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hoops. Do you think I’ll need these rubber balls? My silk scarves, I’ll definitely need those—oh, and my bandoliers …”
    Giving up on the half-elf, Jace turned to face the tall mystic. Ebano Saham stood at the center of the whirlwind, tapping the ends of his fingers together. When he saw Jace staring, the willowy man smiled and made a graceful gesture.
    “Ebano, are you even going to pack?” Jace asked.
    “Pack?” The mystic stared at him, uncomprehending.
    Jace sighed and tried again. “Pack, Ebano. Clothing in bag? To travel?” He mimicked the action, holding up his knapsack. “You know?”
    “Ah.” Smiling, Ebano folded his arms into his sleevesand bowed slightly. “This one saw stars moving, writing on the sand of forever. All things one, all place here, all time now.” He nodded, reciting the lines as he’d been taught and leaving Jace even more confused than before.
    “Ebano, what does that mean?”
    The mystic’s purple eyes sparkled. “Packed before.”

C HAPTER F OUR
    he woods were dark and cold. A rich fall wind pressed the branches and tossed the hems of the circus folks’ traveling cloaks. The four of them had left the circus heading south around noon, and by dinner time they’d found a small path with a broken sign marking the way to the village. Jace knelt to brush the dirt away from the placard with one hand. “Angvale,” he read, looking up again at the faded path. “This must be the road to the village.”
    “Not very well traveled, is it?” Cerisse pushed back some thorns and creeping vines that had grown over the edges of the path. “This must have been wide enough for wagons once, but now there’s hardly room for us to go one at a time.”
    “The correct path is not always the easy one.” Ebano fluttered one hand behind Cerisse’s ear and pulled out a violet. He handed it to her with a bow.
    Jace shook his head and sighed.
    “At least it’s clear enough to travel.” Belen’s voice was soft, hardly rising above the whistle of wind. She looked up at the scraps of gray, cloudy sky visible through the rustling branches of the tall trees. “We should hurry. It looks like that storm will start soon, and we’ll need a place to camp out of the rain.”
    Cerisse went first, the others following her surefooted steps. Slowly, the storm gathered, bringing the false twilight of gray clouds. “Mysos said that there were still ruins where the village stood. If we find them, maybe some of the buildings are in good enough shape to provide shelter. We can start our investigation in the morning, when it’s drier.”
    “Is that going to bother you?” Jace asked Belen. “Staying in the village?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t feel anything here, Jace, other than nerves. No memories, no flashes of insight. Nothing. It’s as if I’ve never been here before.” Ahead of them, Cerisse pushed aside a long, tangled spray of vines falling from a low-hanging tree limb, and Belen suddenly fell silent. There, beyond the brushy limb, lay the fallen village of Angvale.
    Beyond, the moss-covered stubble of small buildings lay nestled among rocky outcroppings in a lovely forest dell. The houses had been made of gray stone, with thatchedroofs and thin cobblestone steps leading from one to another down twisting, soft loam paths. A little brook with an arched stone bridge marked the center of the village square, where the people might have held market on sunny days. Even ruined, the village still held a certain beauty. Today, however, the storm blotted out the sun and made Angvale look somber, spoiled, and a little bit eerie.
    The walls of the buildings had been torn apart, roofs pushed over as if by some mighty wind. Through the remnants of the thatching, long rend marks could be seen, as if a row of four massive swords had slashed through wood, straw, and all. The paths were ruined, both overgrown and caved in by a great weight pressing down on them. The stone bridge had fallen to the