide metal pan from the back wall of tools and bent to sweep up the grain, he heard the steady drone of the two stones fade and grunted to himself. Corim must have lifted the stone nut that halted the milling.
A moment later, Jayson heard Corim’s feet pounding up the stairs from the stone floor to the sack floor. He poured the first pan full of grain into the bin of the hopper when Corim appeared.
“Why are we stopping?” Corim asked, then halted, mouth a wide O, eyes even wider as he saw Jayson standing in the middle of the scattered grain.
“Because I’ve had enough.” Jayson tried not to smile at the look on Corim’s face. His apprentice was barely twelve years old, but was already as tall as Jayson, all gangly legs and arms. Jayson expected the boy would outgrow him in the next year or two. But Corim still had the face of someone younger and the look of shock was too comical.
“But we haven’t even gotten Harlson’s order ground yet-”
“I don’t care. We had problems with the sluice gate this morning, Harlson delivered his sacks of grain late,
Corim scurried off to find a second broom, and Jayson wiped the gritty sweat from his brow with the back of his arm. The motion became a long stretch, his lower back tight. With the grist mill stopped, the groan of the giant water wheel and the rush of the water from the sluice and the stream filled the building; he’d always found those sounds soothing.
Sighing, he began sweeping the loose grain into a single heap near the center of the room, trying to keep the grains from falling through the cracks to the floor below. Corim returned a moment later to help.
By the time they finished, night had fallen completely and they were working by the soft glow of two lanterns. Jayson’s back ached from bending over and he had a mild headache. But the sack room floor was as clean as he’d ever seen it since the mill had been built.
He squeezed Corim’s shoulder once, then pushed him gently toward the stairs. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
They went through the mill, Jayson closing the sluice gate to shut off the wheel, Corim gathering their things
