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in her voice. But there was a remote expression in her dark eyes, as though she was looking at something beyond the lilac walk and the castle walls. “I doubt the Margravine will have any success trying the wards again, now that you are here.”
    Balisan bowed. “So do you come into the open now, or remain hidden?”
    Syrica shook her head. “The Margravine is stronger than I am—and the only way the spell can be undone before the hundred years are up is to kill me. If she finds me she will certainly try, which is why I have stayed in hiding—and only acted when there was extreme need,” she added, with a glimmer of a smile for Sigismund, “to save you from the Margravine’s ill-wishing.” She looked back to Balisan. “It is vital that my presence here continues to remain secret, even from the King and his steward.”
    Balisan bowed again, his palms pressed together. “As you wish,” he said, “so shall it be. You will reveal yourself when the time is right. Meanwhile, we shall not do anything that would draw attention to your hiding place.”
    They waited as the white figure faded back into shadow, leaving them alone in the night. Sigismund wanted to ask why Syrica was so sure that Balisan’s presence would keep the Margravine at bay, but something in the quality of his companion’s silence daunted him. He waited, this time without fidgeting, until the dark figure beside him stirred.
    “Farsighted,” Balisan murmured, as though thinking aloud. “And patient as well, to maintain such a vigil. All the same,” he added as they walked back to the castle, “even allowing for the lady’s presence, I think I will continue to ward you against dreams.”

Lessons
    S igismund lay awake for a long time that night while the events of the day chased each other through his head: a master-at-arms who could walk in dreams and who spoke openly of magic, a faie hidden within the castle walls—and another who was his enemy because, like Syrica, she believed he was the prince who would undo the hundred-year sleep.
    “And I want to,” Sigismund whispered to the night. It was the sort of quest he had always dreamed of, like those pursued by Parsifal and Gawain and the rest of King Arthur’s knights. But gradually his thoughts turned to his mother. He had been so young when she died that all his memories of her were blurred, and now he found it impossible to call up a recollection of her face or voice. Had she been kind and beautiful, like Syrica, or grave and formal, like his fading memories of his father? In his heart Sigismund felt sure that she must have been like Syrica, only less remote.
    They say it was poison that killed her.
Again the whisper out of childhood memory, overlain by Syrica’s voice, soft and sad in the twilit garden:
It did not save your mother when she would not raise you to serve the Margravine’s will.
    Did she know? Sigismund wondered again, staring into the night. Did my mother know that defiance would mean her death? He rolled over, punching the pillow into a new position. She must have been brave, Sigismund thought, and felt his throat close. He wished he could remember her face.
    He thought he might lie awake until dawn, mulling over everything that had happened and been said, but tiredness crept in and he fell into a heavy sleep. He woke to early sunshine filtering through the faded rose of the bed curtains with their pattern of briars worked into the brocade with heavy silver thread. Sigismund reached out and touched one of the flowers, studying his safe, familiar world through half-open eyes. Annie said the bed curtains were shabby and old-fashioned and should be replaced, but Sigismund liked them. Sometimes, when he lay close to the fabric, he could smell the faintest hint of rose perfume, like a memory of summer caught in the weave.
    This morning the elusive drift of rose mingled with the sunshine and when Sigismund closed his eyes there was a flash behind them—a sharp image of bare,