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Seer … I didn’t know you had returned. Counselor Derian, Isende … Please come inside. Everyone keeps saying that spring is here, but I for one find the weather still rather cold.”
    The human callers accepted Ynamynet’s invitation with alacrity, for the winds coming off the oceans were indeed chilly. Firekeeper and Blind Seer followed without the same impetus. Neither of them found the weather anything other than invigorating.
    Ynamynet left them in a sunny front room, promising to return. Soft-voiced conversation in a language Firekeeper didn’t know followed by a muted clattering of pots and plates hinted at possible refreshments. A squeal of protest indicated that Sunshine was having her face scrubbed, but when Ynamynet returned, her expression was tranquil and a touch more composed than it had been when they had arrived.
    “I apologize for calling unannounced.” Derian began, “but Firekeeper has a question for you.”
    “And Firekeeper will not be kept waiting,” Ynamynet said with a smile. She had brought a fur-trimmed robe with her, and pulled it on as she arrayed herself in a chair she moved to where it would be in the sun coming through the window. Firekeeper found herself sweating just looking at her, but Ynamynet looked comfortable.
    There was no real annoyance in Ynamynet’s tone, just a statement of fact: Firekeeper was one who Could not be kept waiting. Firekeeper felt pleased. Wolves value their privileges highly. Besides, she approved of Ynamynet. The woman was brave and devoted. If she had a tendency toward—not treachery … that wouldn’t be a fair description. There is no treachery when a mother bird feigns a broken wing to protect her fledgling.
    “Is important,” Firekeeper assured their host. “We want to know what is said about where querinalo came from.”
    Ynamynet glanced at Derian as if waiting for clarification, and when the young man added nothing, frowned slightly.
    “Where querinalo came from? I don’t know. It has been a bane—that’s what we called it in my homeland, ‘the Bane’ or ‘the sorcerer’s bane’—for something like a hundred and fifty years. It wiped out the sorcerers who once ruled the Old World and the New. Apparently, it then left the New World alone, but the Bane continues to kill and mutilate residents of the Old World to this very day.”
    “But you not know where it come from?” Firekeeper asked. “Not even in stories?”
    “You mean like the stories the Liglim tell? About how the Bane was sent as divine retribution against those who abused the gifts of magic?”
    Firekeeper inclined her head in acknowledgment.
    “No.” Ynamynet’s tone was bitter. “I have no such stories, and my family was descended from the very sorcerers who once ruled our land and many others.”
    Derian spoke very gently. “What about enemies? I have heard some say that the Plague might not have been a disease at all, but rather a magical curse. Could someone have created a curse and then that curse have gotten out of hand?”
    Ynamynet regained her composure. “I suppose that’s possible, although it seems idiotic to me that someone would create a curse that might backwash so horribly.”
    “Still,” Isende said softly, “you admit it’s possible.”
    “Anything’s possible,” Ynamynet replied. “Including deities capable of such incredible cruelty. I know you New Worlders don’t think highly of what the sorcerer monarchs did. All you remember are the tales of their cruelty and abuse. You forget the wonderful things they did as well.”
    She motioned to the lantern that waited on the table to be lit when evening came.
    “They had lights that didn’t smoke or smell. They could travel vast distances in moments. They could heal wounds with a touch. Some say they could even defy old age and death. I’m sure that many of them were perfectly good and just rulers, but no one ever remembers those who rule over them with any fondness—especially when those