Coming into the common room, Kylar ordered enough food to make the goodwife raise her eyebrows. He sat by himself. His legs were throbbing and his butt was sore. If he never saw another horse again, it would be too soon. He closed his eyes and sighed, only the heavenly odors coming from the kitchen keeping him from going to bed immediately.

In what was obviously a nightly ritual, probably half the men of the village pushed their way through the inn’s great oak door to share a pint with their friends before going home. Kylar ignored the men and their inquisitive glances. He only opened his eyes when a stout, homely woman in her fifties set two enormous meat pies in front of him, along with an impressive tankard of ale.

“I think you’ll find Mistress Zoralat’s ale is as good as her pies,” the woman said. “May I join you?”

Kylar yawned. “Ah, excuse me,” he said. “Sure. I’m Kylar Stern.”

“What do you do, Master Stern?” she said, sitting.

“I’m a, uh, soldier, as a matter of fact.” He yawned again. He was getting too old for this. He’d considered saying “I’m a wetboy” just to see what the old goat’s reaction would be.

“A soldier for whom?”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Answer my question, and I’ll answer yours,” she said, as if he were a recalcitrant child.

Fair enough. “For Cenaria.”

“I was under the impression that country no longer existed,” she said.

“Were you?” he said.

“Khalidoran goons. Meisters. The Godking. Conquest. Rape. Pillage. Iron-fisted rule. Ring any bells?”

“I guess some people would be deterred by that,” Kylar said. He smiled and shook his head at himself.

“You frighten a lot of people, don’t you, Kylar Stern?”

“What was your name again?” he asked.

“Ariel Wyant Sa’fastae. You can call me Sister Ariel.”

Any vestige of fatigue vanished instantly. Kylar touched the ka’kari within him to be sure it was ready to call up in an instant.

Sister Ariel blinked. Was it because she’d seen something, or had he just let his muscles tense?

“I thought this was a dangerous part of the world for people like you,” Kylar said. He couldn’t remember the stories, but he remembered something linking Torras Bend with mages’ dying.

“Yes,” she said. “One of our young and foolhardy sisters disappeared here. I’ve come to look for her.”

“The Dark Hunter,” he said, finally remembering.

At tables around them, conversations ceased. Dour faces turned toward Kylar. From their expressions, he could see that the topic wasn’t so much taboo as it was gauche. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and began attacking a meat pie.

Sister Ariel watched in silence as he ate. He felt a twinge of suspicion, wondering what Durzo would have said if he knew Kylar was eating food served to him by a maja, but he’d died twice already—maybe three times—and lived again, so what the hell? Besides, the pies were good, and the ale was better.

Not for the first time, he wondered if it had been the same for Durzo. He’d lived for centuries, but had he been unkillable, too? He must have. But he had never risked his own life. Was that only because by the time Kylar knew him, the ka’kari had abandoned him? Kylar wondered sometimes if there were a downside to his power. He could live for hundreds of years. He couldn’t be killed. But he didn’t feel immortal. He didn’t even feel the sense of power that, when he was a boy, he thought he would feel once he became a wetboy. He was a wetboy now, more than a wetboy, and he felt like he was still just Kylar. Still Azoth, the clueless, scared child.

“Have you seen a beautiful woman come riding through here, sister?” he asked. Vi had seen where Kylar lived. She would tell the Godking and he would destroy everything and everyone Kylar loved. That was how he worked.

“No. Why?”

“If you do,” he said, “kill her.”

“Why? Is she your wife?” Sister Ariel asked, smirking.

He gave her a flat look. “The God doesn’t hate me that much. She’s an assassin.”

“So, you’re not a soldier, but an assassin hunter.”

“I’m not hunting her. I wish I had the time. But she may come through here.”

“What’s so important that you would abandon justice?”

“Nothing,” he said without thinking. “But justice has been too long denied elsewhere.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Suffice it to say that I’m on a mission for the king.”

“There is no king of Cenaria except the Godking.”

“Not yet.”

She raised an eyebrow. “There’s no man who can unite Cenaria, even against the Godking. Perhaps Terah Graesin can, but she’s scarcely a man, is she?”

He smiled. “You Sisters like to think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Do you know that you’re an infuriating young ignoramus?”

“Only as much as you’re a tired old bag.”

“Do you truly think I’d kill some young woman for you?”

“I don’t suppose you would. Forgive me, I’m tired. I forgot that the Seraph’s hand only reaches beyond its ivory halls to take things for itself.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Young man, I don’t take well to impudence.”

“You’ve succumbed to the intoxication of power, Sister. You like watching people jump.” He raised an insolent eyebrow, bemused. “So color me scared.”

She was very still. “Another temptation of power,” she said, “is to strike down those who vex you. You, Kylar Stern, are tempting me.”

He picked that moment to yawn. It wasn’t feigned, but he couldn’t have found a better moment. She turned red. “They say the old age is a second childhood, Sister. Besides which, the moment you drew power, I’d kill you.” By the gods, I can’t stop. Am I really going to get on the wrong side of half the world’s mages because one old lady irritates me?

Instead of getting angrier, Sister Ariel’s face grew thoughtful. “You can tell the moment I draw magic?”

He wasn’t going there. “One way to find out,” he said. “But it would be a bother to dispose of your corpse and cover my tracks. Especially with all these witnesses.”

“How would you cover your tracks?” she asked quietly.

“Come now. You’re in Torras Bend. How many of the mages who have been ‘killed by the Dark Hunter’ here do you think were really killed by the Dark Hunter? Don’t be naive. The thing probably doesn’t even exist.”

She scowled, and he could tell she’d never thought of it. Well, she was a mage. Of course she didn’t think like a wetboy. “Well,” she said. “You’re wrong about one thing. It exists.”

“If everyone who’s ever gone into the woods has died, how do you know?”

“You know, young man. There’s a way for you to prove that we’re all crazy.”

“Go into the woods?” he asked.

“You wouldn’t be the first to try.”