to move again, the bells on the horse ringing in the falling snow. “I am Alliere Morwain, of House Morwain,” she said to him. “And this is Lord Rhovann Disarnnyl, of House Disarnnyl.”
“Lady Alliere,” Geran murmured. He looked past her to Rhovann, who managed a very sincere-looking smile that did not quite reach his eyes. Geran nodded. “My lord Rhovann. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. I shall not trouble you for long.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Alliere said. “The Ysfierres are dear friends of mine, and I will be happy to take you to their home. But I hope that you will tarry a little while in Morwain Tower and warm yourself first. I have never ventured outside Myth Drannor, and I love to hear travelers’ tales of the lands beyond our forest.”
“I’m at your disposal, my lady.”
“Excellent!” Alliere turned to Rhovann. “You don’t mind, do you, Rhovann?”
“Of course not, my dear,” Rhovann answered. He slipped his arm through hers and patted her hand, drawing her a little closer. “I know how you can’t resist caring for any lost little creatures of the forest you come across. I suppose it’s your compassionate nature.”
Alliere favored the elf lord with an arched eyebrow, and looked back to Geran. “Then let me be the first to welcome you to Myth Drannor, Geran Hulmaster. May you find whatever it is you seek in our fair city.”
“I hope that I will,” Geran answered her. He settled back in the seat, already enjoying the warmth of the blankets. The singing grew stronger as the sleigh glided onward through the soft wet snow, and he knew that he was lost no longer.
ONE
3 Hammer, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)
The lights of Thentia glimmered below Geran at dusk as he descended from the lonely moors to the settled lands ringing the old port. He rode past snow-covered fields, steep pastures bordered by crumbling stone walls, black orchards stretching barren branches to the darkening sky. Thentia’s valley was wider and more gentle than Hulburg’s, and its belt of farmland stretched for many miles from the city walls. He came to a cart track that ran northward, away from the city, and guided his weary mount into the muddy lane.
The cottages and barns of Thentia were not much different than those of Hulburg to Geran. The two cities enjoyed something of a mercantile rivalry, since they produced similar goods and had more or less the same wants, but their people came from the same stock, the sturdy Moonsea settlers who’d tamed this cold and bitter land in the days of old Thentur. Many Hulburgans had kin in Thentia; as a young man, Geran had always thought of Thentia as “the big city,” looking for any excuse to visit. He knew the place almost as well as he knew Hulburg or Myth Drannor.
After another mile, he crested a small rise and started down toward an old manor house that lay within a deep hollow hard under the mistblown slopes ringing the city. Home, such as it is these days, he told himself. He tapped his heels to the tired gelding’s flanks and picked up the pace, anxious to be in from the cold.
The manor known as Lasparhall was not quite a palace and not quite a castle. It was a large house with thick stone walls, sturdy barred doors, and rooftop battlements, standing in a lonely vale just under the eaves of the Highfells, a little more than four miles from Thentia’s walls. In warmer seasons sheep grazed on the windy green hillsides that mounted up behind the old estate, but in the dark months of winter the manor’s flocks were kept in fenced pastures and low stone barns just behind the great house. The old estate had come into Geran’s family as a dowry when his grandfather Lendon Hulmaster married Artissa, cousin to Thentia’s ruling prince. In the decades since Geran’s grandparents had passed away, the Hulmasters had left the place to its caretakers for the most part, visiting every summer or two as the mood took them. As a child, Geran had spent many hours exploring the wide green pastures and wild moorland that waited just beyond a thin ring of apple orchards, or playing chase with the servants’ children up and down the long hallways, thick with sunmotes and the redolent scent of the golden brown lasparwood beams that gave the old house its name. It was far from a wealthy estate—the meager rents paid by shepherds and