Beyond The Shadows by Brent Weeks

later return and be greeted as a stranger once more. For several moments
     Feir felt a panic rising inside him at the very thought, but aside from his nose, his head didn’t feel as if he’d taken a
     blow. He could remember leaving Lantano Garuwashi, he could remember approaching the vast bubble of magics that surrounded
     Ezra’s Wood, and he could remember the turmoil within those magics as—miles to the east—the Lae’knaught had entered the Wood
     and been trapped within it. Feir had used that turmoil as a distraction for his own attempt. But from that point, he could
     remember nothing.
    He was facing the bubble now, as if he was leaving. He took a few more steps, disoriented and came around the trunk of another
     giant sequoy. Before him, not fifty paces away, just outside the magic, were Lantano Garuwashi and, oddly, Antoninus Wervel.
    Maybe I have gone mad. Antoninus Wervel was a red mage, one of the most powerful and most intelligent men to walk the halls of Sho’cendi in decades.
     He was a fat Modaini man, and he’d been a casual friend for years. To see him sitting awkwardly cross-legged beside Lantano
     Garuwashi, who sat as gracefully as he did everything, was surreal.
    Then the men saw Feir and both rose. Antoninus called something out, but though he was only forty paces away now, Feir couldn’t
     hear him.
    Feir walked straight to the wall of magic. Whatever clever magic he’d used to get into the Wood, it obviously hadn’t been
     clever enough. He was alive only by the forbearance of whatever it was that lived here. So Feir walked straight through the
     magic. It slid around him, and for a moment, he could swear something in the Wood felt amused.
    Then he was out.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked Antoninus Wervel.
    Antoninus laughed. “You escape the Wood, something no mage has done in seven centuries, and you ask what I’m doing?”
    “Do you have my sword?” Garuwashi demanded.
    Feir was carrying a pack strapped to his back that he hadn’t been carrying when he entered the Wood. “Him first,” he said.
    Antoninus lifted his kohled eyebrows, but said, “I came with a delegation from Sho’cendi to recover Curoch. After the Battle
     of Pavvil’s Grove, the delegation turned back. They were sure that if Curoch had been present in such a desperate battle with
     so many magi and meisters present, that someone would have tried to use it. No one did, so they decided to backtrack and follow
     other leads. The truth is, I don’t think Lord Lucius trusts everyone in our delegation. He and I don’t care for each other,
     but he knows where my loyalties lie, so he released me. So now it’s your turn, Feir. Did you recover Ceur’caelestos?”
    The Modaini was too damn smart. Feir could tell that the man had put together Feir, who’d held one nearly mythical sword,
     with the appearance of another nearly mythical sword and found no coincidence.
    Feir opened the pack. There was a note inside with directions and instructions, written awkwardly, as if the hand writing
     it had been writing in an unfamiliar language. Feir read it quickly and remembered bits and pieces of what had happened in
     the Wood. Setting the note aside, he pulled a hilt out of his pack—a hilt only, with no sword. It was a perfect replica of
     the one on Ceur’caelestos, and it would fit Lantano Garuwashi’s sheath perfectly. As long as the sa’ceurai didn’t draw his
     sword, no one would ever know.
    “What is this?” Lantano Garuwashi demanded.
    “It’s three months,” Feir said.
    “What?” Garuwashi asked.
    “That’s the time I need,” Feir said. “I’m a Maker, Garuwashi, and I received instructions in the Wood—a prophecy left by Ezra
     himself, centuries ago. If you prefer death, I will be your second, but if you want to live, take this hilt. Antoninus and
     I will go to Black Barrow and do things no one has done since Ezra’s time. I will make Ceur’caelestos for you by spring.”
     Or at