Olvir looked politely doubtful.
Naviallanth wouldn’t veil his message, Ulamir said, using the stonekin’s name for the god, nor would he have any need of obscurity with his chosen.
Doubly reproved, Vivian switched angles of approach. “I take it you had yourself inspected by all of the correct people.”
“As many as we could find, before the war called me away. The Dark Lady’s Mourners said that my life force was normal, and her Blades couldn’t find any corruption in me.” Olvir made the fourfold sign of thanks, touching forehead, eyes, and mouth quickly with the fingertips of his right hand. “The mages said that my spirit had been altered somehow, shaped, but they couldn’t tell why, or whether it’d taken place before or after Oakford.”
One or the other need not be the only choice. All gems are cut before they’re polished.
“Fair point,” said Vivian, and explained, “Ulamir says the initial shaping could’ve taken place before Oakford, and then those events could have brought it out. Do you know when it might have happened?”
“No,” he said, politely but promptly. Obviously he’d given the same answer a few times before. “I’ve had an active life, but no mysterious incidents with mages.”
“And your childhood?”
“Infancy, maybe. I was only a month or two old when my mother found me, and she would’ve told me if it had happened since.” His fond grin gave Vivian a little warmth in the chilly morning. “She was a dedicate of the Silver Wind herself. It had been many years since she’d held a blade, but the oaths don’t vanish.”
“No, they don’t.”
Vivian hadn’t sighed, and she believed she’d looked suitably casual, but a trace of her thoughts must have gotten through. Olvir’s large brown eyes briefly met hers in a moment of connection that had nothing to do with the war or his dreams. He was perhaps ten years younger than Vivian, but even he knew the point where a warrior, even one molded by the gods, had to see the ground shifting up ahead. Slower reflexes, fragile bones, and all the other frailties of mortal flesh were still mostly in the future, but not nearly as far away as they’d been at sixteen.
A soldier or a mercenary without a vocation might have started considering small farms, or inns, or ceremonial posts with nobility. The paths were different for the servants of the gods. Vivian had just begun to wonder about that when the war had really started. Now it was anyone’s guess how many of them, god-touched or not, would see that terrifying age.
“That raises possibilities,” she said, pulling the conversation back to practicalities, or analysis, which was the next best thing, “but only those.”
It happens at times that my people bestow gifts on likely humans, said Ulamir, but such favor is rare, and no land near here is missing a prince.
Olvir shook his head. “No. If we’d had more time and could have consulted more mages, possibly, but I was more use with a sword than as a curiosity.”
“You’re right on that point.”
“Thank you…and thank you for listening.”
“I wish I’d been able to help more,” said Vivian.
The camp was slowly waking up around them, with quiet groans and mild profanity drifting through the air. Those who hadn’t had Olvir’s dreams, or the more normal nightmares of the battle line, had to return to a world of unwelcome facts: they were still here, the war was still going on. Bugger it was a frequent response, with no effort to be more specific.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t have expected it of you and been reasonable, any more than I’d have expected you to have the same dreams. I only thought, well, it’s always worth asking.”
“It is,” said Vivian, and then heard footsteps behind her, less regular and more purposeful than the sentry’s.
Olvir’s gaze focused over her left shoulder. Olvir saluted just as Vivian was turning to see the newcomer. “Good morning, General. You seem to have a mission in mind. Can I help?”
“Morning.” General Magarteach had a light, efficient voice. “Glad I caught both of you together.”
“Glad to be of service,” said Vivian. The general was broad of shoulder and bosom, with red hair running to gray in streaks. Magarteach was roughly her height, which was not inconsiderable, so that the general effect was of a moving wall. Right then it was a troubled wall. “What’s today’s complication?”
“Those clouds,” said Magarteach, and gestured to the north, where the thick gray sky was taking on a darker shade. “I don’t like them. More to the point, the mages don’t either. I suspect we may have hoped in vain for spring, Sentinel, and I’m sure we’d best start getting the camp battened down.”
Chapter 3
Wind shrieked through the night. Clouds blotted out the stars, dumping snow by the bucketload onto the border camp, and the air was painfully cold, even when the wind didn’t whip it into a sandstorm of ice. It had been spring two days before. Now it was midwinter again, hard and bleak.
Out beyond the walls, magelights shone stark white on the snow, bright enough to blind any watcher who didn’t shield their eyes, but making sure that any figure approaching the palisades was visible right away. Thickly wrapped soldiers escorted the wizards out three times a day to keep them shining. It was a luxury that, like the spheres of heat surrounding the tents, had become the only way the armies opposing Thyran could hold the border through the winter.
Vivian watched the ground before her from the thin slit in her bonemask, blinked to clear her vision, and cast her gaze over every inch of the snow that she could see, looking not only for the obvious figures of twistedmen—Thyran’s shock troops—but for movement that could
