Rebel Fay

Chapter Twenty

Magiere didn't know what to think when Chap charged into the council clearing, but shock followed an instant later. He wasn't alone. An entire pack of majay-hi spilled through the crowd in his wake, including the white dog she'd seen with Chap more than once.

Chap bolted straight at Brot'an and Freth. He cut between them with a vicious snarl and bared teeth. Without pause, he ran to Magiere. Even Wynn backed up as the dog dug in his front paws and lurched to a stop.

Majay-hi of all shades, all with crystalline eyes, ran one by one through the clearing. The white female came directly toChap. The dark one with grayed muzzle who'd charged Magiere in Nein'a's clearing circled in on Brot'an, cutting between him and Freth.

Freth backed up several steps, but Brot'an looked about in open confusion. Sgaile tried to step in then froze before the maniacal snapping of a tall steel-gray dog.

Wynn grabbed Magiere's hand, pulling her forward toward Chap. "Come on! You have to go with him-now!"

"What are you doing?" Leesil asked.

"Chap says she must come," Wynn answered.

Magiere stepped out in a daze. In three breaths,all but two majay-hi closed on her. The remaining pair paced like guardians before Brot'an, Freth, and Sgaile. Leesil ducked around in front of Magiere to face any dog that came too close. Only the dark one with the gray muzzle growled as he approached.

More cries and shouts erupted in the crowd behind Magiere, and she looked back with Leesil and Wynn.

Another pack wormed through the gathering above. The onlyelf who stood her ground, watching without surprise, was the elder female in maroon holding a scroll. This second pack spread around the clearing's side slopes, pacing before the wide-eyed gathering of elves.

A third pack burst out, upslope behind Most Aged Father. These gave the old elf a wide berth as they circled around the clearing's side. As the packs met, they spread, bordering the clearing floor on all sides.

Those with Chap stayed close around Magiere, and the white female nosed her way nearer. Leesil set himself in her path, but Wynn pushed him aside as she knelt by the female.

"Stop it," she said. "Her name is Lily, and she will protect us."

Chap barked once.

Everyone, including Brot'an, Sgaile, and Freth, looked about in shock. At least three dozen dogs ranged within the clearing, long legs trotting, long fur bouncing up and down. Four of the dogs gathered around Magiere to form some sort of vanguard. She watched them in wonder. What did it mean?

Gleann called out in Belaskian from where he stood above the dogs pacing the clearing's slope. "I think they try to tell us something." His lined face held a hint of amusement. Then he spoke in Elvish to the others around him.

"This settles nothing!" Most Aged Father shouted. "Disperse the dogs and end this interference."

"He's right," Magiere said at Wynn's translation. "We're not getting out of here this way… not without bloodshed."

"Stay where you are," Wynn ordered."Chap, make that old man be quiet!"

Chap turned toward the patriarch but held his ground in front of Magiere.

Wynn flinched sharply, glanced at Chap, and then turned wide eyes upon Leesil.

"What?" Magiere asked. "What did Chap say?"

A handful of Anmaglahk came out of the crowd in answer to Most Aged Father's demand. But any attempt to descend into the clearing was cut off by snarling dogs charging. One anmaglahk drew a blade.

Magiere grabbed Wynn's tunic shoulder, shouting at Chap as much as the sage. "Stop this, now! It's not going to work."

"What else have we got?" Leesil argued. "I'm not letting them take you."

"Leesil, go with Chap," Wynn said suddenly. "Now… and when he barks once at you, onlyyou, give Most Aged Father his message from the ancestors."

Magiere had no idea what this meant. Confusion and frustration made her shudder harder. She'd never turned from a fight. But if Leesil, or even Chap or Wynn, came under threat, she wouldn't be able to control herself in this state.

Leesil glared at Chap. "You've been in my head again!"

"Shut your mouth and do it!" Wynn snapped at him.

Magiere grabbed Leesil by the shirtfront. "This is Chap's game now. Follow his lead."

Chap stalked forward across the clearing, and Leesil followed, looking worried.

A shrill whistle like a rushing song carried above the noise of the gathering.

Chap and Leesil were only partway across the field, and even the majay-hi turned confused circles at the sound. A clan elder in a dark brown cloak raised a hand and pointed high beyond Magiere.

Leesil turned, and Chap did as well. Brot'an lost his stoic self-control for an instant as he stared beyond Magiere. She turned around.

From the upper reaches of one bridge-branched oak, something launched from the thick leaves into the air. It spread wings longer than any bird Magiere had ever seen, and spiraled downward in wild arcs. The closer it came, the more Magiere doubted its shape. The majay-hi scattered away as it landed beyond Leesil and Chap. Magiere sucked in a breath and held it.

Not a bird, for-she-had arms and legs. She looked only at Magiere, as if she saw someone familiar.

Her wings were immense, and their combined span was at least three times her height. They folded behind a narrow and slight-boned torso of subtle curves like that of an adolescent girl. She was no taller than an Aruin'nas, and perhaps less. From pinion feathers to the downy covering on her body and face, she was a mottled off-white. Instead of hair, larger feathers combed back like a headdress and were matched by the same on the backs of her forearms and lower legs.

Two huge oval eyes dominated her face, pushed slightly to the sides by a long narrow nose that ended above a small, thin-lipped mouth. Her eyes were like polished stones, dark at first but turning as red as a dove's where they caught sunlight. She cocked her head like a crow, studying Magiere.

This frail creature stepped toward Magiere, rocking slightly upon the earth as if walking wasn't quite natural for her.

"Uirishg," Wynn said, the word exploding on her exhale.

Magiere couldn't take her eyes from this winged female. The majay-hi pulled farther aside to give her passage. A dry female voice from somewhere behind said, "Seyilf!" The word rattled in Magiere's empty mind until she heard herself try to numbly repeat it. But the closest she got out was "silf."

"The Wind-Blown," Wynn translated.

The silf drew closer and reached up with a hand of narrow fingers. She parted her lips as if to speak, and between them, in place of teeth, were ridges like the edge of a bird's beak inside her mouth. The sound that came out of her throat was somewhere between the cry of a hunting hawk and a sparrow's song.

Gleann came down and stopped beside Wynn. Most of the majay-hi descended to the clearing floor. Even Chap returned with Leesil close behind. Freth headed for Most Aged Father, who now watched in silent suspicion. Brot'an and Sgaile approached behind Leesil.

The silf looked about, growing agitated or nervous, and flexed her wings.

Gleann waved everyone off before they came too close. From behind him, one of the Aruin'nas stepped out.

"This is Tuma'ac," Gleann said in accented Belaskian. "He may be able to translate."

Tuma'ac looked up at Magiere with a vicious twitch of his eye that made the strange markings on his sun-wrinkled face seem to dance. He nodded once to Gleann but looked to Sgaile.

Sgaile regained himself, perhaps remembering his place as adjudicator. "Yes, proceed."

Tuma'ac approached the silf, and indeed she was shorter than he. He motioned with his hands toward himself and spoke to her in his strange tongue. The odd cry erupted from the silf again, sounding much the same as before to Magiere. Tuma'ac blinked twice as he looked sidelong at Magiere, but his sudden shock faded in disgust. He barked something at Gleann.

Gleann's high eyebrows rose even higher. "He says the seyilf called you 'kin'… or blood of her kind."

Magiere looked to Leesil, who only shook his head, and then to Wynn.

The sage was horrified. She gave Magiere a quick shake of her head. Not in confusion but more that she couldn't speak her mind here and now.

It was enough to bring Magiere to her senses, enough to call up memories of a hidden room beneath the keep of her undead father.

One of the decayed bodies there had rotted feathers among its bones. Wynn called them Uirishg, the five mythical races, of which the elves and dwarves were the only known two. Five beings had been slaughtered in that hidden blood rite to make Magiere's birth possible.

Magiere turned cold inside, looking back into the silf s dark eyes.

It cried again, and the chain translation passed once more to Gleann.

"She says you are not to be harmed… her people will not tolerate any violence against one of their own."

"That cannot be true!" Most Aged Father shouted. "You translate incorrectly. And even so, how could she know?"

Again the chain of words passed, but this time Gleann stumbled and spoke one elvish word to Wynn. The sage seemed to have difficulty.

"Something like…" she began and shook her head. "She is… a spiritual leader of some kind. 'Spirit-talker' is the closest I can think of."

Gleann turned toward Most Aged Father. "If you wish to call Tuma'ac or the seyilf a liar, then do so for yourself and not through me. Do we now reject the word of those we promised to protect and hide in our mountains?"

Wynn shifted close to Magiere with a whisper. "The feather and berries in the mountain passage. It was one ofthem..one of the seyilf."

The silf turned away. Her flurried thrash of wings sent majay-hi scattering, as she half leaped and flew to the piles of stones that Sgaile had left at the clearing's edge. She grabbed a black one and tossed it across the clearing.

It tumbled to a halt before Most Aged Father, and he shook visibly as his expression turned livid.

The silf screeched again, and Tuma'ac grunted in satisfaction before speaking to Gleann.

"She calls us to vote," Gleann said, pointing to the stone, "and gives that of her people… against the claim of Most Aged Father."

"Do the advocates have anything further to present?" Sgaile asked quietly.

Brot'an shook his head once. But Most Aged Father clutched at Freth, whispering harshly. Freth kept shaking her head in denial.

"Your answer, advocate!" Sgaile called with more force.

Freth stood up, and her head dropped as she shook it slowly. "No… nothing."

Sgaile stepped to the clearing's center. "The Advocates have retired. We ask the elders to deliberate and render judgment on the claim presented."

Gleann didn't return to his clan. Instead, he simply cast a stone-black-and gave Magiere a curt bow. It was a kind gesture, but not enough to make her hopeful.

Another black stone arched out from behind her and tumbled across the ground. Magiere looked back.

The tall female in maroon stood halfway down the slope, the one Sgaile had called Tosan… something on the night they searched for Wynn. Her calculated study of Magiere turned suddenly upon Leesil, and then she walked back up to her chair between her like-clad attendants. How her filmy eyes saw anything was disturbing.

Magiere wasn't certain how long it would take the others, or whether a quick or protracted vote worked more in her favor. She tried not to meet the silf's steady stare, for its strange face was too difficult to read. She didn't want to think about her own past, her birth, and why this creature had mistaken her as kin.

One at a time, then in twos and threes, black and white stones fell into the clearing.

Magiere closed her eyes. She felt Leesil's arm slip around her shoulders and tighten.

She didn't watch Sgaile gather the stones, but after long moments she heard their clatter as he poured them into piles upon the ground.

Gleann's voice rose so loud it startled her, and her eyes snapped open as Wynn translated.

"As the claim against her is now dismissed, Magiere's companions cannot be held in blame either. They came here as guests of Most Aged Father and under oath of guardianship. No reason has been given to breach either. They must be released, and their property returned. Then other matters require our collected attention"-he glanced toward Most Aged Father-"concerning Anmaglahk ways in conflict with those of the people."

"It's over," Leesil whispered.

Magiere couldn't see any difference between the stone piles at Sgaile's feet. He seemed to understand her confusion and nodded to her.

"It is over-for now," Brot'an added. "I will take you back to quarters, so you may rest."

"Not quite," Leesil returned. "I still have a claim to make for my mother."

"It will be addressed," Brot'an answered. "The rest will be settled without either of you, and should cause you no more concern. Do not press the matter when it is not yet necessary."

Leesil glanced at Magiere, caught between concern and stubbornness.

Magiere put a hand on his chest. Both looked up as a rush of wind around Magiere whipped Leesil's loose hair wildly about.

The silf dropped upon the table behind Magiere and reached out too quickly, startling Leesil into the defensive. Magiere grabbed his wrist.

The tiny female flexed her wings and raised her hand more slowly this time. She lifted the side of Magiere's hair, letting its strands slide between narrow fingers ending in roan-colored nails that curved slightly like talons. The silf cocked her head, watching the hair fall bit by bit.

Magiere pulled back at the thrash of her wings as she lifted into the air and flapped away beyond the treetops.

Leesil exhaled."As if we haven't had enough for one day."

"There is one more thing," Wynn said. "Brot'an, would you please wait with Magiere?"

The sage grabbed Leesil's arm, pulling him along as she followed Chap toward Most Aged Father.

Chap had no idea what this seyilf-silf-truly wanted. Like Magiere and even Wynn, he was confused as to why it mistook Magiere for kin. Somehow the small winged female sensed the blood of its own used in Magiere's conception.

He had tried reaching for its mind to catch any memories, but he found nothing besides images of himself and his charges climbing downward through the mountain. The female had been the one to leave them a trail… the one who had called out to him amid the blizzard. This was all he gathered from it. He was left wondering why it had twice interceded on their behalf and how long it had watched them from hiding.

Chap had planned for a fight, even wanted it in part.Or at least enough distraction to take the one person who mattered-Most Aged Father.

He had watched the an'Croan shaken by how the majay-hi cast their

"vote" in this matter. Lily had likely strained her place among the pack in convincing them for him, but they all shared some strange animosity for the leader of the Anmaglahk, a being too old for natural life and yet making claims against Magiere as an undead.

Perhaps his rejected kin were correct-flesh and heart made him reckless. He did not care anymore.

Most Aged Father's bearers had not come for him. Even this did not matter toChap. He wanted answers, and he would take them.

Frethfare stepped in his way as he closed on the old one.

"We only have a message for Most Aged Father," Wynn said.

Chap barked once, not turning his eyes from the patriarch.

"Snaw… hac…" Leesil began, then sighed in frustration.

"Snahacroe," Wynn pronounced for him.

At the name, Most Aged Father's milky eyes widened and he sat up as straight as he could.

"He said to tell you…" Leesil called out clearly, "that he's waiting for his comrade to join him… when you're done."

Chap lunged into the old one's mind, waiting for whatever might come.

Sounds and images rose, led by the face of a tall elf with wide cheekbones. Chap let go of all else, even anger, and sank into Most Aged Father's rising memories.

Sorhkafare stood amid the night-wrapped trees surrounding Aonnis Lhoin'n, First Glade.

It had been the longest run of his life to reach his people's land and what now seemed the only sanctuary in a blighted world. He led his dwindling group to this place hoping to find other survivors, hoping to find help. But he could still hear the grunts and weeping and madness of the night horde ranging beyond the forest's edge.

All through his flight home, every town and village, and even every keep and stronghold, was littered with bodies torn as if fed upon by animals. The few living they encountered joined them in flight from the pale predators with crystalline eyes, always in their wake.

The numbers of their pursuers grew with each fall of the sun.

Fewer than half of those who fled Sorhkafare's encampment with him reached the forests of his people. Not one of the dwarves made it on their stout legs carrying thick heavy bodies. Thalhomerk had been the last of their people to succumb, along with his son and daughter.

In a dead run through the dark, Sorhkafare had heard the dwarven lord's vicious curses. He looked back as Thalhomerk submerged under a wave of pale bodies. He shuddered at the sound of bones cracking under the dwarf's massive fists and mace. And still the horde flowed toward Sorhkafare and over Thalhomerk's son and daughter. He could not tell which one had screamed out, as Hoil'lhan's voice smothered it with a visceral shout. She whirled to turn back.

Her hair whipped about her long face as she swung the butt of her thick metal spear shaft. It cracked through a pale face. Splattering black fluids blotted out the creature's glittering eyes and maw of sharp teeth.

Sorhkafare did not understand Hoil'lhan's preference for dwarven and human company, nor her restless and savage nature. Perhaps she had been killing for too long.

Hoil'lhan spun her spear without pause as three more pale figures closed on her. The spear's wide and long head split through the first's collarbone, grinding into its chest. She jerked her weapon out as the other two hesitated, and she screeched at them madly, ready to charge.

Sorhkafare grabbed her, pulling her around as more of the horde rushed at them through the dark.

"Run," he ordered.

Even in renewed flight Hoil'lhan tried to turn on him with her metal spear. Snahacroe snatched her other arm, and they dragged her onward.

"You cannot save Thalhomerk," Snahacroe said in a hollow voice.

The endless running took its toll. Two more of Sorhkafare's soldiers dropped in their tracks before any saw the forest's edge. All he could do was hope they died of exhaustion before…

In the clearing of First Glade, humans and elves now huddled in fear. Sorhkafare could no longer look at their gaunt faces.

So few… and in the distance, beyond the forest's limits, carried the shouts and cries of dark figures with crystalline eyes. A part of him found that easier to face than to count the small number who still lived.

A small pack of the silver-gray wolves came out of the trees. They moved with eerie conscious intent. At first their presence had frightened all, but they never attempted any harm; quite the opposite. They wove among the people, sniffing about. One stopped to lick and nuzzle a small elven girl holding a human infant.

These wolves had eyes like crystals tinted with sky blue, and neither he nor his troops had ever seen such before. But during his campaigns against the enemy, Sorhkafare had heard reports and rumors of strange wolves, deer, and other animals joining allied forces in battles in other lands.Which made these wolves a welcome sight.

The survivors in First Glade ate little and slept less. If sleep did come, they cried out in their dreams. Every night, Sorhkafare waited for the pale horde to surge in upon them.

But they never came.

On the sixth night, he could stand it no more and walked out into the forest. Leshiara tried to stop him.

Youngest of their council of elders, she stood in his way, soft lines of coming age on a face urgent and firm beneath her long graying hair. She pulled her maroon robe tight about herself against the night's chill.

"You cannot leave!" she whispered sharply. "These people need to see every warrior we have left ready to stand for them. You will make them think you abandon them."

"Stand against what?" he snarled at her, not caring who heard. "You do not know what is out there any more than I. And if they could come for us, why have they not done so? Leave me be!"

He stepped around her, heading into the trees, but not before he caught Snahacroe watching him with sad disappointment. In days past, his kinsman's silent reproach would have cut him, but now he felt nothing.

Sorhkafare followed the sounds of beasts on two legs out beyond the forest, wondering why they had not come for the pitiful count of refugees.These things on two legs… things that would not die… blood-hungry with familiar faces as pale as corpses'. He heard them more clearly as the trees thinned around him, and he stopped in the night to listen.

The noise they made had changed. Screams of pain were strangled short beneath wet tearing sounds.

Sorhkafare stumbled forward, sickened by his own curiosity.

Through a stand of border aspens before the open plain, he saw three silhouettes with sparking eyes. They rushed, one after another, upon a fourth fleeing before them.

Still, he kept on, slipping in behind one aspen.

In days past, Sorhkafare would have leaped to defend any poor victim.But not now. It did not matter if anyone out there on the plain still lived. He peered around the aspen's trunk.

The three hunkered upon the ground with lowered heads, tearing back and forth. Beneath them, the fourth struggled wildly, its pain-pitched voice ringing in Sorhkafare's ears.

The sound of such terrified suffering ate at him.

He lunged around the tree, running for the victim's outstretched hand. Halfway there, the figure thrashed free and scrambled across the matted grass with wide, panicked eyes…

Glittering, crystalline eyes.

Sorhkafare's feet slid upon autumn leaves as he halted.

Out on the plain, dark silhouettes chased and hunted each other with cries of fear and hunger. The moon and stars dimly lit shapes tearing into each other with fingers and teeth. With nothing else to feed upon, the pale creatures turned upon each other.

These things… so hungry for warm life.

One of the three lifted its head.

Sorhkafare made out a pale face, its mouth smeared with wet black. Its eyes sparked as if gathering the waninglight, and it saw him. It rose, turning toward him as the other pair chased the fourth through the grass.

Sorhkafare heard his own breath. He retreated a few paces, just inside the forest's tree line.

This pale thing he saw… a man… was human.

His quivering lips and teeth were darkened, as if he had been drinking black ink. He sniffed the air wildly and a ravenous twist distorted his features. He began running toward Sorhkafare.

This one smelled him, sensed his life.

Sorhkafare jerked out his long war knife and braced himself.

The human came straight at him, its feral features pained with starvation. Perhaps it gained no sustenance in feeding on its own. But he no longer cared for anything beyond seeing these horrors gone from his world.

It ran straight at him like an animal without reason.

When it stepped between the first trees of the forest, it stopped short, hissing and gurgling in desperation. Sorhkafare saw the man clearly now.

Young, perhaps twenty human years.His face was heavily scratched, but the marks were black lines rather than red. His flesh was white and shriveled, as if it were sinking in upon itself. The thing cried piteously at Sorhkafare and took another hesitant step.

Why would the horde not enter the forest, if they were starved enough to turn on each other?

Sorhkafare raised his knife and cut the back of his forearm. He swung his bloodied arm through the air.

"Hungry?" he shouted. "I am here!"

The sight of blood drove the man deeper into madness. He charged forward with a scream grating up his throat. Sorhkafare shifted backward, feeling blindly for smooth and solid footing.

As the pale man lunged between two aspens, he grabbed his head with a strangled choke. He turned about and cried out-but not in anguished hunger. This was a sound of fear and pain as he whirled and wobbled. The man stumbled too near one aspen, and he clawed wildly at the air, as if fending off the tree.

Sorhkafare watched in stunned confusion. A howl carried around him from within the forest.

It was like nothing Sorhkafare had ever heard-long and desperate in warning. Two of the silver-furred wolves burst through the underbrush and out of the dark, their eyes glowing like clear crystals tinted with sky blue.

The first slammed straight into the screaming man and latched its jaws around his throat, ripping as it dragged him down. The second joined in, and their howls shifted to savage snarls as they tore at their prey.

The man's scream cut off in a wet gag, but still he thrashed and clawed.

On instinct Sorhkafare ran in to help the wolves, but they kept snapping and tearing at the man's throat.

One of them shifted aside. It pinned the man's arm with teeth and paws. The other did the same, and they held him down as the first one looked up at Sorhkafare.

The wolf waited for Sorhkafare to do something-but what?

The man's throat was a dark mass shredded almost to the spine-yet still he writhed and fought to get free. Black fluids dribbled from his gaping mouth and blotted out his teeth.A mouth that either snarled or screamed with no voice.

He could not still be alive. No one could live after what these wolves had done to him… tearing at his neck as if…

Sorhkafare dropped to his knees and snatched the man's hair with his free hand. With so little sinew left on that neck, it was easy to hold the head steady. He pressed the long knife's edge down through the mess of the man's throat until it halted against bone.

In a quick shift, he released his grip on the hair and pressed on the back of the blade with all his weight.

The blade grated and then cut down through neck bones.

The pale man ceased thrashing and fell limp as a true corpse.

Sorhkafare sucked in air as he lifted his gaze to the first wolf, its muzzle stained with wet black like his own hands. He stared into its eyes as his mind emptied of all but two truths.

The forest would not allow the horde in. And if one got through, these wolves sensed it and came.

He climbed to his feet, still breathing hard, and crept back to the forest's edge to look out upon the rolling plain.

Dark forms rolled, ran, leaped, and crawled in the grass. Others barely moved, little more than quivering masses choking in the dark. Pale figures chased each other-slaughtered each other.

Sorhkafare stood watching, unable to look away. Every figure that came close enough for his night eyes to see was human.

He saw not one elf. Not one dwarf. Not even a goblin, or the hulking scaled body of a reptilian locathan, or any of the other monstrosities the enemy had sent against him.

Only humans.

He turned and stumbled back toward First Glade. The wolves paced him all the way to his people.

He found Snahacroe kneeling behind an injured human youth, bracing the boy up while Leshiara worked upon the boy's leg. In the past days, these two shared company more and more.

Leshiara closed her eyes, and a low thrum rose from her throat. She lightly traced her fingertips around the boy's deeply bruised calf, over and over, and then went silent. She opened her eyes and rebandaged the boy's leg.

When she stood up and found Sorhkafare watching her, she frowned.

"Come with me," he said.

Snahacroe looked worried and followed as well.

They walked into the center of the glade.

In the open space stood an immense tree like no other in this world.Its trunk was the size of a small citadel tower, and high overhead its branches reached out into the forest.

Sorhkafare saw where those limbs stretched into the green leaves and needles of the surrounding trees and beyond. A soft glow emanated from the tree's tawny body and branches,bare of bark but still thriving with life. Massive roots like hill ridges split the clearing's turf where they emerged from the trunk to burrow deep and far into the earth.

Sorhkafare laid a hand upon the glistening trunk of Charmun, a name that humans would translate as "Sanctuary."

"We must take a cutting from Charmun," he said to Leshiara. "Can you keep it alive over a long journey?"

She grew pale and did not answer.

"What are you planning?" Snahacroe asked, moving closer to Leshiara.

Sorhkafare looked at his one remaining commander. "The horde turns upon itself. They have nothing else left within reach to feed upon-but it does them no good. In perhaps days, there may be few enough left for us to slip away."

"No!" someone snapped sharply.

Sorhkafare knew the voice before he turned his head.

Hoil'lhan stood at the clearing's edge, and around her paced three of the strange tall wolves. All four were spattered and dripping in black fluids. All four watched him with equal intensity. Hoil'lhan stabbed the long, broad head of her spear into the earth, and Sorhkafare watched more black fluid run from its sharp edges to the grass.

"Where have you been?" he demanded.

"Where do you think?" Hoil'lhan spit out at him. "The enemy's minions range upon our very borders… and you wish to run?"

"We cannot stay here in hiding within this blighted land," Sorhkafare returned.

"I said no!" Hoil'lhan shouted, running a hand through her white, sweat-matted hair. "I will not let the enemy take what is ours! I will not leave any more that I cherish… fleeing with their screams at my back!"

"Enough," Snahacroe warned.

"It was not a request," Sorhkafare said firmly. "I am still your commander."

Hoil'lhan breathed hard, twisting her hand around the upright shaft of her spear.

"And since when do you alone speak for our people?" Leshiara said quietly, stepping toward Sorhkafare. "You do not sit in the council of First Glade, and we no longer follow the old ways of divided clans. Such decisions are the province ofmyself and the others of the council."

"There is no council left!" Sorhkafare shouted at her. "You are the only one that remains… so do you alone choose for our people, like some human monarch?"

"That is not my meaning," she snapped back. "There are too many here who need us."

Sorhkafare shook his head. "What if they are the very ones by which the Enemy can still reach us? Out beyond our forest… those dead things that move and feast… they were once humans, like those still among us."

"You do not know how this was done to them," Hoil'lhan growled. "Or if the Enemy's reach could find any who shelter here!"

Snahacroe turned, staring off through the trees, as if trying to see the forest's edge. Leshiara fell silent and closed her eyes, seeming to grow older and wearier before Sorhkafare's eyes.

But he could not relent.

"We will take our own people. Perhaps the wolves will join us as well. We will get as far from here as we can reach. We will plant our cutting from Charmun and create a haven for our people far from the Enemy's reach."

"Our people?" Snahacroe asked.

"Not the humans," Sorhkafare answered.

"The outsiders are dismissed!"

Chap didn't know who spoke those words, but they jerked him to awareness. His legs trembled as he pulled free of Most Aged Father's memories.

Leesil dropped to one knee beside him, but Chap regained his own footing.

Several anmaglahk came in around Most Aged Father. Under their threatening encouragement, Chap turned away with Leesil and Wynn. Magiere joined them as they were all ushered out of the council clearing.

Chap struggled to follow but could not stop trembling. He looked up at Magiere's black braid swinging as she leaned against Leesil while they walked.

He knew why Most Aged Father feared Magiere so deeply, though the old man did not fully understand what she was. He saw only some new shape of those among the pale horde of his memory. She was far worse than even the old man could imagine.

Magiere was human, born of the undead. Yet she walked freely and unfettered into this land. Chap's mind raced back to his fear-spawned delusion in the Pudurlatsat forest-of Magiere as the general at the head of an army…

No, a horde-one that could not enter a shielded land without her.

If only he could tell Magiere alone, without the need of Wynn to speak for him. Magiere deserved at least that much privacy, but there was no way to achieve such.

Chap blinked but could not keep the old elf's memories from casting ghost images across all things around him. A war had devoured the living at the end of a time known only as the Forgotten… the Forgotten History of the world. On the plain beyond the elven forest surrounding First Glade, Most Aged Father had watched the waves of undead sent by the Enemy.

All of them-every last one-had been human.