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meddling. Hard to stomach, that was. Of everything Barl made, her Weather map was the most beautiful. It had enchanted him even when he’d been bludgeoned to moaning stillness by her Weather Magic… but now only a few scraps of its beauty remained.
    Even though he’d come here to worrit and brood, he smiled at the spacious, grass-covered Dingles and the scattering of tiny untouched towns and villages. They were frozen, of course. Trapped between heartbeats, a forever reminder of the moment Barl’s Wall fell, and how that fall sundered the ancient marriage of weather and world.
    He reached down to touch the Weather map’s nearest edge. Just to give thanks. To acknowledge Barl and all she’d done. For six hundred years she’d kept them safe and well. What happened ten years ago weren’t her fault. His fingertip made contact, lightly—and a sparking of power leapt through his blood where the Weather Magic slept fast, undisturbed for years.
    Shocked, he pulled his hand back.
    No. That ain’t possible. Barl’s magic died. Didn’t me and Dath and the rest of us feel her magic die? Didn’t we see it die when Morg brought down her Wall?
    Heart thudding hard again, blood woken and singing, he touched the Weather map a second, cautious time. Let his fingers rest there as he held a long, deep breath. Yes. He could feel something. Barl weren’t quite dead yet.
    Or… was it nowt but an echo? A taunting from the past, from a brief time when he’d been lord of this place, Lur’s weather, its magic—a king in everything but name.
    Not that I ever wanted that, mind. Not that I did it for myself.
    No. He’d done it for Gar, a good man. For their unlikely friendship. To thwart a man he didn’t like. For reasons that mayhap didn’t matter any more. He’d done it and he’d paid the price. And unlike some others, he’d lived to never tell that tale.
    Oddly, the desperation of those dark days had mostly faded. He could remember being terrified. He recalled how trapped and put-upon he’d felt. There’d been panic. Confusion. An endless wail of
why me?
    Of course, he’d been young then. Fractious and bloody-minded. He was older now. A married man, a father twice over, reluctant head of Lur’s Mage Council and sought-after voice on its General Council. Defender of the law in Justice Hall. He’d never wanted to be a leader, but ten years on still nobody asked what he wanted. Didn’t matter he never cared for it, he had the knack of bein’ in charge. And after the Wall fell, and folk were so fratched and disordered, even the Doranen, they needed someone to boss ’em. To chivvy ’em down the road in the right direction. Besides… after how he’d saved ’em no-one wanted to let him go. They refused to believe they could get along without him. So he’d stayed in Dorana City, even though he was desperate for the clean ocean. It was the only way he could think of to make his amends to Gar.
    But it don’t make me king, no matter what that ole fart Darran says
.
    Any road, it weren’t a bad life. How could he call it a bad life when he had Dathne and Rafel and little Deenie to love? When he had good friends like Pellen Orrick, and a purpose worth serving? An ungrateful bastard he’d be, if he sat on his arse whingin’ on how he didn’t have the whole world his own way. That’d make him no better than that dead sea-slug Willer.
    And if ever he woke from dreams of snowstorms, of gentle rain falling and the turbulence of sprouting seeds, of Weather Magic like boiling wine scouring his veins, well… no life got itself lived without there weren’t some small regrets.
    Beneath his resting fingers Barl’s map whispered and hummed. Not just an echo, but a real sizzle of power. Breathing out a slow sigh he drew back his hand a second time, then closed his eyes. Time surged like stormswell, and surging with it a single, searing memory: his first WeatherWorking.
    He watched his shaking fingers draw the sigils as a voice he