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"He died," she went on to say. "But he... It was only a partial death. His body decayed, but his soul remained...."
I blinked, a tiny ripple of chill crawling up my spine. I suppose such words from anyone else I would have called insane. But not from a magus. Not from one such as Aloren.
"Have you told anyone else?" I inquired.
"No. Just you."
"Why?"
"Because you can't do anything," she replied. "You can only watch. If I tell other magi they would try to set him free; if I told a villager, they would burn me for practicing Dark Arts and then touch fire to the house. You are a madrigal. Your job is to observe and listen. And that is all you will do." She caught my gaze again. "I know what you're thinking: 'But what if I tell a villager?'" She smiled. "I would refute your claims, and they would believe me over you. It is I, after all, who they have known for these last six months. It is I who has cast the spells that have turned aside the droughts, the hard rains, the locusts. I break their superstitions, and give them a sense of peace. And there is no other magus within a distance you could reach in time who could stop what I must do. I checked."
I stared at her openly now, wondering if she was mad. I'm still not quite sure that she wasn't.
"All right," I said after a moment. "I won't stop what you're going to do... whatever that may be."
"I... will tell you," she said.
"Why?" I asked, breaking the patterns now that the spell was complete and sustaining.
"Because someone needs to know."
I nodded. "All right."
"In five days is Lammas Night," she said. "The Darkest night."
I frowned. "I thought the darkest night was during winter or late fall—"
"No. You are not listening. I said the Darkest night, not the blackest night. Lammas Night is the night that a spirit—with the help of magic—may step through the shadowed veils of death's realm and enter into this one. Permanently. In the flesh.
"Lammas Night is the night Jesamen died, exactly one year ago."
I took another swallow of wine. "Go on," I said.
"The state Jesamen exists in now is a unnatural one. He stands on the border of the two lands, a denizen of shadow. He... has asked me to bring him back to life."
I absorbed this for a moment, then said, "How?"
"It is in a book that was his," she said, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. "A grimoire of the dead. I had thought such books no longer existed, but..." She paused. "From it, if I perform the spells correctly, I can do one of two things. Set him free in the lands of the living, or set him free in the lands of the dead.
"And I do not know which I will choose."
I frowned. "Well, the choice is obvious—"
She laughed. "Is it? What would be your choice?"
"I would let him die. Obviously, the gods willed that he should be dead, and, through some unnatural means—perhaps even of his own making—he has lingered on."