Arai and Lillandra returned to the Akane Palace after their meetings with Princess Yasmin and Minister D'mai. Shell, who appeared to have been waiting for them, jumped off one of the wagons and ran up to them immediately, her face full of worry. "I didn't think you'd be gone so long," she said. "What happened? Did you speak with the princess?"

  "Yes," Arai said, "and with Minister D'mai."

  Sir Estil joined them. "Trouble?"

  "Not exactly," he said. "But I think we'd better get out of Palais as soon as possible. There's something brewing here, under the surface, and I don't like it." In truth, Nessa's warning, that everyone who had crossed the desert was in danger, was still bothering him. He wondered, again, whether he should tell Lady Melei.

  "There's some kind of power struggle going on between Princess Yasmin and Minister D'mai," Lillandra added. "D'mai believes Yasmin set Nessa free, and I'm pretty sure Yasmin believes the same thing of D'mai. Both of them were worried about spies and secret enemies."

  Sir Estil tugged at the edge of his mustache -- one of his little quirks; he did this when he was thinking hard about something. "Perhaps we should speak to Lady Melei."

  They found Melei with the merchants, busily discussing the details of some deal they had just made with the queen. "A hundred gold per bolt," she was saying. "No more, no less. Oh, and Phile? Don't forget to show those Jaquin robes to the queen's stewards." Her business concluded, she turned to Arai and the others, a look of happy weariness on her face. "It's going to take a couple of weeks to move this merchandise," she said. "But we're making a killing. We're going to be very wealthy on our return to Galleus...and this is only the first expedition. Hiero's radiator has already paid for itself."

  "Congratulations," Arai said. "But I'm afraid there's something we need to discuss." And he told her about the conversations they had had with Princess Yasmin and Minister D'mai. Lady Melei listened to it all, frowning thoughtfully.

  "You think these two may be planning to use our expedition as some kind of pawn in this game they're playing?" she asked.

  "Possibly," Arai said. "But I don't know enough about Elentish politics to be sure."

  "Are we in danger?"

  He hesitated. "Yes," he said at last, Nessa's warning still tickling his thoughts. "You might want to set some kind of guard tonight. But try to keep it quiet; we don't want to give our hosts the wrong idea."

  She nodded. "I'll see to it."

  Arai decided to stay with the wagons that night, rather than in the room he had been given in the palace; he wanted to be close to Lillandra and Shell in case something did happen. Would these "assassins" Nessa had mentioned really be so daring as to carry out an attack on the grounds of the Akane Palace, however, which was surrounded by soldiers and Queen's Men? He found the idea a little far-fetched, but then again, Nessa had managed to penetrate the palace's defenses when she had come to visit him in his room the previous night, so perhaps the place wasn't quite as highly-guarded as it seemed to be.

  He told Sir Estil to remain vigilant as well. "Perhaps I'll stay up a little later tonight," the old knight said, nodding seriously.

  And so, after spending the afternoon helping the merchants unload their wares, and after spending the evening swapping stories with Lady Melei's knights, Arai retired to his wagon. He was beginning to think this might be the last night he spent in the company of Lady Melei's expeditionary party -- he had become friends with many of the knights, merchants, and workers, and had even fought and bled with them, but the caravan would be returning to Galleus eventually, while Arai, Lillandra, Shell, and presumably Sir Estil would be continuing on to Velon.

  He wondered about Sir Estil, though. The knight had been a steadfast companion, and had sworn himself to Arai's service, but he was also a Gallean, and blood, after all, was thicker than water. Arai wouldn't blame him for wanting to remain with the caravan and to return to Galleus with Lady Melei and her people. He had given no indication that he wished to do that, but Arai wouldn't have been surprised to learn that those thoughts had crossed his mind.

  He wondered about Shell, too. The elf girl very much wanted to stay with them, but what would life be like for her in Velon? She would probably always be regarded as a strange curiosity in these western nations, where practically no one had ever even seen an elf before, and as she grew older, she might begin to feel lonely for her own kind. Of course Arai would take care of her as best he could, but he worried about her future.

  He was thinking about these things, and just beginning to drift off to sleep, when he suddenly snapped awake -- he had just heard a strange sound coming from outside the wagon, a loud clunk. For all he knew it might have been one of Lady Melei's knights, stumbling around drunk and bumping into things, but Arai was on edge, and he immediately sat up in bed, listening for more. He didn't hear anything, but after rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he saw something, at the foot of his bed: a dark, shadowy figure, looming over him. Alarmed, he instinctively rolled out of bed, landing on the floor, and a millisecond later, his pillow was pierced by a wizard's whisker -- a sharp needle, made of steel, propelled by sorcery. A second needle struck the wooden floor, narrowly missing his leg.

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  By then, however, he had snatched Silus from his bedpost and whipped the sword out of its scabbard. A third whisker came whizzing at him, but this time, Silus protected him from the sorcery and the needle flew off course, sticking in the wall behind him. The dark figure standing in his wagon -- the sorcerer -- seemed not to understand what had just happened and tried again, but again, the needle went awry. Arai leapt forward, intending to strike the man -- or woman; he couldn't make out a face, and the figure was cloaked in darkness -- down, but just as Silus was about to strike home the figure stepped to one side and vanished completely, disappearing into the shadows.

  Arai had seen this trick before. "The Draw of Shadows," he muttered. He spun around, expecting the figure to reappear, to step out of another set of shadows behind him, but there was no follow-up attack.

  Arai didn't even bother to throw on his armor -- he kicked open the door to his wagon and jumped out into the night. Nothing seemed to be amiss, at first, but then, as his eyes began to adjust to the half-light, he spotted the body of a man lying between two of the wagons. It was one of Lady Melei's knights. He was lying facedown on the ground, in a pool of blood, having apparently been struck in the back of the head -- probably that had been the clunk Arai had heard earlier. Elsewhere, he heard a scream.

  Kicking himself for not taking Nessa's warning more seriously, Arai went immediately to the wagon Lillandra slept in, which she shared with Shell; this was the big wagon where the radiator was stored. He threw open the door and dove inside. "Lill?"

  Lillandra and Shell were both awake; Shell was holding the Candle of Hours. The two of them were standing over the body of a man wearing a black cloak, with a silver clasp on his breast. Lillandra had a wizard's whisker stuck in her forearm; blood was trickling out of the wound, running down to her fingers. "What happened?" he asked, though he already had a pretty good idea.

  "He attacked us," Shell said. She sounded a little shaken. "Lillandra...stopped him."

  "Is he dead?"

  "Just unconscious, I think," Lillandra said. "I hit him pretty hard."

  Someone else was shouting, outside. Arai jumped out of the wagon, holding Silus before him like a protective talisman, and immediately spotted another one of these black-cloaked figures, battling it out with Damon; the two of them were trading fireballs and wizard's whiskers. Arai went to help him, but there was shouting and scuffling breaking out all over the camp now, and before he could reach the sorcerer, he was confronted by another hooded assassin, materializing out of the shadow of another one of the wagons. A needle flew past his ear.

  He spun around and attacked the sorcerer, but once again, the figure receded into the darkness before Arai could get close enough to strike him down with Silus. Swearing, he whirled around, looking for another opponent; coincidentally, Sir Estil had just exploded out of his own wagon, splintering the door as he kicked one of the sorcerers through it. The sorcerer landed on the grass, gravely wounded, but before Sir Estil could finish him off he, too, disappeared into the night.

  "What's going on?" Sir Estil bellowed.

  "We're under attack," Arai shouted back at him. "The whole camp!"

  "How many?"

  "I don't know." It was difficult to tell how many sorcerers they were dealing with; Arai wasn't sure if the man who had attacked him just now was the same man who had tried to kill him in his wagon. There could be dozens of these sorcerers, but then again, there might only be three or four.

  They heard more fighting going on on the other side of the wagon train, so they followed the sounds of battle, and almost immediately found themselves squaring off against more sorcerers -- one was casting some kind of spell, covering the area in red smoke; another was fighting Lady Melei herself, who was in her nightclothes, trying to slice the man with her dagger. She was yelling something at the sorcerer, trying to get him to talk, but none of these mages had said anything so far; they were implacable.

  Arai went to Lady Melei's aid. The sorcerer tried to ignite his clothing with a fire-spell, but it failed to catch, because of Silus. Surprised, he took a step back, which gave Lady Melei the second she needed to slash him with her dagger, cutting his arm when he put it up to defend himself. He hissed, then backpedaled another step and touched the sigil on his chest. A bright light burst out of it, and at the same moment, Arai heard him say, in a low voice, "Depart." His voice seemed to resonate, weirdly, across the palace grounds.

  The bright light blinded him, and it took a moment for Arai's vision to clear. When it did, the sorcerer was gone.

  "Fled," Melei muttered.

  And he wasn't the only one -- all of the sorcerers had disappeared. The sounds of battle slowly died, away, replaced with groans and cries for help.

  "Are you all right?" Arai asked Melei.

  "More or less," she said. It was only then that Arai realized she had a wizard's whisker stuck in her shoulder. She plucked it out, wincing, and tossed it aside. "Who were they?"

  "I don't know. But we'll find out soon enough -- Lillandra and Shell managed to capture one."

  She nodded. "Let's see to the wounded first."

  There were many casualties. Most of the sorcerers had appeared unexpectedly within the wagons, and killed their victims before they had a chance to wake up; they found three merchants murdered in their beds. Two servants and two knights had been killed as well, including Sir Remnick, who had died fighting with Lady Melei. A dozen more were wounded, some seriously.

  The palace guards were on the scene within a few minutes, along with a contingent of Queen's Men. Melei, furious, vented her anger at them: "This is how you treat your 'honored guests'?" she screamed. "I wish to speak to Queen Alfaze at once."

  "She's...I'm sure she's sleeping right now..." one of the men stammered.

  "Then wake her!"

  While Gramewold tended to the wounded, and while the knights and merchants mourned their dead, Arai and Sir Estil returned to Lillandra's wagon. The wizard's whisker had struck her arm a few inches below her elbow, but it did not seem to have penetrated very deeply; Lillandra had already removed the needle, and Shell had already given her a few drops of her healing potion, which stopped the bleeding and sealed the wound. Shell, for her part, was unhurt.

  The sorcerer they had captured was still lying on the floor of the wagon. Arai tied his hands together, so that he couldn't cast any spells, and went through his pockets to make sure he wasn't hiding any zemi. He was a tall man, probably in his thirties, with short-cropped hair and a carefully-trimmed beard and mustache. He was dressed all in black, his cloak pinned together with a silver sigil in the shape of a half-moon.

  Arai recognized that symbol. "The Mages of the Dark Mist," he said.