Alleghy was stronger than he looked, his lean body barely bowed by the limp weight of his former friend. Geoffrey had been wrapped in a gray veil, hiding his identity from any night owls out late enough to see the healer pass by.

  Storyteller, watching from a nearby alley, didn’t need to see the corpse's face to know who it was. He had been too late. Again. Another adventurer was dead because Storyteller hadn’t been able to properly understand the weft of fate in time.

  Perhaps if he had left Cadence sooner…

  But no. That wouldn’t have been right either. He had been left to choose which story to prioritize, and it would be years, maybe decades, before he knew if he had made the right choice.

  “He shouldn’t have gone like this…” Storyteller muttered to himself. “To some nothing villain like Telik? An unimportant backwater criminal who barely earned the countenance of the Tyrant? It’s not right.”

  He was still missing something.

  The master adventurer slid back into the obscuring shadows of the alley, and reached out with his power to touch the memento he had taken from the Sage’s archon all those years before, the written record of a story she had told him in the witching hour one dark night…

  [Gift of Fate] reflected

  It was the Eldritch, not Storyteller, who studied the patterns before him with luminous yellow eyes, trying to trace the flow of the story that was left without Geoffrey. He had never been as good at it as he would’ve liked. He lacked Ella’s weaver’s eye…

  There was a knot though, a tangle of dangling threads wound together in the top floor of Geoffrey’s house. The Eldritch turned away from the grand story, relying on his soul sense instead.

  One was pushing against Initiate. He felt the burgeoning power of the Rogue… a transmutation. A student of Geoffrey’s? Perhaps primed to take his role… that was worthy of note by itself.

  But the second presence! Even though it was lower level, it practically thrummed with the potential locked into its soul. Another mythic gift? And the void at that…

  The Eldritch returned his attention to the invisible yet omnipresent threads of the grand story, what Ella had once called the tapestry of fate. There must be a way to pick up these disparate threads, to return them to the greater whole…

  “A homecoming…” The Eldritch muttered to himself, his eyes tracing the path that led one of the threads to that bedroom in the assassin’s mansion.

  But how?

  He returned his attention to his mementos, to a story which had taken Allister three days to tell him. The story of how one man had navigated the murky political waters needed to found the trade cities.

  [Gift of the Trickster] reflected

  Had anyone been watching, they would’ve seen the tall man’s eyes flash from an eerie, incandescent yellow, to a bright green, dancing with silent laughter.

  “Easy enough…” Sebastian Freehold decided, new plans forming in his head. A letter, delivered to the right place, would be enough to set those two souls off on a new adventure, to wind their stories together with those he had already tended to. “A homecoming, indeed! Perfect!”

  It was just as well that no one was there to hear his laughter, as no one else would’ve been able to understand what was so funny.

  #

  The King’s study did not suit his rank, Sebastian mused. Cluttered and plain, emphasizing function over aesthetic or comfort. It was well and good to understand that your power was an obligation rather than a privilege, but given the price he had paid, he could at least afford to pamper himself a bit, couldn’t he?

  No more than I can, Storyteller thought, his eyes returning to their neutral brown.

  Storyteller looked around the study. The fire was banked, burnt down to mere coals, but not doused entirely. The King still planned to return to work tonight. Good. He need only wait.

  Storyteller pulled out his book, patted through his bags, found a pen without a nib. He frowned, muttered deprecations to himself. Another minute’s search turned up a vial of ink, but it took him five more to find a pack of fresh nibs.

  Satisfied, Storyteller set to writing, trying to keep straight the Eldritch’s revelations and Sebastian’s plans. After decades of experience with his myriad selves, it was only mildly disorienting.

  Hours later, the door of the study swung open to admit the King himself.

  “Storyteller.” The King’s tone was nonplussed. Of course, his soul sense would be as strong as Storyteller’s, even if he lacked the older man’s expertise with it.

  “Your Majesty.”

  The most powerful man in the Realm swept into the room and turned to the fire, picking up a poker to stroke it back to life. “Enough of that. You have even less reason for the honorifics than the rest of my supposed subjects.”

  “I fear we must agree to disagree, Your Majesty.”

  The King’s desk was the same one his grandmother had once sat behind, and no better for its age. It did not fit the expectations of his rank any more than the rest of the study did. He was, to all appearances, a young man barely into his thirties, but wastefully thin, as if disease had left him frail. He was neither frail nor diseased, but few understood the costs that came with true power.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  He wondered, as he often did, when was the last time the King had a full night’s sleep?

  Storyteller took the opportunity to dry his text and close his journal. Once the fire had supplanted Teller as the cheeriest thing in the room, the King took a seat.

  “I assume this is in regards to the Heartlands?”

  The King never did have any time to dance around a subject. “Correct. I’ve just come from there.”

  The King sighed. “Let me have it then. How bad is it?”

  “Bad. I believe another greater threat may have taken root.”

  “Of course. I know you’d take action for nothing less.”

  That was a subtle jab. Storyteller knew that the King wished he was more active. There were simply too few archons left… But his ability to move had limits, as they both well knew. Storyteller didn’t take up the verbal riposte.

  “I closed no less than three thin places along the Lumber Road. Arrisan, Felisen, and Kellister. I was too late in Arrisan. Half the town was slaughtered before I stopped the coven that had risen there. Add to that undead attacks along the Flax Road and a binding hag consolidating power in Emeston…”

  The King’s thin shoulders slumped. The young man picked up a series of packets from his desk and tossed them to Storyteller to review.

  “These came in over the past few days,” the King explained. “Sickness in Valley Hearth. Bandits threaten the Cliff Way. And now wild magic has been sighted north of Correntry.” He waved at the stacks of correspondences to one side of his desk. “Add to that record breaking spawns in the Umbral and Tidal Wastes, even as my own knights are pushed to their limits in the Lunar.”

  “Very bad indeed…”

  “It’s too much, Teller. First the Painlord, then the Lich of Scales coming over the Divide, then that cyclops century in the Frontier, now a coven in the Heartlands… it’s all coming undone.”

  Not for the first time, Storyteller wondered if the Queen had made the right choice in her successor. But he recalled the eager young sentinel he had taken into the Wastes for the first time, the prodigy who had risen through his levels faster than any in history. Storyteller had thought him the right choice for the gift of the crown then, too.

  “Don’t be defeatist, Your Majesty. Things are not as bad as they seem. My network may not be what it once was, but I’ll see to it that some help arrives where it’s needed soon.”

  The King blew out a breath and closed his eyes. Storyteller knew the feeling, the need to block out the endless stimuli that came with expanded senses. “And the next threat? What then?”

  Storyteller shrugged. “All three of the Dark Worlds have committed greater threats in recent years. They won’t have the ability to toss things like these at us again for some time, I expect. New archons are on the rise too. Everbright, the Mendicant. It’ll only be years before we have help again.”

  The King made a frustrated motion. “Fine, fine. Tell me, what can your people do?”

  “I’ll speak to the Knights-Gallant. One had already taken a hand in the Heartlands anyways, a second sent to Correntry should make the difference we need. There are a few other adventurers around too, those I trust. I’ll see about pointing them down to the Cliff Way and Valley Hearth.”

  “And the undead?”

  “I have directed some resources in that direction already. A little push here and there, and I expect that threat will be handled soon enough. I’ll have a couple cadres go towards Westerlen and Terast too, help tilt those in our favor.”

  “That leaves us two major problems.”

  “At this point, the only cure in Emeston is the disease,” Storyteller told him. “Chaos will seize the city, but I expect the threats there will have no more luck controlling the anarchy than we would. It’s not worth it to send resources that way, not yet.”

  “Perhaps…”

  Storyteller frowned, but offered no further protest. Still, the King noticed the expression.

  “Trade city or no, they’re my subjects. If I can ease the pain to come for them, it is my duty to do so.”

  “I doubt the Golden Council will see it that way, Your Majesty, much less Correntry and Alvanny.”

  The King shrugged slender shoulders. “Their feelings don’t change my duty. But I need to know what’s going on in Elliven before I make any moves.”

  “You noticed it too, then.”

  “Half the Heartlands is going up in flames, and we’ve no word of problems from Elliven? If we’re dealing with a greater coven, then there are still hags unaccounted for.”

  “True enough,” Storyteller admitted with a frown. “I’ll admit, I’m at something of a loss of how to handle the situation there. With no Duke to take the reins of the city…”

  The King shook his head, his face marred by self-recrimination. “I fear I made a mistake there. I wanted to drive opportunity. Give any dedicated sentinel the chance at reaching Master and becoming the city’s ruler. But it’s been nearly fifty years, and there’s still been no progress. The only Experts in that damned city seem uninterested in leveling any farther, and something about the Arboreal Waste seems to trend towards lower ranked threats.

  “Based on what I’ve heard, I think some of the powers that have grown in Elliven would prefer the city to go without a Duke. “

  The King’s eyes looked more deeply shadowed than ever. “I’m beginning to agree with that assumption. Which is why I’ve begun to prepare an Authority.”

  Now that was news. “An Authority? Truly?”

  “Coven or no coven, something needs to change in the Heartlands, Storyteller. This situation has only proven that. So I’d like to ask a favor. Formally.”

  Another surprise. Was this the same King that had been so passive since he had taken the crown? “Name it.”

  “Go to Elliven yourself. See what there is to see. Find out what the hags plan for the Arboreal Wastes, and what passes in Vital. In a few months time, I’ll have my Authority ready, and I need to know where he’ll do the most good.”

  “You know I’ll need to ask a cost, in time.”

  “And you know I’ll pay it.”

  “Very well. I’ll go get what forces I can moving to where they’ll do the most good. You know how to get in touch with me.” He never had before, but there was a first time for everything.

  “Worry not, Storyteller. I’ll keep your waystone close at hand. Good luck.”

  “And to you.”

  That was it. There would be no more time to prepare. A new board had been set. A new chapter was ready to begin. Storyteller could only hope that this time, for once, he had done enough to set the story running the right way.