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of the abbey. Denril had sponsored Abelar’s entry into the Order of the Aster after Abelar, at eighteen winters, had saved a passing caravan by slaying a rampaging
    ogre single-handedly. Denril also had presided over Abelar’s dismissal from the Order and the abbey after Abelar had refused to acknowledge the truth of the Risen Sun heresy. Their parting had been bitter.
    “He is as much politician as priest,” Regg said with contempt.
    “You underestimate him,” Abelar said.
    Regg looked at him from under his bushy brows. “I pray you are correct, but fear you are not. He would gain much were he to turn you over to Mirabeta.”
    Sunlight caught the flecks of mica embedded in the abbey’s smooth walls and they sparkled like a dragon’s trove. The stained glass arches set into the upper windows of the chapel’s towers flashed in the sun.
    When he had first come to the abbey, Abelar had sometimes snuck out before dawn just to sit in the grass, commune with Lathander, and watch the light from the rising sun grace the abbey. He missed the feeling of those days. They had been… innocent. It had been easy then to know friend from foe, right from wrong.
    Much had changed.
    “They will be at Dawnmeet,” Regg said.
    “We will give them time to finish,” Abelar said, and turned Swiftdawn so that she faced the rising sun.
    Regg did the same and they held their own Dawnmeet service, reciting a brief prayer together.
    “Dawn dispels the night and births the world anew,” they said in unison. “May Lathander light our way, show us wisdom, and in so doing, allow us to be a light to others.”
    They dismounted and took a meal of hardtack in silence. Like everyone in Sembia, they rationed their food. The priests in Abelar’s company used their spells to provide the men with enough food to stave off hunger, but Abelar hoarded it like it was gold.
    After they had eaten, they remounted and rode toward the abbey.
    “The guards in the gatehouse will soon see us coming,” Regg said. “They will be prepared for our arrival.”
    “Aye,” said Abelar. He held his shield forward, in plain view, so that the rose of Lathander emblazoned on it would be visible.
    ŚŠŚ
    Elyril and Mirabeta sat at a small table on the open-air balcony of the three-story tallhouse that the overmistress occupied while in Ordulin. Elyril wore a simple, long-sleeved dress to shield her pale skin from the morning sun. Her dark-haired aunt wore a formal green day gown.
    A banner flying Sembia’s heraldry—the raven and silver— hung from the roof eaves above them. Smaller pennons flanked it to either side, both flying Ordulin’s golden wagon wheel on a field of green. All three flapped softly in the gentle breeze. The hum of conversation and the rumble of wagons carried up from the cobblestone street below. Elyril heard the occasional order barked by the uniformed Helms who kept the pedestrian traffic at a discreet distance from the overmistress’s tallhouse.
    One of Mirabeta’s mute serving girls, pole-thin and sunken-eyed, stood unobtrusively near the open double doorway that led into the tallhouse. Mirabeta had brought her own staff to Ordulin from Ravenholme.
    “The sunlight is pleasant,” Mirabeta said.
    Elyril and her aunt breakfasted on dried currants, day old bread, and a light, fruity wine from Raven’s Bluff.
    “It is,” Elyril lied.
    Mirabeta glanced up at the pennons. “I think I will change Sembia’s colors to something that includes the Selkirk falcon.”
    The overmistress smiled, obviously pleased at the thought. She still held the same satisfied air she had worn since a rump session of the High Council had elected her War Regent. Elyril did not share her aunt’s sense of ease. Since setting the Sembian civil war into motion, she had received contact from neither
    Volumvax nor the Nightseer, and her communions with Shar had resulted only in frustration. She did not fully understand her role in events and her ignorance irritated