A moment later, the crackling flames rose with a sudden roar, hiding from them all the shrouded form that had been Athlan Summerstar.

The seneschal's gaze went from the racing flames to the icily beautiful face of the dowager lady. Even before he could have tactfully suggested such a thing, the matriarch of the Summerstars-Dowager Lady Pheirauze Summerstar-had ordered her grandson burned by holy handfire to banish any harmful magic. She now stood watching-calmly, even haughtily. But then, she did everything haughtily, carrying herself with the smooth sophistication that sixty winters of high station and great beauty had brought.

She stood at the center of the gathered family, tall and slender, and the firelight that found her danced on a face that showed more annoyance than sorrow. Athlan had failed her, tearing asunder her schemes of greatness for the Summerstars. She'd probably not live to see another male Summerstar heir ready to ride to Suzail and impress whichever king sat the Dragon Throne then. Worse than that, he'd failed her in a way that left her unable to get even with him. . and Pheirauze Summerstar always got even.

Athlan's younger sister, Shayna, was suddenly the family heir now. Her stunning beauty had built to a peak, and her willfulness was making her dalliances with every second or third young and handsome Purple Dragon armsman in the vale increasingly difficult to hide.

Impossible to hide, more like, thought the seneschal. He'd soon have to call in war wizards to nose about in every corner and cranny of the keep. Murders of nobility might be hushed up, but never the sudden deaths of heirs or of any noble in a border hold. These days, Sembia was looking westward with ever-hungrier eyes. Renglar sighed.

No, the folk that the Purple Dragons privately called "the Happy Dancing Mages" would come. This was murder, all right. No young noble heir goes alone into a so-called haunted tower of a castle and gets his tongue slashed to prevent any screams, a sword thrust through him from behind-and some spell or other that burns him to a shell-by accident!