Naruze looked out into the night. In the absence of his guests he was reminded of how very quiet the forest had grown, punctured only by the crowing of birds, a shuffling of animals in the bush, and the bubbling of the nearby river. In his father’s time, the voices of fellow fey could be heard through the trees, whispering behind backs and making visitors nervous, letting them know that the forest was an untamed place not belonging to any common man. Now the sense of magic was gone and he was the only one listening.

He was the only one to hear the carriage wheels break free of the underbrush onto the open road. Vox had finally left the forest and it was unlikely that he would ever come back, but Naruze finally had what he wanted, just a little more time.

A bird landed on the windowsill. Naruze turned to meet Tarin who had just entered the room.

"Is that your bird?" Tarin asked.

"His name is Mot. He was a gift," Naruze said even though the explanation wasn’t required.

"Are you going to read the note that it brought?"

"Our allies are starting to move. That’s what it says."

Ignoring the note, Naruze sat at his desk, pulled a blank page in front of him, and picked up his quill to jot down a new message.

"You didn’t read it," Tarin accused.

"I don’t need to," Naruze said.

He continued to write the letter. Since the seelie king had a habit of altering people's memories Naruze had finally decided to involve Tremal directly. Even the worrisome elder prince should have no trouble believing a message from his long banished cousin if it was delivered in a familiar way. Naruze would send a contract with a verbal command. Tremal just needed to trick the king into agreement and Gezel could heroically deliver the contract to the wizard's cause. That should take care of things.

"I think I will be staying here to think a bit longer," Naruze said.

"Do you need anything?" Tarin asked. "Or should I go?"

There were some days that Tarin didn't understand how Naruze got any work done. He seemed to have a talent to work on multiple things at the same time, without neglecting any one.

"Check if Manson is in his room. I haven't seen him leave and I won't have him stay."

As he focused on a written formula that would hide the contract's extra magic properties, Naruze vaguely heard the door shut again.

He stopped writing only when he heard a different sort of sound caught in the wind. Someone was casting spells again. He put his pen back in the inkwell and lifted his head to listen more closely. Then he stood and headed out across the corridor, down to the library, towards the front door. Naruze would not have minded the use of magic except…he knew a portal altering spell when he heard it and he was not about to have someone messing up his territory.

The only good thing about wizardry, he thought as he continued through the trees of the Moonbright Forest, was that you could know exactly how long a spell took to cast and exactly what spell it was due to the spells being produced in Latin dialogue.

Naruze stopped a few feet behind the man who was casting his spell by the river and spoke an equally verbose Latin closure that ended it. Doric turned away from the river.

"That is quite rude," the man said.

"I thought I might find you here," Naruze said. "Someone as old as you wouldn’t bother coming if you didn’t have something to do."

"And I thought you wanted this project to be over. Why stay here?" Doric asked in return.

"I'm sentimental," Naruze said irritably. "What about you? Does your school have enough room for the human recruits? You always had to control it all."

"At least I know what I want. You don't even know who to take vengeance on. Do you Car—"

Doric's words choked off at the signal of Naruze's raised hand commanding his air to be cut off.

"Don't try me."

Naruze released the grip of magic and Doric passed out onto the forest floor. Killing would be a mistake. He would alter the man’s memories so that he believed he succeeded without this conversation ever happening. Naruze knelt to get into closer contact. Creating believable false memories should not have been an easy thing to do, but he knew Doric.

Before he had met Tarin and during his tireless efforts to open a portal between the realms of human and fey where none had originally existed, Naruze had found a young Doric secretly practising magic in the human world forest. 

Being the young wizard that he was, Doric had panicked and pulled a gun, only to be amazed when Naruze knocked it from his hand with a simple gesture. Fey were not known to wizards then, and Naruze himself had never thought he would see another wizard. Their meeting had prompted a joined effort to escape the confines of the human realm, but Doric had stolen the portal for the use of his own people and let it close behind them.

Naturally, Naruze had never forgiven him. He had hoped to find the man dead of old age, but it seemed the fey land had been blessed with a slower rate of time. In the hundreds of years Naruze had spent with Tarin as the human cities developed into places of innovation, steam power, electricity, and government control, the wizards had built their college and a meagre town of brick and mortar.

As he pulled out of the spell, letting the spoiled memories fall, Naruze became aware that he was no longer alone. A bronze horse stood beside him, her black mane dripping with the tea stained waters of the river Sabari that flowed through the lands of the fey.

"What is this?" she asked him.

Having spent her entire life in the shaded woods, Wey-hee the kelpie had never seen a wizard so close before. He smelled curiously of wood smoke and damp stones and she thought that he seemed like a man dropped out of his time and place.

"It is the end," Naruze told the kelpie, for he knew that the realm joining was not far off.

Wey-hee did not believe in worlds ending, but she knew of change.

"I am sorry," she told him.

She understood that Lord Naruze had been searching for his home for a very long time and that it would be taken away, but despite his warnings she could not imagine a world without trees, or rivers, or grass, or sunshine. Surely something would be left to watch over.

***

"Selene," Edith called, as she peered out into the dark night.

She had heard someone singing as she fell to sleep, and woke from a nightmare where she and her family were hunted by humans like common dear. Deciding to check the hallway for the phantom singer, Edith had noticed the door outside to the clothesline was left open. She had assumed that her friend might have wandered out, but as the trees wavered on the edge of the blackened lawn she felt that she had made a mistake.

Edith shut the outside door as a shiver crept up her spine. What was she doing so late at night? It would have been better to return to her room where it was safe and warm. However, her feeling of unease remained. She crept two doors down the hallway and knocked quietly on the door to her friend's room. As she silently waited, Edith thought of what a fool she was for seeking comfort in a friend who would surly be wondering why she had been woken.

However, no response came. The space remained quiet. Edith considered knocking again, with the worry that she would disturb other sleepers. Nervously remembering that her friend's room had no lock, she reached out and turned the handle. Light from the hallway lanterns overhead spilled in through the gap and revealed that the room was empty. A minute passed.

Edith pounded at Trisha's door. She needed to tell someone that her friend was missing, but still no response came. Someone should have come to scold her. She felt something horrible in the pit of her stomach. Edith dizzily turned back towards the outside door wondering if she should go out there when the entrance hall door slammed shut.

The sound shocked her. When she turned to look she saw Naruze standing next to the pots of decorative flowers as they cast long shadows over the walls and floor. He stood with the hood of his cloak draped about his feet as though he had been standing to admire the arrangements in the dark. Edith put a hand on the wall to steady her shaken nerves and moved towards him. By the time she reached the end of the corridor he was facing her. His senses had already perceived her as the only one awake.

"Why are you out here?" he asked her.

His calm allowed her to pull her senses together.

"I thought someone was singing before," Edith told him.

Singing? Did she mean chanting? A spell might explain why Naruze had come back to find Tarin sleeping on the floor. Naruze had been trying to figure it out when he heard Edith pounding on the door and had moved his cloak to hide an unconscious Tarin to avoid frightening her. But what was the enemy after?

"Did you find Selene?" Edith asked him.

She thought that if Naruze had been out here then he might have seen her.

"What do you mean?" Naruze asked.

"I think she went somewhere," Edith explained. "I mean the door was open. Her door, and the outside door you know. I tried to wake the others, but they wouldn't get up."

Could the girl called Selene have cast this sleep spell herself? No, that was ridiculous. Such a wide ranged spell was impossible for a beginner, but if Selene had not willingly walked out then...perhaps Edith had heard singing. There was a certain siren that liked to lure people out after dark.

"Is it alright now?" Edith asked him wordily.

Naruze looked into her gentle expression. He put a hand to her cheek and whispered.

"Go back to sleep."

She slumped against him as sleep reclaimed her. Naruze supported her as he lay her down gently on the floor next to Tarin before he pulled back his cloak to reveal the warlock still caught in his dreams. Naruze could not say how Yurith's voice could reach so far and suspected that a wizard must have helped.

"How long are you going to pretend?" he asked his friend.

Tarin opened his eyes and shifted over onto his back to get a view.

"I thought you didn't want to talk to me," Baltane said.

"Tarin isn't waking is he?"

"Afraid not," the familiar told him.

Naruze knew that a familiar could not sleep. Naruze was unaffected because his cat like hearing registered the spell as ineffective white noise, but since he could not hear even this he knew that the projection of the spell had moved further away.

"Then you have a job," Naruze told the familiar as he straitened himself and turned to the door. "Find the wizard who is projecting the sound and stop it."

Naruze opened the main door and stepped back outside as Baltane took shape as a large bird, flapped his red wings, and glided out into the forest ahead. Naruze himself might not be able to distinguish a girl in the forest, but he had already prepared to track her.

***