A/N: A. Lee: There is indeed something wrong with Persinorr- but it won’t be revealed right away.

Chapter 3

Night of Singing Blood

"The time comes to face the assassin, and the time comes to run. Only those who would live learn to distinguish between the two."

-From Bmer Hosilin's Tumblao Corra, or Book of War.

Herran sighed and rubbed his head, staring at the book again. It seemed that no matter how much he read, he could learn no more than the paltry few facts that Persinorr had given him.

Frosthounds were creatures of the spirit-void, and they could be summoned to Arcadia along "conduits." Herran had recognized the term, but he had never bothered to learn the magical theory that backed it, and without belief in the theory the magic would not work. It was simply too convoluted and dependent upon other knowledge he did not possess to hold his awareness. He had moved on rapidly to studying those books that might offer him a little more concrete information.

But there was almost none. The frosthound's bite caused intense cold, and could fester like an unclean wound if not treated by magic. Herran rubbed absently at his hand, glad that the pain had finally caused him to use the magic on it.

And they were cousins to a kind of creature called the firehound, that could also be summoned, and whose effect was also deadly. The book had a picture of a firehound, a well-rendered one- or so Herran had to assume- that resembled the frosthound save for the color of its coat, which was red and covered with shifting, flickering patterns of gold light.

He decided to watch out for them, and to direct any who saw them to destroy them on sight, and went back to reading again.

The texts disagreed on how long frosthounds could be bound, what strength of will was needed to bind them, how long the conduit could be held open, what would happen to a frosthound whose mage-master was killed before it could be sent back to the void, why they took the form they did, and if they were intelligent or not. Herran's head was filled with conflicting opinions at the end of the reading, so many that he was almost beginning to wish that he had never read anything. He sat back and pressed his palms to his temples, his eyes closed as he sorted through his thoughts and tried to decide if he should be doing something else instead of this.

But it was the only thing he could think of to do, the only duty he had. He had spoken with Gercom again and sent him the money, thanking him for the messenger. Gercom had been smug about that, Herran remembered with a slight smile. He had set watchers over the dead guard's house- Faersan, that was his name- to alert him if anyone should approach and try to harm the Emaluans. The date for Erlenth's execution was set. Quirrin had been warned off training assassin again. Everyone was content with Lapida's punishment. There was still nothing that he could do about the escaped assassin, who had appeared in the Council building and gone just as suddenly.

Nothing, except this.

But his mind was numb now, and thus drifting, as if drawn to this idea as the stars were drawn to the depths of space. He was thinking about Tandra again, seeing her face when she looked up at him as he held her, or the night before last when she had come to him with love like a pain or a disease inside her.

Herran knew the pain well. He was feeling it himself, and had been for years. He could love her, could look at her and imagine, but he could never marry her. And he would never take her as a casual lover, though he had had a few moments of weakness concerning that, and he suspected Tandra had as well. She was too important for that. He was hoping that Persinorr or someone like him would win back the part of her heart that she had given him and that he had no right to possess, so that she could love him if she wished, but marry and raise children with someone else. She had often spoken, with a certain wistful longing, of how much she would like children of her own blood.

Children Herran would never have.

It occurred to him that he should make provision, in case he was killed violently one of these days, for the inheritance of the Turnlong lands. Either that, or insure that all the lands were Claimed by someone other than him, so that it would be in good hands and not simply left desolate by the death of its blood-lord.

Yes. That was something he could do, something useful, unlike this useless wondering and wishing for something that would never happen, by his own stronger will and his oath. Herran jumped to his feet and move further back in the library, where he kept his journal and his other private papers, including the documents that proved the heritage of the Turnlong line and the inheritance of the lands that belonged to them.

This library was much smaller than the great underground vault of the Archives where the Esar ruled, but he was far more comfortable in it. It had been the place where Liant stored his books and those papers he was wary of anyone else finding, from detailed plans for magics he thought too terrible to use to stories that he had preferred, gentle, lyrical alfar tales that no one would ever have believed he read. Herran had taken it over. It was reachable only by ward, and he had to be willing to work that ward to get here. There was no way that anyone else could get in or force him to take them to it.

Herran had almost reached the back when he heard a sound behind him that made his heart freeze in disbelief.

A footfall.

He turned, the book about frosthounds still held loosely in his hand, and saw something like a shadow flicker across the opposite wall.

He doused the lamp at once, with no more than a thought. Everything in this room was linked to the Councilmaster of Rowan. He could light or extinguish the lamps with a thought, cause the shelves to topple for him, find what he needed...

And command all the wards that he would ever need to fight an enemy.

But he did not know what the shadow-creature was, really, or how to fight it, and he would prefer to stand in darkness, where it could not reach him, until he had figured more of those things out.

Panting, in near-darkness save for the flicker of auralight here and there, visible to his eyes by nightsight, Herran waited.

He felt magic at last, but he did not smell it. By that, he knew it for divine, the only kind of magic that has no smell. He grimaced, and knelt, shielding his body and the aura of his body in the larger shadow and aura of a shelf.

A priest of Suulta was here, or someone else who could wield the power of the White Lady.

He waited, but the power did nothing for long moments, simply hovering in the air. Then he heard the sound of soft paper crackling, and smelled smoke.

Someone was burning his private papers.

Or trying to. The paper in this room was wound with the same spells that had existed for centuries, binding everything else in the chamber and sinking deeper and deeper.

Everything in the room obeyed Herran. The paper would not burn until and unless he told it to.

But that meant that the attacker would recognize the magic sooner or later, and know that he was still in the room. Herran began planning to deal with that eventuality, reaching up to touch a chain that hooked a book to the shelf and unhooking it with a thought and a tug.

The chained book lifted in the air at his silent command and drifted over towards the place where someone was trying to light a fire and now audibly cursing over his lack of success.

The book waited for a long moment, until Herran was sure that the intruder was consumed in his failed task and would not look up. Then he clenched one hand into a fist and tilted it, holding the image of what he wanted to happen firmly in his mind.

The book swooped down, and he heard a thump as it closed around the head of its victim. There was a loud cry, in contrast to the soft nature of the sound that had come before, and then there was silence again, pure and absolute. But it was a different kind of silence again, the kind that comes just after the predator has sprung, when it is lying still and licking its lips.

The silence of the full belly, when everything else in the forest is too terrified to make any sound at all.

Herran lifted his hand, and the book came back to him. It wanted to settle on his shoulder, like a hunting falcon, but he directed it back to the shelf with a shudder. Then he called for the lamp, and gazed at the book in grim silence.

Looking at it like that, seeing the dark blood that coated its pages and knowing that he had put it there, was part of the penance and the price that he paid. He flinched and bowed his head a little as he saw the pages of the book ruffle, eager to hunt again the moment he would permit it to.

If he would let it.

Herran knew he would. It was tools like this that he relied on, more than anything else but his crystal gift and the abilities that he had developed in the arena of the Game. More than loyal friends. More than all the wards in the world, as effective as they were, and as much as he counted on the magic.

More than Tandra.

Damn it, why would she not leave his head tonight? Herran thought of her often, of course, but not always like this. This rose and fell in cycles, brought on by the arguments they would have about marriage. There were years when he saw nothing but her dedication to Rowan, and admired her as nothing but the Captain of the Guards and a player of the Game who could play it very well for someone to whom it was not life. And there were times like this, when he admired her beauty as much as anything else, when he thought of what it might be like to marry her.

With a sigh, he turned back to the inheritance papers and began to check again, as he had often checked, that there was no possible way he could have living relatives. He did not think so; the Turnlongs had always been a small family, and there had not been more than one child for the past three generations. But he still hoped. He would like to leave the lands to one of his blood.

Since he could not leave it to a child...

He would like to find a cousin, or an aunt, or an uncle, who could take it over, or descendants of those written on the paper.

Again and again, Herran’s fingers ran over the lines that bound him to his father and mother, his father to his own parents, his grandfather to his parents, and so on back and back, all the way to the recording of the family as a family of high blood, when Arbleron Turnlong had carried the name into the ranks of heroes. Herran stared at those names, the very earliest, more than two thousand centuries ago, and ran his fingers lightly over them, imagining them, what hey must have been like.

Arbleron, son of Galaho Turnlong and Xankush Deerfriend, brother of Oriela, husband of Rohera Daycloud, father of Denion.

Then the record was gone, lost in the silence of the Silver Unicorn Empire that had fallen over Arcadia for a million years of slavery.

Arbleron had done his part in fighting that menace, swearing himself as a Killsworn after the fall of Rowan to the unicorns, one who showed no mercy to the silverini and rushed into battle against them without bothering to defend his own life. Killsworns had lived no more than five years at the most. Arbleron had lived more than a thousand, and then fought in the Battle of the Song of Swords that saw the ending of the Frigid Waste's freedom, and then gone north with the death Elwens who had tried to help the curalli stay free and had failed.

And then had vanished.

There was no death date marked for him.

Herran touched the question mark there and closed his eyes, for a moment feeling a profound connection with his ancestor, who had loved Rowan with such a fierce passion that he could not exist save as living death when she was gone, killing eternally in her memory...

And then he knew that he could not be Arbleron, could never be Arbleron. Arbleron had had no room in his heart for anything else, had never said that he would go back to his wife when she betrayed him and fled to the unicorns. Herran had Rowan in his heart, but there were other things there as well.

Chemilli.

Tandra.

He stroked the page again and struggled to keep from closing his eyes and listening for her voice, struggled to keep from wishing she was here, that he could touch her shoulder and reassure himself as well as her with that simple gesture.

"Herran?"