Halferd tightened his grip on the ebon-hued wood. “I carry out my duty to guard the babe,” he said, letting his eyes meet Wanno’s for only an instant before sliding away. The old one could work magic simply through his gaze meeting with another’s, and Halferd had no intention of allowing himself to be caught by some trick-not now!

Then something seemed to alert Wanno. A strange light shone in the old man’s deeply set eyes as he looked at his apprentice. The realization came to him at that moment that Halferd was near middle age, even for a dweomercraefter. And he was also a spell-worker of considerable ability-so why had he been content to remain an apprentice? There was only one answer…

Wanno stood with his spine straight. His staff was in the hands of an outsider, a man he didn’t really know after all, despite their years as apprentice and master. Halferd’s brief glance into Wanno’s eyes had betrayed something that the old mage liked not. There was a smell of duplicity in the still air, a sense of something malign that hovered in the shadows overhead.

“I see,” Wanno said, meaning something entirely different from the way Halferd took the remark “Exemplary, Halferd, exemplary!” he added with a bluff heartiness that he hoped didn’t seem as forced and insincere to his apprentice as it did to him. “However, I have other, more important things for you to see to now. Hand me my staff, and I’ll instruct you as to their nature.”

Halferd coughed and shuffled his feet. He didn’t hand the twisted length of ancient yew to Wanno. Instead the apprentice raised the silver-bound tip of it, so the staff pointed with veiled menace in the general direction of his master. “There is a matter to be cleared up ere I give this to you, Wanno.”