Chapter 2

It was necessary for me to ride a fair distance that evening, as a result of which the sun had completely sunk by the time I was able to meet young Lance at the Maliksen field. The priestess and her apprentice had already arrived and my own poor assistant appeared more than a little confused and uncomfortable in their company. To my surprise, the priestess had brought along with her a young boy. Twelve or thirteen years old by my reckoning, he was not anAlvere, yet the glimpses of his ears which I occasionally caught behind his long, lank black hair showed them to be unusually shaped, though by no means as sharply pointed as those of the priestess. His complexion was of a sickly hue, his eyes narrow and reddish-brown, and his face gaunt and suspicious. His clothing was ridiculous: a set of black doublet and hose straight out of some old storybook romance, totally inadequate to the weather. He also wore a rough mantle of fur, unlikely to serve against the rain for long. Lance had thankfully provided oilskins for two. I offered one to the priestess, who refused with polite words and a thoroughly impatient voice. Preoccupied with gazing across the horizon in all directions for heaven knows what, she obviously had no time to worry about chills or damp. I ventured the same offer to her apprentice, but received only sullen looks for my pains.

“Johan does not speak modern Lucinian, I am afraid,” declared the priestess, though never sparing us a glance. “His birth was in a much colder clime, in the far northern peninsula beyond the mountains and to the east of Albinor: a harsh land, so I do not think you need worry about his tolerance to your dismal autumn weather. He has lived with blizzards and winds that would kill your pheasants stone dead if they blew over that moor for half a minute, not to mention violent sea-storms. His parents’ fishing boat washed ashore upon the northern strands of this continent. Salvagers found the pilot and his wife dead and cold, but they had poor Johan well protected below decks. That was almost two years ago. His health is quite recovered since, and I have taught him in the language of my people. Not yours, as yet. I suppose I must eventually, now that we are allegedly on diplomatic terms.”

“You mean to bring him up yourself, as anAlvere?” I asked, concealing my involuntary distaste at the notion. She answered dispassionately:

“Not as a common warrior, I am resolved. I have trained him well, and perhaps when he comes of age my archmagister will accept him as a novice. I see the very notion of it disgusts you. So much for the vaunted tolerance of the new order... but if you would look at Johan, even you might accept that he has at least a trace of the fair folk in his heritage already. A ‘changeling’, as they used to say, though that is a poorly chosen term. Your clever Lyceum has found a better one: a ‘recessive pangenetic characteristic’, I believe. Both his parents must have had some weak, latent faery characteristics in their blood. Sadly, those born in such affairs have a tendency to face hostility, ignorance, and occasionally being burned as witches