“You know, you don’t have to leave.”

Raeca finished tucking Brendis into bed. The Hero has, yet again, badly won a fight. This time with a stone giant, if his mage friend was to be believed. It was nearly a year since her first encounter with the hero, and she was more than used to his ways by now.

If there was some terrible monster menacing a village somewhere, Brendis felt it was his duty as their Hero to deal with it.

Frequently that landed him with the healers, recovering. He was an incredible warrior, and not a half-bad spellcaster himself, but he wasn’t indestructible. More often than not, he came to her rather than go all the way to the castle.

“I shouldn’t stay,” the man said reluctantly. He went to wash his hands at Raeca’s sink. “We are reluctant allies, on the best day. If he finds me here, he will be difficult and rip out his stitches.”

“He won’t wake for hours,” Raeca promised. After months of dealing with Brendis, she was very familiar with how he took to Healing. “This is the second time you’ve brought him to me. Stay for tea and food, at least. I don’t even know your name.”

“Haroun,” he said, and looked tempted despite himself. Raeca washed her own hands and went for the kettle. Either he would stay, or he wouldn’t, and either way she needed something to soothe her nerves. “I suppose I could spare a minute.”

“Good. What kind of tea do you want?”

“What do you have?”

He came over to peruse her vast collection of herbs, and quickly mixed several together into the mug she handed him. While he was focused on the task, Raeca stole a moment to examine him carefully with a healer’s eye.

Haroun was a mastermage. That much was obvious. He shone like a small sun to her magical vision, even after helping her through a second powerful healing.

He also looked tired. Or rather, worn to the bone from carrying some great weight. The healer in her screamed to help him, and Raeca was not in the habit of ignoring that sense.

The first step, getting him to sit and have tea, was the hardest. Bribery helped.

She set a little plate of honey cakes between them at the table and hid a smile when he eyed them suspiciously. There was no magic in them. Not even herbs to loosen the tongue or temper.

Haroun might be a mastermage, but it took a strong will indeed to resist Mitso’s honey cakes. He took several and Raeca let him eat through them and have some tea before speaking again.

“How did you meet him?” She asked quietly when he seemed to have unwound from his tensions somewhat. “Brendis, I mean.”

“He comes through the desert sooner or later in every life,” Haroun shrugged casually. “The third of his Prophecy is always born there, and Brendis cannot help but seek him out each time.”

“So that’s where you met him?”

“No,” Haroun chuckled wryly and curled his fingers around his tea. “We met as children. He was already the finest hand with a sword the Masters had ever seen, but the first time he became a hero was when he rescued a scrawny mage student who was hell-bent in fighting a fight he couldn’t win.”

Raeca smiled fondly at the sleeping warrior. That sounded like him all over. “He doesn’t know who he is until his teen years, yes? Queen Calliope said a little, but it makes her so sad to talk about it that I don’t often ask.”

The mention of the queen brought the slightest alarm to Haroun’s eyes, although he hid it well. Raeca wondered about it, and also wondered if he would give her a straight answer if she asked.

Probably not.

“Brendis is usually the last to remember, as near as I know,” Haroun said after a minute. “As I said, we are not exactly friends these days, so this is mostly speculation. I don’t know about the queen.”

“And the Dark Sword?”

No one ever mentioned the evil warlord’s name. It was like saying it aloud would summon him. Raeca hid a shiver. She couldn’t do much if the Dark One came for Brendis while he was hurt.

“There are stories about him, among the desert folk,” Haroun said slowly. “Mostly wildly embellished, although his journals, from every life, are kept at the great Mage School there. Interesting read. I assume Brendis doesn’t know about them, and the Queen certainly doesn’t, or she would try to destroy them.”

“Why?” Raeca wanted to know. This was more information than she had ever gotten about the Bound Three, and Haroun would certainly know. The Dark One was of his people. “She always seems very kind, and very wise.

“You see her best side, I suppose,” Haroun said bitterly. “Don’t underestimate her. She’s a ruler, born time and time again with the knowledge of past lives. Her ability to manipulate and twist the facts is legendary.”

Raeca wanted to protest, but suddenly a memory came to her, of Calliope telling her about a young courtier who married a noble without royal permission. At first, it seemed like the couple brought their banishment and dishonor on themselves. Thinking it over again, they could never have been banished without Royal authority.

Calliope’s authority.

“Tell me more about the Dark One,” She said instead of sharing her thoughts. Something told her it would be important later. “No one seems to know much about him, but if Brendis is here so much, the Dark One may turn his eyes on this place.”

“Well,” Haroun seemed easier with the change in topic, and his smile came back, although it was strange around the edges. “Did you know he’s the only one to ever have a family? In his twenty-second life, he won, and outlived the other two. Oh, he didn’t make it more than ten years before the old curse came to take him, but he had a wife, and a daughter, and grandchildren later.”

“Really?” To think, an evil man could love enough to have a family. Or maybe he just found a woman he liked and kept her. That seemed like the kind of thing a warlord would do. “How do you know?”

“He wrote about it,” Haroun waved vaguely east towards the desert. “Like I said, journals. Can you read?”

“Yes, by not quickly,” Raeca mumbled, taken aback by the sudden question and slightly embarrassed. “There wasn’t much chance to learn, here.”

“But you can, yes? In Common?”

“Well enough.”

“Good,” he stood abruptly and flashed a quick smile. “I’ll bring the first of the journals in a few days. Once Brendis leaves and I don’t have to worry about being stabbed.”

“He would stab you?” That didn’t seem like Brendis, but to be fair, she mostly saw him wounded and recovering.

“We aren’t friends, healer,” Haroun reminded her gently, and winked. “If you need help reading, I can teach you. Not much occupies my time at the moment.”

And with that, he was gone in a puff of smoke, and Raeca stared at the place where he had been in faint astonishment.

“Your friend is a little odd,” she told the sleeping Brendis, and sighed, before getting up to wash out the vanished mage’s cup. “But I think I like him, even being odd.”