The first day that Jordan had helped his charges travel east after first traveling to the west, he felt like a moron. Even knowing that something greater was at work, he felt like he’d immediately regret his decision to leave his childhood home. That didn’t ge as the house that had alrotected him or in any of the chilly days that followed.

  They traveled east for a day, then forded the river before tinui-south-east toward the coast. Each day was bleaker tha, and with so many mouths to feed, it wasn’t so long before their food supplies were running low. On the fifth day he brought a deer down with a lightening bolt, just to keep anyone from going hungry.

  He worried that whatever was looking for them might be able to find him from that little spell, but Sister Annise assured him that the darkness couldn’t find them now, no matter what they did. “Besides,” she volunteered. “The evil that haunts this nd is too busy tearing apart your manor, even as we sit around this fire.”

  “What?” Jordan gasped. “How you possibly know that?”

  “See for yourself,” she said with a shrug, handing him the Book of Ways as she ope to a page, seemingly at random. “These things are decided well in advance, aher you nor I stop them. We are all of us sves to fate.”

  Jordan ignored her ofteed line and instead studied the page, noting with annoyahat it was dominated by a rge illustration of the manor house they’d just abandoned.

  It was drawn in red and bck, and though it wasn’t impossible that Sister Annise could have do herself, if she’d been able to see, in this picture, though, it was on fire. That wasn’t the detail that caught his eye, though.

  As he peered closer, he saw a tiny smuggled illustration of a thihe house. It would have been impossible for the average person to say what it was that the thing was supposed to be. More than anything it looked like an rown scarecrow.

  Jordan reized it immediately, though. How could he not? That hideous tentacled brain had haunted his dreams for years. Of all the sights he’d seen in that pit. That one was the most terrible, and if he hadn’t burnt it to a crisp with corusg electrical fire, it would have driven all of them insane and made them rip each other to pieces.

  Just thinking about it again after all this time made him remember that terrible paranoia auro the spidery text, trying to gain some insight into what was going on here. What he found was only further horror.

  ‘By the sed night, less than a half of the inhabitants of Sedgim Manor still breathed. A few had run to the Greywood, but due to the inaucpicious nature of the stars, they turned on each other too in a series of terrible misuanding.

  Sihey were not directly utaone of the survivors uood the danger of barag themslves into unused rooms to escape the madness. That was folly, for wheal abominatiourned after the fourth sun was set, most of those that were already weakened by its previous assaults succumbed to a number of creative suicides.

  Though most of those with light in their eyes mao hold on to much of their wits, Britha chose to—’

  Jordan tore his eyes and smmed the book closed. What in all the hells did I just read, he wondered. He turo Sister Ao ask her, but when he realized her answer would be a repeat of so many others, he thought better of it and opehe book again, searg for the page to exami further.

  Just like before, though it had vanished. He searched by firelight, aually, he found the page he thought it had been, but now the manor had been buro ruins, and the words no longer described the same thing. Instead, it talked about how quiet the town was now that the survivors had been rounded up and dragged off by the minions of death.

  He shuddered and would have shouted obsities if he didn’t have the children to sider. “Is this what will happen, or what has happened?” he asked finally.

  Sister Annise shrugged. “What you read is the history of now. Whether they happened yesterday or tomorrow is a meaningless question. No matter what say they happen on, they ot be ged.”

  “So I couldn’t save them?” Jordan asked, feeling like he had their blood on his hands. “Not even if I summohe storm winds? I could be there tonight. I could—”

  “If you found a way to raise Siddrim from the dead and el his full fury on the monsters in the region, you would only dey this,” she sighed. “Our destinies ot be ged. They have already happened.”’

  Jordan flipped to the page and saicture of them sitting around the fire. He read about the versation he’d just had.

  “The blind prophetess assured the skeptical mage that what has already happened ot be ged, then, before he could ask her about the god of secrets or the trials to e, she took the book and—”

  He didn’t get to finish reading, because no sooner had he read it, then she snatched the book back from him and shut it tight before putting it in her bag. “Hey!” Jordan protested. “I was reading that!”

  “You were,” she agreed. “But you should read no further than you have to. Reading too far into the future is bad for the eyes.”

  “Trust me, I know,” she chuckled darkly. “Sufficed to say, I have seen enough to know the way, and you shall know it soon as well.”

  “What is the tower?” Jordan asked. “And the God of Secrets? You—”

  “The tower is where we will find the hermit,” she said bndly. “And all the other questions wait until we get there.”

  Jordan was less than thrilled by the answer. However, what had started as a quiet versation had bee heated enough to attract the i of the children, and that was enough reason for him to drop it. If he tihere would be questions, and as brave as these light-eyed kids could be, he had no wish to force the responsibility of how dire their situation had gotten on those who were so young.

  . . .

  They traveled for two more days and nights before they found the barrier. Well, barrier wasly the right word. It was a line in the sand that he sensed as soon as they crossed it, though.

  One sed, they had crossed through the thin pine forest and were making their way down a dreary peninsu toward the sea, and the , they were oher side of the line, and they could see a small vilge and, at the far end of the spit of nd that jutted off into the sea. Just beyond it, there was a lighthouse, too.

  No, not a lighthouse, he corrected himself: a tower. It was white and elegantly tapered to a ical blue roof that blended with the sky, but it had too few windows for a lighthouse, and the shimmering that emanated from it was not any sourundane lighting.

  Before he could give much thought to it though, he focused on the fact that it had just appeared out of nowhere. That was far stranger.

  “Did you feel that?” Jordan asked, turning to sister Annise.

  “Why would I?” she asked. “I am no mage. The veil barely exists to me.”

  “Why would it matter that I’m a mage?” Jordan asked.

  “Because the veil does if a mage isn’t here to power it,” she said with a patient smile as if she was telling someone something they had known but fotten. “This is why you are the Shepard. Because your flock could never find sanctuary without you.”

  Jordan studied her expression, but said nothing as he marveled at her non answer. Until she’d spokehought that what they’d just passed through was something like an illusion, but her answer implied it was more like a pocket world. Such things possible, theoretically, but Jordan doubted that any ten masters at the Collegium Arum could struct a thing like this without divine inspiration from Lunaris or another of the gods.

  For now, all he could do was study the ndscape. No o him seemed to be perturbed by the sudden ge. Ihe children were more than happy to accept the ge and quickly shed their cloaks to enjoy the suddenly sunher.

  It would have been picturesque, of course, if the whole se hadn’t just suddenly ged. If there had always been a vilge and a lighthouse ging to the edge of the nd while a sea roared in the background, then he would have been sure they’d finally found a refuge. As it was, though, his doubts were thiough to blot out even the menag red sun that was only now climbing toward its zenith to chase the grey ohat had already moved past it.

  The vilge, they quickly discovered, was called Landsend, which was evocative, if not particurly creative. They were greeted by the locals more warmly that expected. It only occurred to Jordan after a few minutes of versation that these people had no idea what was happening in the world outside their little bubble, or whatever this was.

  “You don’t get out much, do you?” he joked at one point.

  “Out?” one of the farmers who’d been handling much of the talking said, “Why would we want out? To leave the veil would be to share its doom.”

  “Doom?” Jordan asked, trying to draw out more details.

  He was disappoihough. Instead, the man shook his head and said, “These are not topics for a farmer. I fess to knowing little and uanding even less. You must speak to Tazuranth; he’ll want to speak to you in the evening after supper, I’m sure of it.”

  Tazuranth? Jordan wondered, sure he’d heard that name before. He seemed to recall that someone from the dawn age had such a name, but he had not been particurly ied in the histories and legends of long dead mages, so he could not say precisely what the man was known for, or why someone would want to hemselves after such a figure, but he was sure he there was a reason.

  That question didn’t st long. Soon enough, logistics became more important. There were no spare cottages, but there was a barn that wasn’t used muymore, and they quickly set to work ing and anizing that to create a refuge. They’d eaten almost all their animals, but that did not seem like it was going to be a problem. After all, the vilge of Landsend rosperous enough. They had fish, sheep, goats, and cattle, along with several steep step-terraced fields that were full of crops of all types.

  A few years ago, any vilge in the ty might have looked like this. Some would be better, and some might be worse. Now, it aradise that they dared not dream of, and for better or worse, it was home for the foreseeable future.