"The Sons?" deLan asked. "How can you know?"

"It's a guess," Kanick admitted. "But the use of such forbidden magic... It is frowned upon to carve spells into a living human. But spells to influence the mind? These are truly forbidden," he elaborated. "The Sons, or perhaps a similar group with similar aims, are the only ones with the skillset to perform this kind of spell."

"What about a lone mage, fallen out with the rules of the order?" deLan asked.

"It is possible," Kanick admitted, but he didn't think so. "The order has two tiers of rules, one for the order and one for all mages. Blood curses, necromantic spells, confoundments are all condemned in the harshest terms, and any mage found practicing them forfeits their life. A mage would have to fall very far indeed, in order to risk using a spell such as this." Jarron Miller groaned on the damp floor, whispering as deLan, Kanick and Bera looked over him in silence. "Especially for reasons so opaque."

"Can anything be done for him?" Bera asked, nodding at the prone figure against the hard floor.

"The rune might fade, with a skilled healer," Kanick replied, feeling pity for what such a man had been reduced to. He continued, "but it's impression on the skin, and thus, the mind will likely be with him for the rest of his life. Although weakened, the spell will always compel him to believe his wife was undead. In quieter moments, he may know the truth." Kanick replied sadly.

"I will speak to my Court Mage, Valdez," deLan said, "though he will freely admit that the healing arts are not his strong suit."

"We know a good healer in Dorran," Bera replied softly. The tragic tale of Jarron and Marin Miller had clearly affected him. "She might be able to help if we can get him there."

Kanick shook his head. "Perhaps she can lessen the burden, but those scars will never truly heal, and any activation of the spell, any question about Regius, or the fate of Marin will no doubt reactivate the suggestion, reinforcing the wound and so reinforcing the mark."

On que, Jarron screamed, his foot fizzed and spat purple sparks as the rune activated, opening the wound anew. "We were happy, my wife and me... He killed my wife!"

"We can't leave him like this," Bera pleaded while Jarron continued his ranting.

"Look, the spell has reactivated, and the runes reinforced," Kanick pointed out. "In time, infection or weakness caused by the magic will kill him. The only other option is amputation.

"Valdez might be able to at least lesson the strength of the spell, so long as no one triggers it," Kanick continued, addressing deLan. "But once that is complete, the only way he will ever be free is if the foot is removed." Kanick thought for a moment of the villages that had once been in the path of the Scar. "But he will never truly be free."

"What will you do now?" deLan asked. "Will you go to the Magister?"

"Yes," Kanick answered, shaking his head, "but not before we visit Regius's cave. I fear we have been delayed from examining that place for too long. Besides, the Magister keeps to a very particular schedule." A thought occurred to him. "Do you have horses? It is a long walk, but a short ride up the shore."

"The garrison keeps a stable of horses," deLan told them as he began to lead them out into the dank hallway and up the stairs. "Be warned, though, they are beasts of war more than burden, and difficult for an inexperienced rider."

"I've been riding since I was a child," Bera declared. "Al-Sayyal picked me personally for his Chovken team. I have no problem with horses."

deLan ignored the boast, and Kanick threw his apprentice a look.

Both deLan and Bera, it turned out, had been correct in their assessments. The large destriers, huge black beasts with muscle packed beneath their glossy coats, taken from the garrison stables proved ill-tempered and Kanick's was constantly threatening to break into a canter at the merest provocation. A Spahan saying about riding tigers, and the difficulties of dismounting came to his mind.

Bera, by comparison, controlled his horse masterfully with one hand on the reigns and was a picture of a casual assuredness, his hips swaying in time with the creature's gait. Kanick was certain his apprentice must have simply gotten lucky and chosen a more pliable horse.

They passed under the Northgate a little before noon, as the sun soared high above, aloof to the oppressive heat it was visiting on the world below. From there they followed the road, across the causeway and ignoring the dirt path through the forest from which they first came. Instead they took the better maintained road as it skirted along the edge of the dense woods. The sounds of crickets chirping, and the dull clop of their horses' hooves filled the air, albeit muffled somewhat by the heat.

Kanick could feel his skin beginning to redden as he gripped his reigns tightly, pulling his horse back to a slow trot. The horse, resisting, pushed forwards at a canter, passing Bera and nearly dismounting his passenger until Kanick managed to get him under control again.

"He can sense you're nervous," Bera offered.

"Of course I'm nervous, if I fall this demon will trample me out of spite!" Kanick shot back.

"You need to relax."

"Relax! Ah-" The horse was off again, and Kanick jerked back on the reins. Unhelpfully, the horse came to a complete stop. "Bastard thing!" He cursed, as Bera overtook him again. Slowly, hesitantly, Kanick gently squeezed the horse's flanks, and he began to walk forwards, following the road.

"Al-Sayyal chose you personally?" Kanick asked, hoping the conversation might distract him.

"Yes," Bera replied eagerly. "Did you ever play?"

"Sayyal taught me the game, Chovken. Sticks and balls?" The apprentice nodded. "But I never took to it, to my master's disappointment."

"I miss it, Spaha, I mean," Bera confessed. "Even this heat is wrong. In Spaha it would cook you alive, out in the desert, though the gardens of the temple were always cool. Here it feels like I'm being boiled in a pot!"

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"It is unusual this far north," Kanick admitted, clasping his hands together, hoping to relieve some of the heat, and instead deciding just to let his hands breathe. "All my memories of the north are snow and wind," he added, removing his gloves with his teeth. "I always considered Aaton my home, however." Kanick thought for a moment back to the classroom in Parras, and his cool white-washed chambers in the tower. "Before I moved to the Grand Temple, anyway."

Eventually the woods fell away, as the ground to their right began to rise into a steep verge, before evolving into muddy cliffs scabbed with brown, rocky crags. The road split, one fork heading north along the coast, while a dirt track continued steeply up the side of the cliffs.

Kanick, not wanting to be thrown down towards the sea, suggested they walk the horses up. The climb was steep and would have been difficult without the oppression of the sun, even though the mages had long left their outer robes draped over their saddles.

The path became narrower, and the horses were struggling to find their footing. Just as Kanick was beginning to think they had made a mistake bringing them – the suggestion to turn back and tie them at the bottom never quite made it through his salted lips - the path widened to a small plateau.

Kanick looked out at the sea, his chest tighter than he was comfortable with, hearing the gentle crash of the waves and the call of the gulls. The city was well behind them, and the distant mountains, denoting the border with Nerrath looked otherworldly in the heat haze. Did Regius ever sit here and look out, he found himself wondering?

"Where now?" Bera asked.

Kanick looked around and then pointed to an even narrower path made of wooden, muddy steps cut into the cliff. "Up there, but we should stake the horses here."

The stepped path was even steeper, and Kanick found himself stretching his leg muscles to try and keep moving forwards, all efforts to conceal his breathing now abandoned. He could hear Bera muttering numbers under his breath, at first, but the apprentice eventually stopped trying to keep count.

Finally, they reached another landing, about two thirds of the way up the cliff, formed from the top of one of the crags stuck precariously out of the muddy face. They jogged the last few steps, eager to reach the charred and splintered door haphazardly covering an opening burrowed deep into the crag.

"This is it," Kanick declared as he stared at the lopsided piece of wood, cut circular to cover the entrance. The sound of the sea had retreated below them, and the gulls were silent. Except for the barest whisper on the breeze, the cave was silent. "Let's take a look," Kanick said as Bera came up behind him.

The apprentice hefted the heavy piece of wood, some of it splintering away to fall on the ground as he rolled it away from the entrance.

The light of the day spilled into the cave.

It was a very simple tunnel in the rock, Kanick saw, extending thirty feet or so into the cliff face. The walls of the cave were blackened, and the floor carpeted with ash. A powdery smell rose to meet them as they took their first steps over the floor flaked with the remains of papers and whatever possessions Regius claimed. Wisps of ash were kicked upwards by their boots; wraiths twisting in the hot light.

Though most of the cave was smote and desolate, a few blackened structures divided the cave into sections. What had once been a bookshelf, now collapsed and charred, had separated a sleeping space from a lump of charcoal that might have been desk and chair.

The angle of the light wasn't steep enough to penetrate all through the cave, so Bera activated a rune and, after the characteristic purple sparks, a small orb of yellow light illuminated the darker places.

"Stone table," Bera pointed to a slab in the middle of the cave, black and covered in the same remnant flakes of blackened paper that covered much of the cave.

"Where he saw patients, I imagine," Kanick said absently as he walked around, the ash here damp, Kanick's boots leaving prints where he walked. "We're not the first to have been here," Kanick noted, seeing two other sets of footprints.

"Probably from the Enclave, to remove the body," Bera replied.

Kanick looked on the walls around the desk. Something had been scratched into the rock. "Bring the light over here," he told Bera.

"Er, I don't know how," Bera replied and Kanick heard the sheepishness in the boy's voice.

"Just come over here and it should follow then," Kanick replied. "There are characters you can add to the rune that will allow you to direct it," he added.

Once illuminated Kanick saw that the scratchings were white marks; rock on rock, like a child scraping one stone over another to make scribbles.

"What is it," the apprentice asked.

"Not sure," Kanick muttered, looking closer. There was a series of mindless scoring on the wall of the cave, eight distinct patches in total. He examined them closer and realised they were runes that someone had scratched over.

Casting his eye over them again, he could recognise a single character, on the edge of the fourth series, which had been missed. It was often used in healing spells, though Kanick knew that the characters of a rune could interact in unpredictable ways and so inferring the function of a spell from its components might be a fool's errand.

"Do you have paper and pen?" He asked of his apprentice.

Bera nodded, pulling a blank piece from within his robe. "Last one, though," he warned.

Kanick waved his hand dismissively. "We can get more later. Record as much of this as you can," he instructed.

As Bera began tracing as much of the runes as he could, a white speck caught Kanick's eye. As he knelt among the damp, ash he saw that a half-burned piece of paper was plastered to the ashy surface.

Gently, so as not tear it, Kanick peeled it away and held it to the light and saw there was rune traced upon it – half a rune, rather. The pattern of the paper's consumption was markedly different from that of the other detritus in the cave.

The edges of the paper were shaped as though burned by flame, but there was no blackening or ash along the edge, Kanick saw with a rueful smile. As a teacher, this pattern was more familiar to him than to most. He had made numerous mistakes that looked like this before, every mage had of course.

Simply put, the rune of the spell had been too powerful for its vessel to hold. A mage, presumably Regius, would have activated it, the rune would have fizzed to life in a flurry of purple sparks... and then consumed the vessel, destroying the rune before the spell had completed.

"How embarrassing, old friend," Kanick muttered to himself, smiling. "Hey, Bera," Kanick called out. The apprentice stopped recording the runes on the wall. "Just to show you, even masters can get it wrong," he showed his apprentice the scrap of paper.

"I knew that already," Bera shot back, grinning. "What spell is it?"

"I don't know," Kanick replied, studying it closer. "Let me have a look at what you've got."

Bera moved, the light with him, as they laid the two pieces of paper next to each other. Kanick pointed out the healing rune on the paper, which matched that from the wall. He followed it round, through the spell, and to other marks he couldn't recognise.

"That one's in the almanac," Bera pointed at another character. "I think it speeds up healing."

Kanick saw that he was right, but the orientation of the mark looked strange to him, tilted at an angle. When he realised that, other marks began to appear. "Here, that's one for heat, I think."

"What could it mean?" Bera asked.

"I think, this is the spell Regius must have used to heal Marin," Kanick replied. "Or at least some iteration of it... We have to get it back to the Enclave and study it further-" Kanick began, but he was cut off by a sound at the entrance to the cave.

There was a flash of purple light, as a figure in white rushed past the entrance and the wooden door was rolled back over the mouth of the cave.

All was darkness save the small pool of light given out by Bera's already fading spell.

"What in the void was that?" Bera asked, his voice tight and slightly higher than usual.

The mouth of the cave was brightening again, an orange glow that seemed to seep upwards from the floor, bringing heat and thick smoke. Flames began to lick at the mouth of the cave, crawling up the walls.

Bera was saying something, but Kanick's brain couldn't make out a single word, as though the apprentice was yelling through a gale.

Instead, horror-struck, Kanick was focussed on the fire that was sweeping forwards with intense heat, burning that which was already burned. The cackle and hiss cut through the nauseating pounding of his heart.

It was a voice, Kanick knew, a voice like a woman with fiery wings and outstretched arms.

You, belong to me, it whispered.