Anryn ran headlong after Maertyn Blackfire into the woods, leaving Professor Lawson and the witches of Java behind with barely a second thought.

　　His lungs ached, his head pounded, and the awful smell of burned flesh clung to his nose. It felt like Dorland all over again. He told himself this time was different, that he was not the one fleeing like a wounded animal.

　　Anryn held the sheath of his sword to his side and picked up his pace. Desperate to catch up to Maertyn.

　　At first, he intended to search with only the two eyes his mother gave to him. Yet the temptation to use the Sight was powerful. The trees pressed in around Anryn, smothering the sunlight. He squinted through the shadows at the ground underfoot, and hoped to pick out trampled bits of grass or broken twigs, some sign that Maertyn had run this way.

　　When he strained too hard, his eyes went cross, and the Sight swam across them. It was like double vision: A view of the natural world in the background, and the things he wanted to See brought to the fore, picked out in bright, glowing lines. The Seen things were completely still, while underneath the lines, their natural form continued to move. Trying to view both at once gave Anryn a headache that reached down the back of his eyes into his stomach. If this were witchcraft, he thought, it felt very much like being drunk.

　　Finally, Anryn Saw a trampled place in the grass with bright patches of blood ground into the dirt. He plunged after the trail, gripping the hilt of his sword, ready to stop and draw at an instant. All the lines of the Sight flowed along with him, converging into one bright point just ahead of him.

　　Beneath the Seen, hands and arms moved. Frantically waving.

　　"Help! Help! Over here!" voices shouted.

　　Anryn had to blink several times to clear the Sight from his vision. The natural world sharpened into focus. He saw three small tents pitched near a large metal cage. Inside it, bodies of a dozen men were crammed together, arms and legs flailing from between the grate. White candles encircled the cage, and he could smell the thick, sweet stench of incense.

　　Mages, Anryn thought.

　　He had never met a mage of Nynomath in all his young life. He knew about them only from the stories Ammar told its children: Men and women with a terrible power that let them bend the natural world to their will in defiance of God. They cultivated this power in the witches and lost souls of the world, enticing them to Nynomath with promises of power. Who they could not entice, they enslaved. Who they could not enslave, they killed.

　　Out from behind the cage stepped a tall, thin woman with short-cropped hair. He almost didn`t recognize her for a woman, so unused to seeing women without their veils. Her voice was high and clear as she sang out a word Anryn did not know.

　　The air around him went cold with a sudden gust of wind, as if Anryn hurtled down a snowy slope on the back of a sled. Ice crystals puckered in his vision and stung his nose and throat. The wind slammed into his face as if a blizzard materialized from the very air Anryn tried to breathe.

　　"Don`t let her touch you!" someone from the cage screamed.

　　Choking from the cold in his throat, Anryn sank into a defensive crouch. He drew his sword and slashed at the cold air around him, hoping to keep the mage at bay while he squinted through the wind that gnashed at him. His eyes watered when he tried to open them. The tears froze as fast as he could blink, blinding him.

　　The Sight broke through. Behind his frozen eyelids, Anryn Saw the world around him as an afterimage pressed against the blackness. The bright lines resolved into silhouettes—the tents, the cage, the arms reaching for him.

　　There was the mage! She crept along Anryn`s flank, her hands held out with the thumbs and index fingers joined in a strange shape. The outline of her mouth moved in a silent phrase and the Sight picked out the lines of her lips fixed in vivid red.

　　Anryn bent his elbows, brought his sword close to his body. Then turned and lunged with the point straight out. With the Sight to guide him, he was not the panicked novice flailing at the assassin on the mountainside. He remembered to drop the heel of his leading foot, flex the ankle of his back foot. He let go of the hilt with one hand and let it fall behind him, acting as a counterweight to the other that held fast. A shining line of Sight flowed along the edge of his blade, flaring as the tip of it at last met flesh.

　　Anryn`s sword buried itself deep into the mage`s chest. In that instant, her spell broke.

　　Water streamed Anryn`s face as the ice melted. He managed to blink twice. Then the crowd in the cage all began to scream at once.

　　"Behind you! Behind you! Behind you!"

　　Anryn went down hard, tackled by a man twice his size. He lost his grip on his sword, still stuck in the ice mage`s chest. Stunned, he barely managed a feeble jab with his elbow. Anryn caught the barest glimpse of his attacker—gray beard, bald head—before the man flipped him onto his stomach and pinned his arms to his back with only a single hand.

　　"How dare you! I am the Prince of Ammar! Unhand me!" Anryn screamed into the dirt. Then, absurdly remembering his childhood language lessons, he berated the mage in Nynomathian: "It is not permitted to touch the Prince of Ammar!"

　　Without a word, the mage hauled Anryn to his feet, and frog-marched him toward the cage. Anryn went on shouting until the mage wrapped one hand around his face. The flesh of the man`s palm was so taught with callus and muscle, Anryn`s teeth couldn`t break the skin when he bit down on it.

　　Maertyn`s voice rang out from somewhere behind them: "Get your hands off her."

　　The mage whirled around, holding Anryn in front of him like a shield. Over the top of the callused fingers squeezing his face, he saw Maertyn standing not ten feet away amid the trees, face pale and eyes glittering. His smoke-stained coat gave him the look of a bird of prey. His hands were balled at his sides, red all the way to his wrists.

　　Anryn didn`t need the Sight to know that the blood was not his. The mage saw it, too.

　　"Matthias?" the mage called out, his voice high and uncertain. "Matthias&! Where are you?"

　　Maertyn shook his head. "Shout louder—he is in Hell."

　　The hand holding Anryn`s face twitched. "You are no mere ditch-witch& What kind of devil are you?"

　　Anryn wrenched his face free of the mage`s hand. He shouted to Maertyn, "Watch out for the other one!"

　　Maertyn glanced down at the ice mage. She sprawled on the ground, and whimpered as she tried to pull Anryn`s sword from her chest. He went to her side and knelt down. For a moment, Anryn thought that he was about to help her, as he had the brigand after he`d broken the man`s jaw.

　　Then Maertyn grabbed the woman by the throat with both bloody hands and squeezed. Black flames kindled under his fingers. They licked down the woman`s neck, spread all across her face in smoking tendrils. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

　　"Don`t, don`t!" she screamed. Then the black fire was in her mouth, in her nose. She did not live more than a minute at most before it had burned her lungs all away.

　　"Saints alive& You are the Winze!" said the last mage standing. He thrust Anryn forward, a shield between himself and Maertyn. "Mercy& mercy, Winze& I was not the one who cursed you. My companions were not looking for you. Take this witch, take the ones in the cage, and let me go."

　　Maertyn glared at the last mage. He shook his head.

　　Stalemate, Anryn thought. He glanced wildly around, looking for some way to tip the balance. With only his feet free, Anryn thought of kicking backward at the mage, but the man was so large, it was unlikely to do him much harm.

　　Then Anryn noticed the absence of the Sight. No lines appeared when he crossed his eyes. He glanced down and saw that the mage held him inside the ring of white candles surrounding the cage.

　　Anryn flung his leg out. His toe knocked one taper out of the formation. The Sight came flooding back.

　　Inside the cage, the witches of Ammar surged against the bars. With no enchantment now to bind them, they willed their magic into the world with desperate screams and furious shouts. It was a chaos of phenomena. With neither spell nor gesture, the witches` cries conjured the wind from all directions. Flowers sprouted up from underfoot. Fat drops of warm summer rain fell from a sudden cloudburst overhead.

　　The mage swore and flung Anryn forward. He stumbled and nearly fell into black flames leaping from the corpse of the ice mage. Maertyn caught him by the shoulders, and then threw him to the ground. With his body, Maertyn shielded Anryn as the witches` fury ripped through the wind and the trees. Branches crashed down all around them and the wind howled.

　　Anryn clung to Maertyn. He relived the horror of Dorland, the sensations of the calamity raking over his mind. The witch weeping on the pyre, the knife stabbing into his back. The smell of his own charred flesh in his nose while the wind dragged him across the ground. The wind was screaming, the witch was screaming& Anryn screamed into Maertyn`s shoulder.

　　Please, God, not again, Anryn prayed behind the scream. I swear I will never burn a witch again&!

　　After a few moments, the phenomena died down. Untrained to magic, witches lost their strength quickly. They sagged against the bars, half-fainting as their magic faded from the world, leaving behind only the damage it caused.

　　Anryn peeked out from underneath Maertyn`s shoulder. Sunlight streamed down through torn treetops. Bright summer flowers littered the ground all around the silver cage. The mage was nowhere to be seen.

　　Maertyn started to rise, cursing. Anryn jumped up, and grabbed his arm before he could run off again.

　　"Leave it," the prince commanded.

　　He saw the dark, seething fury in Maertyn`s face. The disturbing brightness crept into his eyes. Anryn had only seen it twice so far, and it was just as frightening how quickly it changed Maertyn`s face. At first, he shrank back from the other man`s pain. Terrified that Maertyn would kill him, or abandon him.

　　Before the terror could overrun him, Anryn thought of the woman in the water. Just the memory of the black hair was enough to conjure her—and she was not afraid of Maertyn`s pain. When Anryn spoke, she spoke through him:

　　"They hurt you. They stole you, and the life that you were entitled to. I swear to you, Maertyn Blackfire, they will not go unpunished. No mage of Nynomath will go unpunished when I am King in Ammar."

　　Anryn almost didn`t hear the words. They poured out of that secret place too fast to comprehend. It only mattered that Maertyn heard and believed them. After a moment, he nodded. The unhealthy brightness in his eyes faded.

　　"I need a drink," Maertyn said.

　　Anryn let go of his arm. He recovered his sword from the smear of black ashes that had been the ice mage. Anryn wiped the blade off with his shirt, then searched the tents of the mages flattened beneath branches. Eventually, he found the key to the padlock that held the cage shut.

　　The exhausted witches spilled onto the ground. They gasped ragged breaths and stared, amazed, at the havoc their magic had wrought. Fearful, they each glanced at once another. Anryn understood then that none of them was sure until that moment that the other had been a witch at all.

　　How did the mages know? Anryn wondered.

　　These men looked like any other subject in Ammar. Most of them were clean-shaven, and decently dressed. These weren`t hungry brigands or lost, lonely people who didn`t go to church. They were ordinary.

　　The witches of Java glanced at each other, and then nervously back at Anryn. Finally, the last man to step from the cage came to kneel. He was as old as Professor Lawson, though only half as tall, with a round potbelly.

　　"Your Highness, God save you as you have saved us on this day," the old man said with pretty country manners. "I am Hammond, a footman at the governor`s house in Java. Blessings on you and your father, King Anathas. Long live the King."

　　"Long live the King," a few of the others muttered.

　　Anryn watched their faces. The witches glowered at the ground. They did not wish the Lightning King a long life at all. Not at their expense. With a sinking feeling, Anryn thought that these men would all be tied to stakes right now, if the King of Ammar had been there instead of him.

　　"What were you doing out here in the woods?" Anryn asked. "How did these& fiends come to find you?"

　　"We were looking for where the governor sent our women, Your Highness," said Hammond. "My daughter. Cayeren`s old mother. Asher`s girls. The governor took them to punish us for feasting Saint Soren."

　　Anryn widened his eyes and crossed them. The Sight revealed a dim line among the bright ones between Hammond and the other witches.

　　"I`m not sure that`s entirely true," Anryn said. "You did something to the water."

　　"It was a blessing ceremony," one of the other men muttered. "It`s the full moon. The perfect night for fertility and healing. It was only some oils we painted on the ladies to help them with their rituals&"

　　"That is how the mages found you," Maertyn said. "The spells showed them where you were. They would not take you from Java because it is a holy place. When you left, you were fair game."

　　Anryn blinked the Sight away, his eyes stinging from the brightness. Realization set in, behind it dread. Mages were abducting the witches of Ammar, now that they were no longer exiled to Nynomath. For how long and for what purpose, Anryn shuddered to guess at. He wavered, unsure of what to do.

　　Anryn glanced at Maertyn. The man was glaring down at the black smear that remained of the ice mage, flexing his red, sticky hands. He wouldn`t be much help to anyone until he got a drink in him, Anryn thought. Professor Lawson would have been able to suggest a course of action, but Anryn didn`t know whether the professor lived or died from the fire in the coach.

　　If I were King, what would I do, the prince wondered. Anryn fumbled to find something to say, to take command. Somewhere between a witch, a woman, and a prince lay the future King of Ammar. What king could leave these lost souls alone in the woods while their enemies hunted them?

　　The words came again from a secret place somewhere inside, and they were somehow the right words:

　　"You are the witches of Java. Your women were unjustly arrested by the governor, without a fair trial or a lord to pronounce a sentence. This is not the law of the land my father commands. It is not germane."

　　Some of the sullen faces turned toward Anryn now instead of the ground. Cautious, hopeful. Desperate for a way out of the woods.

　　Encouraged, the prince continued: "I give you my word, as the Prince of Ammar, that no witch of Java—no man, nor woman—will be burned at the stake. You are still subjects of Ammar."

　　Anryn reached down to help the witch Hammond to his feet. The old man clung to Anryn`s hand for a moment and kissed the back of it in homage.

　　"God save you, Your Highness," Hammond whispered.

　　"God save Your Highness," the witches of Java echoed.

　　This time, Anryn could both hear and See sincerity. All the lines between them lit. Now the prince pointed the way toward the clearing where their women had been taken. He started to follow them, but hung back when he saw that Maertyn lagged behind.

　　Maertyn glared after the witches. He reached behind him to scratch his back.

　　Anryn went to him. "What is it? What`s wrong?"

　　"There are nine of them," Maertyn said.

　　Anryn turned and counted the bodies shuffling away from them, through the trees. "Is that significant?"

　　"It is to mages," Maertyn sighed.

　　He stumbled and Anryn threw an arm around Maertyn`s waist to catch him before he could fall. He face still bled, and he winced when Anryn touched his back. Gently, Anryn shifted his arm lower and pulled Maertyn`s arm across his shoulder.

　　"Come on. Let`s get a drink in you," Anryn said.