“And Garen Demont is the son?” Lia asked, sitting up straight and leaning in.

“He is one of the younger sons. Gravely wounded at Maseve and imprisoned instead of butchered – which one might attribute to many reasons, some of which may involve the Medium. He escaped after his injuries healed and fled to another country. Dahomey, I think.” He sat up, his eyes twinkling. “There is one story about him that I particularly admire. After Maseve, he joined the service of some foreign king and won many battles. One summer, he was visiting an abbey in a distant land and one of his cousins arrived, for they are cousins to our king through marriage. This cousin had fought against his Family at Maseve. Well, Garen drew his sword and nearly beheaded the man right then and there. Yes, in the middle of the Abbey grounds! Everyone gawked, expecting to see blood spilled. Then he paused, spat on the ground, and said, ‘Though you had no mercy for my father and brother, I will grant mercy to you.’”

“That was very generous of him,” Lia said, wide-eyed.

“An act of clemency that made him practically as famous as his father. Rumor has it, Lia, that he is back from fighting foreign wars, that he has come to raise an army to topple the king who killed his father. The thought of Sevrin Demont’s son, like his father revived, coming to our realm has the whole kingdom ablaze with a thousand different rumors. So this may be rumor only. He may still be leagues and leagues away serving a foreign king. But from what I heard the sheriff’s men say, they are not treating it as an idle report. The full host of the king’s army musters and marches on Winterrowd. As I told you before, there will be another slaughter.”

Lia was desperate to see the armiger, tell him what she had learned. “Why will they be slaughtered?”

“No one has defeated the king in twenty years of battles since Maseve, although many have tried. His battle flags bring fear to his enemies, for he flaunts the flags of his foes amidst his own standard. No army who has faced him, not even Sevrin Demont himself, has won. From what the soldiers were muttering in their cups last night, only the younger knights and squires are joining Demont. The experienced ones, the ones who have fought for the king all these years, are paid and fed. They know his kind of war. Let me say again that there are but few, if any, knight-mastons among them.”

“I need to go,” Lia said, gathering up her cloak and shaking the grass off it.

“Lia,” Duerden said, shifting awkwardly, then rose with her. “Can I ask you something first?”

“What is it?”

He fidgeted with his sleeve, tugging it taut. “When you said you would dance with me at the Whitsun Fair…I want you to know that…you realize that I would have told you all this anyway. You need not make me any promises. I would…I should like to dance with you…but I do not want you to feel coerced.”

Lia stared at him for a moment. “That was not a question.”

He swallowed. “I guess you are right.”

“I have a question for you then. Why do you only greet the girls at the abbey?”

“I…what…you mean…I greet everyone…”

“No you do not. I have seen you. We can be walking together and talking, and you will greet another girl who passes by, but never one of the boys. Why?”

He was flummoxed. His face turned red.

Lia clasped the cloak around her throat. She gave him a teasing smile and then hurried away.

What she really wanted to ask him, which she dared not, was about the twisted charm she had yanked from Almaguer’s neck during the night. She would save that question for the armiger hidden in the forbidden grounds.

* * *

“The power of the Medium should never be compelled. Its power must be coaxed, persuaded, allured, invited. Throughout the generations of Family, a relationship with the Medium has formed. As each generation honors it, the union is strengthened until they gain access to the ultimate power of the Medium and free their line from the bands of death. But there are those who, because of anger, spite, jealousy, or domination, cannot engender even the briefest flicker of agreement with the Medium. To them, the power is closed because they will not yield their thoughts, their desires, their wills over to it. They think their own thoughts. They desire their own cravings. And they demand obedience to their own will. As with all things in nature, there is opposition. Sun and dark. Sweet and bitter. Courage and fear. And like the Medium, there is a means by which one can force power to obey. A fellow can compel another to serve him. It is my experience and has always proven to be the case that when humans give in to their baser instincts, they discover ways to forge a link to the Medium that is unnatural. This forging is not only figurative but literal. Those who do parade the emblem of this union from a chain around their necks.”