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Valescienn himself did not share. Catching the eyes of the soldiers who clustered around the pit, he waved a casual hand toward the captives.
    â€œKill them.”
    The chamber erupted in screams then, desperate people trying to flee despite the lack of any possible sanctuary. The sounds of splitting and splintering filled the room, a ghastly symphony played with swords and axes, conducted by a blond man with empty, soulless eyes. The floor grew wet and sticky with blood, and one by one, the screams fell silent.
    At the back of the crowd, an old man moved. He sought no escape, for he knew that was quite impossible. And though no less terrified than all those around him, no less frantic to cling to whatever years oflife might have remained to him, he knew there was something more important he must do. Heart hammering in his chest, he ducked behind the panicked crowd and lifted a sobbing young boy off the floor. As swiftly as he could, he stepped to the edge of the pit in which dozens of bodies, some still twitching, already sprawled.
    â€œI wish there was a less unpleasant way, my boy,” he said to Jassion, his voice hushed and obscured by the clamor around him. “But you’ll live.”
    Jeddeg smiled, then, despite the sudden tears cutting through the dust on his face to vanish into the prickly depths of his beard. “If—
when
you see your sister again, tell her I wasn’t a
completely
selfish bastard, yes?”
    The old man let go. Jassion fell from his hands, to land with a painful thump on the uppermost corpses in the pit. He lay for a moment, stunned, until he was covered and almost crushed by the body of Jeddeg himself, the man’s head shattered from behind. He wanted to cry, to scream. Mostly he wanted his sister back. But he knew that any sound would let the bad men find him, too. And so he kept quiet, even when the blood of the men above began to coat his arms, his head, and his face, even when their weight threatened to squeeze the breath from him.
    And finally the room went silent. The last sounds of the slaughter faded from the farthest corners, but not from the depths of a young child’s mind, where they echoed unending, and would until his dying day.

Chapter One
    THE MOST WONDERFUL THING about it was that it was a simple, ordinary house.
    Not a large structure, but roomy enough for the comfort of its inhabitants, with a bit of space to spare. The walls were solid, dependable, fitted together over many months by loving hands. The builder had used no magic in the house’s construction, though certainly he could have. But that would, in a way, have defeated the entire purpose.
    Windows sparsely dotted the structure, numbered and positioned perfectly. They were sufficient to admit the bright sunshine during the day, and the glimmer of moon and stars at night; to cool the house during the warm summer months, yet not so numerous as to make it difficult to warm against winter.
    The house sat on the very outskirts of town. It was near enough to be neighborly, but retained a certain modicum of privacy unachievable in the heart of the small but bustling village. Chelenshire, it was called, a rather weighty name for a community of perhaps five or six dozen souls.
    Another advantage to the house’s position at the edges of Chelenshire: It kept the inhabitants away from the slow but steady traffic that passed along what was once a major trade route. The odds of a strangerrecognizing the house’s inhabitants were minuscule, but even “minuscule” was a risk not worth taking.
    This morning, in particular, was a sunny one. The air was warm without quite crossing the fine line into hot, the sky a bright and cloudless blue. Birds wheeled above, droves of them, rejoicing in the last of the fine weather before the blistering heat and the rare but torrential storms of summer fell heavily upon them. Squirrels, gophers, and the occasional rabbit dashed across the grass, each on