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Menju did not insist on our destruction. He had what he wanted. He sealed up the Well of Life so that magic no longer flowed into the world of Thimhallan. Bereft of their magic, most of the people in Thimhallan said bitterly that they might as well be dead. Many did kill themselves. It was a terrible time.

Fortunately, Garald, who was then King of Sharakan, following the death of his father, was able to act quickly and take control. He brought in the Sorcerers, the practitioners of the Dark Arts, and they taught our people how to use tools to do what magic had always done for them in the past. Gradually, as the years went by, we rebuilt the cities, though the buildings were crude and ugly, compared with what they had once been.

But all that would come later. Joram was dead. I had two responsibilities now, or rather three. The Darksword, Gwen, and the child she bore. Whoever had killed Joram must still be in the Temple and, indeed, I saw the Executioner rise and start to move toward us.

He was a powerful Duuk-tsarith. I could not hope to escape him. Suddenly, however, he was pushed backward, almost to the edge of the cliff. I saw him struggling, but he fought an invisible foe!

And then I knew—the dead were giving us a chance to escape.

Picking up the Darksword, I grabbed Gwen’s hand. She came with me docilely. We fled that sorrowful place. Later, when the Emperor sent to recover Joram’s body, it was found laid out in state inside the Temple of the Necromancers. The hands of the dead tended him, who had been Dead in his lifetime.

All of Thimhallan was in confusion, as you can imagine. Bad as that was for some, it was good for me, for no one cared about a middle-aged catalyst and a young woman they took for my daughter. My first thought was to go to the Font. I am not sure why, except that it had been my home for so long. Arriving there, I realized my mistake, for though the place was in an uproar, there were people who knew me and connected me with Joram. In order to be truly safe, I would have to take Gwen and travel to a part of the country where neither of us were known.

It was while I was at the Font, however, that I came across a child, a little boy of about five years of age. He was an orphan, they said. His parents were catalysts, and had been killed in the first assault. The boy was mute. He could not speak, and whether that was due to the shock of seeing his parents slain before his eyes or if he had been born mute, none could say.

I looked at that silent boy and I saw in his eyes the same emptiness, the same grief, the same loss I felt in my own heart. I took him with me. I named him Reuven.

We started our journey. I chose to relocate to Zith-el. Although I had heard that the city was heavily damaged in the war, it was one place where I was certain that no one would know me.

The magical wall that guarded the city was gone. The Zoo creatures had mostly escaped and returned to the wild. The inhabitants were dazed and disbelieving. All of the tall buildings had been destroyed, but Zith-el is also a city of tunnels, and the survivors moved underground.

We found a small place for ourselves, little more than a niche in one of the tunnels. Here Gwen and little Reuven and I dwelt, living on the sustenance that was brought to us by our conquerors.

Gwen never did return to the world of the living. She was happy with the dead, for Joram was with her. She remained with me only long enough to bring her child into this world, and then she died. Reuven and I were left alone with the baby. I named her Eliza.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I had carried with me, all this time, the Darksword. And not a day dawned but that I feared someone would find me and then they would find it. Menju the Sorcerer was searching for the Darksword, so I heard. Fearing the use he might make of it, I determined to hide the sword in a place where it would never be discovered.

I prayed to the Almin for guidance and that night I dreamed I was walking in the Zoo.