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Even so, the next , and Udinaas suspected that the Warlock King and his advisers, clever as they were, would walk into that treaty like blind elders What worried his borne on the tide, the peoples of two kingdo into deep, deadly waters

Three slaves from the Buhn household trotted past, bundles of bound seaweed on their shoulders One called out to Udinaas ‘Feather Witch will cast tonight, Udinaas! Even as the council gathers’

Udinaas began folding the net over the drying rack ‘I will be there, Hulad’

The three left the strand, and Udinaas was alone onceup the slope towards the outer wall’s postern gate

Finished with the net, he placed his tools in the shtened

He heard the flap of wings behind hiht so long after the sun had set A pale shape skione

Udinaas blinked, straining to see it again, telling himself that it was not what it had appeared to be Not that Anything but that He , he quickly sketched an invoking sigil into the sand with the sht hand to his face, first two fingers reaching to his eyes to pull the lids down for a brief moment, as he whispered a prayer, ‘Knuckles cast, Saviour look down upon ht Errant! Look down upon us all!’

He lowered his right hand and dropped his gaze to the syone!’

The sigh of wind, the , Udinaas bolted upright Snatching up the basket, he ran for the gate

The King’s Meet was a vast, circular cha up to a central peak lost in se, the outer to witness the council Next, and seated on backed benches, were the matrons, the wedded and oed on hides A pace before theth to form a central pit of packed earth where sat the warriors At the very centre was a raised dais, fifteen paces across, where stood the Warlock King, Hannan Mosag, with the five hostage princes seated around hi outward

As Trull and Fear descended to the pit to take their place a Of average height and build, Hannan Mosag seelance His features were even, a shade paler than ave him a perpetually surprised look The power, then, was not physical It lay entirely in his voice Rich and deep, it was a voice that deard to volu in silence, as he did now, Hannan Mosag’s claiship seemed a mere accident of placee chauely be was no different fro the absence of trophies – for his trophies, after all, were seated around hiated chiefs

Arevealed another indication of his power His shadow reared behind hiripped in both gauntleted hands Hel’s shadoraith bodyguard never slept There was, Trull reflected, nothing bemused in its wide stance

Fearlocks were capable of conjuring such a creature when drawing from the life-force of their own shadows Kurald Eilant sentinel

Trull’s gaze fell to those of the hostages facing him The K’risnan More than representatives of their fathers, they were Hannan Mosag’s apprentices in sorcery Their names had been stripped from them, the new ones chosen in secret by their master and bound with spells One day, they would return to their tribes as chiefs And their loyalty to their king would be absolute

The hostage froest of the six tribes, the Merude had been the last to capitulate They had alwaysone hundred thousand, forty thousand of which were blooded or soon-to-be-blooded warriors, they should by right have held pre-e the Edur More warriors, more ships, and ruled by a chief with enerations Doed to the Merude