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left a message.
    Where else could he be? Could
he have forgotten?
    In desperation, she walked all
the way to Perry Park, though it was little used in the wintertime. Seph was
nowhere to be seen, but she came upon the warriors Jack Swift and Ellen
Stephenson, drilling their ghost army in a secluded clearing in the woods.
    She found them by following
the sounds of combat. Jack had put up one of those wizard enclosures to keep
nosy people away, in the unlikely event that nosy people were out walking in
the woods in mid-December. But Madison was an elicitor. Magic and its illusions
didn't work on her. She just sponged it up, then it dribbled back out, totally
out of her control.
    There in the meadow was Jack
Swift, his long gold-red hair tied back with a leather strip, leading two dozen
warriors across the snowy field in a howling charge. To be met by Ellen
Stephenson and her two dozen, a bristling wall of swords and shields.
    There was no sign of Seph.
    It was a motley collection of
soldiers, with armor and weaponry drawn from two centuries of warfare. Their
weapons glittered in the frail winter sun, their breath was pluming into the
cold air. The warriors collided with a bone-shattering thud into a melee of
arms and legs and deadly weapons. Blood splattered across the snow, and vintage
curses and challenges in a half-dozen languages rang through the trees as
individual warriors tried to free themselves from the press of bodies so they
could use their swords.
    Jack extricated himself,
clearing a great space around him with his sword, Shadowslayer. The blade
flickered like a flame in the gloom under the trees. Ellen spun in under his
reach, her sword somehow finding an opening in his defenses. The flat of her
blade slammed into his ribs, raising a spray of snow.
    “A hit!” she crowed.
“A palpable hit. Do you yield?”
    “Barely palpable,” Jack growled, driving her back
furiously. Sparks flew as their blades collided and their heated bodies steamed
in the frigid air. Their boots churned the meadow into a thick pudding of mud
and ice.
    Madison was fascinated in
spite of herself. Tall, muscular Jack was a pleasure to watch any time. He and
Ellen were longtime dancing partners whose bodies moved to a savage melody no
one else heard.
    It was like a lifesize video
game, a gut-wrenching bout between the living and the dead. They might be
injured— even mortally during these
skirmishes—but everyone rose whole at the end of the day, if not without aches
and pains.
    Finally, Jack pivoted and
struck Ellen's sword a massive, two-handed blow, sending it flying out of her
hands. Jack came on, grinning, sword extended, backing Ellen into a tree.
“So, Warrior, do you yiel…hey!” he yelped as Ellen let fly
with her sling, and a fist-size rock struck him on the shoulder.
    Ellen hated to lose.
    Jack finally noticed Madison, lurking
in the fringes of the trees. “Madison! Where'd you come from?”
Side-stepping a tall warrior in buckskins who lunged at him with a hatchet, he
raised his hand. “Hold!” he shouted.
    The fighting dwindled into
late hits and skirmishes, then subsided.
    The spell was broken. Madison
jammed her hat down over her ears. “Don't let me interrupt.”
    Jack and Ellen looked at one
another, as if each hoped the other would speak. Madison didn't approve of any
of the frenetic preparations going on in Trinity, and they knew it. The gifted
were a club from which Madison was excluded.
    Jack cleared his throat.
“We're, you know, drilling. In case the other Wizard Houses try to break
into the sanctuary.”
    Madison hunched her shoulders
like she could disappear into her coat. “They're not coming here.
They wouldn't.”
    “They're fighting other
places,” Ellen pointed out. “Kidnapping sorcerers to help in the war.
Stockpiling weapons.”
    True. But. Madison jerked her
head at the motley army. “If the Roses do come—which they won't—what are you going to do? Do you
really think you'll be able to hold