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Mainstrait, utterly still.
    "Well?" The sorcerer spoke sharply. "Do you believe yourself capable of warding weather?"
    Anskiere glanced briefly at his adversary, and his reply held no rancour. "No."
    "Then what have you gained, Cloud-shifter, except enmity in the one inhabited place left open to your presence?"
    Anskiere regarded the ocean as though searching for something lost. He did not speak. And that quiet lack of response unsettled his escort as nothing had before. The sorcerer longed to lay rough hands on his charge, and shatter the stillness which clothed him. In a tone stripped by malice he said, "What bard will sing of you, with the blood of Tierl Enneth on your hands?"
    "What bard would have liberty to sing, should the Free Isles' Alliance be broken?" Anskiere removed his attention from the sea to the sorcerer. "Hear me," he said softly. "Not once did I promise to free the frostwargs."
    Tathagres' henchman reddened beneath that steady gaze. "Beware. The little girl will be made to suffer for your treason."
    Anskiere laughed. "Treason? Against whom? Tathagres?"
    "Against the Kielmark, Cloud-shifter. And against your sovereign lord, the King of Kisburn."
    Anskiere gestured impatiently. "I am no vassal of Kisburn's, to be called to heel like a dog. His ambitions will ruin him without any help from me."
    "What of the Kielmark?" The sorcerer reached out, and delicately plucked a tern's feather from a cranny in the rocks. "If you defy my liege and the frostwargs are not freed by your hand, recovery of your powers will rouse them to riot. To alter the weather, you must bring about destruction upon Cliffhaven. Your promise is now linked to your demise."
    "So is your threat." Anskiere stood straight as an ash spear. Dying sunlight glanced through the interlaced metal which capped his staff, unaltered by any trace of resonant force. Yet his assurance seemed complete as he said, "Dare you tell your mistress?"
    "Dare I?" The black sorcerer stiffened, and the quill crumpled like a flower petal between his fingers. "Tathagres is the King of Kisburn's tool. As you are." And he released the feather, letting it drift, broken, to the ground.
    Anskiere caught it as it fell. He turned its mangled length over in his hands, then slowly smoothed it straight. Without another word, he set off down the slope toward the sea.
    The pace he set was recklessly fast. Angrily the sorcerer followed. If Anskiere would not be ruled, his will would be broken by force, however distasteful the method. The sorcerer plunged down an embankment, flailing his arms for balance as the footing crumbled under him. Over a rattle of pebbles he said, "You have until dawn. After that, I have no choice but to inform Tathagres. When the child cries out in agony perhaps you will reconsider."
    Anskiere's knuckles whitened against the wood of his staff. But that was the only sign he heard the words at all.

 
    III Tempest
     
    Fuzzed by heat haze, night fell over Cliffhaven, and a reddened quarter moon dangled above Mainstrait, mirrored by ocean unmarred by waves or current. At the crest of a bluff overlooking the beach, Anskiere waited on a cluster of rocks, his staff against his shoulder. He had stood watch since sunset. Close by, the black sorcerer sat among the dune grass, irritably keeping his vigil. The heat had not lifted. The surrounding land seemed poisoned, throttled by a hush which silenced summer's chorus of crickets. Even the gnats were absent.
    The sorcerer blotted his sweating face, nagged by the feeling that the simplest of motions somehow violated the unnatural quiet. He shifted uncomfortably to ease cramped limbs. Grasses pricked through his robe, making him itch, and his flesh ached for rest and for the meals he had neglected. Yet while Anskiere remained on the rocks, the sorcerer had no choice but to stay with him.
    The moon set well after midnight. Overhead, the stars wheeled with imperceptible slowness until dawn at last paled the sky above the