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. 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, 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. 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. 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.