C adell and Jan brought additional candle lanterns, and the room was illuminated around Magiere in yellow light. The stench was still so thick that she could taste it. Before her was a small heap of remains amid an old wood frame with decayed shreds of cloth still bound to it.
At first, she thought it was two bodies, for there were too many bones for a single being. Yet there was only one skull, human shaped, but too small and narrow, with oversize eye sockets like those of the elf. There was only one set of hands and feet, with toe bones that were too long. Its limbs had been bound with leather straps now crusted hard with age, as well as another hanging loose around the frail rib cage.
In the filth surrounding it were the remains of rotted feathers.
"Wings?" Wynn whispered as she drew closer, holding up a crystal. "It had wings… like a bird. Perhaps female-if its make is similar to other races."
Magiere's gaze traced the tangled bones until the illusion of two bodies was dispelled by the memory of once seeing a dead hawk in the woods. A few feathers lying before her still held their mottled gray and white color.
"What is it?" Jan asked, though he kept his distance a few steps away, near the large vat they'd discovered.
Wynn shook her head and looked up, but not at the zupan's son. Magiere saw fear in the sage's unblinking eyes. For an instant, all Wynn's horror turned upon her, and Magiere backed away.
"There's another over here by this iron box," Leesil called from the right side of the room. "But it's… something else. I'm not sure what."
The words barely entered Magiere's thoughts. What did the remains of this sealed chamber reveal concerning the death of her mother? Had something been done here to Magelia in order to bring her unnatural daughter into this world?
Magiere saw her whole life infested with the dead and undead. Even her birth was somehow forecast with these bones, yet she couldn't fathom what they told her of the past. She sensed-somehow knew-that the contents of this room were connected to her.
There were only more questions, and no answers.
Beside the crusted vat lay the second body they'd found. Wynn had partly cleared the hardened leather clothes from it, telling them it was-had been-a dwarf. The sage knew of these people from a seatt-dwarvish for a city stronghold or fortified haven-across the bay from the capital of her homeland, Malourne. That capital, Calm Seatt, had been named out of respect for the dwarven people who'd helped to build its first keep.
Neither Magiere nor Leesil had ever met one of his kind. Wide framed and wide jawed, with a skull as large as a soldier's helmet, his thigh bones were as thick as her whole wrist. Slightly yellowed with age, the bones had speckled shadows in them like a hint of granite.
"If any of this bears upon the past you're looking for,"
Cadell said, "I don't care to know any more of it. We've enough troubles of our own."
"More than you thought," Magiere replied bitterly, but she didn't explain.
Whatever happened here had been done in haste and then sealed up. Few but Leesil could have uncovered its existence. But if she had come looking, who else might do so, as well, once word traveled of what had been found here?
Magiere couldn't bear looking at anyone in the room. She turned her attention to the vat, and hunger churned inside her.
The vat's outside was tarnished. Wynn had scraped away dust and grime to reveal engraved symbols, each no larger than a coin, across its entire surface. She had asked Jan for paper and charcoal to make rubbings for later study. At one side of the vat, dark stains ran down it as if the contents had been poured out or had spilled over.
When Magiere looked inside the vessel, a thicker stain covered the bottom third of its depth, creating a dried and cracked layer. She took the crystal from Wynn, startling the sage, and lowered its light into the vat. The cracked layer in the bottom had a distinctive dark brown color, like liquefied earth dried out. When her hunger stirred again, Magiere knew what it was from instinct more than anything else.
"They were bled… here," she whispered.
When she stood up, she faced the elf's corpse lying in the chamber's front left corner, and she looked down at the dwarf's.
"Sacrificed," Wynn whispered.
"How long ago… " Magiere trailed off and turned to Wynn. "How old are these remains?"
Wynn looked away, and it took a moment for her to answer.
"It's impossible to be exact. But from decomposed animals I've studied in the past, I would guess no more than thirty years, perhaps less."
The sage backed toward the far side of the room. Her hand shook visibly as she pulled her short robe more securely around herself.
"So," Magiere asked in a hard voice. "Twenty-six years would be as good a guess? About the time I was conceived."
Leesil came up beside Magiere, glanced once at the vat, and tried to pull her away. Magiere jerked her arm out of his grip-In all, six corpses had been found. One was human with leather armor and a sword, perhaps a guard during the time when her father had been lord of this place-a father who might not be as unknown to Magiere as she'd once thought. Welstiel had posed as an ally during the fight with Miiska's undead, but that conflict, as with the one in Bela, had been of his making. From the beginning, he'd known of her dhampir nature, as well as the falchion and the amulets. In Bela, he'd claimed to be preparing her to assist him in gaining whatever ancient treasure he sought.
Visions… in Bela, there had also been horrible visions. By accident, she'd stumbled upon another attribute of her dhampir nature-to experience the moment of a kill through an undead's perspective. To lure her to the capital, Welstiel murdered the council chairman's daughter and left the girl's body on her own doorstep. By chance, Magiere had walked in his steps at the death scene while holding a scrap of the girl's dress. She relived that moment, felt the victim's flesh tear in Welstiel's teeth as if she were him.
How much more would she see with an innocent's bones in her hands? At least she would know if he had been here… if he was the one she'd come here to find.
Magiere knelt down and wrenched the dwarf's skull from its carcass.
"What are you doing?" Cadell said, and took a step toward her. "Enough of this. You will not desecrate-"
"Stop it!" Leesil snapped, and he was on her from behind, grabbing for the skull. "Whatever happened here, you don't want to see it… not like that!"
Magiere cradled the skull with one arm and snapped her shoulder back into Leesil's chest. She followed with her arm and sent him sprawling. Before he got up, she looked into the skull's sockets, the grit of bone against her bare palms and fingers.
"No!" Leesil called.
Magiere closed her eyes.
Darkness. The sounds of voices around her and quickened breaths behind curses. The stench of the cold chamber filling her head.
Nothing more, as Magiere opened her eyes again.
"I'll have no more of this sacrilege, defiling the dead," Cadell growled, and he stepped threateningly toward Magiere. "Get out of here."
Magiere tightened her grip on the skull as she raised her eyes to Cadell. She wasn't going anywhere, not without answers. She rocked back on her heels and stood up. Leesil stepped in front of her, snatching the skull from her hands.
"Leave," he told her. "Now. Go back to your aunt's, and wait for me."
"Yes, all of you go and leave this to us," Cadell said.
Jan looked upset but didn't speak, and Wynn remained quiet at the back of the chamber.
"We're not done here," Leesil replied, and returned his attention to Magiere. "Wynn and I will join you shortly, once we've finished examining the bodies."
Magiere looked about the room. As she received no vision by touching the dwarf's skull, she didn't believe he died by a vampire's attack. Some part of her felt relief at the thought of escaping this place. She didn't even acknowledge Leesil when she turned and walked out.
Outside the keep, the two village men paid her little attention as she strode through the courtyard and back down the road. More corpses had been found in her life's wake, yet they'd revealed nothing. One more of the dead still waited.
Chap had long since ceased battering the shed's door and walls. He spent even longer trying to claw up the rough planks on the floor. Neither approach gained him an escape. Mounted to the hut's side, the shed proved sturdier than it appeared, and he couldn't get his thick claws into the floor cracks.
He peered through a crack in the wall and saw that night had come. With time, he could break free, but Magiere and the others had already been gone too long. He had to try another way, and he began to howl in long mournful tones.
He kept at it as loud as possible, hoping to disturb someone. In a short while, footsteps approached outside, and a woman's stern voice came from beyond the shed's door.
"Fe leneshte, tu emportun corcheturu!"
He could not understand her words but reached out to touch her thoughts. Surfacing memories flashed through his mind.
Magiere arriving in the village.
The inside of the hut… and an image of himself curled alone in the corner that morning.
Magiere's relative, Bieja, stood outside the shed's door.
Chap could not delve into a being's thoughts further than the memories that came to the surface of its mind. All living things remembered their pasts in scant pieces. He could also use these memories to poke and prod an unaware being's choices or actions… nothing more than a mental suggestion.
The only other way was to dominate the being's spirit, suppress its will, and take control of its body directly. And this he would never do.
Gently, he recalled for Bieja her memory of him curled silently in the corner as he mixed his howls with piercing whimpers and feeble scratches at the door. Outside, Bieja heaved a deep sigh, her voice filled with resignation.
"Tot dreptate, tu fe sose… dar you optem comporta tu. "
Chap heard a scraping sound, and the shed door began to open. When it was wide enough for his head, he bolted.
The door flew open, a startled Bieja jumped out of his way, and Chap raced off into the night. Her angry shouts followed briefly behind him, but he ran out the side of the village and turned toward the keep.
Chap kept the road in sight for a guide as he raced through the forest with his senses reaching out into the night. No one passed along the road, and the forest ahead on the slope showed signs of thinning near the crest.
A door slammed shut, and Chap froze with ears poised as he looked through the trees and toward the keep.
Magiere came down the road at a steady gait, her cloak loose in disregard of the night's chill. Her pale face was expressionless, all emotion suppressed or turned inward. Chap caught an old memory of a grave in the forest that surfaced in her thoughts once, twice, again and again. Each time, he sensed Magiere recoil from this image, smothering it with other more recent memories.
In a hidden chamber beneath the keep were secrets and death.
Chap's panic sharpened.
Magiere was one step closer to the truth, yet she did not realize it. And he was one step closer to failing-to losing her-and in the end, Leesil, as well.
Chap went wide through the forest to get ahead of Magiere, as he raced back toward the village.
Chane did not enjoy standing in the woods, in the dark, to keep watch over a decayed keep in the middle of nowhere, but he did not complain. To make matters worse, Welstiel was fixated upon the old structure, lost in thought, and offered little reason why they waited. He did, however, insist Chane never move too far away from him.
Whenever they had needed to hide from the dhampir or the dog, Chane had noticed that Welstiel absently touched the brass ring on his finger.
Chane saw movement coming from the village, and he focused. A flash of silver fur passed through the trees near the road.
"It's Chap," Welstiel said. "Magiere's dog is coming."
To Chane's surprise, Welstiel reached out and grasped his cloak, pulling him close. "Get down."
Chane did not care for the idea, but obeyed. He heard a door slam shut. The rat in his pocket began squirming, so he took it out and let it sit on his shoulder. It wrinkled its whiskers and sniffed at his face.
Magiere strode out of the keep's courtyard and down the hill toward the village. She looked pale and defeated. The sight of her made Chane's jaw ache. Her smooth skin and black hair drew his full attention. Victims who fought back excited Chane, and no one had ever fought like Magiere. She drew closer and walked right by their position. Welstiel was studying her face as she passed.
"We should withdraw," he said. "There is nothing we can do."
"Was there something you planned to do?"
Welstiel ignored his question. "Look at her face. Her search here is over, and there is nothing more for her to seek I suspect she will leave this place in the morning. We should find a place to rest for the day. When we wake tomorrow night, I believe she will finally head north."
Chane looked down along the road, but the dog had not joined her. It had disappeared. Welstiel backed into the trees holding tight to Chane's cloak, keeping them close together.
Wynn completed her rubbings of the vat's symbols. The millweed paper Jan had brought her was too rough for the work, but she made do, her hands shaking as she'd worked the charcoal against the paper. It was unlikely that Cadell would allow them to remain long enough for her to scribe out all the vat's markings, and she did not wish to be here any longer than necessary.
Somehow, all of this was connected to Magiere's birth.
Magiere had been sired by an undead, birthed to be its enemy and predator. That much they knew, but now it seemed that a vampire had committed a blood sacrifice for that purpose. The brass vat was a conjuring vessel of some kind, but its size and the number of victims were baffling. What was truly needed to birth the child of an undead?
"If you're finished, we should go," Leesil said as he paced, glancing at an impatient Cadell near the room's entrance. "I don't want to leave Magiere on her own for too long."
Wynn had not studied the last two strange remains. Her sage's nature and need for all pieces of the puzzle were greater than her own dread of the answer.
"Another moment…" she said. "I need-"
"Isn't this enough?" asked Jan.
His charm and attention toward her had waned, and Wynn saw him staring at the tarnished vat and the roll of rubbings she held close.
"Yes, I think you've got quite enough," Cadell said. "It is no wonder there have been few masters of this place with such tragedy hidden beneath it. I must report this to the Antes."
"Then you're a fool," Leesil said, swinging his arm in a wide arc, indicating the whole chamber. "Or do you think you'll remain caretaker long after bringing this to their attention?"
"How can I not?" Cadell asked. "You've unearthed a curse upon us, and I'm at a loss for how it will ever be cleansed."
Wynn recoiled at the zupan's words. She felt responsible for placing him in this situation.
"He is right, Father," Jan said. "Prince Rodek would send one of his vassals, and even troops perhaps, and you would never regain stewardship of the fief. Your presence is far more important to the people here than some noble servant of the Antes. No, we will keep this to ourselves, and not even our own clan should hear of it."
"How is that possible?" Cadell asked, turning his anger on his own son. "Look about you!"
Jan did so, with one last brief pause at Wynn. "I will see to it, gather and contain the bones. Mother can send word to her people. They will take me into the mountains, so I can lay these remains to final rest where no one will disturb them."
Cadell regained composure from his son's words. "All right then, we will do as you say," he answered, and turned to Leesil. "Now get out, and let us deal with this."
"Soon… in a moment," Leesil answered with forced calm and a frown at Wynn. "Finish, please."
Wynn returned to the winged remains among the wooden frame with its shreds of aged canvas. What would Domin Tilswith do if he was faced with these bodies… with these sacrifices? He had sent her on this journey with his deepest trust. She was determined to try to act as he would. There was still something lost in her memories that stirred when she looked at the physical make of this winged body, and, as she knelt with her back to the others, she did something that shamed her.
She quietly loosened one of its finger bones to secret it in her palm.
Wynn kept her hands in front of herself, so the others could not see. She lingered long enough to note as much of it as she could for later recounting in her journal, and then she moved on to the fourth and fifth skeletons.
They had fallen near each other. One lay before an open iron box the height of her leg, and the other near a huge clay urn lashed into a wooden frame, likely for hauling. The urn was as tall as her head, and its side had been smashed in.
The insides of the iron box had gouges in the metal, visible even beneath the grime and thin coat of rust. The bones of the creature next to it were more disturbing than the winged one. In place of teeth, its jaws had sharpened ridges, and the final bones of its toes and fingers ended in sharp curved points. The creature, locked within the box, had tried to claw its way out.
All its bones and dried flesh were tarnished with streaks of red grime so thick, it made them look pitch black. Another sense of the familiar stirred in her mind. Keeping her back to the others, she pretended to lean in for a closer examination. Removing a loose toe bone with its claw, she palmed it along with the winged creature's finger.
The fifth body rested near enough that she did not have to move. Slender but solid of build like the elf, the creature had strange rows of spikes stuck out along the back side of its forearms, from each vertebra of its spine, and along its crested skull. The bones were cream-white and had not yellowed beneath its decayed filth. Its teeth were also ridged, but with regularly spaced points.
She made a hidden reach for one of the smaller spikes springing from the front of its shin. She took one of these off and added it to her collection.
Her gaze returned to the spikes on its spine, longer near the upper back but growing shorter toward the tailbone.
Like the fin of a sea creature.
Wynn stumbled as she got up and began shaking.
"We will leave you, zupan, to tend your own…" Leesil started to say, and then his eyes widened as he looked at Wynn. "We're done. It's all done. There's no need for tears."
Jan took a step toward her, suspicion and mistrust washed away with concern.
Wynn pulled away from him, suddenly afraid to let anyone near her in this place. She had not even been aware of her own tears, only that she could not stop shaking and found but one word for her thoughts.
"Uirishg!" she said in a whisper tinged with hysteria.
Her gaze passed over one remains to the next, out of control-elf, dwarf, a creature of the air, one of water, and the other… of fire?
'Take her out of here, you fool," Cadell snapped. "This place has driven her beyond wits, as it might do us all."
Leesil reached out and steered Wynn toward the entry way. She let herself to be pulled along, as her mind did little more than reiterate her earliest lessons in the structure of creation.
The elements are Spirit, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire…
Showing states in Essence, Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Energy…
To manifest as Tree, Mountain, Wind, Wave, and Flame…
And within the chamber were an elf of the forest, a dwarf of the mountains…
She did not know the names for the other three. They were so lost back beyond The Forgotten that no one knew them as more than part of the myth of the Uirishg, as the elves called them. The sages translated that word as akin to "Fay-blooded" or "Children of the Fay," but the word was so old that its literal meaning was uncertain.
Old recovered texts revealed scant hints of a myth among her lands that humans were the oldest race. In primordial times, they mingled among the first Fay, and their offspring were the beginning of five new races. It was a legend that tried to explain their origin, perhaps with some hidden truth, though the elves of her continent found it little more than an amusing tale.
It should not become real, not like this… in blood and ritual sacrifice.
Before Leesil guided her all the way up the stairs, Wynn jerked free and ran the rest of the way to the keep's front doors. When the cold night of the courtyard outside wrapped around her, its numbness sank through to her own bones. She collapsed to her knees on the damp ground, sobbing. There was no sign of the two guards.
Leesil caught up to her, crouching to take her by the shoulders.
"Wynn… what did you find?" he asked, and then he saw the three bones in her limp hand. "Oh, for all the dead saints! What have you done?"
Wynn raised her head to look at him.
Leesil reached around her to pull up her hood. He closed the short robe's front more securely around her.
"You have to tell me," he said. "I don't understand what's wrong."
"Uirishg," she whispered again, and held up the three bones.
With effort, she told him of the Children of the Fay who were the five forgotten races. Only two, the elves and dwarves, were known to truly exist, and in that it should have all been but a myth. Leesil listened with the bones between them in Wynn's palm, and in the end she saw there was some understanding in his eyes.
"All right," he said. "But we have to go. I need to find Magiere."
He tried helping her up to her feet, but Wynn began to shake again at the thought of Magiere waiting for them in the village below.
"No more," she cried. "I do not want to know any more."
Leesil gripped her arms and forced her up. She was surprised by the strength in his hands.
"I understand," he said, "but you have to pull yourself together-now! Magiere is already on the edge, and I need you to stay with me."
"What is she?" Wynn asked.
"Don't start that with me," Leesil returned. "She had no more choice than you or I in how she came into this world. She was born a dhampir and-"
"Is that all you think she is?" Wynn said. "I just told you what we found in that room. The vat was so large, it would have taken a long time to make, to engrave. It was left and discarded, as if it could be used only once… because of what it was used for. Have you ever wondered why a Noble Dead-a vampire-for an unknown reason, would labor to create its own kind's hunter?"
Leesil's temper flared. "That's not what she-"
"Yes, she is," Wynn nearly shouted. "It is her nature… but only its thin outer surface. Those victims in that chamber… Leesil, someone searched the world to find them, and three are but a myth so old, it had been forgotten. They were brought here to be slaughtered for Magiere's birth and then sealed in rather than risk disposing of the evidence in another manner."
She shoved him away, and her voice softened. Not in sympathy but in disbelief at his blindness.
"What was done here is close to impossible. And you still think it was just to create an enemy of the Noble Dead?"
Leesil stared back at her, looking lost amid her words. "I have no choice in this, I love her… and I can't turn away. If you don't help me, then I'm alone. Not even Chap seems willing to tell what he knows or why he brought Magiere and me together."
He stepped closer, looking tired and desperate.
"I need you," he said. "You have more knowledge than any of us. All I have is cunning and my past, and that may not be enough. I need you now."
Leesil's plea made Wynn's knees tremble. This was not the world she wanted to live in. She feared these first steps into Magiere's past would inevitably lead them to worse places. In Chap she had found a Fay taken to flesh, who had befriended a half-elf with a black past she still knew too little of. The dog had steered Leesil to Magiere, and they had stumbled on to more of Magiere's nature than Chap wanted anyone to know.
Beneath the city of Bela, Wynn had kept Magiere from killing Chane, though he was revealed as a monster. And she adamantly defended her choice, believing that even Chane might have some good in him… what she felt, how different he had been in the quiet study of the sages' barracks.
Leesil pleaded with little more than his blind faith in someone he loved.
"We had better go," she said.
He blinked in relief. He took her hand, gripping it gently, and pulled her along as he headed down the road.
"Say nothing to Magiere," he told her. "If what you suspect has any truth in it… for now, we'll keep this between us."
Magiere faltered as she passed Aunt Bieja's little home. Even with the shutters closed on its one front window, soft light leaked through the cracks.
Few villagers were about, and those few quickly became none, now that she stood amid the cluster of squalid buildings. When the sound of the closing doors and sliding wooden bolts ended, she was alone in the dark. For the moment, it was too much. She wanted one warm touch of life before her next task. Magiere opened the hut's door and stepped inside.
Aunt Bieja stood before the burning fireplace, the cook pot's lid in her hand as she stirred its contents. She looked up as Magiere closed the door.
"I wondered when all of you would return," Bieja said with annoyance. "Already added water twice to keep the stew going. Where are the others?"
Magiere decided to say as little as possible. She'd wanted only to see a friendly face not marred by the hidden past that surged toward her.
"They're still at the keep," she answered. 'They'll be along shortly. I just stopped to let you know… I'm on my way to see Mother."
Bieja closed the pot, and her expression softened. "I wondered if you were going or not. I haven't been there myself in a long while."
Her aunt's words surprised Magiere. Tending those who'd passed on was at least a yearly ritual for the people here. Still, it was best that Bieja had moved on, as had Magiere… until this return.
Bieja paused a moment. "So, did you find anything at the keep?"
"A little," Magiere lied. "We'll leave that for later. I don't want to keep everyone waiting too long, so I'd better go."
"Take your time, dear," Bieja answered, wiping her hands with the old rag she'd used for a hot pad.
Magiere stepped out into the night once again.
The graveyard was a ways off into the trees but not so far it couldn't be seen. This was the usual way, as if the dead should still have a home among the living. The lantern that had glimmered within the plot on the first night they arrived was gone. Magiere was forced to call upon her night sight, letting her dhampir nature trickle through her flesh enough for her vision to open wide. It seemed a whole lifetime since she'd last been here, and she stepped slowly through the trees, uncertain of the way.
Village graveyards in Droevinka were little more than a series of spaces in the woods kept reasonably free of low growth. Tree branches were thinner here, letting in the night sky, but the moon wasn't high enough for much light. She made out a few markers sprouting from the earth here and there, with evening mist a vaporous carpet between them.
Some were made of planks and posts. A few newer ones were stone. Recent lapsed taxes and missing overlords may have afforded the coin for such. It was ironic that the changing fortunes of the living were marked by remembrances for the departed.
But it wasn't her own memories she hunted among the dead. She came for those of her mother… or at least as seen through her killer's eyes.
Magiere stopped short.
She could neither continue nor flee but only remember the skull she'd so recently held in her hands. In Bela, she'd envisioned a girl's last moment by walking in a Noble Dead's footsteps with a scrap of the girl's dress in her hand. She'd lived inside Welstiel's moment as he tore open the girl's throat without even feeding.
Magiere would have to walk every passage and room of the keep, over each of its stones if need be, to find where her mother had died. But a scrap of clothing wouldn't remain for her carry now. Not after all these years in the ground. She would need bones.
"Forgive me," she whispered, and drew her falchion. "I have to know… to see if it was him, Mother."
There wasn't time to find a spade without drawing attention, so the blade would have to do. She stepped forward, searching for anything that sparked memory of this place- of her mother's marker. Sweat built beneath her grip around the sword's hilt.
The spring before she'd left home, Magiere had gone with Aunt Bieja to a woodwright's shop in a neighboring village of the zupanesta. Her aunt paid for a new marker, the old one having weathered to where it no longer stood up in the earth. The two of them lost half a day's fieldwork in the journey.
Magiere stopped again, looking about.
She remembered that the marker was on the south side of a large fir. She crouched near the base of the nearest tree. There was no marker she recognized by make or the name upon it.
Her dread for her task withered beneath a rising fear. Where was the marker… her mother's grave? She stood up to look back, wondering if she'd come too far. The markers in this present clearing were older, so Magelia's grave should be near.
Magiere heard softly shifting branches nearby, perhaps from a breeze high above that had penetrated down into the woods. She gazed ahead along her original path, but saw nothing besides the thickened forest. This was the last graveyard clearing. She backtracked, anxiety quickening her step.
In the previous clearing were a few smaller stone markers. Nothing appeared familiar to her. She heard the breeze again, nearer this time, and it whistled sharply in her ears.
Magiere's instincts surged, and she ducked around a tree. Along shape whizzed past her and cracked against the trunk, and she heard bark tear away under the impact.
A shadowed figure appeared around the tree's far side. Magiere stepped out and away. Starlight was enough for her to make out the disfigured side of his face.
Adryan held a long staff, overly thick at its upper end. He shifted its weight with both hands, slowly swinging the end back and forth through the air like an inverted pendulum.
"Looking for your mother again," he said softly.
It was not a question. Anger stirred dhampir hunger in Magiere's stomach, and her vision sharpened further. Rather than open rage, Adryan's expression was a mix of anguish and anxious hope. He mirrored her movements as she sidestepped farther into the open, tilting the staff from side to side.
"What have you done?" she asked, glancing about. "Where's my mother's grave… where's the marker?"
The barest wrinkle appeared on his brow, but it was enough to see he didn't understand what she'd asked.
"You're the last of it," he said. "Magelia was mine, and he took her. When he left, that should have been the last reminder. And then you came, little thing, crawling out of a thieving noble's bed."
The staff's end leveled as Adryan turned his whole body to power his swing. Magiere dipped her blade to catch it.
A dull clang sounded on impact as her sword was slammed away and the staff struck her side. Magiere went down hard, stumbling over a stone marker in her fall. Pain spread through her side.
It was only a staff, and Adryan was only a villager without skill at arms.
When she looked up at him, she was just a child beneath the high branches of the graveyard. All she saw was his scarred face leering at her from the trees on the last day she'd ever found her mother's house.
"I'll send you to her," Adryan said, nodding his head as his cheeks glistened with tears. "And I'll never have to look on you again."
He swung the staff at her, and Magiere shrank away as she'd done so long ago beside her mother's grave. It glanced off the stone marker with a crack.
Magiere rolled back and chopped down with her falchion upon the staff, hoping to break it. A louder metal clang sounded, and the sudden stop of the blade jarred her wrist. She took her eyes from Adryan just long enough to glance at the staff.
Bound to it with nails and straps were thick iron strips longer than her forearm. They formed a sheath around the staff's upper end, creating a crude great mace. Magiere kicked out at his shin.
His foot slid on the wet sod, and he dropped to one knee. Before she could scramble away, he pushed up from the ground and lifted the iron-shod staff. Twisting his body, he brought it round at her again, like a scythe in a wheat field. Magiere leaped back out of its reach toward the next tree.
"Pin her down!" Adryan screamed in frustration.
His words confused Magiere for only an instant, but even that was too long.
Another twinge shot through Magiere's injured side as someone grabbed her wrist from behind and jerked her sword arm back around the tree trunk. Her wrist was held tightly out of sight as a hand clawed at her fingers, trying to take her weapon.
The staff arched toward Magiere's head, and she ducked as low as she could. The bark above her crackled as the staff hit.
Before she could spin to her right and free her sword, a pitchfork came from nowhere. It skimmed her left ankle, pinning her foot to the ground between its prongs. Its wielder was barely visible around the side of the tree, pressing the pitchfork down with his weight.
Fear gathered in Magiere's stomach and began to burn. Adryan spun around, gathering force into his next swing. His eyes glowed with the hope of an injured man who saw relief within reach.
A scream rang out from behind the tree. Adryan faltered at the sound, and his swing came low as Magiere felt her sword arm come suddenly free.
She threw herself against the pitchfork, not caring that she fell or what had become of the second attacker who'd held her arm. The third man clung to it as he tumbled with her to the ground. Adryan's staff struck the tree's side and recoiled, and he stumbled under the jarring force.
Magiere's fear turned to hunger and ran out of control from her stomach into her head. An ache built in her jaws. It sharpened as her teeth pressed apart and her mouth filled with saliva. Her vision opened even wider, and the night brightened enough to hurt her eyes.
Magelia had been taken away by a Noble Dead. But it had been Adryan in the graveyard clearing who'd taken the last of a mother from a forlorn and frightened child.
Magiere bit into the arm of the man grappling for the pitchfork. Her teeth sank halfway through thick wool cloth and into flesh. He cried out, and wet heat spread across Magiere's lips. The taste of salt seeped through the wool and into her mouth. She smashed her fist down on the man's head, and he went limp.
Magiere arose, tears in her eyes. She snarled, the blood still in her teeth, and rushed at Adryan.
Leesil followed Wynn into the hut, expecting to see Magiere waiting, but he found only Aunt Bieja fussing over her cook pot.
"Finally," she huffed. "Now, if that niece of mine would bring herself back again, we can eat whatever hasn't caked itself to the bottom of this pot."
Leesil settled Wynn at the table, and the sage hunched there with her head down. That Magiere had come and left again fed Leesil's worry. Bieja told him where she'd gone, and this calmed him somewhat.
He'd wondered when she might visit her mother's grave, realizing she might prefer to do so alone. So he would wait, but not for long. When Bieja added the tale of Chap's escape, Leesil slumped at the table with a groan.
He'd spent years drinking himself to sleep at night to hide from the nightmares conjured by his past. Those torments, resurfaced in newfound sobriety, lessened when he lay in Magiere's arms at night. The long-hidden secrets of the keep hinted at things as dark from Magiere's own past. And to top it all, he would have to find Chap before the dog frightened unsuspecting villagers.
All he truly wanted was everyone here under his watchful eye, safe, so he could forget what he'd seen at the keep, if only for a short while. He didn't even want to hear more of Wynn's insights. She sat staring blankly at the tabletop, lost in her thoughts.
"You want to tell me what's going on?" Aunt Bieja asked. "From the look of you two, that niece of mine is being as closed-lipped as ever."
Leesil shied away from the elder woman's gaze. "I think it's best to wait for her. It's not my place to-"
"You'd better start filling my ears with something I want to hear," Bieja warned. "Unless you'd like those ears trimmed down to a respectable size."
Leesil was in no mood for parental threats.
"That skull in her hands…" Wynn whispered.
"What's she saying?" Bieja insisted.
Wynn lifted her head like a child on the verge of sleep but troubled by a sudden thought. The sage's words made about that much sense to Leesil. She wasn't even looking at him.
"What about it?" he asked, raising a hand for Bieja to wait.
"What was she doing with the skull?" Wynn asked, seeming afraid of any answer that might come.
"Seeking a vision, I think," Leesil answered. "In Bela, she had to hold something from a victim at the place of death. It let her see through the killer's eyes, if it was a Noble Dead. I can only imagine what it's like for her. I couldn't let her do that… not with what we saw in that room."
"Are you going to tell me anything?" Bieja interrupted.
Before Leesil could stall her further, Wynn continued. "But where is Magiere?"
"She went to visit her mother's grave," he answered.
"Now… in the dark, after holding that skull… after all of what we found?"
Wynn looked away in puzzlement, lips moving as she mouthed something to herself. She turned back to Leesil. "No, she would not… Do not let her-"
"Valhachkasej'a!" Leesil cursed, and he was off the bench and heading for the door.
Aunt Bieja shouted from behind him, but he was already out into the night and running for the graveyard.
In the keep's sacrificial chamber, Magiere's actions had terrified him more than what they'd found. She was obsessed with finding her undead sire and had tried to reach back to relive the slaughter.
The moment she'd stared into the skull's empty sockets was shadow and dust compared with what he feared she did now in the graveyard.
A male voice screamed from somewhere ahead in the dark.
Leesil leaped and dodged through the grave markers of the first clearing as another voice cried out. Two more clearings, and he still couldn't find Magiere. He heard a snarl from nearby, and he stumbled, trying to pick out its direction.
He followed it into the next clearing, and what he saw brought him no relief.
Magiere grappled with a tall man at the clearing's far side. Her falchion was missing. Even in the dark, Leesil saw her mouth forced wide by teeth like a wolf's. The two struggled for control of a thick-ended staff, until Magiere wrenched it sideways, pulling herself closer to her opponent.
Her head twisted, and she bit into the man's shoulder.
Leesil sucked in cold air. He drew one of his blades as he closed on the two and slammed full speed into both of them.
The impact sent all of them sprawling, and Leesil tumbled up against a tree. His scarf had fallen off, and he stripped his cloak, as well. When he rolled to his feet, Magiere was facedown to his left across two broken markers, and then he spotted the body.
Pitchfork across his limp hand, a man lay still where he'd fallen, eyes closed, mouth slack. Leesil looked at Magiere.
She rolled to a crouch. The saliva running from the corners of her mouth was darkened from stains on her lips and teeth. Her eyes were wide with irises full black, and her face was wrinkled in a snarl. She didn't even look at him and glared back at her opponent. When he arose, Leesil recognized him.
Adryan, half-scarred and half-mad, stood with his eyes locked on Magiere.
Magiere had succumbed to rage, slipping deep into her dhampir half. In such a state, Leesil feared she wouldn't stop until Adryan was dead. What could there be between these two that had kept this kind of hatred alive for so long?
Adryan swung the staff high, bringing it down toward Magiere's head, and she made straight for him, lunging to her feet from all fours. If Adryan missed, Magiere would tear him apart, and if he didn't…
The staff's end came down, and Magiere swerved around it without breaking stride.
Leesil leaped in to cut her off. His left foot landed upon the slant of Adryan's grounded staff, and he kicked out with his right into Magiere's shoulder. She tumbled away, and he stomped down with his full weight upon the staff. It snapped, and Adryan stumbled back with the splintered half in his hands.
Leesil stood with both feet planted, the staff's heavy end trapped beneath one foot. It felt thick, and he glanced down to see its iron-shod end.
In his youth, he'd seen shorter, single-handed versions used by Lord Dartmouth's mounted riders to disperse crowds. Whoever didn't fall beneath the horses' hooves had their heads split open by those swinging iron-shod clubs.
Adryan had come here to kill Magiere.
Leesil stepped toward him, lifting his one blade.
"Get gone," he rasped out. "If you want to live."
Adryan stood there a moment, claw marks on his face, his shirt and vest shredded and stained with his own blood. Leesil saw the remnants of a strange hope in his eyes, and then it faded as the broken staff dropped from his grip. He put his hands to his head, turned, and fled into the trees.
Leesil turned toward Magiere and remained perfectly still. She clawed wet earth to pull her feet under herself and get up.
"Magiere… come back," he whispered.
Face soiled from the ground, her head jerked around at the sound of his voice.
Black irises fixed upon Leesil. There was blood on her mouth, in her teeth. Her hands were stained, as well, and her fingers were hooked, ready to grab for him. Beneath the blood, her nails appeared extended beyond her fingertips.
Leesil knew she didn't see him. Not him… just some thing in a predator's path.
"Please," he said softly. "Come back to me."
Ever so slowly, he crouched downward, reaching with his free hand for the shod end of the broken staff.
"Magiere… Magiere," he whispered over and over.
With hands outstretched toward him, she froze there, and Leesil stopped, too.
The creases of her snarl faded from around her eyes. Her mouth closed until only her long canines were visible between parted lips. She looked down with her black eyes at her bloodied hands and began to shudder.
"It's all right," Leesil said. "Let it pass."
He started to rise again, and she flinched. She saw him. He tensed and swallowed hard, knowing what returning awareness would bring to her.
Still feral in all her features, Magiere's expression twisted in horror as she looked at him and at her own hands. She began backing away.
"No… Leesil. Not again."
Her words were barely understandable with her mouth so altered. She choked between whimpers and collapsed to her knees before Leesil could reach her. Hunched over, she covered her head with her forearms rather than hands. Leesil dropped before her, tilting her up by the shoulders.
He saw the change pass over her.
Between clenching spasms of her jaw muscles, Magiere gagged as if trying to clear her mouth and throat. She bucked in dry heaves each time, and all he could do was steady her and wait for it to pass. Her teeth receded until only the canines remained slightly long. It was her eyes that shifted last, color flooding in from the outside edge of her irises. Magiere stared back at Leesil, her face stained by tears, soil, and blood.
She began pawing at him frantically.
She pulled his shirt up, nearly tearing it apart. Everywhere she touched left stains of blood from her hands, and that increased her frenzy.
"Enough!" he said, and grabbed her wrists to stop her. "It's not my blood. I'm all right."
Magiere closed her eyes and leaned forward until her head thumped against his shoulder. It didn't take long for her pull away again. "Adryan?" she asked weakly.
"Still alive," Leesil answered. "But there's another body across the clearing. Did you… kill him?"
Magiere jerked her arms out. Leesil was startled how easily she broke his grip. She ran across the clearing, and he followed. When she couldn't bring herself to touch the prone figure, Leesil put his hand near the man's nose and mouth and detected shallow breathing. He gave Magiere a quick nod of assurance.
"Leave him," she said. "Let him wander home on his own."
Leesil picked up his scarf and cloak from where they'd fallen. Magiere sat down and leaned tiredly against the tree, dragging the falchion to her from where it lay nearby.
"If this ever happens to me again," she said, "stay away from me."
"I can face you," he answered, "any way you-"
"I can't," she cut in. "I couldn't face hurting you again. And I don't want to even think about what you saw in me tonight."
"I've told you more than once, I'm not that easy to kill… and I can face you, any way you are."
Leesil crawled over to kneel before her. Now that she was safe-from herself, as much as anything else-his fear faded to be replaced by anger.
"What I can't face is why you came here," he said. "Where's your mother's grave? What did you do?"
Magiere looked out through the ruined graveyard, markers shattered, broken, and uprooted.
"I couldn't find it," she whispered.
At first Leesil wasn't certain of her answer. But if she'd done what he'd feared, vision or not, he believed he would have seen its aftermath in her face.
"I have to know if it was Welstiel," she said.
"Not like that. " He shook his head. "Whatever happened, you don't want to feel your mother die in your hands. And you don't even know where she died. What were you going to do, wander the entire keep?"
Magiere's gaze was still distant. There were clear paths through the grime and blood on her face, and Leesil realized she was silently crying.
"You saw what was in that chamber," she said, and turned away from him as if hiding in shame. "What am I?"
Leesil knew it wasn't a question she expected him to answer. He shifted closer and grasped her arms, turning her toward him. Using his scarf, he tried to wipe some of the blood from her lips. When he'd done as much as he could, he leaned in and kissed her softly on the mouth.
He sat back and looked in her astonished eyes.
Chap watched from the thicker forest beyond the graveyard as Leesil led Magiere away. Panting in the darkness, he hung his head in relief and licked the remnants of blood from his jowls.
He had nearly run out to Magiere and given himself away when the scarred man appeared. So fixed upon Magiere and her opponent, he had not even sensed the approach of the others. When the two skulking peasants tried to hold Magiere against the tree, he rushed in from behind to seize the one holding her sword arm by his leg. Grinding flesh in his jaws, he dragged that one screaming into the woods. He released the man to hobble away only when he was certain the peasant would flee rather than return to the fight.
Chap then ran through the trees around the clearing, trying to find an avenue to strike Magiere's opponent without being seen by her. His evasion of Wynn's questions had already stretched everyone's patience. If Magiere saw him in this place, or anywhere near her mother's grave, she would expect an explanation.
Leesil arrived, and Chap pulled back as the fight ended, but he kept Magiere and Leesil in sight.
Neither of them should be here… in this place, on this path. The further Magiere pressed on into her past, the less likely it was that Chap could ever stop her. As she and Leesil left the graveyard together, Chap circled back once again to a marker left lying in the woods.
It was strange how mortals clung to the dead. To remember them was one thing; to hold on to them like a possession was another. For Magiere it presented a temptation he could not allow. Seeing her mother die as if by her own hands could strip Magiere of hope. And then, even Leesil's presence might not be enough to keep her from falling into darkness.
So Chap had raced ahead of Magiere to the graveyard and found what she had sought. He did not understand the spoken language of this land, but its written markings and symbols were similar enough to those of Belaski. Speaking furtive wishes to the grass, he asked the blades to grow and creep. They filled in and covered the hole left at the grave's head, and he dragged Magelia's uprooted marker into the forest.
Chap stepped into the ruin of the graveyard, markers toppled and broken all around from a conflict of festering old hates and anguish. When he passed Magelia's grave again, all signs of its presence or the missing marker obscured, he paused on instinct and sniffed the earth.
It was undisturbed, but this he already knew. Magiere had not found her mother's true resting place. He sniffed again, scent filling his head, as if this were the way to sense what was missing beneath the odor of damp loam, grass, and slivers of old wood caught in the earth. Even the dead carried a lingering essence of the life once held.
There was nothing.
Chap stared down at the earth. Whatever had been done here had happened so long ago, there was no trace of how or when.
But Magelia's bones were gone.
Magiere lay in the corner of her aunt's hut, curled in the unfolded bedroll. While Leesil had tried to clean them both up at the village well, she asked him to tell her aunt whatever he thought was necessary to explain this night. When they'd returned to the hut, Aunt Bieja put Wynn into her own bed, and Leesil had settled Magiere in the comer to rest.
Tomorrow, they would move on to Keonsk, though Leesil was reluctant. They would leave early, before word of what happened in the graveyard spread through the village.
She half heard Leesil's low voice as he sat at the hearth-side table talking with her aunt, but her fatigue-fogged thoughts drifted elsewhere.
She'd been so lost in rage but remembered Leesil's face.
The night had been brilliant in her sight, but his luminous hair had burned her eyes like the sun. Confusion rose as she reached out her hands, ready to tear him.
And then doubt… followed by strange longing.
He spoke, and at first she heard only one word. "Magiere."
She remembered. This was her name.
The eyes that watched her were like amber stones she wanted, would hide away, and keep to herself.
That face, those eyes… had a name. Both were framed in her sight by her own hands, blood appearing to run from his flesh down her fingers. She could taste it in her mouth. It made her choke with despair.
"No… Leesil. Not again."
Terror followed.
Until he leaned close, kissed her tainted mouth, and she looked in shock at Leesil's face to find no revulsion there. The same face that had called her back from hunger.
As Magiere lay in the bed, a scratch came at the hut door. She was vaguely aware of Leesil speaking in sharp tones as he let Chap in. The dog looked about, walked over to her, and sniffed her head. When Magiere rolled to look at him through half-open eyes, her thoughts ran in a blur, and for no reason, an odd memory surfaced.
She walked south on the coastal road of Belaski. They were just approaching Miiska for the first time. Its north-end market was filled with people out for the day buying and selling the necessities of life. In the air was the smell of baked goods and smoked fish and other simple things.
Magiere looked up again into Chap's crystal blue eyes. "No, not yet. We go on."
The dog wrinkled his jowls and trotted over to drop beside the bed where Wynn slept.
The room darkened, and only the low fire spread a red glow through the room. The blankets lifted as Leesil crawled under them. He lay close to her. Magiere slid her fingers into his hair, letting her palm come to rest against his tan cheek. "I want to remember your face," she whispered. "It keeps me from the dark."