But even though sleeping bells were precious and few, Melliandra had been using most of hers to practice her newfound magic.

Every spare moment of the workday, she now spent haunting the Mage Halls, watching the novices practice, listening to them talk amongst themselves, picking up every small scrap of information so she could teach herself to use her newfound abilities. And each sleep shift, she brought what she learned back to the quiet dark of the umagi dens to practice.

She closed her eyes, letting the darkness envelop her. She could hear the breathing of the other umagi. The occasional cough and sniffle. The shifting of a body in its bunk. She tried to silence those small noises from her mind. From what she’d learned eavesdropping in the Mage Halls, all novice Mages learned to access their magic by first silencing their minds. It was only there, in the darkness and the silence, that a Mage and his magic first truly connected.

Not that she wanted to be a Mage. She didn’t. But she needed to know what Mages knew, to better defend herself and Shia’s son against them. Most importantly, she needed to know how Mages wove their wards—and how they unwove them—because that talent was the key to all her plans. With it, she could enter Vadim Maur’s treasure room where Lord Death’s magic crystal and weapons were stored—and with it, she could gain access to the nursery where Shia’s son and the other valuable infants of the Mage’s breeding program were kept.

Melliandra took deep, unhurried breaths, holding them, letting them out again in a slow, steady rhythm. She breathed in through her nose, held that breath for a count of five, then exhaled through her mouth to the same count. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Slowly, as the rhythm took over, her body began to relax, the world faded away.

And there, in the darkness, she found the silence, perfect and absolute. She’d never known absolute silence until this week. It was peaceful. She’d never known that either.

Her breathing continued, slow, steady, and in the silence, she initiated the next step all novices learned. Stretching out their senses, opening their minds to let magical receptors begin to absorb the subtleties of the world around them. In the Mage Halls, the novices had taken turns holding an object, with each novice trying to determine what the other was holding.

“Don’t influence, just observe,” instructed one of the apprentices who’d come to help them. “Let your partner’s senses become your own. If you do it properly, he won’t even know you’re there.”

Melliandra had been practicing that skill every waking bell these last days. What did that umagi have in his pocket? What was this umagi hiding in the corner? What secret savory had the kitchen mistress tucked away for herself today? She was getting very adept at peering into the brains of the umagi around her. Yesterday, she’d had a moment where she’d seen through the eyes of the kitchen mistress—which, she discovered, was a very disorienting practice when the kitchen mistress was walking one way down a hall, and Melliandra was walking the other.

She’d even practiced on the two Mages who’d tried to get into Vadim Maur’s office that day last week. She’d heard them talking about the High Mage, about how they’d known the Mage whose body Vadim Maur now inhabited. They’d been talking about how that Mage—Nour—while strong, hadn’t been as strong as either of them. There were other Mages, like them, who were growing dissatisfied with Vadim Maur, concerned that he’d lost focus, that his war against Celieria and the Fey was more about some secret personal goal than the triumph and glory of Eld.

It wasn’t until this morning, when she’d gone back to listen in on the novices practice again, that she’d heard the apprentice warning the novices not to get too bold with their attempts at eavesdropping.

“Don’t try this on a Mage, greenies,” he’d warned. “Unless you’re more powerful than he is, he’s going to know you’re there, and he won’t be pleased.”

And yet she’d tried it on those two Mages—the ones who claimed they were more powerful than the High Mage was now—and neither of them had detected her presence. Just to be sure her success was no fluke, she’d eavesdropped on several other Mages throughout the course of the workday. Not one of them had noticed her in their minds.

Her success gave her courage. And this time, as Melliandra stretched out her senses, she directed them in search of a specific mind, a specific pair of eyes. It was, surprisingly, much easier than she expected, perhaps because the cool, dark path to that mind already existed inside her, forged when she was very young.

In the silence of her mind, unnoticed by her host, Melliandra looked out through the eyes of Vadim Maur.

The Faering Mists

Kieran knelt beside Lillis’s body and prayed while the shei’dalins worked frantically to save her. Behind him, Lorelle clung to her father and Kiel with desperate fear.

The shei’dalins, surrounded by a thinner mist and a golden light, had been the first of the lost party Kieran and Kiel located. Both of the women had already healed each other’s wounds from the falling mountain, and rather than heading off blindly into the Mists, they’d decided to wait and send questing calls of Spirit out in every direction. Kiel had stumbled across one of those Spirit threads, and the two of them followed it to its origin. Together, the four Fey began combing the rubble in search of the Baristani family.

Many bells later, they found Lorelle and Sol, both completed covered by a fall of rocks that hid them from view. How they’d found them, Kieran wasn’t entirely sure, but he’d followed a sudden feeling that had taken him off in the right direction. Lorelle and Sol were both barely alive—hardly more than a few heartbeats from death, actually—and as the shei’dalins healed them, they said that someone or something in the Mists had been holding them to the Light.