"What? Oh, nothing."

"Nothing? I don't believe it. You've been brooding since we got here. You've been dragging around puckered up like a mouth full of crabapple." He raised her chin, peered into downcast brown eyes. "Come on."

Nepanthe was in her forties. A lot of hard years lay behind her, yet her long raven hair showed only traces of grey. Her figure wasn't the wisp it had been at nineteen, but neither had lumpiness conquered all. Her face did not record all the tragedies that had dogged her life. Only her eyes betrayed the melancholy caged within.

Those eyes were old, sad windows, aged by sorrow and pain the way glass is purpled by the endless assault of the sun. They said they would never sparkle again. They would believe in no good fortune, for luck and happiness were but pitfalls and taunts cast in one's face by a malign fate. She had lost her zest for life. She was marking time, waiting for the big sleep, and knew it would be an age arriving. Her husband, the arch-sorcerer Varthlokkur, had learned to hold Death at bay. He was over four centuries old. "Come on," he said in his gentle, coaxing voice. "What is it?"

"Varth... I just don't like this place. It brings back so much that I want to forget. I can't help it... Vorgreberg is accursed. Nothing good ever happens here." She met his stare. A shadow of fear brushed her face.

"I won't stay a minute longer than I need to."

"Bragi will keep you... " She ground her teeth on words too harsh for the situation, "why did you come?" She heard the whine in her voice and was disgusted with herself.

He accepted the question at face value. "I don't know. We'll find out in a few minutes. But Bragi wouldn't have called me if it wasn't important."

That wing of fear stroked her face again. "Important to whom? Varth, don't let him get you involved. He's accursed too." She had begged and begged her first husband, just like this, and he hadn't listened. And so he had died, and left her alone...