"Father," Perivel cried, "why are you doing this?"

The head of House Uskevren twisted to look back at his sons. "A man is but memories of deeds done, in the end," he bellowed. "Deeds measured by promises kept! Don't forget, both of you: Uskevren keep their promises!"

He gave them a wave that became a brutal, chopping signal to the magic he rode-and the wave of stone crashed down with sudden, terrible speed.

The shattered solar rocked as that fist of the stones hit the ground. Perivel and Thamalon clawed and sprinted and stumbled forward in desperate haste.

They were in time to see the terrible crash that transformed Marmaeron Talendar, head of the house of that name, and almost thirty armsmen and hired mages around him, into bloody pulp. They were in time to see their father's contorted body, reeling atop it all, consumed by the rushing, glowing energies of the magic he'd raised. They heard Aldimar's last, ringing cry, "Die, Soargyls! Die, Talendars! And know you full well at last: Uskevren keep their promises!"

The words were a roar above the rising dust, a call made loud by magic after the lips that had uttered it were burned to nothingness, and gone. Aldimar Uskevren was no more.

Perivel and Thamalon stared at the rubble-strewn courtyard through glimmering tears. Nothing moved in it now but the lazily curling dust-and one injured bird, who fluttered away from the cracked, crazily leaning fountain and flew drunkenly, in obvious distress, up into the ruined room where the guards had died, and out of view.

"F-father," Thamalon whispered. "You shall be avenged. This I swear."

"This we swear," Perivel echoed, in a voice like a gem-knife cutting glass. He raised his hand, and sketched a salute with the sword he held in it-not his own blade, lost again by Thamalon somewhere in all the tumbling, but the warsword that had hung in its case on the solar wall for as long as either Uskevren son could remember.