“I am grieved that you had to be subjected to such an unsatisfactory message.”

Silence held in the audience chamber. It was a large room with walls of rough stone that reminded all who entered that once it had been part of a fortress. The arched ceiling overhead had been painted a midnight blue with the stars of a midsummer night frozen forever there. Tall slits of windows looked out over a vista of sprawling city.

No point in this city was taller than the Duke’s hilltop citadel. Once the fortress had stood upon this peak, and within its walls a circle of black standing stones under the open sky had been a place of great magic. Tales told of how those stones had been toppled, their evil magic vanquished. Those same stones, the ancient runes on them obscured and defaced, now lay splayed out in a circle around his throne, flush to the gray flagged floor that had been laid around them. The black stones pointed to the five corners of the known world. It was said that beneath each stone there was a square pit into which the sorcerous enemies of ancient Chalced had been confined to die. The throne in the center reminded all that he sat where, of old, all had feared to tread.

The Duke moved his lips, and a page sprang to his feet and darted forward, a bowl of cool water in his hands. The boy knelt and offered it to the chancellor. The chancellor, in turn, advanced on his knees, to lift the bowl to the Duke’s lips.

He tipped his head and drank. When he lifted his face another attendant had appeared, offering the chancellor a soft cloth that he might dry the Duke’s face and chin.

Afterward, he allowed the chancellor to retreat. Thirst sated, he spoke.

“There is no other word from our emissaries in the Rain Wilds?”

The chancellor hunched lower. His robes of heavy maroon silk puddled around him. His scalp showed through his thinning hair. “No, most illustrious one. I am shamed and saddened to tell you that they have not sent us any fresh tidings.”