“Yes.” Williams opened his eyes. “The light swept through the stronghold, and where it touched a soldier of the Hand, he stopped. Not died. Stopped, frozen in place, unable to lift a weapon or draw a breath. A hundred and twenty men, held motionless in the middle of the slaughter, their faces twisted in the shapes of the last thing they had meant to do.”“And the clan?” Sablen asked. “The students? The innocent?”“The light passed through them like wind through grass. It did not touch a single hair.” He looked at his hands. “I stood at the top of that tower, and I watched my people stand up from the floors where they had fallen. The wounded stopped bleeding. A woman who had taken a sword in the belly pressed her hand to her stomach and found nothing there. The dead remained dead, those who were already gone. But everyone who still breathed, the light healed.”“It heals too,” Maya said, awed.“It remembers what the clan was meant to be. A place where harm does not stand.” His voice cra

“I said, ‘Then come with an army. The Sentinel will be waiting.’” His lip curled faintly. “A bold thing, in retrospect, for a man who had just watched his entire clan nearly annihilated. But I was young, and she had frightened me, and I wished to frighten her back.”“Did it work?”“She laughed. Not cruelly. Almost with respect. She said, ‘You are very like him.’ And I said, ‘Like whom?’ And she said, ‘The boy. The one who will wake it.’” Williams’s amber eyes moved slowly across the table and came to rest on Thorne. “I did not understand her then. I think I do now.”The room was dead silent.“She knew?” Thorne said, his voice thin. “Eleven years ago? About me?”“She knew that someone would come. She did not know who.” Williams shook his head. “Veyra was a seer, among other things. It is possible she glimpsed a fragment of the future. The Hand collects seers the way other people collect coins.”“And Elvyn?” Maya asked. “Is she like her?”“I do not think so. Elvyn is clever and ruthless

Nobody died on the training ground. Several people spent the first hour wishing they had.The dawn came up hard and white over the Boiling River, and the frost lay so thick on the garden that every blade of grass cracked like glass underfoot. Thorne walked out of the dwelling with Dawnrender’s absence still strange at his hip, since he carried only the plain sword Master Adrian had lent him. The Aegis of the Thirteenth hung on his left arm, its thirteen silver leaves dull in the pale light. Behind him came Sablen, then Maya, then Cael Dross, then Breck, who was limping from the coals and had made it known, loudly and in detail, to everyone who would listen.Williams was already waiting in the center of the lawn. He wore the same plain dark tunic as the day before, and his silver-streaked hair was tied back. Kester stood a pace behind him, moving his left knee in slow, careful bends, the cost of the Sentinel still visible in his gait. Corwin and Adrian sat on their bench beneath the ea

“Reflecting force requires reflecting surface. Think of a still pond. A stone thrown into it makes ripples, but a mirror made of stone sends the force back the way it came.” Williams smiled. “That is the theory.”“And if the wall breaks?”“Then the force passes through, and everyone in front of the wall is injured. Or killed.”“That is wonderful,” Breck muttered.“You are welcome to stand at the back.”“I am at the back.”“Then you are welcome to stand further back.”They set up in formation on the open lawn: Thorne in front, Sablen and Maya flanking him, Cael and Breck a few paces behind. Kester stood fifty feet away with a heavy wooden mallet and an expression of grim apology.“I will strike the wall,” he said. “Gently at first.”“How gently?” Maya asked.“I will increase the force each time.”“Until?”“Until it breaks.”“That is not reassuring.”“No. But it is honest.”Thorne closed his eyes. In for four. Hold for four. Out for six. He reached down through the soles of his boots, t

“I see no difference.”They tied the blindfolds, and Kester took his place across the lawn with a bundle of wooden practice weapons. Thorne stood in darkness, feeling the silver thread hum at his wrist, feeling the others like candles in the dark.“Begin,” Williams said.A rush of air. Kester was moving. Thorne felt the threat before he heard it, a sharp spike of alarm from Cael on his right, flowing through the thread like a bell. He swung his wooden sword toward the sensation, caught Kester’s blade, and was surprised by how clearly he knew where it was.“Left!” Maya’s mind said, without words. Thorne turned and blocked a second strike. “Behind!” Sablen’s thought flashed through him, and he ducked, as a wooden staff whistled over his head.It was like dancing in the dark with six pairs of eyes. Each member of the team became a sense, a limb, a thought, and together they moved as one. Kester’s attacks, which would have struck any single fighter, found only empty air and parrying blade