“This is what I wao show you,” Jordan said finally, uning the dirty cloth that covered the mahat he’d kept hidden for so long and showing it to Taz for the first time.

  The archmage didn’t look at the cursed thing, though. Instead, he simply stared deeper into Jordan’s eyes, searg for something. The silence lingered for almost a minute before the ageless man said, “Why didn’t y this to me earlier?”

  “Because I wasn’t sure I could trust you,” Jordan said, mostly truthfully. “Not after… well, you know…”

  The truth was that it wasn’t the way that this man had ended Sister Ahout a sed thought. It was the way that he tio sniff around and ask probing questions. Taz khat Jordan was hiding something from him; he just didn’t know it was the book. So, Jordan was him this as a gambit to try to muddy the waters. While he doubted the archmage would be happy to discover that an artifact of the Lich had been smuggled into his domain, he was certain that he would be much more upset if he found out that Jordan had been hiding a book that told the future all this time.

  Of course, it was also hard to trust Tazuranth, givehings the book had been hinting at tely. Jordan pushed those thoughts from his mind, though, as he met the other man’s gaze, lest he somehow sniff out Jordan’s stray thoughts.

  “After all this time you still think I mean to hurt you?” Taz asked with a cold smile, pretending to be hurt. “You’re my apprentice, of a sort. I could never do that. Besides, now that the Collegium has fallen, you might be the st mage left on the ti beside me. When I asd a back the darkness, I’ll need you to refound the school for me.”

  “I… what?” Jordan gasped, his mind reeling. “The Collegium fell? But how? I thought that it was holding up better than expected?”

  This was hardly the first time they’d talked about the pce. For a time, it had been flourishing, at least acc to Taz. His divination spells had shown him a valley of lights, which had bee a bastion against the darkhat had swept across the rest of the nd, and now all that seemed to have reversed, and somehow, the ageless man didn’t seem particurly upset by the news.

  “It was,” Taz nodded, “But the Lileashed some neon that undid the very rules of magic itself. Things fell apart rather quickly after that.”

  “But that shouldn’t be possible,” Jordan answered, uain if that was true but even more uain as to whether or not Taz cared very much about what he was saying. Jordan had certainly never been taught such a thing, but then, his education was far from plete. “Is that what ihe moon, then?”

  Taz had reached down to pick up the corroded manacle. He was busy studying it, but as soon as Jordan spoke, his gaze lifted back up to meet Jordan’s eyes. “How do you know about that?”

  “You s-see that something has happened, even without your fancy telescope,” Jordan stammered, realiziipped his hand a little too much. “There hasn’t been a full moon in over a month now, and there’s a growing stain in the lower quarter.”

  In truth, it was barely more than a dark smudge through the naked eye, but he’d seen much more detailed drawings in the book. Though all it would say is that ‘the Lich struck a blow that could not be healed,’ as it showed off the worm-like cerous growths that were spreading on the moon, which was either the body of the goddess or the pce where she lived, depending on which page of the book he read.

  “It might be reted,” Taz said finally. “It’s hard to say. She hasn’t spoken to me sihe i. She may yet recover from it, or this might be the first sign that I’m about to repce her. We should know soon iher case.”

  Soon was, of course, an impossible measurement when dealing with Tazuranth. He might mean a few months or a few decades from now, so Jordan simply ighe statement.

  “So what will you do then?” Jordan asked.

  “I will be patient, as always. I will study this bauble you’ve brought and see if we find some way to turn it to our advantage, and I will learn what I so we be ready when the moment arises.”

  Some version of this was Taz’s ao almost everything, and Jordan fought to avoid rolling his eyes. It said exactly nothing, which robably exactly what the ageless wizard meant to say.

  “Do you think this will be useful to you?” Jordan said finally, gesturing toward the manacle, “Or do you think we should destroy it before the Lich uses it to track us down?”

  “Through the barrier?” Taz ughed. “If it manage a spell that leads it past the edge of the world, I would be very impressed. No, it should be safe enough. It’s a crude thing, but it certainly gives me some insight into the magic it prefers to use. This is a hentarctiution. Very basic stuff. It tells me that we might be misreading this situation altogether. Perhaps what we face is no mastery of sorcery but some other kind of aberration.”

  Tazuranth started an impromptu lecture ah then. Sometimes, when you wanted an ahe man would dodge and weave avoiding anything that might appear clusive, but if your discussion happeo tread into magical theory, he might spend an hour, or even two discussion the minutia of a history, and the merit of different theoretical approaches.

  Jordan paid attention as best he could. At times, he would try to returopic back to the fate of the Magica Collegium, but the most detailed ahat Jordan could get from Taz was that “Sg spells became unreliable several months ago and only retly started tain.”

  Even that wasn’t enough to hold Jordan’s attention, though, and his attention began to wander, he stood up and wandered around the room instead. He still answered Taz’s questions as best he could, and even tried to ask some semi intelligent follow-up questions where they were appropriate, as Jordan struggled to remember his a runiguages.

  Still, as he worked his way around the room, he noticed that the a mage’s telescope ointed down toward the bead not up at the sky where it usually was. He didn’t approach it directly, and he definitely didn’t look through the eyepiece. That would have shown that he noticed. Instead, Jordan tinued his slow loop around the room, looking at different odds and ends while he discussed the nature of binding rituals on u spirits with the e.

  Still, when he was in the right spot, across from the wide picture window, he looked down and he part of the beach the telescope oi. Jordan immediately reized it as the pce where the childreheir practices and tourneys wheide was lht now, the tide was high, so the sandy strip was almost pletely uer, but still, the fact that the man had been watg… It was the first firmation of some of the things the book had been hinting at for a while now.

  Jordan tried to push the thought from his mind, at least until he got back to the little farm he called home, but it distracted him until Taz had finally had enough of the versation. Then the ageless wizard assigned him some light reading from three massive tomes about the nature of rune stru and the him on his way as the st sun was heading toward the horizon.

  Though the meeting had rgely been b, it had given Jordan much to think about. Really, he should have been obsessed with the school. If he’d returhere as he’d po do so often, he’d be dead right now.

  Or maybe I would have mao turide somehow, he thought to himself. As if one more apprentice could have done anything useful.

  In the end, it wasn’t the Collegium’s fall, or even the moon’s wound, that he thought about, though. It was the children. He spent the whole walk back w that what he’d read was going to e to pass. It almost had to at this point. There was no way around it if Tazuranth was studying them discreetly from a distance. He really was going to use them in some sort of twisted experiment. Maybe not soon, but someday. The book had been very clear about that.

  In a pce where time has little meaning, someday is forever, but someday, just the same, the mage that covets their light will try to find a way to take it for himself. Given that he is entirely uable, such eventualities are unavoidable.

  However, the thoughts never left him, even when he came home to find the older children already cooking a fish stew. Still, he tried to keep the worried expression off his face for their sake. Instead, he listeo them as they told him about their day. They were a rge and unruly tribe at this point, and he was likely to be the only parent they ever had.

  One by one, between different fights and bouts of bickering, eae of the twelve light-eyed children told him about their day, and he nodded, asking questions as he preteo be ied and ehey’d all spent the earliest part of the m looking for a lost mb oheir drills had been do dawn, of course. That was a devotion that never wavered, even if Brother Faerbar hadn’t been around in more than a year now.

  After that, though, they’d gone in half a dozen different dires to help the good people of Sanctuary and earn their keep. Toman and his brother had mended s, ara and some of the irls had helped the vilge’s wise woman gather herbs that were just ing into bloom for the season, and Reggie and some of the other boys had helped to weed the fields. All in all, it roductive day, and it might have sounded like a huhers they’d had sihey’d e to this strange pbsp;

  Ihe weather was better than average here, and most days were cool and clear, so they really did start to blend together. In the end, as they all ate, everyo the ce to tell their story. The only one who didn’t say a word was youhat was to be expected. He’d talk if Jordan asked what he’d dooday, but there was o do so. The young man had almost certainly spent the day praying and training just like he always had.

  He was frighteningly intense for a boy of eleven. Teically, he was almost two years older than that now, but the boy didn’t age beh the barrier the same as everyone else, which made his focus and maturity all the stranger. Jordan had never pnned on being a parent, aainly not to twelve children, so he had no idea what to do about that sort of behavior; in the end, he resolved simply to ig in the face er issues, though he khat wasn’t healthy either.