At dusk Jordan received an invitation to dih the man that the vilgers called the Wise One, or more only, Tazuranth, the Great and Powerful. This struck Jordan as a little ostentatious, but then there were many Mage Lords at the Magica Collegium that insisted on sup as well.

  They rarely hemselves after mages of legend, though, he thought ironically.

  Despite not being invited, Sister Annise insisted on ing, and when Jordan told her, “You should probably stay behind until I learn more about our host, and we e to some sort ement,” but she ignored him.

  “The Book of Ways says that I am there at dionight,” she insisted as if that meant anything. “So, I am afraid I must attend.”

  Jordan sighed inwardly but didn’t pursue the issue further. Surely even the most callous host wouldn’t deny a blind woman food, would he?

  Jordan’s s were needless, as it turned out, and the servants invited her in, almost as if they’d expected her, further deepening the mystery. It was only when they sat down at a table heavy with food that their host finally joihem.

  He wasn’t at all what Jordan had expected. He’d expected a gray master in eborate robes aeles. He’d expected the typical obsession with protocol and peg order that he’d e to associate with mages powerful enough to have their own demesne, let alone mages with enough power to raise some kind of illusion around it to protect it from the outside world.

  What he found instead was a man that was little older than him, in stained shirt sleeves, who begaing almost as soon as he sat down.

  “What?” he asked with a mouth full of roll as Jordan looked at him in fusion. “Dig in. The food will get cold. We talk about your journey after we’re done. I have an important astronomical aligo observe in 44 minutes. We must be quick about these things!”

  Though Sister Annise tio look at the man as if he were a she absurdity of the situation was enough to put Jordan almost immediately at ease. This wasn’t an archmage; instead, he was just like any number of other senior students from the Collegium, and that memory was enough to make him smile wide for the first time since Brother Faerbar had left the manor, o return.

  The three of them devoured the best meal that Jordan had eaten si year's harvest in record time. Holy, they ate like kings; everything was good, from the mashed potatoes and the boiled carrots to the buttered rolls and the piping hot prime rib.

  There was some versation throughout dinner, but it was limited rgely to pleasantries, and whenever Jordan or Sister Aried to ask about something more substantive or expin something he would deflect right back to the food, he statemeirely as he focused on his feast, or checked the hss that he’d brought with him from somewhere upstairs.

  Through all that, Jordan mao learn a couple of things. Foremost was that their host seemed to insist on calling him Taz, and he seemed almost allergic to formality. He did listen, though, when his manservant said, “Please, sir, do try to keep your elbows off the table when we have pany over.”

  Those were all normal enough, but in pces, like when Taz said, “Well, sometimes stars do surprising things, even after you’ve been staring at them for a tury or two. It’s always best to keep an eye on them lest they start to waoo far.”

  The idea that anyone could watything for a tury or two was impossible, of course, uhey’d stumbled into the ir of a small god, of course. The man almost certainly meant that he was tinuing someone else’s vigil that was doted in an old book, or perhaps he art of an order that devoted themselves to such things.

  Jordan didn’t know. What he did know was that he o get to the bottom of this. The man was obviously a mage, though. Even though he seemed too young and too rexed to have any real power, the way he would casually use minor spells to summon food from across the table after he’d cleared his pte or animate a napkin to dab at his mouth instead of simply wipe at his mouth showed that he had real power.

  He enjoyed every mouthful, and it was only when the servants were asking about desert that he suddenly stood and said, “Sorry, out of time. Perhaps ime, Bernard.”

  He jumped up with his hss and ran to the stairs. It was only when he reached them and said, “Well, are you ing? You’ll want to see this, trust me. Its not often that a steltianizes!”

  Those words, strung together in that way, meant nothing to Jordan, but he still wao see what his host was talking about. So, he stood and followed the other man up the stairs. By the fourth floor of the steep spiraling staircase, he was beginning tret that decision, but even so, Sister Annise kept up with him while he huffed and puffed without any pint.

  In fact, if anything, she looked grim, and he made a o ask her about that when they returo the barn that had bee their temporary home. Right now, there was no time for that, though. Instead, there was just enough time to appreciate the quality of the mage’s observatory and the view it afforded him of the dark sea before the real show started.

  Taz had one of the elescopes that Jordan had ever seen. It was the size of a rge wine barrel with a mirror he back, which was certainly an unventional arra. He was just trying to figure out how much light that monstrosity might be able to gather and what the level of magnification could be when their host muttered a few words, and the rge circur window in front of it suddenly became… something else.

  A moment ago, it had been a rge, circur window frame that would have been more than big enough for Jordan to crawl out to the ledge beyond if he’d wao. After the runes on the frame began to glow with a soft blue light, though, the air inside of it began to dense and thi, adjusting its optical characteristics. One sed, it had been an open window, and the , it was a giant magnifying lens almost four feet across.

  Taz leaned down to the telescope’s eyepiece, and as he did so, he said, “It’s just a little trick I learo observe the stars with better resolution. That’s all.”

  He spoke as if he’d read Jordan’s mind, but he’d probably just observed his look of shock. Over the few minutes, he lectured about the phenomena he was looking for. “Stars don’t st forever, you see,” the strange wizard expined. “Just like Siddrim, they all burn out eventually, and its always iing to see what the given steltion repces them with.”

  The mage ughed at his joke about Siddrim, but no one else did. When Jordan looked at Sister Annise, he was unsurprised to see that her expression had soured.

  Before he could say anything about that, though, Taz wave him over, and said, “go on, take a look. Be quick about it. Its hard tonight, because Lunaris is spending more of her power on the affairs of mortals than she should, but that happens sometimes.”

  The stars didn’t look any dimmer to Jordan than any ht, but that didn’t stop him from looking through the telescope. It was then that he saw something he never expected to see.

  Jordan had seen the heavens through smaller telescopes before at the Collegium, but never oh this level of magnification before. In the past they’d always appeared as glimmering dots, but here, now, as he stared out into the void what he saw was a glowing figure, locked in mortal bat with an inhuman monstrosity that he might have best pared to a hydra, or perhaps a jellyfish.

  “What in the name of Lunaris…” Jordan swore softly as he looked on in wonder. “What is it I’m seeing here?”

  Taz took the scope back, chug softly. “Surely they still teach you the nature of the heavens in school, do they not? That each star is a god onto itself in the serviother Lunaris?”

  “Of course,” Jordan answered, w how the man knew what he’d learned in school. “But it’s a metaphor, not a literal…”

  Jordan’s words trailed off as the e started to ugh. “A metaphor, he says. If they were only metaphorically defending the world, I assure you that the darkness would have ed us long ago. No, they are very real, and though not all of them have fming swords, they all work together to hold back the night.”

  Jordan tried to digest what it was he was hearing, and as he did so, he watched the stars through the lens. From that device, he cked the magnification to make out the details of any of the stars, but he could see the steltion of the Orchid and another wandering star moving toward the one he’d just observed.

  “What’s going to happe?” Jordan asked, watg with rapt attention, even as the stars got closer and closer.

  “All stars get old, and they o be repced,” Taz told him, “That is the natural order of things.” As he spoke, he made frenzied notes into a journal while he watched through the eyepiece, Jordan saw two stars meet, and then, after a bright fsh, there was only one, fixed in the heavens. The steltion adjusted, but only a little.

  “Does that still look like an orchid to you?” Taz asked. “No, I think it does. We leave it unged. I was worried it might bee the rose or the tulip, and I’d have to ge all of my charts.”

  “What happeo the other star?” Jordan asked. \

  “It was devoured,” the mage smiled. “Nothing goes to waste, not on that scale. All the gods are ibals. Did they not teach you that either?”

  “Well, not in so many words, but I uand your meaning,” Jordan agreed.

  “Do you, though?” Taz said, finally looking up from his ic light show now that whatever he’d been waiting for had happened. “It’s not a metaphor either. Gods die, and new gods rise up to repce them. I know. I’ve seen it plenty of times myself.”

  “You have?” Jordan asked, making no effort to hide his fusion.

  “He has,” Sister Annise agreed. “Tazuranth the Remarkable is well over four turies old. He has seen almost as much as Lord Siddrim.”

  “He… he what?” Jordan asked.

  “More, actually,” the young man said with a slight bow. “After all, I’ve seen all the terrible things that have happened since he slipped up and died, haven’t I?”

  “He’s also killed every mage that his stumbled upon his own private world in all the time between then and now,” she said, making Taz’s smile go even wider.

  “How does someone… what?!” Jordan blurted out. He’d po ask about how even magical immortality could st so long, but Sister Aest revetion disrupted that entirely. “If he kills mages, then why did y me here?”

  “Don’t worry,” Taz said, dispelling the lens and sitting down in a chair. “There’s o end you at this point. Not only are you an apprentistead of a fully vested mage, but you’re trapped here. With that monstrosity out there, there’s literally nowhere else for you to go, is there?”