Magiere stepped in to aid Chap. Vordana snatched Chap's rear leg, and with the dog's jaws still on his arm, heaved Chap at her.

All she could do was swing the falchion and the torch out of the way as Chap crashed into her. They fell back together in a tumbling mass. As they rolled apart, Vordana stepped toward Leesil's crumpled form.

Fear for Leesil washed away Magiere's rage, and she rushed in front of him as Chap charged straight for the sorcerer. Vordana stopped short, backstepped, and both his hands came up with fingers crooked.

Magiere's head filled with humming words she couldn't understand. Vordana's whole intent was fixed on Chap. Magiere thought she saw a spark flash in the undead's eyes.

Chap skidded to a stop, turning about to stare up and down the street. He whimpered. As he ran back and forth across the road, the whimper grew into a snarl.

"Chap, get back!" Magiere shouted.

The dog didn't seem to hear her. He spun around, eyes glaring at nothing in the spaces between the buildings. With a mournful howl, Chap took off down the inland road toward the manor.

For an instant, Magiere froze in shock, then she rushed Vordana, slashing with the falchion.

He dodged, but this time alarm flashed over his face. Magiere followed with the torch, hoping to light his cloak on fire, but again, he managed to duck and back away.

Your elf is nearly gone, but he'll sustain me for a long while.

Magiere flinched and glanced back toward Leesil. He was getting to his feet, no longer as stricken as he'd been just moments ago.

She realized her mistake. When she whirled back, it was too late. Vordana had both of them in his sight line.

A tingle crawled over Magiere's skin. She didn't understand the chant that echoed through her skull, but it fed an emotion into her flesh and bones that made the world fade.

Fear.

IWynn stood up on shaky legs, struggling with the crossbow, still dizzy with the blue-white mist that permeated everything she saw. Chap had fled, and her spellbound sickness had cost Magiere and Leesil. Both appeared to go mad before she could lift the crossbow to fire.

Leesil dropped his blades and turned about, searching the night. He stumbled off between the buildings.

Magiere backed away from Vordana. She did not seem to see him as she cast about, eyes wide in fear of something Wynn couldn't see. All Wynn saw was Vordana's presence. Unlike the dying tree with its lingering essence, he was completely shadow within.

The world's glimmering essence drifted toward him. Where it touched him, it was consumed like water into a black pit. Trails of the blue-white currents clung briefly to the moving ribbons of shadow in Magiere and then pulled away to drift on to the undead sorcerer.

"Magiere!" Wynn called out.

Vordana turned toward her.

His eyes, like Magiere's, were ebony pits even darker than his form. His composure returned, and so did his grin. He stepped toward her, and his voice filled her mind.

A treat... before I return home with good news of my find. I can taste you from here!

Wynn heaved up the crossbow and fired. She tried to aim for center mass as Leesil had once instructed her, but when she pulled the lever and the bowstring snapped forward, the crossbow bucked in her grip.

The quarrel struck Vordana in his right eye. His head jerked to the side on impact, and the quarrel head punched out of his temple. Vordana cried out, grasping at it as smoke sizzled from the wound to envelope his face.

Wynn did not wait and turned to run. In her spellbound sight, she stumbled along the buildings hedging the main road and nearly tripped over a tripod brazier. Its flame blinded her for a moment-but an idea flashed into her mind.

Magiere and Leesil used fire to fight the undead.

The iron vessel was too hot to touch. It looked too heavy to lift by its suspension chains, and there was nothing about that she could light in its flame. She remembered one place where she might find something of use.

Wynn stumbled on toward the smithy down near the common house. They had seen smoke rising from its chimneys when they had arrived the night before. If a smith lived and worked here, there might be smoldering coals left from the day's labor. As she reached the forge room door, she panted in relief. It was not locked. She heard footfalls pounding from behind as she slipped inside.

IChane bullied his weakening horse toward the town's inland side, forcing it to run through the trees. He heard Chap's eerie wailing and needed a vantage point to see what was happening. He did not care if Welstiel followed or not.

The dog's voice fell silent.

The land here was flat, but he found enough of a rise to let him see over the short buildings around the crossroads. With his sight opened wide, Chane saw a bizarre scene play out in the town's midway.

Dressed in her hauberk, with a torch in one hand and her sword in the other, Magiere faced a soiled figure in a short, hooded robe. Chane focused his whole awareness on the dhampir's adversary. What he sensed disturbed him.

The figure's presence wasn't blank, like Welstiel's, but there was no life in this man. Not like one of his own kind, but a lingering deep emptiness of death he'd never encountered before... at least not in anything that still moved.

Chap charged into the creature's legs, tumbling it to the ground, and turned to snap his jaws closed on its arm. Leesil was on the ground, but Chane couldn't tell if he was injured. Suddenly, the creature threw the dog at Magiere, and she fell under its weight. Both dog and dhampir were quickly up again. The dead man was already on his feet and stretched out his hands in the air, gesturing at Chap.

The dog whirled several times, and then ran off wailing up the inland road. As it passed out of sight, Chane dismounted and jogged down to the same path between the buildings for a better view. Magiere swung at the creature again, and Chane found what he sought.

Wynn huddled behind a water trough across the main road, a loaded crossbow in her hands. As he looked back to the fight, the dead man gestured at the dhampir standing before the half-elf.

"Magiere!" Wynn shouted.

Every sinew of Chane's body clenched as she gave her position away.

Magiere and Leesil ran off in separate directions between the buildings and inland through the forest. They abandoned Wynn, and the dead man turned to look at her. She fired the crossbow.

Chane got up to run toward Wynn, but something snagged his cloak from behind.

"Stop!" Welstiel ordered.

Chane whirled around, slapping away Welstiel's grip. "She's alone down there!"

"The sage is not part of this, " Welstiel said. His dark cloak cast him as a deeper shadow within the dark. "Magiere is in danger. We must go after her. "

If Wynn's need were not so urgent, Chane would have set upon Welstiel right then-and severed his head. He took two steps back, turned, and ran between the buildings into the crossroads.

Chane halted between the braziers and searched about. He heard running footsteps to the west along the main road and followed them. Ahead, he saw Wynn disappear into the wide door of a building, and the dead man was close behind her. The air around the building smelled of char and metal. Chane drew his sword as he reached the smithy's open door.

Looking inside, he saw the creature as it peered into the empty stalls to one side. In the center of the room was a brick forge pit of glowing coals.

"Wynn!" he called out. "Wherever you are, stay down!"

The cloaked creature spun around.

Chane had tossed aside many a corpse in his short time among the Noble Dead, but it had been a long while since he'd seen one that had succumbed to decay. The quarrel Wynn had fired into his left eye was gone, leaving a blackened hole that oozed down his gray and sunken cheek.

"You like spells?" Chane asked. "Come try one on me. "

A mere boast, since he had no clear idea what magic thiis thing had used upon Magiere and Leesil. Yet he did have a few tricks of his own.

The undead took in Chane's fine cloak and sword and smiled with shriveled lips. His one eye narrowed in concentration. For an instant, Chane felt a pulling sensation from within his flesh; then it vanished.

The corpse stopped smiling.

It looked down from Chane's face to his chest, and Chane followed its gaze to catch the object of its interest. His own brass urn for binding familiars lay in plain view.

You think you can match me... vampire?

The words filled Chane's thoughts.

Through long years of study, Chane knew of few reputed methods of conjury and thaumaturgy that might produce projection of thought. He froze for a moment, at a loss for what to do.

He was facing a sorcerer.

And that meant he was in serious trouble... as was Wynn.

Chane lunged forward and swung, burning up the life energies he had consumed in past nights to bolster his speed and strength. He needed to take the thing's head without warning. The creature ducked under the blade, not even startled. It seemed to know what he planned even as he began to move.

The creature grabbed a smith's heavy iron hammer from the wall and swung back at him. It was not skilled at combat, but the action took Chane by surprise. He stumbled back into the forge, and his hand pressed briefly through the ash into hot coals. He snatched it away at the sound of searing skin.

Perhaps it needed time to cast, as Chane would when the moment came. When it swung clumsily again, Chane backed away, his thoughts turning quickly.

Crafting lines of scarlet light with his thoughts, he visualized them overlaying his view of the creature and began whispering his chant. First the circle, then around it a triangle, and into the spaces of its corners appeared glyphs and sigils, stroke by stroke. He sighted through the diagram's center at the ground beneath the sorcerer's feet.

And he heard the creature's laugh inside his head.

A conjuror? And I worried you might be dangerous.

Suddenly, Chane could not move. He could feel his body, and there was no ridid clench of muscle, but it would not answer his will to step away.

As the last of his incantation rolled off his tongue, he shuddered at what he saw through the diagram in his thoughts.

All the room's fixtures shifted in his sight. He saw the forge that should have been behind him and the smithy doors. He saw himself viewed from the room's far side, as if he looked through the eyes of someone facing him... the eyes of the dead sorcerer.

A flicker of elemental flame ignited from the ground beneath his own feet, instead of his target's.

The creature had slipped into his thoughts, fed him its own sight, and Chane had unwittingly turned his own con-jury on himself. Searing heat filled his boots as the hem of his cloak ignited. And he still could not move.

Then the sorcerer's face contorted, and his mouth opened wide into a silent scream.

The creature's arms twisted around behind his back, reaching, as smoke rose behind him.

Chane felt control return to him. He dropped to the floor, rolling in the dirt to extinguish his cloak. The brief flame he had conjured was already gone, but his breeches were blackened and seared above the tops of his smoldering boots. He scrambled up again, suppressing the pain in his feet.

Wynn stood in the forge room's back corner near a narrow workbench holding an empty crossbow. She leaned against the wall, trying to reload, but her grip kept slipping, and she blinked her eyes repeatedly. A jangling sound pulled Chane's attention back to his adversary, flailing to remove a smoking quarrel from his back.

The sound came from a brass vial on a chain about his neck. It fell into view from the sorcerer's shirt amid his frantic struggle.

Sorcery required no conjuring vessels, so why was this undead wearing one?

On impulse, Chane snagged the dead man's cloak and pulled him around. The sorcerer, shocked by pain from the quarrel, did not respond quickly enough, and Chane grabbed the vial. A hard jerk broke the chain, and he threw the brass urn onto the forge's hot coals. The dead man's expression shifted from pain to horror as the brass began melting.

No! I can't...

The sorcerer lunged for the forge with outstretched hands, and Chane slashed out with his sword. The undead dodged aside, still fixed upon the brass vial. It caved in over the coals' heat, and a puff of vapor was released with a snap. The dead man's one filmy eye opened wide as his mouth gaped. He looked wildly about the room.

A word-or was it a name?-screamed through Chane's thoughts.

Ubad!

Whispering, unintelligible sounds filtered through Chane's mind. Afraid that the undead sought to cast his own spell, Chane rushed him again, but the room filled with swirling clouds of gray. He lost sight of his quarry and couldn't see anything. As he thrashed about, the vapor began to thin almost as quickly as it had appeared, and the clouds vanished.

The sorcerer was gone. There was only Wynn staring at him from her corner before she slumped to the floor.

Her brown eyes wide with disbelief, the image of her oval face hit Chane as if he'd run into a wall. It had been so long since he'd seen her. He stumbled over to drop down beside her on the floor.

"You are burned, " she whispered.

There was a sickly pallor to her skin, something brought on by more than fear, and she kept blinking her eyes. Her hands shook as she clung to the crossbow.

"It is nothing that I can't heal on my own, " he said.

"Is he gone? Is Vordana gone?"

"Yes, I believe so... though I'm not certain how or why. A sorcerer has no use for conjuring vessels. I hoped it was something he needed to maintain his existence. "

Chane reached out to help her up, and she shrank away from him. Her gaze wandered over him as if she were looking for... looking at something on him. He glanced down to his scorched boots and breeches.

"I will be all right, " he assured her.

The reality of his presence seemed to dawn upon her. "What are you doing here?"

"I saw that thing coming after you. I couldn't let him-"

She shook her head, brown braid slipping from her hood. "That is not... you know what I meant. "

How could he lie to her, keep her from telling the dhampir? How could he find some gladness in her eyes at the sight of him? The only times in his new existence he had been truly content were those sitting at a study table with her, delving into ancient parchments and sipping mint tea. He clung to the truth buried in a half-lie and held out his hand.

"I came after you, " he said. "This backward country with its ignorant peasants is no place for you. I have a good horse that can carry us both back to Bela and your guild. I am not what you think, and with your help, we can make Domin Tilswith understand. "

Her round eyes widened even more.

"Please. I would do anything you ask, " he said, "if we can just go back to Bela and try to live as we did before. "

Chane had never begged in his life.

One tear ran down Wynn's cheek. She dropped the crossbow in her lap and put her shaking hands to her head.