"My lord!" said Tybben, scrabbling into the room on all fours before straightening. "I came as soon as I heard of your return. How went your visit to the court?"
Pallian paused, dumb-struck as he tried to formulate an answer to that particular question. "I don't know," he admitted at last. "I survived, and did what I could to support the wizard-king. I have met most of the royalty of Edrias, and I am pledged to become the husband of their first-princess while their third-princess is pledged to become the wife of Ravaj. It was a very eventful couple of days. And there is an Emissary from the Tomb of the First. It has reached the city of Marinul, and Marinul lies in ashes. The gods alone know what it learned there, but we must stop it before it reaches anywhere else."
Tybben went completely still. "Oh," he said after a moment. "Oh, dear."
Pallian nodded. "My father has granted me a single initiation -- I chose Smoke -- and ordered me to return here and make ready, When I ride out, I will go as the Black Knight."
Tybben considered that. "Smoke will not help you, not inside the armor. I would not defy the wizard-king, but... You should talk to the Grandmother."
Pallian drew a long, slow breath. "That is good advice," he admitted.
The crypt was where the House of Teres sent its revered dead. Not all of them had stopped moving. Pallian had at least a double-handful of ancestors in the depths, some of whom he'd met and others whom he hadn't. The Grandmother was the oldest of them, and rumor had it that she watched over her descendants and sometimes assisted them, if they found her favor. It was something of a walk, but it would be at least a day before his father called for him...
He would go, and learn what he could.
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