I reached for my dagger and threw it at Kos, making a perfect line between my hand and his face. However, Kos lifted his fingers and caught the blade of the dagger between them.

“Foolish boy,” He said, grasping the dagger by it's hilt, “ Did you think I would be slain by my own dagger?”

“My dagger.” I snapped. “Always has been, always will be.”Kos smirked and set the dagger gently on the table.

“You'll see.” He said. “You should have simply come when I sent Tenlon for you. Mind you, I do not blame you for your attack upon him. He is a fool, and went against my orders.”

“Which orders? The orders to destroy Artis? The orders to kill Foster?”

Kos shook his head. “This is why I ordered him not to do those things unless absolutely necessary. I did not wish to distance you further. Also Tenlon has been...Punished for his misdeeds”

I smirked. The halfling was likely dead, or he wished that he was. It was a shame, really. I had wanted to kill him “And now what? I'm here. What do you want exactly!”

Gently, he sat down in the chair behind the desk, and took off his mask. The mask was thrown carelessly on the desk.

Kos looked a lot more normal than I had expected, and a lot more like any other normal human I might encounter. His hair was short and black. His eyes glowed blue, and he had a single scar running over the bridge of his nose.

He looked more like a farmer then a Magus.

He waved a hand, and from one of the corners of the room flew an old chair. I was thrown into it by some horrible force. I struggled to move, but I was bound to the chair.

“You can't move...” Kos said gently. “So you may as well sit there and relax while we get better acquainted.”

He sat down, and leaned back in his chair looking at me. I looked around, my eyes darting all about the room, wondering how I might be able to get away from him.

“You have had this dagger for a long time, haven't you?” he asked. I said nothing. Slowly, he shook his head.

“In all honesty.” he said, “I was surprised to find out that you were alive-”

“Because you're halfling didn't kill me?”“Pleasantly surprised.” He gave me a good look. “I wasn't sure at first. The way you look, I thought it was coincidence. But then I saw the dagger.”

“My dagger.” I snapped.”

“I could smell myself in your blood, and I smell it now. Tenlon stank of your blood when he came back from his guardianship of the shard. I had thought he had killed you.”

“Blood.” I said, sneering, “I've heard the story, most likely the rumor you put around to try to entice me into your service.”

“Rumors?”

“You misunderstood how the peasants of the city viewed you, though. They hate you, And you and you alone are blamed for the death of... Of Rosa!”

Holding the dagger before him, Kos looked sideways at me, his eyes glittering with rage.

“Do not ever say that I was the one who caused her death. Not when I have been working so hard to restore her. Not when I worked to try to cure her madness.”

“There is no cure for madness.”

“Hers wasn't madness of a natural type. It was a curse.”

He walked over to me, and held the dagger long my face, running the cold steel against my burned scar. I glared up at him, keeping my breathing slow and even.

“Indeed, your blood smells like mine. There is not question that you're my son.”

“This is just what you say. I smell nothing.”

“I also sense the pendant on you.” He said. “Something I wasn't sure of at first, but that was one good thing about Tenlon, he did discover that you had the pendant.” He lowered the dagger to my neck, and caught the chain of the silver pendant, pulling it away from my bare skin and out over the bloodied and dented armor so that the glittering moonlight reflected in it

“How about I show you,” He whispered, “How to really use this thing.”

He set his hand on my forehead.

There was a moment, unlike any other moment I had ever experienced, when everything stopped. There had been times when everything seemed to stop, times when I happened to be falling, or when I was about to be hurt. However, time truly stopped. Then there was only the cold. Ice flowed through my veins rather than warm blood. Frost covered my skin and stiffened my hair. I cried out, the cold was a like innumerable small daggers driving into my skin. Ice passed through me, through my mind. I opened my eyes, which were fastened by frost. I saw the tiny, intrinsic patterns lain across my vision. The stillness of the ice, calm, cold, overcame me. I was ice, my entire body became a chunk of ice, which shattered as finally my heart beat once more. With every heartbeat, I was destroyed and reborn.

If only some of Rico's flames could have warmed me now.

Then the cycle stopped. My heart beat, and I was a flesh and blood creature, shivering and shuddering before Kos, who stood untouched by the layer of ice that covered his office.

I took several long, deep breaths. “What... what was..”

Kos stared at me for several long moments before speaking. “I've awakened within you the understanding of the element entrapped within the pendant. Its power is yours to use now. It is not true power, you cannot wield it without the pendant. However, you also had much less of a chance of going insane.”

I stared up at Kos, still breathing heavily. My breath came out in lines of steam. “Why?”

“I like my blood to be powerful...And after all you've struggled through, after all you've been through, it was the least I could do.”

“What do you mean, all I've been through?”

Kos walked behind his desk, and looked at the shimmering moonstone. “This was your mothers.” Kos said, “I took it from her after our wedding, after she revealed it to me, hoping I would be able to use its power-”

“I know that story too.” I snapped, “To unleash the chaos of the Demon of Magic.”

“To unleash the true spirit of magic.” Kos said, “The power to wield the forces of magic to our hearts content. To control chaos. To bend the world to our own views. To cure sickness, break curses, erase the past, build the future... and to bring the dead to life.”

“The dead...”

“It was my hope that I could break the curse on Rosa. The curse that took away her mind. Baliancia placed the curse on her because she held the Moonstone, she told me that much, and because she refused to hand it over to them. I hoped to break the curse, and build a world that would forever bring beauty to what should have been her immortal eyes. So I took the moonstone, and left, seeking the other elements that I needed to shatter the moon and release that power. When I returned, only nine years later-”

“Nine years is a long time...”

Kos gazed at the moonstone and make a small noise from his nose. After two hundred and thirty years, nine years is as nothing. I'm sad to say that I forgot what time it is to real mortals.”

“It's true then,” I whispered. “Magi are immortal.”

“Not quite. I can warp this body so that it doesn't take the ravages of age, I can defend myself from sickness, from disease, from poison and attack. Were I vulnerable, I could be killed.”

“Like Lord Necanda.”

Kos looked over at me. “Like Lord Necanda...Whom you slew?”

“I was there, but no, not I. I did see a single stab-wound kill him.”

Kos nodded. “He was insane before I awakened him to an understanding of the full power that I hold. It was too much, though I had hoped that his unstable state of mind would make it easier. I was wrong. It only drove him deeper into insanity.”

There was a long moment of silence. Kos stared at me, and I stared back at him.

“What, you think that because you tell me you're my father, that I'm going to back down? That I'm going to work for you? Because you gave me power, I'm going to submit myself to your will?”

“Of course not.” Kos said, “I tell you these things because you deserve to know them if you don't already. You deserved to know your parentage, you deserved to know what should have been your future, you deserved to know why I, who could have cared for you, and made you powerful beyond your own imagination, left you for dead.

“When I returned, I had been told that Rosa had dived deeper into insanity than anyone thought was possible. In her state, she bore a child, but was unable to name him. Rosa died six years later, and the child only two years after that was arrested for thievery and brought to the castle. He was never seen again.

“I assumed my wife and only child had died, and I thought only gaining the power that I needed to revive them both. It wouldn't be the same as though they were both with me in eternity. But I was selfish... I'm still selfish, because I desire the same things. However, I knew when I smelled your blood that time in Teans, I hoped that you were my own blood.”

“I still don't believe it.”

“You needn't if you don't wish to. Let me believe it.” He turned back to the shard. “Let me believe that you somehow managed to escape the castle. Let me believe you are my son, and let me...Let me fix this mess.”

“Fix it?” I tried to stand, but was held to the chair. “Fix what, might I ask? Bring Rosa back to life? Erase the countless years of my life-”

“If I am correct, you are no more then twenty six years. A moment to one such as me.”

Twenty six. I felt a strange moment of disorientation, like a shimmer where everything I was seeing for a moment seemed like a picture, and not real. Was that the power that Kos had unleashed in me?

“It matters not! Even if what you say is true. Do you think you can start everything over? How do you intend to fix anything?!”

Kos stared at the Moonshard a moment longer, and then sat down behind his desk.

“I intend to hire you.”

I smirked. “I've already been hired.”

“I intend to hire you for more than anyone else could ever pay.”

“I doubt that. I've been offered a nice sum to-”

“I will pay you with a new life.”

I stared at Kos, who looked at me, waiting for me to say something. When I didn't, he continued.

“I'll have the full power of Magic at my disposal.” he said, “And with that, I shall revive Rosa, and unite the entire kingdom into a city of gold and amber. I will eliminate poverty. Like King Rawlin the first, I will take all the peoples of the kingdom, and of the scattered islands of the Cyclades. I will take the lost lands to the north and the creatures there, and make a quiet, peaceful, beautiful home for them all where I will be king. Where death is a myth, where sickness is a nightmare and nothing more. Rosa will be my queen, and you, Alex,will be a prince. As it should have been.”

I smirked, “I'm not prince material.” I said. “I'm an assassin.”

“I can change that also.” he said. “ I can take your memories like paint on a canvas, and change them to paint a brighter picture. I can give you memories of a happier life. In any way that you wish it, I will shape your life so that it will seem to have always been that way, and so that it will always be that way. A life in which you never killed, never saw death, never had need to steal. A life with joy in it.”

“There is no such power.”

“I will wield such power if you work with me.” he said. “If you do not-”

“You'll kill me, right?” I smirked, “You'll kill me, and then you'll kill my allies.”

“The old man, the girl, the elf and the magician?” he shook his head. “No, I have no such intentions. If you do not wish to do as I desire, I will set you and your friends free, outside the boundaries of the city. I will keep an eye on you, and for the duration of your small, miserable life, I'll make pains to see that it is lived as pleasantly as possibly. When you die, I will take the pendant from your remains and restore you to life. It will not be the same, mind you. You, the Alexander I am speaking to now, will not exist. Only my memory of you, and what I have imagined you might be like will exist in your form. If you refuse me, I will let you go.”

“And what do I have to do if I accept?”

Kos smiled. “You have the pendant. I have in my possession the Moonshard and the Golden Feather. There are two more things that I need to perform the spell.”

“Legend has it that there are only three items.”

“I need not an item. I need the book in which the ritual is described in full. A book protected by the man who brought me to magic many many years ago. A withered old mage in the forest who failed to use his powers to keep him from being affected by age and sickness. He could have prevented it, but without true power, he cannot reverse it. He has the book I need. Do you know the other item I need?”

“The stone.”

Kos nodded. “Baliaicia has that in frigidis. If you slice your way, if you, for what will be the last time in your miserable life, if you fight your way through my enemies, and bring me the book and the stone, then I will rebuild your life from the ruined hut it is, to the glimmering castle that it could have been. You can be whatever you want.”

I remembered Foster, the last time I saw him, and time and time before after I made an odd comment that Almond or Cara would have laughed at, about me being a poet.

“Well, Alex? What will it be?”

“Alex.” I let the name again roll through my mouth. I had learned it, and forgotten it in the cell back in Teans. I didn't know what it was to me, if it was anything to me. A useless relic of a life I didn't remember, of a man I didn't know. Now? Now it was the name of what was possible. The name of the world painted with gold and silver for my future. A new future, a new life.”

“And of my allies? What would happen to them?”

“If you desire them to be near you in your new life, I could make them your friends, your siblings. Anything you desired, I would clean their minds of Stiri, and give them Alex instead.”

The magic loosened from me. I moved my hands from the arms of the chair. “I've said what I wanted to. If you try to kill me now, if you attack me, I'll simply send you outside the city.” He set the dagger before him on the desk. “So choose, what will it be? I'll give you the dagger back. Take it and bring me the book, and the stone. I'll give you a life worth living.”

I stood up and walked over to the table. Kos sat, his chin resting in his hands, looking up at me.

I set my hand on the dagger, took it, and sheathed it.

“I want my horses back.” I said, “And I need my allies.”

“I will give you anything you need.” He said, “I'll release your allies to follow you if that is what you wish.”

“I don't want them captured.”

“Very well.” he said. “I will send you outside the gates, They will be laying in the snow. Hurry before they fall ill.”

I nodded. Kos lifted his hand. Flames from the torches in the room glittered blue and formed hands and slowly, painlessly clasped around me.

“I wonder...” Kos said, “If the journey might be too dangerous though.”

The flames obscured my vision, and formed a solid wall around me. When they receded, I was outside the walls of Rawlin.

In the snow, further away from the walls of the city than I was, I saw a dark blot on the snow. I couldn't see what it was in the moonlight, but I assumed it might be the caravan. I ran forward, the fresh snow crunching under my feet, the silver light of the moon glittering across the frozen ground. It was refreshing to see the moon white again, rather than red.

My caravan was there, with Dawn and Night who were agitated, but otherwise alright. Christen, Rico, Mic and Joss lay in the snow nearby. I kneeled down next to Christen, and gave her a nudge. Her eyes fluttered opened, and sat upright, looking around the frozen scenery.

“Stiri!” she cried. She reached over and grabbed me by the arms. She was crying and laughing at the same time. “They said you must have died! They said you were burned by that terrible monster. Rico was trying to beat it back with his own-... Oh, Stiri, we all thought you had died.”

I smiled and shook my head, “No, I didn't die.” I smirked, “It'll take more than a giant flaming monster to kill me.

“You have the moonstone then?” she asked.

“No. I don't, I-” I wondered what I should tell her. Should I tell her my deal with Kos? Should I tell her what was offered to me in return for my services this time. I thought not. She would tell Rico, and most likely he would not appreciate my plans.

No, Rico would not. Rico would refuse outright. Rico would turn away, and leave me, Christen would go with him. They would go to Teans, or perhaps chase after me, and try to stop me. They would try to kill me, or I them.

“It's a long, tiring story.” I said finally, “I'll tell it another time, when we're in a warmer place. And speaking of which.” I looked around at the others, “You could help me wake them up, so they don't freeze to death.” I realized as I said that that I myself wasn't cold in the least. My hands, buried to the wrists in snow, didn't feel the cold. I felt the ice, the snow around me, it's stillness, it's quiet, sneaking ways, but I wasn't cold. I supposed it was the same as Rico, who didn't burn in fire. I wondered if I could feel hot again, as Rico couldn't feel cold.