around the Kingdoms like a crazy person for the past six years, staying at petty kings' courts until someone finds out he's there and tries to poison him. He's pretty alert about such things, usually. Or the business of his running around with his little sword tail and stealing for a living. He seems to steal from people who need it. But lately he's been coming to grief a bit too often, just missing getting caught – and you've been having to go and get him out of these scrapes. And now this; here he is, stuck in this old keep with a thousand Steldenes waiting to starve him out –and you're going to go get him out of it. Alone. Herewiss, it's not really safe.''I'll manage,' Herewiss said. 'What are you thinking father?''This. What happens when he gets into something that you can't get him out of?''By then I hope I'll have my Power . . .''But you don't have it yet, and if you get killed for Freelorn's sake, you never will. Son of mine—' and Herewiss's underhearing brought him a sudden wash of his father's sorrow, a feeling like eyes filling with tears – 'I have long since reconciled myself to the fact that you're going to die young – by use of the Flame, or more slowly by all this sorcery. Yet I want you to be what you can. Here you are, the first male in an age and a half to have enough of the Fire to use – the first sign that the Kingdoms are getting back to the way things were before the Catastrophe. But you have to live to be what you can. At least for a little longer. And Freelorn is endangering you.''Father,' Herewiss said very softly, 'what good is the Power to me if Lorn dies? He's the only thing I need as much as the Flame. Life would be empty without him, the Fire would mean nothing to me. There are priorities.''Is your life one of them?'Herewiss reached out, took his father's hands in his. 'Da, listen. I won't follow Lorn into any of his famous last stands or impossible charges. I'll try not to let him get into them. I'd like to see him king, yes – but I won't let him drag me into some crazy scheme that has a dead Dragon's chance against the Dark of succeeding. However, I also won't let him get killed if there's any way I can help it –and if my life is the price of his continuing, well, there it is. I can't help how I feel.'
