Stalking Darkness

doesn’t sound so bad, just telling it,” he said when he’d finished. “Especially that last part. But in the dream, it always feels like the worst part. Even worse than my father—”
    He broke off, surprised at the tightness in his throat. He sat staring down at his hands, hoping his hair veiled his face for the moment.
    After a while Seregil said gently, “You’ve had a lot to contend with lately, what with finding out the truth about your birth and then this. Seeing Rythel all mangled in that cell must have dredged up some unpleasant memories. Maybe this is your way of finally allowing yourself to mourn your father’s death.”
    Alec looked up sharply. “I’ve mourned him.”
    “Perhaps,
talí
, but in all the time we’ve been together you scarcely ever mention him or weep for him.”
    Alec rolled the edge of blanket between his fingers, surprised atthe sudden bitterness he felt. “What’s the use? Crying doesn’t change anything.”
    “Maybe not, but—”
    “It wouldn’t change the fact that I couldn’t do anything for my own father but sit there watching him shrink like a burnt moth, listening to him drown in his own blood—” He swallowed hard. “Besides, that’s not even what the dream was about, really.”
    “No? What, then?”
    Alec shook his head miserably. “I don’t know, but it wasn’t that.”
    Seregil gave him a rough pat on the shin and stood up. “What do you say we scrounge breakfast with Nysander tomorrow? He’s good with dreams, and while we’re there, you could talk to him and Thero about this life span business. With all the uproar over Tym and Rythel, you haven’t had much time to absorb it all.”
    “It’s been easier, not thinking about it,” Alec said with a sigh. “But I guess I would like to talk to them.”
    In the darkness of his own bed, Seregil lay listening to Alec’s breathing soften back into sleep in the next room.
    “No more dreams, my friend,” he whispered in Aurënfaie, and it was more than a simple well-wishing. He could almost hear the Oracle’s mad whispering in the shadows, echoing over the weeks and months with increasing insistence and clarity.
The Eater of Death gives birth to monsters. Guard you well the Guardian! Guard well the Vanguard and the Shaft!
    The shaft. An arrow shaft, like the one Alec clutched in his dreams night after night—useless, impotent, without its broadhead point.
    It could mean a thousand different things, that image
, he told himself, struggling angrily against his own instant certainty that another fateful die had been irrevocably cast in a game he could not yet comprehend.
    The storm blew itself back out to sea before dawn. The soaring white walls, domes, and towers of the Orëska House sparkled against a flawless morning sky ahead of them as Seregil and Alec rode toward it. Inside the sheltering walls of the grounds, the scentof new herbs and growing things enveloped them in the promise of a spring not far behind in the outside world.
    Nysander and Thero had other guests breakfasting with them. The centaurs, Hwerlu and his mate Feeya, had somehow navigated the maze of stairways and corridors, not to mention doorways not designed to admit creatures the size of large draft horses. Magyana was there as well, sitting on the corner of the table with her feet propped on a chair next to Feeya.
    “What a pleasant surprise,” Nysander exclaimed, pushing another bench up to the impromptu breakfast spread out on a worktable. Most of the regular victuals were laid out—butter and cheese, honey, oat cakes, tea—together with a huge platter of fruit. The usual breakfast meats had evidently been banned for the occasion, in deference to the centaurs. Giving Seregil a meaningful stare from under his beetling brows, he added, “I do hope this is a social call.”
    “More or less,” Seregil said, piling a plate with bannocks and fruit. “Alec’s feeling a bit lost about living for a few extra centuries. I thought you wizards could give him some helpful guidance, since it takes your sort by surprise, too.”
    “So he finally told you,” said Magyana, giving Alec a hug. “And high time, too.”
    Hwerlu let out a snort of surprise. “Not until now does he know?” He said something to Feeya in their whistling language and she shook her head.
    Turning to Alec, Hwerlu smiled. “We saw it that first day you came here, but Seregil says not to tell you. Why?”
    “I guess he wanted me to get used to him first,”