It was two hours later that they pulled over, having reached a curve of the road hidden from the watchtowers by deep forest. Sarcer piloted the wagon deep into the woods and went back to sweep away the tracks.

Oriole came to unlock the cage, looking haggard, his eyes covered in deep shadow. “If you don’t mind, I need to sleep.” He was practically begging. “It’s been more than a day, and I, I… I can’t…”

“Sleep.” Grae said. The wagon creaked as he stepped out.

“Good, good. I’ll ah, make us some dinner before I lay down.” He stumbled away, moving to kindle up a fire.

Sarcer chuckled. “Shoulda seen him sweat. But me ‘n my friend…” He slid his dagger free from his sleeve, where it had been hiding. “We kept ‘im honest.”

As the fire crackled into being, Oriole lay down a saucepan, cutting a cube of butter from a hand-pressed stick and dipping it down against the cast iron surface with a crackle. He spread sizzling, browning fat across the surface and dropped in thick-cut slices of fresh rye bread, browning them to black.

He set the toasted bread aside, adding a cut of fattened ham to the sizzling butter inside. A can of preserves was cracked open, pale slices of pears and fig in a dark molasses oozing into the pan with a sudden hiss of steam. Cheese, crumbly and moldy with blue veins, was cut from a wheel and layered on top of the mess.

The smell was overwhelmingly good. Sweet and rich and tangy from the cheese. Grae lingered by the fire, sniffing.

“You didn’t tell Heidrich we’d kidnapped you.”

“No, no! I didn’t say anything.” Oriole protested.

“I wasn’t accusing you. I meant to ask, why not?” Grae’s eyes fixed the man in sight.

For a moment the man chewed his lip, and then said. “Well… Of course, I wanted to… I wanted to tell him everything and beg for help, and maybe, maybe I even had the chance for a moment or two…” He sighed, his shoulders sinking. “But I couldn’t take it. I wasn’t… It was just like my father all over again, I just couldn’t bring myself to speak.” His voice shook in frustration.

He ladled the mix of cured ham, pear and fig preserve, and dripping-molten cheese onto a slab of bread. “Here.” His voice was rough with emotion as he offered it to Grae.

Grae bit down, cheese smearing across his whiskers. It was good in a way he’d never experienced before. The ingredients came together into one oozing, pan-warm mass of flavors, sweet and rich and salty with something foul but delicious added by the molding cheese.

He chewed through it in two bites and licked his fingers. “It’s good.”

“Mm.” But Oriole took no comfort in that. It was odd, Grae thought. Of all the things he’d seen the man struggle with, here he finally had a talent, and yet it brought him no joy. As if he was numb to his own skill.

“Me next.” Sarcer slid in by the fire, licking his chipped teeth.

Grae looked about for Larktongue and Greenleaf and found them lingering at the edge of the campfire’s light, watching with hungry eyes as if they were still slaves. “You two. Come here.” He instructed, and then turned to Oriole. “Feed them too.”

And then he departed from the ring of firelight.

Grae had his own matters to attend to.

He had obtained magical power through the Stars and Constellations, but hadn’t yet found full understanding of that power. Clearly, he could alter how the abilities formed, but to what extent?

Practice was needed.

Finding himself a quiet glade among the forest, Grae raised a hand and conjured a water bullet.

It floated in his hand till he directed it to fly towards a tree, shattering a portion of the bark and leaving a deep, bruised imprint.

That was the baseline.

Next Grae tried to shape a smaller, more compact form. He could feel the power flowing through him, drawing sparks of red mana from his core. He focused the flow and imagined the bullet shrinking smaller, smaller, smaller…

But something interfered.

A weight pushed back against his mind. Then a voice began to whisper. It was a hissing, hungry sound, a claw scraping at Grae’s mind as he struggled to focus.

The first principle of mana is its division…

Then a second voice began to speak. A third. A fourth.

A third form…

Hubris! Impossible hubris!

It took a sacrifice…

Grae stumbled. There were more of them every moment, pouring into his mind in a black wave of sound that blotted out his focus, annihilated his will, made him a prisoner within his own head.

It was if he was struggling to hear his own thoughts through a fog of whispers, fighting to retain concentration as the voices tried to seize control of the spell.

He grunted with effort and flung the half-formed bullet away early.

It smashed into the tree and drilled a much smaller, deeper wound.

Grae was left gasping. He had been right. It was possible to alter a spell, even if it required experience and talent he’d yet to develop…

But what were the voices? They had overwhelmed him, disoriented him…

There had been thousands of them.

Cautiously, Grae began to cast again. He chose a less strenuous alteration this time. Instead of cutting the bullet to a tenth size, he would stop at half, consuming less of his focus….

But the whispers arrived again.

They were malicious. Insidious. They poured through the cracks in his mind, speaking to him- but there were so many that they drowned each other out.

Grae tried to understand. He tried to follow a single voice in the whispering sea, but he could only catch hold of a single word or a fragment of a phrase before he lost track. There were too many. They were too hungry.

The sheer weight of their need to be heard crushed into him like a black sea of desperation.

Grae let the spell collapse.

Instantly silence returned.

He was left gasping, an ache forming between his brows. This couldn’t be right. Something about the voices felt abnormal and sick. They couldn’t be a natural part of casting.

Grae needed a defense against them…