Dorian laughed. He knew. “Oh, my friend,” he said, holding onto Solon’s arms. “You did well.”

“You look well, too,” Feir said. “You were fat when you left. Look at you now. A decade of military service has done you right.”

Solon smiled, but the smile faded fast. “Dorian, seriously, I have to know. Did you mean that I needed to come serve Logan, or did you mean Regnus? I thought you’d said Lord Gyre and not Duke Gyre, but when I got here, there were two lords Gyre. Did I do the right thing?”

“Yes, yes. They both needed you, and you saved both of them several times. Some you know, some you don’t.” Perhaps the most important thing Solon had done was something he would never appreciate: he had encouraged Logan’s friendship with Kylar. “But I won’t lie to you. Keeping your secret was something I didn’t foresee. I thought you would have shared it years ago. Down most paths I see now, Regnus Gyre will lose his life.”

“I’m a coward,” Solon said.

“Pah,” Feir said. “You’re many things, Solon, but you’re not a coward.”

Dorian kept silent, and let his eyes speak empathy. He knew differently. Solon’s silence had been cowardice. Dozens of times he’d tried to speak, but he could never summon the courage to risk his friendship with Regnus Gyre. The worst of it was that Regnus would have understood and laughed about it, if he’d heard it from Solon’s own lips. But discovering deceit in a friend felt like betrayal to a man who’d had his fiancée sold out from under him to another man.

“Your powers have grown,” Solon said.

“Yes, he’s truly insufferable now,” Feir said.

“I’m surprised the brothers at Sho’cendi let you come here,” Solon said.

Dorian and Feir looked at each other.

“You left without permission?” Solon asked.

Silence.

“You left against their direct orders?”

“Worse,” Dorian said.

Feir barked a laugh that told Solon he’d been put into another plan of Dorian’s that he couldn’t believe.

“What did you do?” Solon asked.

“It belonged to us, really. We’re the ones who found it again. They didn’t have any right,” Dorian said.

“You didn’t.”

Dorian shrugged.

“Where is it?” Solon asked. From the bland looks on their faces, he knew. “You brought it here?!”

Feir walked to the little bed and threw back the blankets. Curoch lay sheathed on the bed. The scabbard was white leather, inlaid with gold Hyrillic script and capped with gold.

“That’s not the original scabbard, surely.”

“It’s work like this that makes me want to never be a sword smith,” Feir said. “The scabbard is the original. Woven thick with magic as fine as Gandian silk, and I think all that’s just to preserve the leather. It won’t stay dirty, won’t take a mark. The gold inlay is real, too. Pure gold. Hardened to where it would stand against iron or even steel. If I could figure out that technique alone, my heirs would be rich to the twelfth generation.”

“We’ve barely dared unsheathe the sword, and of course we haven’t tried to use it,” Dorian said.

“I should hope not,” Solon said. “Dorian, why would you bring it here? Have you seen something?”

He shook his head. “Artifacts of such power skew my vision. They themselves and the lusts they invoke are so intense that it fogs my sight.”

Suddenly, he was drifting again, but drifting was too gentle a word for it. His vision latched onto Solon and images streamed past him. Impossible visions. Solon against incredible odds. Solon as a white-haired old man, except not old, but—blast, the image disappeared before he could understand it. Solon Solon Solon. Solon dying. Solon killing. Solon on a storm-tossed ship. Solon saving Regnus from a wetboy. Solon killing the king. Solon dooming Cenaria. Solon propelling Dorian into Khalidor. A beautiful woman in a chamber of a hundred portraits of beautiful women. Jenine. Dorian’s heart lurched. Garoth Ursuul.

“Dorian? Dorian?” the voice was distant, but Dorian grabbed onto the sound and pulled himself back to it.

He shook himself, gasping as if emerging from a cold lake.

“It’s getting worse as you get stronger, isn’t it?” Solon asked.

“He trades his mind for the visions,” Feir said. “He won’t listen to me.”

“My sanity isn’t necessary for the work I must do,” Dorian said simply. “My visions are.” The dice were in his hand, not just two dice, a whole handful of dice, each with a dozen faces. How many twelves can I throw? He would be throwing blind; he could see that Solon already was thinking he should leave, that no matter how good it was to see his old friends, he had to try to save Regnus Gyre. But Dorian had a feeling. That was the damnable thing. Sometimes it was as logical as a sesch game. Sometimes it was just an itch.

“Anyway, where were we?” he asked, playing the oblivious seer. “Feir doesn’t have enough Talent to use Curoch. If he tried, he’d either burn or explode. No offense, friend, you have finer control than either of us. I could use it, but only safely as a meister; my mage powers probably aren’t strong enough. Of course using it with the vir would be a total disaster. I don’t even know what I’d do. Of us, Solon, you’re the only mage in the room, or the country for that matter, who could hope to even hold it without dying, though it would be a near thing. You’d die if you tried to use more than a fraction of its power. Hmm.” He gazed into space as if he were suddenly caught by another vision. The line was set.

“Surely you didn’t bring it all this way for nothing,” Solon said.

Set and sprung.

“No. We had to get it away from the brothers. It was our only chance. If we’d waited until after we returned, they would have known they couldn’t trust us. It would have been kept far from us.”

“Dorian, you still believe in that one God of yours, don’t you?” Solon asked.

“I think he sometimes confuses himself with Him,” Feir said. It was uncharacteristically bitter and it struck Dorian deeply. It hurt because it was deserved. He was doing it right now.

“Feir’s right,” Dorian said. “Solon, I was setting you up to take the sword. I shouldn’t treat you that way. You deserve better and I’m sorry.”

“Damn,” Solon said. “You knew I was thinking of taking it?”

Dorian nodded. “I don’t know if it’s the right thing or not. I didn’t know you’d walk in our door until a second before you did. With Curoch, everything gets twisted. If you use it, Khalidor may well take it from us. That would be a disaster far greater than losing your friend Regnus, or even losing this entire country.”

“The risk is unacceptable,” Feir said.

“What good does it do anyone if we don’t use it?” Solon said.

“It keeps it out of the hands of the Vürdmeisters!” Feir said. “That’s good enough. There’s only a handful of mages in the world who could hold Curoch without dying, and you know it. We also know that there are dozens of Vürdmeisters who could. With Curoch in their hands, what could stop them?”