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prince. We await your orders.”
    “Pay our hostess,” Raidan directed as he exited the common room into the yard. The stable lad holding his mount’s reins bowed his head as the prince took charge of the horse.
    When the entire party had mounted, Raidan led the group out of the inn yard onto the road leading north. He frowned at the dark clouds bulking on the horizon, then looked back over his shoulder to see the innkeeper standing in the doorway, her face a mask of worry. Raidan couldn’t help but sympathize with her.
    I have children too , he thought.
    He turned to look at Kasai, riding beside him. “We must hurry. This has taken far longer than I’d anticipated. I want to get back to Sendai by tomorrow night.”
    “Yes, your Highness,” Kasai replied.
    Raidan dug in his heels and his horse surged into a canter. Together, the group of riders raced northward, into the storm.
    ***
    The prince peered through the eyepiece of his scope at a smear of fluid staining a small glass plate and sighed in frustration.
    Nothing!
    The samples he had collected in Tono had yet to yield any clues to the nature of the mysterious essence he knew must be the cause of the disease. He pushed aside the scope and rubbed his tired eyes.
    Could it be my collection methods? I followed, to the letter, the recommendations of Nazarius. No, that can’t be the problem. What about the means of preservation of the specimens?
    He picked up a specimen jar and examined the blob of tissue floating within.
    Perhaps. Vinegar, wine, salt. All well and good for foodstuffs, but for fragile tissue samples? Unfortunately, there isn’t anything else available, unless I incur the considerable expense of buying preservation spells from a mage, which is impractical.
    Could the problem lie with my instruments? Perhaps they are not sensitive enough.
    Raidan gazed at the microscope, a delicate construction of brass and carefully ground lenses. The finest maker of scientific and navigational tools in all of the Arrisae Islands had custom crafted it to Raidan’s specifications. The scope had worked beautifully on other things: the minute structure of a butterfly’s wing, the round disks that floated in the blood of both people and animals.
    No, there has to be some other reason, something I’ve not thought of yet.
    Raidan stood and stretched, then poured himself a glass of wine from the carafe on his work table. He took a sip, then walked to the window of his study and looked out at the small, walled garden below. The carefully tended plants had been the pride and joy of his mother. Taya, his wife, looked after it now. The little garden had always been a sanctuary of sorts, filled with happy childhood memories.
    If only those carefree days could be recaptured , Raidan thought.
    Five days ago, he had stood before the full council and had given his report on the situation in Tono. Afterward, Lady Odata immediately begged permission to return home and the king had granted it. She and her people had departed Sendai that same day.
    Yesterday, a rider had arrived from Tono with a message from Odata—the Soldaran Army advanced northward at a leisurely pace, as if deliberately mocking the elves. Keizo had remarked that since the humans brimmed with such confidence over their superior numbers, they apparently felt no need to hurry.
    Tonight, he, Keizo, and Sen Sakehera planned to meet privately in order to finalize the war plans. All was essentially in readiness. The army was assembled and the Home Guard in place. Only the role of the mages remained to be finalized.
    Keizo had insisted on using mages, and after some serious thought, Raidan had agreed. It made sense. Very few humans were capable of wielding magic, and those that could did not command the same force and power as even a modestly trained elven mage. From what Raidan knew about human magic, most of it seemed based on little more than superstition, illusion, and outright trickery.
    Magic would give them a badly