"She is Heart-"

"She is not the Heart!" Anton roared. "You people may be able to throw your weight around in Koth, but this is not Koth, boy! I am in charge, here."

The adept fell back into his seat looking stunned. Will glanced around the long table. Everyone looked shocked, in fact.

The Landsgrave of Lochnar leaned forward. "What she describes sounds enough like an orc raiding party to me that I think we should have a look into it."

"Since when are you such a big orc hunter, Beltane?" Anton snarled, his voice oily with threat.

If the Boki have left their forests, we need to know right away and, furthermore, see to our defenses. Immediately. Lest we have another insurrection."

"Commit troops to an investigation right now, Lord Governor, or I shall send my own men," Lochnar demanded.

"You do not give orders around here, Beltane."

The landsgrave pushed his chair back. Stood up. Said through a clenched jaw, "Then I shall depart and go where I do give the orders. And I will see to the defense of my own people." The implication was clear that Anton would not do the same and take care of his subjects.

Following Beltane's furious departure, uncomfortable silence fell around the table.

A look of something Will might name chagrin crossed Anton's face, followed by a momentary flash of rage in the direction of Lochnar's empty chair, come and gone so quickly Will almost thought he imagined it.

Anton leaned forward aggressively and growled at Rosana, "If you're lying to me, girl, Heart tabard or no, I'll strip your colors and sell you into slavery before this day is done."

He would do it, too. Of that Will had no doubt. Panicked, he jumped to his feet and cried out, "She's telling the truth! They were orcs, I tell you. I fought one myself. And they were Boki. I saw the red scars on their foreheads!"

Glaring fiercely enough at him to make Will's knees knock together in terror, Anton gestured sharply for a soldier to bring him to the council table. Shaking, Will stumbled along beside the guard. The fellow shoved him forward to stand beside Rosana.

She threw him a sidelong look of both wonder and gratitude that he would take up for her like this. He was shocked as well. But something protective, possessive even, moved in him at the notion of her being frightened and badgered. He straightened to his full height and smiled down at her reassuringly. The room fell away as she smiled back shyly at him in dawning awareness. Oh, yes. He would go to the Imperial Seat and back for her if necessary. And he would certainly face Anton Constantine for her.

"Who are you?" the governor demanded.

"Umm, I'm Will, uh-h-" he stuttered, unsure if he should give his full name or not. His father had long insisted that Will never, ever tell his real, complete name.

"Whatever. Tell me of these orcs, and make it good, or I'll make a slave out of you, too."

Will cleared his throat and started over. "I wanted to stand watch for Hickory Hollow with Adrick. The hollow's at the southwest edge of the Ring in the Wylde Wood."

Anton gave the barest nod of recognition, and Will forged on, "I went home to get permission to do it, and when I returned to the knot above the hollow, Adrick was dead. An orc had just gutted him with a spear. The orc attacked me next."

"You defeated a Boki warrior?" Anton scoffed.

"Not exactly. He broke my spear, but I tripped him with the shaft. He fell and hit his head. Knocked himself out. I went over to see if he was dead or not, and I saw an irregular reddish scar in the middle of his forehead as clear as day. I heard more orcs coming and ran for the hollow to warn everyone."

"Then what happened?" Anton asked dismissively.

"Near two dozen of them, plus a bunch of other greenskins, dragged everyone outside and burned the village. The Boki thane killed Lars in single combat."

"You recognized a Boki thane?"

His father might be dead, but Will was not about to give up Ty to the governor. "Not me. One of the villagers said something about the Boki leader being a thane."

"Yet you not only lived but also escaped this supposed thane of the Boki." Anton sounded as skeptical of Will's story as he had been of Rosana's.

"I ran," Will replied firmly. Why he didn't mention his parents he wasn't quite sure, but it seemed right not to do so. "From behind a hedgerow, I saw them firing huts and gutting Lars and..."-he gulped and continued, "... and eating body parts. That's when I fled for the woods and did not look back."

The room had fallen completely silent as everyone listened intently to his tale.

He continued, "I ran for a long time. Eventually, I came upon the Southwatch Path. I must have circled around to the south of the hollow. At any rate, I saw an overturned wagon on the road. I approached it and found Ros-Novice Rosana-alive but unconscious. As she previously stated, her three companions were dead." He added defensively, "I checked them myself."

"But you have no idea whether goblins or orcs attacked them?" Anton challenged.

"The two guards were hacked nigh in half. I've never seen a goblin strong enough to do that. And we get plenty of goblins in the Wylde Wood. Plus, the Boki were sending patrols out into the woods by the time I fled. I had to hide from a few of them."

"Poppycock," Anton pronounced.

Frustration overflowed his gut and into his voice as Will retorted, "I speak truth!"

He started as his voice rolled forth, deep and powerful. That was how his father had spoken the night of the Boki attack in the woods. A voice of command. A voice designed to carry across the chaos and noise of a battlefield. A voice so powerful it could be heard in the spirit itself.

"Where..."-Anton half-rose to his feet, his own voice gathering power-"... in the name of Koth did you learn how to do the Dragon's Roar, boy?"

Will gaped. He had no idea what to say, for he had no idea what this Dragon's Roar might be. "The ... what?"

Anton leaned forward aggressively, staring. "You look familiar, boy."

Equal parts shocked and terrified, Will stammered, "This is the first time I've ever left the Wylde Wood, sir, uh-h, Your Lordship, uh-h, my lord governor. I don't' see how-"

Anton's stare swung to Aurelius. "Is he one of yours?"

Aurelius held up his hands as if to disavow any knowledge of Will.

Anton pressed harder, "Your guild knew nothing of this boy who throws out a powerful Celestial Order of the Dragon ability so casually?"

"No, Governor, I had no idea a youth of such talent was in the city." The solinari rose to his feet, scowling. The elf appeared displeased at this surprise even more than the governor. Aurelius added direly, "I shall take him immediately to be tested."

All eyes fixed on the Mage's Guildmaster pacing toward Will. For his part, Will gulped in dawning dismay.

From down the table, the man Rosana had identified as the Landsgrave of Hyland announced abruptly, "In the meantime, I volunteer to send a force to investigate the Boki. If orcs have broken the peace, all of Dupree could be in grave danger."

The lizardman girl, Sha'Li, stood utterly motionless in the darkest shadows the alley had to offer while her partner in crime picked the lock behind her. She wasn't half-bad at popping locks, herself, but Kerryl Moonrunner had insisted on doing it himself. Far be from her to tell a nature guardian of his stature what to do, however. And she did have the advantage of blending into the shadows better than he did. Her black scales made her all but invisible in these low-light conditions.

Pinky-white human. He would laugh if he knew she thought of him thus, but she would never dream of voicing it aloud. It was not the way of the lizardmen to mock their superiors. At least it was not how she and her clutchmates of Clutch Ol'lu had been raised.

A shockingly accurate cricket chirrup noise behind her was the signal that Kerryl had opened the warehouse door. She eased backward, watching all the while for the town guard or an untimely passerby. But the mouth of the alley remained deserted. She slipped into the inky interior of the warehouse and Kerryl closed the door quickly behind her.

There would be a guard roaming in here somewhere, but he was the least of their troubles. She had no doubt that Aurelius Lightstar and the Mage's Guild would guard their truly valuable treasures with only the most dastardly of traps. It was for those Kerryl had brought her along tonight.

She was grateful for the chance to prove herself. If she did well enough, she might finally earn her Tribe of the Moon mark. All full Tribe members wore the stylized moon-and-stars symbol prominently on their right cheek. Of course, if she failed tonight, if she set off the guild's traps, she would die. Many aspired to the mark, but few succeeded. The seven tenets of the Tribe of the Moon were not easy to uphold.

Her reptilian eyes were well suited to the dark and she had no trouble seeing Kerryl wave his hand to indicate she should follow him. As they moved out, she gazed around the cavernous space. It was large enough to hold a small house, she estimated. Strange how so large a place could feel so claustrophobic. It was the crates and barrels and boxes stacked so high and close, she supposed. Give her an open sky and a nice, smelly swamp any day over this. Aurelius could have his hoard. Except for a few bits of it that did not belong to him, which was the whole point of breaking in.

Kerryl had told her earlier that somewhere in here would be a special area, magically protected and trapped within an inch of its life. It would be there that Aurelius stored the prize Kerryl sought. Moonrunner could take care of the magical protections, but he needed her to disarm the traps. First, though, they had to find the special stash.

Twice they had to duck behind crates and freeze while the guard bumbled past. Clumsy, loud human. She noted scornfully that he followed the same track through the piles of goods and took exactly the same amount of time to make each circuit of the warehouse. No self-respecting rogue would ever be so predictable.

She'd followed Kerryl in careful silence to the far wall of the storeroom before she spied the faintest of magical glows emanating from behind a tapestry hanging on the wall. The tapestry depicted a heroic battle of Imperial forces defeating the Dominion-the dangerous animal changeling horde that occasionally poured from its island stronghold to bedevil Koth and its colonies.

She touched Kerryl's sleeve and pointed to the glow. He nodded, murmured some sort of incant under his breath, and the magical glow behind the tapestry winked out. He gestured her forward to search for a hidden door while he took up a watch position.

As she moved past him, she noted a pair of mice skittering out from behind a barrel to sniff at his feet. Kerryl chittered under his breath at the rodents. She wondered why she shuddered whenever he spoke to animals and if he was telling them to keep an eye out for the second guard, who had yet to show himself. She wondered briefly what animals had to say to humans who could talk with them.

She peeked behind the tapestry and spied a door. No hinges, so it opened inward, away from her. She pulled out her thin-bladed dagger and ran it gently around the door. Two wires, both chest high, one on each side of the door, acted as sensors against its opening. She quickly ran a crossing wire between the two, then carved out a small notch and slipped a pressure pad against the hinge-side wire. Using her knife blade, she held pressure on the other wire as she tested the knob. Unlocked. A sure sign of a trapped door.

She eased the portal open just enough to slip a small mirror inside. Ahh. Clever mechanism mounted on the other side of the door. She would have to- A cricket chirruped behind her. Dregs. That was Kerryl. She flattened herself next to the door and prayed that she wasn't disturbing the hang of the heavy, dusty tapestry lying against her. An urge to sneeze climbed her nose, torturing her until she near died from the tickle. Another chirrup. The guard on his rounds had passed. She mashed her hand over her face and gave vent as silently as she could to the mighty sneeze she'd been holding in.

She went back to work on the intricate trap, concentrating fiercely. Her entrance into the Tribe rested upon defeating this mechanism, and she would do anything, anything, to become a member of that elite force.

Eventually, when she poked the mirror through the gap, she spied nothing to indicate that any active traps remained on the door. All that was left to do was open it and pray some attack wasn't launched at her from across the hidden room or that a poison gas didn't explode in her face. The predictable guard had just passed again, which gave them seven minutes or so until they needed to worry about his return.

"Pick me up you will when I drop?" she breathed.

"Aye."

She eased the door open. No warning glyphs screamed, and no gas traps discharged. She took a cautious step into the small treasure chamber. Golden and jeweled platters, chests, vases, and chalices were jumbled about just like she would have imagined in a dragon's lair.

"So much gold there is!" she exclaimed quietly.

"Bah. It is a distraction. Aurelius hopes to deflect ignorant thieves away from the real treasure." Kerryl began setting aside the gaudy baubles quickly. "Help me. We need to get into the chests below these useless piles of gold."

"What seek we?"

"A pair of bracers. Leather. Decorated with animal shapes and signs. A mantle with the same sort of decorations around the hem. And a staff intricately carved with animal figures all around."

Those sounded like items created by or for the Great Circle. She nodded and commenced digging through the first chest. It was only gold coin. Hundreds of pieces. More than she and all her clutchmates could hope to see in ten lifetimes. The temptation to pocket handfuls of it was great, but tonight was about impressing Moonrunner, not enriching herself.

"Ah hah!" Kerryl exclaimed under his breath. "There you are." He lifted a curved leather piece from a chest. It was brown and looked old, but the leather was well oiled. Crude, almost runic, images of animals cavorted along its surface.

"What is it?" she asked.

"One of the Bands of Beasts."

"What does it do?"

"This one gives the wearer power to command beasts that would otherwise not obey."

She gaped. What beasts did not obey Kerryl already? It was said the Hunter in Green was the most senior nature guardian in these lands and Kerryl Moonrunner his most powerful apprentice.

"If Aurelius had the other items, he would store them with this. He must not have them. Too bad," Kerryl commented regretfully. "And now we must find the focus item for a ritual, Sha'Li."

"The ... what?"

Kerryl spoke impatiently as he wrestled open a big chest. "A chalice. Made of wood. Decorated with inlaid ivory. It should have some sort of runes or symbolic drawings upon it."

She might have asked what the chalice was for or what a focus item did, but the guards would be back soon. Instead, she focused on the search. They grew sloppier in shoving aside priceless objects to get to the chests below. She opened chests full of silver and jewels and more gold, glowing crystals, and some filled with strange mechanical objects she didn't recognize. Finally, she threw open a lid and stared down at an ornate chalice covered in intricate designs and whorls of ivory. Silvery runes were worked into the complex patterns covering the surface of the drinking vessel.

"Found it!" she called.

Kerryl moved over to her quickly. "Good girl." He picked up the chalice and examined it closely. "Yes, indeed. This is it."

He moved over to the open chest of glowing crystals and scooped up as many as his pouch could hold.

"What are those?" she asked.

"Mana crystals."

Ahh. She'd heard of those. They powered magic spells and rituals. They were passing rare.

"Have you taken something for yourself?" Kerryl asked abruptly, startling her.

"No, sir. My mission this night is to aid you."

"Yes, yes, that's noble and all. But you should take something.... I know just the thing...."

She glanced around, overwhelmed by the riches. She would have no idea on her own of what to take. Something small that would fit in her pouch, she supposed. Maybe gold or gems. Would they be marked, though? Could they be traced back to the guild's treasure horde? She lifted a green wreath made of gold-edged leaves that, for all the world, looked alive, fresh, and crisp. The wreath looked about of a size to wear upon one's head.

Kerryl lurched. "Is that-" He squinted and looked more closely and then laughed a little. "No, it isn't the Crown of Gandamere. That is just a trophy from some recent tournament. Gave me a start, there, for a moment, you did."

He rummaged in the chest the bracer had come from and lifted out a dull metal cube not much larger than his hand. "Cold iron," he announced.

She frowned. Cold iron was renowned for its ability to harm and ward off fae. Did the box hold an item of fae making, then? Kerryl set the thing on the floor and lifted the small woodsman's hatchet from his belt. She jumped as, abruptly, he swung the hatchet and hacked the little cube nearly in two. He reached into the pieces of it that had fallen apart and pulled out an entirely innocuous-looking disk of wood.

It was about the length of her thumb in diameter and round. The rings of a tree's growth were visible in its lightly polished red-brown surface. The whole of it was covered with strange sigils that looked very old. That was all she saw before Kerryl swiftly ran the pad of his thumb across the edge of the hatchet blade and blood welled. He held his thumb over the disk and let his blood drip onto it until the surface was red and slippery. He held it out to her.

"Take it. Give it to the elders of your tribe. I have woken it as much as I can, but they will need to attempt to finish the process. Maybe they succeed, maybe not."

"What must they do?" she asked, startled.

"They will know."

She took the blood-slippery disk he thrust at her and slipped it in her pocket. A mouse commenced chittering frantically in the corner, and Kerryl cursed. Quickly he kicked the remains of the iron cube into the corner behind a treasure chest.

"Time to go," he bit out.

Sha'Li darted out of the treasure room on his heels. They darted past the tapestry and into the shadows behind a stack of crates. The guard had a companion this time around, and the pair pulled back the tapestry and commenced arguing excitedly. One seemed to think there'd been a break-in, and the other that a worker had merely been lazy and not properly set the traps. She and Kerryl crept farther away from the pair.

She heard the schwing of a sword being drawn. A second sword was drawn more slowly. Kerryl slipped behind bolts of cloth piled high, and Sha'Li rolled behind a wine cask as the arguing guards headed this way.