Rebel Fay

Chapter One

Chap fought for each breath the blizzard tried to rip away, and every step sank him nearly chest deep in the snowdrifts clinging to the cliff's path. Squinting against the wind, he flexed his paws to fight the numbing cold.

His fur and the folded blanket Magiere had tied across his body were thickly crusted, and his vision blurred if he looked up too long at the whitened sky. To his right, a deep gorge fell beyond sight, while on his left, the peak's steep facerose sharply, its upper reaches lost in the blizzard.

Lashing snow and hail had pelted his face for three days as he led his companions onward. This was the third storm since they had entered the winter-shroudedBroken Range over a moon ago. The map Wynn had procured in Soladran had guided them partway, but once beyond the Warlands' foothills, it was of little help.

Chap had crossed these mountains only once before, and in winter as well, as a pup. Leesil's grandmother, Eillean, had carried him in the company of the deceitful Brot'an'duive. Here and now, so many years later, Chap tried not to think upon his failure.

He could not find a passage through to the elvenTerritories.

Chap flattened his ears. Each time he raised them, pelting flakes collected in the openings and sent an icy ache into his skull. Even that pain did not quell his panic. Rather, his fear grew as he looked back down the narrow path.

A dozen paces back, a short figure trudged toward him, half-obscured by snowfall blowing in the harsh wind. It was Wynn. Beside the small sage thumped the hulking silhouette of a burdened horse, either Port or Imp. Farther behind came two more figures with the bulk of the other horse.

And three questions still plagued Chap as he waited for his companions to catch up.

Why did Aoishenis-Ahare-Most Aged Father-seed war among the humans? Why had the dissidents among the Anmaglahk-Leesil's mother and grandmother included-created Leesil to kill an enemy they knew nothing about? Why had Chap's own kin, the Fay, now abandoned him?

More than a season past, he had left Miiska with Magiere and Leesil. Every day and league brought more questions he could not answer. All he had wanted in the beginning was to find Magiere and keep her from the hands of the returning Enemy. And Leesil had been his instrument to accomplish this. It was-should have been-a simple task to accomplish. Perhaps this life in flesh made him foolish and naive, stunting the awareness he had shared among his kin.

Wynn's muffled form grew distinct as she neared, one mittened hand braced against Port's shoulder. Her cloak's hood was cinched around her face, and the wool blanket tied over her cloak was caked with frozen snow. A loose corner of Port's baggage tarp snapped and cracked in the wind.

The little sage stumbled and then collapsed.

Her knees sank in the snow, but her left arm jerked straight up, as if her hand were frozen to Port's shoulder. A cord tied around her wrist disappeared beneath the tarp at the base of Port's neck. It was all that kept her from falling facedown into the drift. She dangled there, legs dragging through snow, until Port halted under the extra burden.

Chap lunged down the path and shoved his muzzle into the scrunched opening of Wynn's hood. He licked furiously at her face, but she remained limp and slack-faced, as if not seeing him.

Dark circles ringed her large brown eyes, and her olive complexion had gone pallid. Food had run low, and for the last quarter moon they traveled on half rations. Wynn's chapped lips moved slightly, but her faint words were lost beneath the wind's howl.

Chap pressed his head into her chest and shoved upward. Wynn twisted, not quite gaining her footing, and flopped against Port's shoulder. Chap braced his shoulder under her hip, ready to force her to stand.

"Get up," a voice growled. "On… the horse."

Magiere stood at Port's haunch with Imp's reins clutched in her gloved hand. She held her cloak closed and looked from Chap to the young sage. Like Wynn's, her appearance was one more warning of the cost of Chap's failure.

Snow clung to black locks dangling free of Magiere's hood. A crusted tendril swung across her white face, but even her steaming breath could not clear the ice. And her irises were full black.

No other sign showed of her dhampir nature. No sharpened teeth, no elongated fangs, no feral anger twisting her features. Only her eyes showed that she held her darker side half-manifested.

Chap watched her change each dawn to remain strong enough to move on and watch over Leesil and Wynn.Each dusk when she let go, her exhausted collapse grew worse, and the next morning's rise took longer. Wind-burn marked her face, and it was disturbing to see stains of color on her ever-pale cheeks.

Magiere dropped Imp's reins and closed on Wynn. She grabbed the sage's cloak front with both hands. Wynn lashed out wildly with her free arm, knocking Magiere's hands away.

"No-too much!" she shouted, and her voice grew weak as she sagged. "I am too much… Port carries… already carries too much."

Magiere pulled Wynn into her arms, shielding the smaller woman from the blizzard. Around Port's far side, a third figure struggled past along the steep slope.

Leesil sidestepped across the incline, bracing one hand against Port's far shoulder. His calf-high boots were caked to their tops. At each step, the slope's white blanket cracked and chunks slid around his legs. Strands of white-blond hair blew over Leesil's face to cling to his cracked lips. He scanned the expanse over the gorge and settled angry amber eyes upon Chap.

Determination fueled Leesil in the worst of times. But since discovering his father's and grandmother's skulls displayed as trophies in Darmouth's crypt, it had become something else.

Chap had seen the warlord's death in Magiere's memories. And in Leesil's, he had felt the blade sink through the tyrant's throat to jam against the man's spine. From that moment, Leesil's determination sank into blind obsession beyond caution or reason. Any suggestion by Magiere to turn back and wait out the winter met with vehemence. Though he was as worn and weak as his companions, Leesil's fanaticism pushed all of them onward.

Somewhere in Imp's baggage, the skulls rested in a chest, where they were to remain until the moment Leesil placed them in his mother's hands. Cuir-in'nen'a-Nein'a-was alive and waiting, a prisoner of her own people.

If they all lived to find her.

"Enough!" Leesil shouted at Chap, but the storm made his voice seem far away. "Find shelter… anything out of this wind."

Chap turned about, facing up the path and into the gale. For an instant, he forgot and lifted his ears. Snow filled them, and his head throbbed.

Where could he find shelter in these dead and barren heights?

The narrow path traced the steep mountainside, rising and falling over rock outcrops peeking above the drifts, but he had seen no worthwhile shelter or cover all day. The last place they'd stopped for the night was a half day's retreat behind them. They were too fatigued to reach it before dark.

Chap trudged up the path, wrenching chilled muscles. He rounded the next outcropping and stopped. In this lifeless place, he tried to sense Spirit from anywhere… anything. He reached out through the elements-Earth and frigid Air, frozen Water but no Fire, and his own Spirit. He called to his kin.

Hear me… come to me, for we… I… need you.

Cold seeped up his legs from stone and snow and frozen earth.

No answer. Their silence brought no more despair than he already bore, and his spirit fired another plea.

How many times must I beg?

He tried often enough. Once before, Wynn had flinched and swallowed hard, and Chap knew the young sage sensed his efforts. Her awareness of his attempts to commune with his kin, as Wynn called it, had slowly grown.

Chap had not spoken with them since the Soladran border. He had turned from the Fay in outrage and raced to the aid of fleeing peasants. After all the times they had harassed and chided him, not once since entering these mountains had they answered his call. He looked back to three silhouettes in the storm huddled near the horses' larger shapes.

/ have brought them here… and they will all die here!

Wind across the hidden peak above issued a mournful whistle. It ended in a strange staccato of shrill chirps. It was the only answer Chap received. He lifted his muzzle at the sound.

A horse screamed under a rumble like thunder.

The upper slope's white surface appeared to move. Every muscle in Chap's body tightened.

He lunged back down the path, struggling through the snow toward the others. Panic sharpened with each bound. He closed the distance as the rumble grew abruptly.

Leesil vanished beneath a river of cascading snow.

The slide collided into Port, pouring over him as Imp screamed and backed away. Port's rump pivoted toward the gorge's lip and caught Magiere's back. Chap lost sight of her and Wynn as the avalanche spilled around and over them.

Wind and the thundering slide smothered Chap's howl. He staggered to a halt at the slide's rushing edge. Twice he tried to wade in, only to thrash his way back before the current could drag him over the edge.

Port's head and forelegs broke through the slide, snow spraying up around the horse. It seemed impossible that the animal held its place, and Chap saw no sign of the others. Port struggled up on the precipice's edge, thrashing head and forelegs in the deep drift, but he could not pull himself up.

The river of snow slowed, and Chap lunged in before it stilled completely.

He plowed toward the horse, probing the snow with his snout as he searched for anyone not forced over the edge. His nose rammed against something.

He smelled oiled leather and wool. A metal stud grated along his left jowl. He snapped his jaws into the leather as a voice carried from the gorge below.

"Magiere!"

It was Wynn, somewhere below yet still alive. There was no time to wonder how, and Chap heaved on the leather hauberk clenched in his teeth.

A gloved hand reached out of the snow and grabbed the back of his neck.

Chap's paws scraped upon stone beneath the drift as he backed up, hauling Magiere up from where she clung to the precipice by one leg and one arm. He did not let go until she was on her knees.

"Leesil!" Wynn called out, voice filled with alarm.

Leesil rose from out of the deep snow at the path's far side with a stiletto in each gloved hand. He had somehow managed to duck in against the slope and anchor himself with his blades.

Chap darted around Magiere to peer over the edge and into the gorge.

Port's haunches hung out in midair, and Wynn clung to his baggage. She was coated in white. The cord from her wrist to the saddle horn had snapped, and she had held on to baggage lashings. She dangled against Port's rump as the horse kicked wildly at the cliff's side, trying to find footing. Wynn's eyes widened at the sight of Chap.

"Help me!" she cried and tried to pull herself farther up.

Port whinnied in panic as he slid farther over the edge. His shoulders and forelegs sank deeper in the drift. More snow shifted, tumbling around him to strike Wynn's head and shoulders. One of her hands lost its grip, as wind slapped the loosened baggage tarp into her face.

Chap leaneddown, snapping his jaws, but the sage was far beyond his reach.

"Leesil, get to Wynn!" Magiere shouted and dove for Port, grabbing the horse's halter.

But Leesil scrambled the other way, toward Imp at the snow-slide's edge.

"Hold on!" he shouted. "I'll be right there."

Imp whinnied, trying to hop free of the snow that had flowed in around her legs. Leesil snatched her reins, pulled her head down, and reached under the baggage tarp. He jerked something out and lunged back toward Magiere.

"I'm coming!" he yelled.

He carried Magiere's unsheathed falchion. When he reached her, he slammed it point-down through the snow with both hands. Magiere grabbed its hilt for an anchor as the wind ripped away her blanket.

Chap peered down helplessly as Wynn coughed out snow and clawed for a grip with her free hand. He dug furiously around Port's stomach to clear footing for the animal. The horse slipped again, and Chap scrambled away before he was clubbed by a forehoof.

Wynn cried out as the horse's belly scraped across the stone and frozen earth of the path's edge.

Leesil heaved on Magiere's waist as she pulled on the embedded falchion. She swung her left leg around it and sat down to sink waist deep in snow. She braced her chest against the sword to keep from slipping toward the gorge's edge and snatched the other side of Port's halter. The falchion's hilt ground into the chest of her hauberk as the backs of Port's forelegs locked against the path's edge.

The horse's quickened snorts shot steam at Magiere. His wild eyes were as unblinking as Magiere's, but her black irises expanded rapidly. She gripped his halter tightly, trying desperately to keep him from falling.

"Get Wynn," she said through clenched teeth.

The tears that always came with her change barely reached her cheeks before the wind whipped them away. Her lips parted, and her face wrinkled in a snarl around sharpened teeth and elongated canines.

Magiere's dhampir nature rose fully, and she heaved on Port's halter. The horse's creeping slide halted.

Leesil let go of Magiere and started to rise. The falchion against her chest began to bend. He quickly sank backdown, bracing his legs, and threw an arm over her shoulder, holding her tightly around the chest.

"Climb!" Leesil shouted. "Wynn, you have to climb up!"

Chap clawed the path's edge, clearing a space for himself as he barked at Wynn. The young sage looked up at him in fearful confusion.

"Climb!" Leesil shouted again.

Chap barked once for yes.

Wynn grabbed the next lashing within reach. She pulled herself up and braced one booted foot against Port's rump. The horse kicked again at the cliff's face, and the strap in Wynn's first grip snapped.

She spun like a tassel in the wind and twisted over Port's side. Her back and head slammed into the stone cliff below Chap. Her remaining grip on the baggage lashing began to slip as her hand went limp.

Chap lunged out.

One clawed forepaw ground against Port's side. He snapped his jaws closed on Wynn's wrist, and tasted blood between his teeth as it soaked through her mitten. Wynn shrieked in pain, and Port whinnied.

Chap's forepaw began to slide down the horse's side.

A heavy weight fell on him from behind and pinned him across the cliff's edge.

Leesil's panting breaths filled Chap's ear as he felt Wynn's mitten and skin tear in his teeth. Leesil squirmed and pulled on Chap. The dog's chest scraped back over the edge until his forepaws were digging into the snow.

Leesil reached over the edge and grabbed the shoulder of Wynn's cloak to pull her up. Even when she lay beside them in the broken snow crying in pain, Chap was too terrified to release her wrist.

"Let go!" Leesil shouted.

Chap opened his jaws, and Wynn curled away from him, grabbing her wrist.

"Let go," Leesil repeated.

But he was not looking at Chap, and Chap's gaze flashed up.

Magiere held only Port's reins wrapped in her grip. The horse's struggles had broken her hold on his halter. A panic-pitched snarl twisted into growled words between her clenched teeth.

"No… no… more… lost!"

One rein snapped in half.

Port jerked farther over the edge. The falchion tilted sharply forward as Magiere was pulled hard against it. Port struggled wildly, rolling sideways against the edge, and the blade flattened completely.

Magiere drove her feet down through the snow to braceherself, refusing to let go of the remaining rein. And still she slid.

"Let go, damn you!" Leesil shouted, and thrashed in the drift to get up.

Chap lunged at Magiere. He snapped his jaws closed on the taut rein. The part that Magiere still held severed under his teeth.Before he could open his jaws to release the other half, his head wrenched sideways toward the gorge.

Chap saw white… the white-ringed terrified eyes of Port vanishing over the edge… the white of snow in the horse's face as he slid… the white blizzard air of the gorge below him.

A hard grip closed on his rear leg and jerked him back. Arms closed around him in a tight grip.

No sound echoed up from the gorge, at leastnone that could be heard over the wind.

Held tight in Magiere's arms, Chap heard a sound in her chest, like a low rumble smothering her whimper. He answered it with his own as he struggled about with his muzzle buried in her neck.

Somewhere above them the wind whistled across the peak.Three short bursts, sharp and quick.And then again.

Chap's ears perked and stayed there, even as the wind spiked into his skull.

He wanted to give Magiere a moment for grief. At a crunch of footsteps, he squirmed about to find Leesil half-dragging, half-carrying Wynn. Leesil lowered the sage beside Magiere.

Chap writhed free of Magiere's hold. The snow-slide had exposed part of the upper slope's face, and he climbed it for a short distance before stopping to listen.

The sound in the peak… it could not be the wind.

He stood there so long he wondered if he had heard anything at all, until…

Three short and shrill whistles of even length and spacing.

The blizzard's wind could not make such a sound-not twice. Had his kin finally answered his plea?

Chap tumbled and hopped halfway downslope, howling as he went. When Leesil looked up, Chap reversed, climbing two steps before barking loudly. He needed them to follow.

Leesil just stared at him. But when the whistles came again, his gaze rose to the heights above Chap. He scrambled to Imp and began slashing off her baggage as he shouted at Magiere.

"Get Wynn and follow Chap!"

At first Magiere did not move. Her irises were still large and black, and her teeth had not receded. She rolled onto all fours and glared upslope like a wolf searching for any member of its pack. Her black eyes found Chap, and her head swung toward the sage curled in a ball within a pocket of snow.

Magiere hoisted Wynn over one shoulder and stood up. She braced her free hand against the slope's partially exposed rock and took a step upward.

Leesil swatted Imp's bare rump, sending the unburdened horse down the way they had come. The horse could not follow them. He stepped in behind Magiere with whatever baggage he could carry.

Chap climbed toward the heights.

Magiere was near the end of her strength, even with her dhampir nature unrestrained. Wynn was injured, perhaps most by what Chap had done to save her. Even Leesil had given up driving all of them onward. A sudden doubt gripped Chap.

After a moon in these barren mountains, without one touch from his kin, why would they choose to help in this obscure way?

He grew wary of what he had heard, and what waited above in those heights. The more he pondered with each upward lunge, the more his doubt grew.

What choice was left? Either he found shelter, or those under his protection would perish.

Leesil lost sight of Chap above and stopped. Daylight was fading, and he scanned the slope, blinking against flecks of snow pelting his face.

A reassuring howl and yip rolled down on the rushing wind, and Leesil turned to check on Magiere.

She still followed, one hand braced against the steep slope and the other gripping Wynn's legs where the sage hung over her shoulder. Her black irises had reduced in size, and were all that remained of her dhampir nature. She'd used up the last of both natural and unnatural strength.

Leesil tried to see through the storm to the heights. Chap had to find somewhere for them to hide, as Magiere had only moments left. He swung the small chest of skulls up on his shoulder over the saddlebags slung there. He gripped the one horse pack he had brought and dragged it upslope. A rock outcrop appeared above, and Leesil halted, panic rising.

It jutted out overhead, perpendicular to the slope. Long icicles crusted its edges. Leesil couldn't spot any passage onward but he heard Chap howl, and the sound rolled around him in the wind as he looked about.

Three paw prints showed in the snow beneath the overhang. They led to the right. The rest of the trail in the open had already vanished under snowfall. Leesil followed the way, looking upward as he passed beyond the outcrop's side.

Chap stood atop the stone protrusion and lowered his head over the edge, barking urgently. He turned a circle back from the edge and then returned.

Whatever the dog had found couldn't be seen from below. Leesil stomped down the snow, trying to make footing Magiere would need, and then heaved the chest and baggage up next to Chap. He turned back for Magiere and found her collapsed beneath the outcrop with Wynn on top of her.

"I'm done," she mouthed, and her eyes began to close.

"No, you're not!" he snapped, and heaved Wynn off of Magiere.

Wynn's whimper was barely loud enough to hear as she tried to grip her bloodied wrist and hold her head at the same time. She curled in a ball at Leesil's knees.

"A little farther," he insisted. "Chap's found something."

Magiere lay on her back with her eyes shut and mouth slack, taking long labored breaths. Each exhale sent up vapor that lingered around her white face beneath the outcrop's protection.

"Sleep…" she growled at him. "Leave me alone."

Leesil's own fatigue overwhelmed him. It felt like relief, making the cold, noisy, white world seem far away. He felt warm and sleepy, ready to lie down next to her.

Chap howled from above with angry frustration.

Leesil snapped his eyes open, and the cold hurt his face once again. He leaned across Wynn and grabbed Magiere by her cloak front, catching the neck of her wool pullover as well. He jerked and nearly toppled himself as she rolled toward him.

"Get up!" he shouted. He tasted blood and knew he'd cracked his wind-parched lips.

Magiere's eyes rolled open as she glared at him. Her irises were their normal dark brown. She struggled to sit up, and then grabbed Wynn under the arms.

Leesil ducked out from beneath the outcrop. He climbed up on the ledge next to Chap and spun about to reach down. With Magiere lifting from below, they hoisted Wynn up. Chap darted away before Leesil could see where the dog went. When he turned in his crouch with Wynn slumped between his knees, he saw a narrow crack in the mountainside where the outcrop met the slope.

Chap poked his head back out of the narrow opening and barked.

Leesil grabbed Magiere's arm and pulled her up.

"I'll take Wynn," he breathed. "Get whatever baggage you can manage."

He knelt down, urging Wynn until the young sage straddled his back.

They climbed upward through the narrow crevice with Magiere in front. The footing was better, as the shielded path was reasonably bare of snow, but the tight space made the wind screech in Leesil's ears. And then a dark gash appeared in the mountainside.

Leesil couldn't see much around Magiere, until she vanished into the opening. It was jagged and ran at an awkward angle up the icy peak. The gash was far too narrow to enter with Wynn riding on his back.

Magiere reached out of the opening, and Leesil lowered Wynn so she could stand. The two of them threaded the staggering sage through the crack, and Leesil followed. Darkness swallowed them for an instant.

It took longer than expected for his half-elven eyes to adjust. Perhaps long days outside had made his eyes weary, where the world seemed brilliant white even at night. The first thing he saw was Magiere holding up Wynn against the side wall as she gazed deeper into the passage.

Its sheer walls slanted like the narrow opening, though it widened farther on, and its bottom was filled with rubble. Uneven footing at best, but the floor beyond seemed flat and manageable. Freezing winter winds and the light thaw of high summer rain had long ago loosened anything that might fall.

A strange rhythmic sound echoed softly around Leesil. It startled him until he recognized it.

Breathing.

He heard Magiere and Wynn breathing, now that they were all out of the blizzard wind. Then he heard claws scrambling over shifting stones. Light from the cave's opening caught on two crystalline eyes looking at them from down the dark passage.

Chap stepped into sight, huffed once at them, and then headed back into the dark.

Leesil rummaged through the saddlebag and horse pack but found neither of the lanterns. They must have been lost with Port. When he looked up, Wynn was trying to reach across into her left cloak pocket with her right hand.

" Crystal…" she said. "I can… not get to it."

Magiere reached around and pulled it out for her. She removed her gloves and rubbed the crystal in her hands, but the responding light was weak.

"Too cold…" Wynn added weakly. "Put it in your mouth… for a moment."

Magiere was too exhausted to even scowl. She slipped the crystal between her cracked lips and closed her mouth.

In the cave's darkness, her face slowly lit up. Pale features burned from within and her face became a glowing skeletal mask, too much like the skulls of Leesil's father and grandmother. The ghastly sight made him rise and reach for her.

"Take it out!" he snapped.

Magiere spit the crystal into her hand. Its light sprang up so strong that they all flinched. With the crystal in one hand, she prepared to lead the way after Chap.

"Wait," Leesil warned.

He pulled one of Magiere's extra shirts from the horse pack to fashion a sling for Wynn's arm. Then he saw the dark stains around the mitten cuff of the sage's left hand. He carefully peeled the mitten off.

Wynn's wrist wasn't bleeding anymore, but blood had smeared across her hand and up her forearm around where Chap's teeth had torn through her skin. Leesil hoped it looked worse than it truly was, but he wouldn't know until there was time to clean her up. He ripped off the shirttail for a quick bandage.

Wynn didn't flinch until he tried to tie the shirt's sleeves around her for a sling. He worried that her shoulder had been pulled from its socket, and he needed to keep her arm secured. She yelped, cringing away, and Leesil finished quickly.

"Follow Chap," he told Magiere. "We need to get away from the opening to someplace more sheltered."

Magiere scowled, as if all this were his fault, and glanced at Wynn slumped against the stone, breathing weakly. She carefully took Wynn by the waist and led the way with the crystal in her free hand.

Leesil heard Chap scrabbling ahead over the uneven floor, so he hoisted their few belongings. The deeper they went, the quieter it became, until the wind outside sounded far off. Along the way, Leesil noticed pockmarks of darkness high above that the crystal's light couldn't erase. There were smaller openings-cubbies, holes, and other natural cracks, perhaps even channels and smaller tunnels connected into the larger passage.But always at a height impossible to see into.

What at first seemed a cave at the passage's end, made from ancient shifting rock inside the mountain, became a series of subterranean pockets. One led to the next, ever inward below a connecting tangle of smaller cracks and fissures overhead. The air felt slightly warmer, or maybe it was just that they were out of the wind. The way narrowed, then widened, shortened then opened, over and over, until inside one tall cavern the crystal's light barely reached the stone ceiling overhead.

"It's so high," Leesil whispered, and then thought he heard something.

Cloth or some other soft substance dragged quickly across rough stone.

Every move they made echoed and warped off the walls, and Leesil couldn't be sure it wasn't just a trick of fatigue. He quick-stepped to catch Magiere's shoulder and called out to Chap.

"Here… we stop. Over by that wall there's a smooth slant of stone."

Magiere looked where he pointed and guided Wynn to their resting place. Leesil dropped their belongings beside them, but Chap remained poised at the cave's center.

The dog let out a low rumble, turning his head slowly. He scanned all around the chamber.

Something made Chap wary, and that was enough for Leesil to hesitate. He took a few steps out toward Chap, turning his own eyes upward to the hidden high places above.

"What is it?" he asked.

A long silence followed. Chap huffed three times to say he didn't know.

Leesil backed up to Magiere and Wynn, still watching all around.

Magiere had settled Wynn to lean against the horse pack. She stripped off the sage's blanket, shook away clinging snow, and laid it across the woman's legs. Leesil knelt down on Wynn's left.

"I have to look… feel your shoulder and upper arm," he said quietly, and pulled off his gloves.

Wynn didn't even nod. Perhaps she hadn't heard him.

Magiere sidled closer on Wynn's right, waiting tensely as Leesil unfastened the sage's cloak and short robe. He rubbed his hands together before his mouth, trying to warm them. As he pulled Wynn's shift open and slipped one hand in, Magiere slid her arm behind Wynn's back and held the sage tight against herself.

"Squeeze hard," she whispered, gripping Wynn's good hand."Hard as you have to."

Leesil held Wynn's left arm with his free hand as he closed his fingers around the soft skin of her small shoulder. Wynn sagged and buried her face into Magiere with a soft whimper.

For all he could tell, Wynn's shoulder was sound. She had not winced when he'd first gripped her upper arm, so it was unlikely any bones had broken or cracked. He closed up Wynn's clothing and grabbed the crystal Magiere had left atop the skulls' chest. Setting it down before his knees, heunwrapped Wynn's wrist.

Once he'd rinsed away the blood with a bit of chilled water, the teeth marks in her skin didn't look so bad. He rewrapped the bandage, put the crystal back, and shook out his cloak and Magiere's.

Leesil reclined against the pack as Wynn settled and closed her eyes. With the sage between himself and Magiere, he covered all three of them with the cloaks and blanket.

Magiere watched him with something akin to a frown on her wind-burned face. Or was it disappointment? She finally closed her eyes.

"Go to sleep," she said, and a dull flush of shame washed through Leesil.

They were all in a desperate way, and Wynn had been injured yet again.

Leesil couldn't count the times he'd cursed at Chap for every blocked passage or dead end they'd run into. But his guilt was always outmatched by what drove him.

Somewhere beyond reach, his mother waited. As he laid his head back, his gaze fell upon the small snow-dusted chest.

Dusk fell as Chane huddled in his cloak within a makeshift tent, listening to Welstiel's incessant murmurs.

"Iced stronghold… show me… where…"

Chane cocked his head.

Dark hair marked with white-patched temples gave Welstiel the distinguished look of a gentleman in his forties. But over passing moons since leaving the city ofBela in Magiere's wake, the once fastidious and immaculate Welstiel had fallen into disarray.

Disheveled locks, mud-stained boots, and a cloak beginning to tatter made it hard for Chane to see the well-traveled noble he had first met.

Chane sneered. He knew that he looked no better.

"Orb…" Welstiel muttered.

Chane tried to focus upon Welstiel's scattered words. He pulled the threadbare cloak tighter around his own shoulders.

Cold was a mortal concern to which he gave no thought, but he was starving. He longed for the heat of blood filling him up with life.Hunger grinding inside him made his thoughts wander.

Well past a moon ago, he and Welstiel had pursued Magiere and her companions through the Warlands and into the city ofVenjetz. None of them knew Welstiel followed, and they believed Chane was gone, after Magiere had beheaded him in the dank forests of eastern Droevinka. Welstiel remained undetected, but Chane was not so certain that Magiere was unaware of his return to the world.

Welstiel purchased sturdy horses, grain for feed, and a well-worn cloak for Chane from a merchant caravan they happened upon. He also procured canvas, several daggers, and a lantern. From a distance, they followed Magiere, Leesil, Chap, and Wynn through the foothills and into the base of the Broken Range where it met with the Crown Range. On the twelfth dusk within those heights, Chane was preparing for the night's travel when Welstiel mounted and turned his horse east by southeast.Away from Magiere's path.

"We follow our own way-into the Crown Range. Magiere will find us when she has finished chasing Leesil's past among the elves."

His voice had been calm, but Chane knew better. He sensed resignation in his companion. No undead could enter the forests of the elves, or so Welstiel had once claimed.

Chane heard something that made him pause, and he urged his horse up next to Welstiel's.

Voices carried down the mountainside, not quite clear enough to understand. But his vision expanded to full range, and he caught movement far above. Magiere and her companions had set up camp below a granite spire jutting up from the mountainside. As their campfire sprang to life, Chane's grip tightened on the reins.

Wynn crouched near the sputtering flames.

Now Welstiel would have him just turn away?

Anger burned against Chane's hunger at this last glimpse of Wynn, still wearing his cloak. As far as Chane knew, Welstiel had never noticed this one telltale sign.

On the last night in Venjetz, Chane had carried Wynn from Darmouth's keep to safety. Welstiel knew as much, and Chane never denied it. Wynn remained unconscious the whole time, never seeing who carried her. But the others with her-one frail but sharp-eyed noblewoman and a strange girl child-would surely have told Wynn that he had been there.

And he had covered Wynn with his cloak.

The thought of her so far from reach, beyond his protection-especially among those bigoted elves-was unbearable. But Chane did not blame Welstiel.

He blamed Magiere.

Wynn would follow that white-skinned bitch down into every netherworld of every long-forgotten religion. Chane had once tried to dissuade her and failed. Nothing he did or said would stop Wynn. Now he had no home, nothing he truly desired, and little future other than to follow Welstiel in search of the man's fantasy-this… orb.

Welstiel believed some ancient artifact would free him from feeding on blood, though he was not forthcoming about how. From pieces Chane gathered, it would somehow sustain the man without "debasing" himself. But while Welstiel had once believed he could not procure the object without Magiere, he now planned to locate it himself and lure her to it, once she emerged… if she emerged… if Wynn ever left the elvenTerritories.

The "orb" of Welstiel's obsession pulled Chane from the one thing that mattered most to him. Whatever source of information Welstiel found in his slumber, it had begun doling out tidbits again, like a trail of bread crumbs leading a starving bird into a cage. Yet the trail was incomplete.Perhaps purposefully so?

All Chane wanted was to find his way into the world of the sages, his last connection to Wynn. For that he needed Welstiel's promised letter of introduction. The man had more than once implied a past connection to that guild. So Chane followed him like a servile retainer. And then Welstiel turned irrationally away from Magiere… away from Wynn.

It made no sense, if Welstiel expected to pick up Magiere's trail later, for she would surely return-if at all-through the Broken Range. Something in Welstiel's dreams now pushed the man towards the Crown Range.

Now, Chane was starving, huddled in a makeshift tent and wrapped in a thin secondhand cloak, with no people living up this high to feed upon.

Welstiel's head rolled to the side, exposing his thick neck and throat.

The grinding hunger grew inside Chane.

Could one undead feed upon another? Steal what little life it hoarded from its own feeding?

It had been twelve days since Chane had last tasted blood. His cold skin felt like dried parchment. He could not take his eyes off Welstiel's neck.

"Wake up," he rasped.

The words grated out of his maimed throat. He slipped his hand into his cowl to rub at the scar left by Magiere's falchion.

Welstiel's eyes opened. He sat up slowly and looked about. The man always awoke disoriented.

"We are in the tent… again," Chane said.

Welstiel's lost expression drained away. "Pack the horses."

Chane did not move. "I must feed… tonight!"

He waited almost eagerly for an angry rebuke. Welstiel looked him over with something akin to concern.

"Yes, I know. We will drop into the lower elevations to find sustenance."

Chane's anger caught in his throat. Welstiel had agreed too easily. His surprise must have shown, for Welstiel's voice hardened.

"You are no good to me if you become incapacitated."

Welstiel's self-interest did not matter, so long as the prospect of human blood-and the life it carried-was real. Chane slapped open the tent's canvas and stood up beneath spindly branches of mountain fir trees. Welstiel followed him out.

Half a head taller than his companion, Chane appeared over a decade younger. Jaggedly cut red-brown hair hung just long enough to tuck behind his ears.

Snow drifted around him in light flurries across a landscape barren and rocky except for the scattered trees leaning slightly north from relentless winds. Chane hated this monotonous, hungry existence. For a moment he closed his eyes, submerging in a waking dream of nights in Bela at the sages' guild.

Warmly lit rooms were filled with books and scrolls. Simple stools and tables were the only furniture, though often covered in so many curiosities it was hard to know where to begin the night's journey into unknown pasts and places far away or long lost. The scent of mint tea suddenly filled the room, and Wynn appeared, greeting him with a welcoming smile.

Chane surfaced from memory and turned dumbly to saddling the horses.

Both were sturdy mountain stock but showed signs of exhaustion and the lack of food. Chane had begun rationing their grain as the supply dwindled.

Georn-metade…

Wynn's Numanese greeting stuck in Chane's thoughts. She spoke many languages, and this was the tongue of her homeland. Chane glanced sidelong at Welstiel with a strange thought.

He knew next to nothing of Welstiel's past, but several times the man had said things… comments that implied the places Welstiel had traveled. How could the man have a connection to the Guild of Sagecraft abroad without the ability to converse with them?

"Georn-metade," Chane said.

"Well met? What do you mean?" Welstiel stepped closer. "Where did you hear that greeting?"

Chane ignored the question. "You've traveled in the Numan lands?"

Welstiel lost interest and reached for his horse's bridle. "You are well aware that I have."

"You speak the language."

"Of course."

"Fluently?"

Welstiel held the bridle in midair as he turned on Chane. "What is brewing in that head of yours?"

Chane hefted the saddle onto his horse. "You will teach me Numanese while we travel. If I'm to seek out the sages' guild in that land, I'll need to communicate with its people."

Snowflakes grew larger, and the wind picked up. Welstiel stared into the growing darkness, but he finally nodded.

"It will pass the time. But be warned, the conjugations are often irregular, and the idioms so-"

He stopped as Chane whirled to the left, head high, sniffing the air.

"What is it?" Welstiel asked.

"I smell life."

Chap slowly paced the cavern, watching its dark heights. He smelled something.

Like a bird, but with a strange difference he could not place.

Perhaps a hawk or eagle took refuge here against the storm. The crystal's light did not reach high enough for even his eyes to see into the dark holes above. He approached the far wall, peering upward.

A thrumming snap echoed through the cavern.

An arrow struck in front of him and clattered on the stone.

Chap backpedaled, twisting about in search of its origin. He braced on all fours with ears perked and remained poised to lunge aside at any sound. About to bark a warning to his companions, he heard another sound high to his right.

Something soft… pliant… smooth that dragged on stone, followed by a brief and careless scrape of wood. Then silence.

Chap growled.

"Come back here!" Leesil called in a hushed voice.

Chap remained where he was but heard nothing further. Whatever hid above and had called to him amid the storm, it did not care for anyone coming too close. And he no longer believed it had anything to do with his kin.

He inched forward, sniffing carefully at the small, plain arrow.

The strange bird scent was strong on it, especially on the mottled gray feathers mounted at its notched end. The shaft was no longer than his own head, and ended in a sharpened point rather than a metal head. He gripped it with his teeth, and the light-colored wood was harder than expected. It tasted faintly sweet, not unlike the scent of jasmine, and maybe cinnamon, reminding him of spiced tea Magiere served at the Sea Lion Tavern.

Memory.How strange the things that came to him-and the things that would not. Things he must have once known among the Fay.

Chap looked up to the cavern heights. Instinct and intellect told him there was likely no danger, so long as they left their hidden benefactor well enough alone. Still, he did not care for a skulker watching them from the dark. He loped back to his companions with the small arrow in his teeth.

He dropped it upon the edge of the layered blankets and cloaks, prepared to nudge Leesil.

Wynn rolled her head and half-opened her eyes. Chap stepped as close as he could, sniffing at her loosely bandaged wrist, the one he had injured trying to save her.

He peered at Wynn's round face by the waning light of the crystal atop the chest. She settled her hand clumsily on his head. It slid over his ear, down his face, and dropped limply against her side as her eyes closed again.

"It is all right," she said, and even weaker, like a child on the edge of sleep, "thank you."

Chap turned a circle and curled up at Wynn's feet.

He laid his head upon his paws, trying to keep his eyes open, and watched the heights of the cavern. He never knew whether fatigue or the waning crystal finally pulled him down into darkness.

Welstiel urged his horse through the dark, keeping up with Chane amid the scattered trees of the rocky mountainside. Occasionally, Chane slowed to sniff the night breeze.

Disdain tainted Welstiel's grudging respect for Chane's hunting instincts. He had suppressed such long ago, but given their present situation, the need for life to feed upon grew desperate even for him.

Since leaving Venjetz, Chane had reverted to the resourceful companion he had been in Magiere's homeland of Droevinka, securing supplies, setting proper camps before dawn, and hunting. Even his ambition to seek out the sages had renewed. Welstiel was pleasantly relieved, at least in part.

"Are we close?" he asked quietly.

Chane did not answer. He wheeled his horse aside, sniffed the air like a wolf, and then kicked his panting mount forward.

Welstiel followed with a frown. When they pushed through thin trees tilted by decades of wind, he caught a whiff of smoke. Chane's starvation might drive him to lunge the instant they found prey, but Welstiel had other plans.

"Stop!" he whispered sharply.

"What?" Chane rasped. He reined his horse in, his long features half-feral around eyes drained of color.

"Whoever we find, I will question them first." Welstiel pulled up beside Chane. "Then you may do as you please."

The sides of Chane's upper lips drew back, but his self-control held. He pointed between two small boulder knolls.

"Through there."

Welstiel smoothed back his hair. Despite his threadbare cloak, he still had the haughty manner of a noble. It was near midnight, and as Welstiel rounded a rocky hillock he saw a small flickering campfire. Two figures sat beyond its ring of scavenged stones.

"Hallo," he called out politely.

Their faces lifted. The flames lit up the ruddy dark features of an aging Mondyalitko couple. Unbound black hair hung past the old woman's shoulders with thin streaks of gray turning white in the firelight. She was layered in motley fabrics, from her quilted jacket to her broomstick skirt. The man tensed and reached behind where he sat. Dressed in as many layers as his mate, he wore a thick sheepskin hat with flaps over his ears.

Behind them stood a lean mule tied to a small enclosed cart not nearlyso large as these wanderers usually lived in. What were they doing up here all alone? Welstiel smiled with a genteel nod and urged his horse to the clearing's edge.

"Could we share your refuge and perhaps some tea?" he asked, gesturing to a silent Chane. "We had trouble finding a place out of the wind. We can pay for the imposition."

The man stood up, an age-stained machete in his grip. His manner eased as he eyed the night visitors, who were clearly not roving bandits.

"Coin's not much good up here," he replied in Belaskian with a guttural accent."Perhaps a trade?"

"Our food supply is low," Welstiel lied, as he had no food. "But we have grain to spare for your mule."

The old man glanced at his beast, which looked like it had not eaten properly in some time. With a satisfied nod, he waved the night visitors in.

"We have spiced tea brewing. Are you lost?"

"Not yet," Welstiel answered wryly. "We are cartographers… for the sages' guild in Bela."

The old man raised one bushy gray eyebrow.

"I know… mapmakers, wandering about in the dark," Welstiel replied. "We stayed in the upper peaks too long. Our supplies dwindled faster than anticipated."

The woman snorted and reached for the blackened teapot resting in the fire's outer coals.

"Hope these sages-whatever they are-pay good coin to track ways that few ever travel."

Chane remained silent as he settled by the fire. Welstiel knew these pleasantries were difficult for him at such close range, but Chane would have to hold out a little longer.

"And what are you two doing up here in winter?" Welstiel asked.

"Stole cows from the wrong baron," the man said without the slightest shame. "We know these ways, but the baron's men don't."

This blatant honesty surprised Welstiel, and it must have shown on his face.

The old man laughed. "If you were the baron's hired men, you'd hardly have waited for an invite."

Likely true.Welstiel glanced at Chane and noticed his hands were shaking. In the camp's flickering light, Chane's skin looked dry like parchment beginning to show its age. Neither Mondyalitko took notice of Chane's odd silence.

Welstiel hurried things along. He returned to their horses, took a grain sack hanging from Chane's saddlebag, and dropped it beside the fire.

"Take what you need," he said. "At dawn, we head down for supplies."

"We thank you," the old man said with a casual shrug, though it did not hide the eager widening of his eyes.

"Our employers asked us to locate any structures or settlements," Welstiel went on. "Waystations, villages, even old ruins… any strongholds high up. Do you know of any we should seek out when we come back?"

The woman handed him a chipped mug of tea. "There's Hoar's Hollow Keep. A lonely old place trapped where the snow and ice last most year round."

Welstiel paused in midsip, then finished slowly. Locked in snow and ice.

"You're certain? How many towers does it have?"

The woman frowned, as if trying to remember."Towers? I don't know.Haven't seen it since I was a girl."

She stepped around the ring of stones and poured Chane a mug of tea. He took it but did not drink.

"Can you tell us the best route?" Welstiel asked.

You'd do better to wait for the thaw," the old man answered. "It's a ways, and at least then most of the path would be clear."

"Yes, but where?" Welstiel's grip tightened on the mug, and he struggled to relax his fingers.

"Thirty leagues… or likely more, into the Crown Range," the woman answered.

Chane let out a hissing sigh.

"Hard going, so it'll seem longer," said the man.

"Just head southeast until you reach a large ravine," his wife continued. "Like a giant gouge in the mountainside. It stretches into the range, so you can't miss it. The passage is marked by flat granite slabs. Come to think, they might not be easy to spot in the snow. Once down through the passage, you'll see your stronghold, but it'll be blocked away by winter now."

Welstiel stayed silent. It was the only way he could contain a rising relief that had waited for decades. A chance meeting with two Mondyalitko thieves put the end of his suffering in sight.

Elation faded like the vapor of hot tea in a cold breeze. Was it chance?

Perhaps his dream patron relented from years of teasing hints. Perhaps those massive coils in his slumber took a more active role in his favor.

A season had passed since he had trailed Magiere into Droevinka, the land of her birth. Before her birth, in his own living days, Welstiel had resided there. Ubad, his father's retainer, had waited there all Magiere's life for her to return within his reach. When she came and then rejected him, the mad necromancer had called out to something by a name.

il'Samar.

In hiding amid Apudalsat's dank forest, Welstiel watched dark spaces between the trees undulate with spectral black coils taller than a mounted rider.The same coils of his dreams-his own patron-or so it seemed. And it abandoned Ubad in his moment of need. Welstiel had watched as Chap tore out the old conjuror's throat.

He turned the warm mug in his hands as he studied the Mondyalitko couple. What he had seen in that dank forest left him wondering.

Were this il'Samar and his patron one and the same? If indeed his patron could reach beyond wherever it rested-beyond dreams and into this world-had it done so here and now? Should he trust such fortune appearing when he desired it most?

He had learned all he could from the old couple. He rose and leaned over on the pretense of opening the grain sack. The old man stood as well.

Welstiel drove his elbow back into the man's chest just below his sternum.

The old man buckled, gagging for air. Before Chane's mug hit the frigid earth, his fingers closed on the old woman's throat.

"Wait!" Welstiel shouted. He whirled and smashed his fist into the man's temple, and the aged Mondyalitko dropped limp, face buried in the grain sack.

The pulsing life force of the woman in his hands drove Chane half-mad. He jerked her head back until it seemed her neck might snap, opening his jaws and exposing elongated canine teeth.

She gasped in fear, but couldn't draw enough breath to scream. He bit down hard below her jawline, drinking inward the instant he broke her skin, desperate to draw blood into his body.

Welstiel rushed in and back-fisted Chane across the cheek.

Chane stumbled away. His grip tore from the woman's throat. She screeched once as his fingernails scraped bleeding lines across her neck.

He spun with his teeth bared as Welstiel struck the woman down and she crumpled next to her mate.

"I said wait!" Welstiel shouted.

Chane closed in slowly, enraged enough to rip his companion's throat out instead.

"There is a better way," Welstiel stated."Watch."

Something in his voice cut through Chane's hunger, and he paused warily.

Welstiel held up both hands, palms outward. "Stay there."

He hurried to his horse and retrieved an ornate walnut box from his pack. Chane had never seen it before. Kneeling by the unconscious old woman, Welstiel opened the box and glanced up.

"There are ways to make the life we consume last longer."

Chane crouched and crept forward, forcing himself to hold off from savaging the woman as he looked into the walnut box.

Resting in burgundy padding were three hand-length iron rods, a teacup-sized brass bowl, and a stout bottle of white ceramic with an obsidian stopper. Welstiel removed the rods, each with a loop in its midsection, and intertwined them into a tripod stand. He placed the brass cup upon it and lifted out the white bottle.

"This contains thrice-purified water, boiled in a prepared vessel," he said. "We will replenish the fluid later."

He pulled the stopper and filled half the cup, then rolled the woman onto her back. Chane pressed both hands against the ground and fought the urge to lunge for her throat.

"Bloodletting is a wasteful way to feed," Welstiel said, his voice sounding far away. "It is not blood that matters but the leak of life caused by its loss. Observe."

He drew his dagger and dipped its point into the blood trailing from the woman's nostrils. When the steel point held a tiny red puddle, he carefully tilted the blade over the cup. One drop struck the water.

Blood thinned and diffused beneath the water's dying ripples, and Welstiel began to chant. It started slowly at first, and Chane saw no effect.

Then the woman's skin began to dry and shrivel. Her eyelids sank inward and her cheekbones jutted beneath withering skin. Her body dried inward, shrunken to a husk as her life drained away. When Chane heard her heart stop beating, Welstiel ceased his chant.

The fluid in the cup brimmed near its lip, so dark it appeared black.

Welstiel lifted the small brass vessel and offered it to Chane. "Drink only half. The rest is for me."

Chane blinked. He reached out for the cup, lifted it, and gulped in a mouthful.

"Brace yourself," Welstiel warned and tilted his head back to pour the remaining liquid down his throat.

For a moment, Chane only tasted dregs of ground metal and salt. Then a shock of pain in his gut wrenched a gag from him.

So much life taken in pure form… it burst inside him and rushed through his dead flesh.

It burned, and his head filled with its heat. He waited with jaws and eyes clenched. When the worst passed, he opened his eyes with effort. Welstiel crouched on all fours, gagging and choking.

Chane's convulsions finally eased.

"This is how you feed?" he asked.

For a moment Welstiel didn't answer, then his body stopped shaking. "Yes… and it will be some time before we need to do so again, perhaps half a moon or more."

He crawled to the unconscious old man and repeated the process. But this time, instead of drinking, Welstiel poured the black fluid into the emptied white bottle and sealed the stopper.

"It will keep for a while," he said. "We may need it, with so little life in these peaks."

For the first time in many nights, the painful ache of hunger eased from Chane's body. He rose up, his mind clearing. He felt more… likehimself again, but he turned toward Welstiel with growing suspicion.

"How did you learn this?"

"A good deal of experimentation."Welstiel paused. "I do not share your bloodlust."

A cryptic answer-with a thinly veiled insult.

Welstiel picked up the abandoned kettle and poured tea into two mugs. He held out one to Chane. "Drink this. All of it."

"Why?"

"Does your flesh still feel brittle like dried parchment?"

Chane frowned and absently rubbed at his scarred throat. "Yes… for several nights past."

"Our bodies need fluid to remain supple and functional. Otherwise, even one of ourkind can succumb to slow desiccation.Drink."

Chane took the mug and sipped the contents, annoyed that Welstiel lectured him like a child. But as the liquid flowed down his throat, the ease in his body increased. He retrieved the grain sack, but also untied the donkey and let it go.

Welstiel watched this last act with a confused shake of his head.

Chane kicked the fire apart to kill its flames and headed for his horse, glancing once at Welstiel as if noticing him for the first time.

They mounted up, and Chane led the way southeast until dawn's glow drove them once more into the tent and another day of hiding from the sun. He thought he knew most of Welstiel's secrets-or at least hints of them. What else of import did his companion hide?

Eyes closed in halfsleep, Magiere rolled and reached out across Wynn for Leesil. Her fingers touched hard stone beneath a flattened blanket. She sat up too quickly, and Wynn rolled away, grasping the cloaks and blankets with a grumble.

"Leesil?" Magiere called in a hushed voice.

She teetered with exhaustion and her head swam in the dark. She tried to force her dhampir nature to rise and expand her senses.

No feral hunger heated her insides or rose in her throat. She'd held her dhampir nature in part for too many days, and now it wouldn't come in her exhaustion.

Magiere crawled around Wynn, feeling along the cave's rough floor until her fingers struck sharply against the side of the skulls' chest. She cursed, shook her hand, and followed the chest's contours until she touched the cold lamp crystal atop it. She rubbed it briskly, and it sparked into life between her palms.

Wynn slept rolled in Chane's old cloak beneath Magiere's own and the blanket. The makeshift sling had slipped off the sage's arm. She seemed in no serious pain or she would've fully awoken. There was no sign of Leesil-or Chap-anywhere in the slanted cavern.

Magiere's gaze fell upon something that made her tense, and she shifted to the bottom edge of their makeshift bed. Amid clinging strands of Chap's fur lay a small arrow. She picked it up, glancing warily about the cave.

Its light yellow shaft was too short for any bow and too thin for a crossbow quarrel. Tiny featherings bound at its notched end were a strange mottled white and almost downy at the forward ends. In place of a metal head, it ended in a sharpened point-or would have if it weren't blunted. Its last flight must have dashed it against something hard.

And it lay in Chap's resting place. Where had he found it?

Magiere tucked it in the back of her belt and rose to head up the way they'd come. The crystal's light spread wider and caught on something else.

Beside where she'd slept was a small mat of green leaves, each as large as her opened hand. They held a pile of what appeared to be grapes. Magiere dropped back to one knee.

Each fruit was the size of a shil coin, and dark burgundy in color, but they were not grapes. A green leafy ring as on a strawberry remained where each had been plucked from a stem. They looked more like bloated blueberries. There were more than she could quickly count, enough to overfill a cupped hand.

Magiere looked about, wondering how anyone could have approached while they slept, especially with Chap present. Then she spotted another pile near where Leesil had rested.

Where had they come from in these winter mountains?

Magiere checked Wynn one last time to be sure she rested peacefully. She considered waking the sage to eat or to ask what she knew of the berries. Instead she quietly picked up her falchion and headed for the opening to the path back outside.

She called out softly when she reached the next smaller pocket along the way."Leesil? Chap?"

A rustling echo carried up the passage from behind her.

"Leesil?" came a voice, and it grew louder in panic. "Magiere… Chap, where are you?"

Wynn had awoken. Magiere hesitated between calling out and turning back, and finally retreated to the cavern so that Wynn saw she wasn't alone.

"Here," she said, "I'm here."

A distinct scrape and padding footfalls sounded from the passage behind her. She looked back to see two sparks in the dark passage that became crystal blue-white eyes.

Chap trotted out, silver-gray fur rustling and his tail high, as if he'd been out for a morning run. Leesil followed, carrying a torn horse pack and another set of saddlebags. His cloak's hood had fallen, and white-blond hair swung loose around his dark face to his shoulders. His oblong, slightly pointed ears showed clearly.

"Where in the seven hells have you been?" Magiere growled at him.

Leesil stopped, looked at her in bewilderment, and then held up the saddlebags. "Where do you think? I climbed back down and gathered what was left."

She paused, slightly embarrassed. Of course that was what he would do, but he might have thought enough to let her know.

"Next time, you wake me before you disappear! I told you-"

"That I'm not to leave your side," Leesil finished for her, "or you'll club me down before the second step."

For three slow blinks, his amber eyes glowered in cold silence. Magiere's anger melted toward the edge of despair. Was there anything left of the man she'd once resisted falling in love with? Or had he too been murdered in Dar-mouth's family crypt?

The barest smile pulled the corners of Leesil's mouth. Not quite the mocking grin he used to flash at her, but still…

"Were you worried sick about me?" he asked. "Afraid I'd been packed off by some prowling cave beast?"

A hint of the old Leesil reappeared-the one who'd teased her so often. The one she'd known before this journey of unwanted answers, their own dark natures, and too much death.

Leesil's smile vanished, as if he'd read her thoughts and couldn't face them.

"We should take stock of what's left," he said, and stepped past, heading for Wynn.

Magiere followed, feeling bruised inside. "How's the shoulder?"

"It is stiff, and it aches," Wynn answered, shifting her arm back into its sling. "But I can move it without sharp pain."

Wynn pulled back her hood, running fingers through her tangled, light-brown hair, and then winced.

"What's wrong?" Magiere asked too sharply.

"Nothing," she answered. "I have a lump like a… I banged my head when I hit the cliff, but I will be fine."

Wispy tufts of hair stuck out above Wynn's forehead. Chap circled around Leesil, sniffing at her wrist.

Magiere set the cold lamp crystal on the chest and crouched. Sheunwrapped Wynn's bandage to inspect her wounded wrist. Chap whined softly, and Wynn settled her good hand upon his head.

"That's good to hear," Leesil said. "Shouldn't be long before-"

"Did you find Imp?" Wynn asked.

Another longsilence, and Magiere waited for it to end.

"No," Leesil answered. "I sent her down the path before we carried you here. It's still dark out, but the storm has faded. Hopefully she'll make it to the foothills."

Magiere dropped from her crouch to one knee.

They were only animals, Port and Imp, but they'd been with her for the better part of a long journey. She barely hung on to what she had left of herself-what was left of the Leesil she wanted. Anything more she lost sliced away another piece of her.

Chap licked at Wynn's cheek, and his ears perked. He turned around to sniff the cave floor beyond the blankets. Magiere was too lost to give him much notice.

She wanted to say something comforting to Wynn but couldn't think of anything. They had survival to attend to, and this place might offer hidden threats beneath its guise of sanctuary.

Chap barked sharply, shifting about until he faced all of them with his nose to the ground. Magiere realized what the dog had found. She grabbed the crystal and held its light up.

"Bisselberries?" Wynn whispered. "But… where? I have not seen such since… How did you find-"

"How do you know these?" Leesil dropped onto his haunches before the pile.

"These are bisselberries," Wynn repeated, then picked up one plump fruit, dropped it in the hand with the bandaged wrist, and tried to split its skin with a fingernail. "That is what my people call them, or roughly that in your language. We buy them at market to make puddings and jams for the harvest festival or special occasions. But they have to be-"

"Stop jabbering!" Magiere snapped. "How could they grow inwinter mountains?"

Wynn scowled at her, still trying to split the berry's skin.

"They do not grow here. They only come from…"

Wynn's big brown eyes widened as she looked up at Magiere; then her breath quickened, and her voice vibrated with nervous excitement. "Elves… they only grow in the elven lands south of my country!"

Leesil spun to his feet, pulling stilettos from his sleeves. Magiere snatched her falchion and jerked it free of its sheath, as he turned about, searching the shadows.

Chap's rapid chain of barks echoed around the cavern.

Magiere spotted him off near the far right wall, opposite the opening they had come through.

"Stay with Wynn," Magiere told Leesil, and trotted toward the dog.

Chap dropped his head as she joined him. At his forepaws was a small hollow where the floor met the wall. She couldn't see far into it, but it seemed another passage below headed deeper into the mountain's belly. Chap huffed at her, head still low.

Another pile of berries lay on a mat of leaves near the hollow's far edge.

"No, don't!" Leesil snapped.

Magiere twisted about to see Leesil slap away a berry that Wynn tried to pop into her mouth. The sage looked up at him with shock.

"We are starving, you idiot!"

"Better than dead!" he countered. "We're not eating anything left by one of them."

"It's not elves," Magiere said as she returned. "Not that I can guess. Look at this."

She pulled the small arrow out, and Leesil's brow wrinkled.

"I found it on our blankets when I awoke," she added, "along with the berries near my head. Chap found more of those over there by another open-ing.

Leesil took the shaft, turning it in his hand. "Too thin for a crossbow… too short for any bow I know of, and it looks newly fletched. That other opening must be how… whoever got in here.Maybe another passage out to the mountainside."

Chap thumped Leesil's leg with his head, then stepped out a ways to the cave and looked upward. Magiere picked up the crystal, rubbed it harshly, and held up its brightening light.

Above them in the ragged slanting walls were other openings scattered about. Their irregular positions, sizes, and shapes suggested they were natural and hadn't been dug. Leesil headed for the far wall, eyes raised to one larger opening.

Chap rushed into his way with a snarl of warning.

"You found the arrow," Magiere said. "It came from up there? Did you see it hit?"

Chap huffed once for "yes."

"Wynn, dig out the talking hide," she called.

"She can't," Leesil said.

Wynn was already pawing one-handed through the pile of saddlebags, packs, and bundles that Leesil had scavenged. Her frown deepened.

"Where is my pack?"

Magiere knew the answer. She'd been the one to pack the horses the previous morning.

"It must've been on Port," Leesil answered. "Everything I could find… this is all we have left."

The little sage's eyes widenedfurther, then narrowed at Leesil. "What? All my journals were in that pack, my quills and parchments… Chap's talking hide!"

Leesil turned away and wouldn't look at her.

"You sent most of your journals to Domin Tilswith," Magiere said, anxious to calm Wynn."Before we left Soladran. You can rewrite anything of importance, and there's been nothing worth noting since we left the Warlands. The elvenTerritories are still ahead, and that's what you've been waiting for most. We'll find parchment or paper-and I've seen you make ink."

"Of course," Leesil put in. "Soon as we're through these mountains… and a feather to cut a new-"

"If we get through! "Wynn shouted at him, and her words echoed about the high cavern."If Chap finds a way.If we do not starve. If we do not die of exposure or walk blindly over a cliff into a chasm… because you could not wait for winter to pass!"

Any defense Magiere might have offered for Leesil was smothered in her own rising guilt.

They all knew from the beginning that if Leesil's mother still lived, she was imprisoned by her people. The elves wouldn't kill her, it seemed, so she would still be there no matter how long it took to find her. But from the moment Leesil discovered the skulls of his father and grandmother, he'd stopped listening to reason.

Magiere had argued with him, time and again, over waiting out winter. In the end, she always relented, and he pushed them onward. Now here they were without horses or adequate food, and beaten down with fatigue and injury. Wynn's words were aimed at Leesil, but they struck Magiere into silence.

"What about Chap's talking hide?" Wynn continued. "How is he to talk efficiently with me, now that it is gone?"

The talking hide was a large square of tanned leather upon which Wynn had inked rows ofElvish symbols, words, and phrases. Both she and Chap could read it, and Chap pawed out responses beyond his one, two, or three barks.

Chap shook himself and barked once for "yes," then poked his nose into Wynn's shoulder.

"He can still talk with us a bit," Magiere offered.

Wynn didn't answer. She took another berry, fumbling to peel its skin with her thumbnail.

Magiere was about to stop her, for Leesil's suspicion was half-right. They had no idea where this gift of food had come from or why. She glanced at Chap, ready to ask if the berries smelled safe. He huffed a "yes" before she spoke and headed off across the cavern floor.

With a sigh, Magiere set the crystal aside and took up a bisselberry of her own, pulling back the fruit's skin.

Leesil wandered off to the cave's far side and crouched to gaze blankly down into the hole Chap had found. He was so driven to keep moving, to reach the elvenTerritories and find his mother. But Magiere knew they'd be lucky to even find their way back out of the range. She looked toward the hole he inspected and saw a flash of silver fur.

"Leesil, where is Chap?"

Magiere snatched up the crystal and her falchion as the tip of Chap's tail disappeared down the hole.

"Get back here, you misguided mutt!"

Chap crawled over thehole's lip and hopped down into a sloped tunnel, heading deeper inside the mountain. In the darkness he barely made out the passage, but scent guided him more than sight. He smelled something familiar. As much as that made his instincts cry a warning, he had to be certain of what he suspected.

The passage was rough and its ceiling so low that his ears scraped if he raised them. A few sliding pacesdownward, it dropped again a short way to the floor of a wider tunnel. The scent was strong, and Chap jumped down. His nose bumped a pile of plump fruits that tumbled apart, rolling off their platter of fresh leaves.

Bisselberries, Wynn had called them. What the elves of this continent calledreicheach sghiahean — bitter shields-for their edible skin was as unpleasant as the inside was sweet.

He pushed on down the tunnel, and when it seemed he had gone too far without encountering another pile, he paused and sniffed the air. It took a moment to separate the scent behind him from anything ahead, but they were there, somewhere down in the dark.

More bisselberries.

Someone… something… had laid a trail for them into the belly of the mountain. This was too mundane to be the working of his kin. He could not determine the direction in which the passage ran-forward or back or even to the side through the so-calledBroken Range. Where would they end up, even if the trail led out of the mountain at all?

Entombed in stone, a manifestation of the element of Earth, Chap called out through his Spirit one last time.

In this dark place, the silence of his kin made him sag. He stiffened and rumbled with outrage.

They would not come to him, and the survival of his companions-his charges-now depended on skulkers who would not revealthemselves. Behind the scent of fresh fruit and their green leaves, behind grime and dust kicked up by his own paws, was the other scent he had smelled upon first entering this place.

Like a bird and yet not. Faint but everywhere in the dark beneath the mountain.

Chap turned back, stopping long enough to pick up several bisselberries in his mouth to show the others. Hopefully it would not take long to make them understand. There was only one path to take, if they were to avoid starving or succumbing to winter.

Someone was trying to lead them through the inside of this mountain. Someone had called them in from the storm to find shelter.

Chap headed back toward his companions. He had to convince them to follow him into this passage… to trust his judgment once more.