The knife gleamed in the light, sending blue beams reflecting on to the wall. Neal swallowed hard and considered his next move very carefully. Vinson had to be out of his mind, assuming he had one, attacking a noblewoman.

 "Leave her alone," Neal said, keeping his voice slow and calm. Phillippa's face was serene, trusting, her hands still. He was impressed; she didn't panic or squirm under the blade.

 Vinson's eyes were wide and wild, like a frightened horse's. He didn't think he'd get caught, Neal realised. And he doesn't see any way out of it now.

 "Go away, Queenscove, or I'll hurt her," Vinson spat, his mouth trembling.

 "You won't," assured Neal. "If you do, there's no going back. You'll be handed over to the Goddess' warriors for punishment. As it is, you're running that risk. Just let her go."

 "She wanted to," he said hoarsely. "Little tease, always pretending to ignore me."

 "Pretending?" Phillippa said in outrage. She swallowed as the knife scraped along her neck. As he saw a thin line of blood blossom on her tanned skin, Neal winced inwardly. Only a shallow cut, but it showed just how close to the edge Vinson was.

 "Whether she wanted to or not is hardly the issue," he argued, ignoring the enraged look in Phillippa's eyes that said he would be in some severe pain later for that. "The fact is, right now, you're holding a knife to her throat. Anyone comes along here and you'll be missing a few vital parts faster than you can blink. Do you know what the Goddess' warriors do to rapists?"

 He could see the sickly hue to Vinson's face. Neal was getting to him. Good, he thought savagely. "I..."

 "Let her go and we'll both keep quiet about this," Neal said mildly. "Hurt her, and I promise you, all the armies in this world will not stop me searching the length and breadth of this land until I track you down."

 Vinson sneered. "You in love with her or something?"

 Neal's disgusted look said everything. "Don't you have any comprehension of what being a knight is? Now let her go."

 Tension hung in the air for a minute, the knife glinting at Phillippa's throat while Vinson's crazy eyes darted from side to side. Then he pushed her at Neal so roughly she fell into a heap on the polished floor, and ran throwing the knife aside. It clattered against a wall.

 Neal knelt down beside her. "Are you okay, Phillippa?"

 "It's Pip," she said, picking herself up without any help from him and dusting off her clothes. "After that, it's definitely Pip."

 He ran a finger over her throat, healing the scratch. She wiped the blood away with her headscarf, not seeming to care that the stained silk was irreparable. Glancing at her hands, Neal saw they were rock-steady and was astonished.

 She looked at him and grinned. She didn't seem at all shaken by what had happened. "You do a nice line in threats, Neal. I was just about to use Queen Thayet's self-defence lessons."

 "Queen Thayet gives self-defence?" Neal said in amazement. He was starting to realise he had really no idea what the ladies of the court got up to.

 "Certainly." She had changed, he realised, into loose trousers and a short tunic that fell to her waist. Her hair was tamed into a neat, tight knot. "How to escape from men attacking you. Among other things."

 "I'm probably going to regret asking this, but how?"

 She grinned, eyes twinkling. "Stamp on their foot, then twist and knee them. While they're doubled over, double handed punch on the back of their neck, then kick them while they're down." She said it with such relish, Neal promptly vowed he would never sneak up on Phil-Pip.

 "Right," she declared as they strode back to the library, where Neal's friends were. "So now you're going to teach me some Shang moves."

~*~

A week later:

 Reality dawned a slow, simmering red. It clouded her thoughts as she moved and felt tiny white lightning bolts of pain shoot from her shoulders and legs. Hadn't there been something...

 Andrea froze. The monster, there had been a monster and it had...hurt her. It had ripped its claws through her shoulders and screamed at her, screamed like something mad and possessed. And all there had been was that banshee voice ripping at her hearing, the red-tinged bolts of pain and then the soft, welcome embrace of darkness...

Someone was touching her.

She was almost paralysed with fear as she realised; a hand was stroking across her forehead with smooth, practised movements. She kept her eyes shut...she didn't know who it was or...or what they wanted of her. Andrea remembered how the men in the village had looked at her, with something hot and hungry in their eyes.

 "Marc?" A high, hushed voice above her. A child? she thought, confused.

 A low dragging sound. "I don't know." The voice was youthful, weary. "Ssssh! Shari, keep still. Or that damn lizard will be back again."

 A little gasp and utterly mystified, Andrea opened her eyes. There was a face peering down at her, a round, cherubic face with huge dark eyes the coloured of polished oakwood in sunlight. The little girl gave a shriek and jumped back. "Marc!"
 
 "I'm sorry," said Andrea hurriedly. She sat up and almost screamed as pain exploded in her shoulders.

 "Oh, oh," the girl said. She couldn't have been more than six or seven, with the incredibly fair hair that dims into honey blond as childhood ends, the light vanishing from it. "Marc," she wailed. "She's bleeding!"

 She lay back and as the pain subsided to a dull throbbing, Andrea was able to focus on her surroundings. A small, dim, damp room that was shrouded in darkness except for a pale rectangle of light that a skylight let in from at least fifteen feet above. There were bars across it.

 "All right, Shari. Hush, hush." That odd, dragging sound again and a new face appeared in her vision. "Can you hear me?"

 "I can." He was pale, icy pale as if he had been drowning in chill waters for time beyond counting. His eyes were pure black, like two deep wells, but soft and shadowy. He had the most aristocratic face she had seen on anyone, carved like a statue might be, but without any of its remoteness. "Who are you?"

 "Marcus of Kennan. Do you know where you are?"

 "There was...a beast." She recalled its pink scaly body and three eyes. "Like a dragon but wrong somehow. Terribly wrong."

 "Ah. The Arachon. Part spider, part dragon, all mad." His touch of humour made her feel a little better. The boy frowned, shook overlong red hair from his eyes and touched her shoulders with careful, healer's hands. "It took rather too many chunks out of you."

 Something caught up with her. Andrea's golden eyes widened, pushing away his hands. "You're a noble?"

 His voice was pleasant. Oddly throaty and disturbingly sensual. No trace of a noble's lofty accent. But no roughness of a commoner's either.

 "Once upon a moonbeam. It's not important. No, don't try to sit up." He grimaced slightly, and that odd dragging sound came again. "You'll only hurt yourself."
 
 "What is that sound?" she said, trying to sit up and finding that despite his elegant looks, he was surprisingly strong.

 "Me." He smiled faintly. "The Arachon crippled me a few years back. Hush, girl, don't ask anymore questions. I'm going to heal you and I need to concentrate."

 Pleasant heat flooded over her shoulder, like the warmth of a flame tickling at her. She relaxed completely, letting him heal without difficulty and as the pain faded bit by bit, she realised he was a healer of great skill. Slow, steady, and powerful.

 "There. You can sit up now." She did, sliding her so she sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor, looking at the boy, who had propped himself against a wall, legs stretching out in front of him. She saw he spoke the truth; his limbs were shrivelled and useless, the muscles hopelessly wasted. His eyelids fell with exhaustion, eyelashes making black crescents on his ashen face.

 "May I...?" she asked and hesitated.

 He dragged his eyes open with an effort. She could see he was bone weary. "May you what?"

 She reached out and took his hands. They were cool, latticed with thin curving scars like whipmarks and one finger was missing. Then she sent a stream of golden energy through is body, saw him shiver convulsively and then let go, startled.

 "Mithros, I see why she wants you now!" His lips were half-parted, breathing fast and almost panicked. "Warn me next time. But...thank you."

  "No, thank you," she said hesitantly. "Was I...out long?"

 "The red mage brought you in six days ago." Marcus beckoned gently and the fair-haired child scurried over to settle herself in his lap with a sweet smile. "Arachon's claws are poisoned. You were lucky. They tell me I was out for months after she severed my ligaments." His voice held no emotion, but she saw a muscle flicker near his jaw.

 "I'm sorry." She saw now why his arms were so powerful; he had to haul himself everywhere. Not that the cell was large. "Why are you here?"

 Marcus smiled. "You want my life story and I don't even have the pleasure of your name?"

 She looked at him, and was like a phoenix burning in the gloom of the prison where Marc had been so long. For thirteen years of his life, he had been trapped here. Trapped because he had a Gift powerful enough to tempt the Arachon; she liked rare things, and magical rare things especially. They were her servants, her play-things...her weapons.

 This girl was startling; her skin was smooth and clean, marred only by the dirt of the cell. Her hair gleamed bright gold, her eyes like molten fire. She was the most beautiful creature he had seen, smouldering in the dark like fire, and he was surprised at her power. She looked fragile as spun glass, and yet had power to call down a storm.

 "Andrea," she said softly. "Andrea Kirisra."

 "Andrea." He smiled and ruffled the white-gold hair of the child on his lap who sucked her thumb. "Andrea, this is Shari. We think she's from Scanra."

 "Hello," said Andrea, reaching out. Shari wriggled and then ran over to the girl to coil in her arms. Marc watched, startled. Shari clung to him usually, and he had grown used to the warm weight of her at night, when she refused to sleep alone in the dark, and in the day, when a memory of 'interviews' with the Arachon plagued her.

 "'Lo," she whispered and gave Andrea the seraphic, dazzling smile she rarely showed anymore.

 "Your life story?" the girl said, her fearful gold eyes striking chords on his soul.

 Marc swallowed. "It's long and I should warn you, very dull."

 "We have time," she said.

~*~

 "A week!" Bruna groaned, swinging her now messy and rat-tailed brown hair over of her face. The rain sleeted down on the four travellers, dripping down their faces in cold rivulets. Shoulders slumped, they rode on, the horses' hooves splatting on the muddy road. "One gods-cursed week chasing after some commoner rat who's probably dead by now-"

 "She ain't," Ryan snapped, pushing dripping tendrils of hair from his eyes which were a soft, smoky grey that matched the sky above. "I'd know, so why don't ye quit your bitchin' and shut up? I've met dogs that whined less."

 "That doesn't surprise me," the noblewoman said tartly, her tones filled haughty superiority. "They seem about your level."

 "Tell me," interjected Kel. She detested Bruna even more than when they had started this trip, if possible. "How are the pond scum this week?"

 "Children, enough!" Numair Salmalin's voice cut the air like a well-honed blade. "The three of you have done nothing but argue for the past five days. Show a little mercy! There's enough unpleasantness about this ride without the three of you sniping. I know it's wet and you're tired and aching, but complaining won't change any of this. We'll stop soon and set up camp for the night."

 "We're close now," said Ryan, his thin face alight. "I can feel it."

 The mage glanced at him, coal-black eyes unreadable. "How close?"

 "A mile or two." The boy shrugged, shivering slightly as they struggled on through the rain and fog that clouded their way. "She's been here. It's like...footprints. Magical ones, like."

 "Interesting," the mage said. "I've never come across such a phenomenon. You two appear to be linked very closely. And you say the alicorn told you to look to your blood for the answer?"

 "Aye."

 The blood was washing off Kel's face now; they had heeded the alicorn's warning and strayed clear of the villages now. Even wayfarers they passed on the road gave them suspicious, icy glances and muttered among themselves. This morning, they had stumbled over a tiny collection of houses hidden in the mist and had had stones flung at them for their trouble. All of them sported cuts and bruises, and they had galloped away hastily.

"Y'okay there, Kel?" the streetboy said, giving her a weary grin. In the week that had passed, Kel had discovered that Ryan had a quicksilver wit and a devilishly fast punch. He had been teaching her to streetfight, and hand to hand combat had become more hand to elbows, teeth, knees and nails. In return, she had taught him basic survival skills and a little of what he called 'noble's fightin'.

 "Soaked to the skin. Can't you cast a spell to keep the rain off?"

 A flicker of those sharp eyes. "I ain't been taught that."

 "Then that shall be tonight's lesson," Nuamir Salmalin said with a sigh. "At least the woodlands are bereft of immortal creatures now."

 "I don't think it is," Bruna objected. Kel and Ryan exchanged a look of mutual apathy. "I've seen the trees move."

 "We call that 'wind'," Ryan explained slowly, as if he was talking to an idiot child.

 Her full mouth curled, but with her clothes covered in mud and her hair a mess, somehow, it just didn't have the same effect. "You don't get wind and fog, streetrat. Whatever's moving the trees, it's alive. And it's been following us."

 "Those aren't immortals," the mage murmured. But there was an uneasy, chilling note to his voice.

 "Ye've known about them?" Ryan looked about restlessly, keen gaze stabbing at the dark layer of foliage that crowned the sides of the road. "Why ain't we doin' anythin'?"

 "Because this is the beginning of their land," he answered, drawing his cloak closer around him, "and we may need to bargain to cross its frontiers. They will make themselves known soon."

 "Soon?" Kel reached under her cloak to check her long knife was still there. The bulk and weight of the metal was reassuring. "How soon?"

 "I wouldn't worry, Squire Keladry." The flat silence around them seemed more eerie, waiting somehow. "They are nothing to harm us. Not anymore."

 They rode on, Kel's hearting beating so hard and loud she thought the others must surely hear it, every sense whetted by her fear. Her hazel eyes darted around, her hands tight on the reins. If only she hadn't insulted Bruna what seemed like an eternity ago. She wouldn't be on this unnerving, strange hunt chasing the phantom of a golden-haired girl.

 Peachblossom reared with a shrill neigh and she clung on desperately, praying he would remember she was here and she was going to hit the ground very hard if he didn't stop.

 "Easy," she whispered, as he fell to the ground, stroking his long, trembling neck. "Easy, boy. There's nothing-"

 But there was. Oh sweet Goddess, there was.

 They came from the mist like hunched shadows, some moving in scuttling, light steps, others slowly and heavily. The first thing Kel saw was their eyes; horrible, glittering orbs of a thousand thousand colours like a rainbow struck with a hammer until it shattered into scintillating fragments.

 And then she saw their bodies and wanted to stop and retch. The horror rose up in her like a shrieking wave, terrible, wretched and horrified.

 They were like an immortal gone wrong; bodies melded together of pieces of animals, claws, tails, teeth catching her eye. Deformed and repellent, she had to swallow several times before she could trust herself to breathe again.

 One of them stepped forward, huge overgrown teeth stretching to its chin like chunks of ivory. "Yyyyou..." it hissed. Its voice was hard to make out, almost strangled. "arrrrre wellllcome herrre."

 "Thank you," the mage said solemnly. He half-bowed from the saddle. "We are searching for a girl; a mage, young. She passed this way sometime ago."

 The thing turned back to its fellows and chattered in a strange grotesque language that was a combination of slavering growls and high-pitched clicks. Kel saw a pair of tiny, useless wings curled on its back. They looked half-rotted.

 "She had gold hair," Ryan put in. Kel could see he was trying not to stare. "An' gold eyes. Gold Gift."

 The leader froze and turned back. "We sawwww herrrr. Took herrrrr. She rrrran. Ourrrr rrrregrrrret. Did not know she was yourrrrs."

 The mage nodded. "May we cross your lands?"

 "You may..." It paused, as if searching for words in a language it had long forgotten. "Willlll not hunt you. Ware the Arrrrrachon. Is nearrrrr."

 The figures hobbled away, melting into the mist with disturbing swiftness. All of them were silent. Kel felt her pulse, beating at her temples and felt a wave of cool relief wash through her body. It was only then she realised how much they had scared her.

 "Master Salmalin?" she said in a faint, thin voice that didn't sound at all like her. "What were they?"

 The man sighed. "Let us set up camp first, Squire Keladry. This is not a matter to be discussed in the open."

 "Secret, is it?" Ryan said lightly, though he was still pale.

 "One of the darkest secrets of the Gifted and the realm," came the grave answer, and when she looked at the man's face, startled, she saw only a kind of grimness there. "They should never have been...but we lost control. We lost them all."

Hanging On Part Twelve
 
 Neal ducked as the staff whistled by his head. Phillippa ha Minch was wielding it like she meant business, the varnished wood gleaming golden-brown as it looped through the air, back and forth in her expert, vengeful hands.

 "Watch it, Pip!" he said indignantly. "That was close!"

 Wood hit wood in an impact that jarred his arms. "Pip!"

 Her green eyes were narrowed and furious, her teeth showing under her skinned-back lips. Swing after swing after swing as she slammed the staff at him wrathfully, not caring she was leaving wide open holes in her guard.

 Neal backed away, trying not to hurt her as he parried the blows that were starting to make his arms ache. "What on earth is wrong with you?"

 She threw the staff at him in a display of temper he had never seen. In a week, Pip had spent most of her free time with him, learning how to fight like no lady ought, joking with all his friends and giving icy-cold glares to anyone who dared pass misinformed judgment on why she was there.

 "I don't know!" she shouted. "Why don't you tell me? Am I stupid or a flirt or an over-priced whore? Do I have a flag screaming 'hate me' attached?"

 "What?" Confused, Neal looked hard at her small, angry face and saw she was utterly serious. "Of course not. Who's been saying that kind of rubbish?"

 "I don't know!" she hurled back, colour blooming in her face like twin crimson roses. "But they have and the court won't...the ladies...and..." And to his complete astonishment, she sank down onto the floor and buried her face in her hands. He could see her shoulders shaking, hear her gulping in ragged breaths and realised she was crying.

"Pip?" he said cautiously, putting down the staff and walking slowly, carefully towards that huddled figure, like he might a temperamental crocodile.

 "Go away!" her muffled voice said, husky with tears. "I know you think I'm just some stupid girl..."

 "No I don't!" Neal said indignantly. "My dear, you may be a girl, but stupid is the last thing you will ever be. Take it from one who is learned in the art - stupidity is something it takes time to acquire and you certainly don't sit still long enough to have grasped it so quickly."

 A shaky laugh. "You're no fool."

 "And it takes one to know one, so neither are you," he said promptly and was reassured when she glanced up briefly. Crying girls were a new one on him. He had seen Kel cry, once or twice, but it was always because she was hurt, not because she was upset.

 Neal sat down quietly on the wooden floor of the practice room. "So someone's been spreading rumours about you at court?"

 She flicked away her tears angrily, as if she was embarrassed to be crying. He didn't really mind; it was nice to see a more normal side of Pip rather than the hot, fierce person that was all she had shown him so far. "Not just me. About my family...about Ian..."

 "Ian?" The name struck a chord. He was sure he had seen it written down somewhere...on one of the numerous scrolls they had been set to study (much to Neal's delight) for their strategies class. "Ianos ha Minch...wasn't he killed in the Immortals War? In the Battle of Port Legann?"

 "That's what makes me so angry!" snarled Pip, her lovely green eyes dripping sparks of loathing. The tears that fell, he saw, had been ones of rage. Of frustration against an invisible enemy. "He can't even defend himself against what they're saying...and they think I can't hear them whispering and giggling, but I do...I do."

 "Sounds like the court to me," Neal said and heaved a sigh. "In the University, the grapevine moved faster than the Lioness on a rampage." He smiled ruefully, his intelligent face briefly distant in old memories. "And it was very easy to fool it. I remember telling someone that Melliah of Naxen had broken off her betrothal. Next day, her husband-to-be ended up punching three over-amorous suitors, one of whom happened to be my best friend. I never told him who started the rumour."

 Pip gave him the ghost of a smile that didn't reach her sorrowful, livid eyes. "But how can I stop it?"

 "Fight back," Neal said promptly. "Dish the dirt on Vinson...I'll bet you anything it's him. He's too much of a coward to fight honourably."

 "But I don't know anything about him!" she protested.

 Neal gave her a sly grin. "He didn't know anything about you either, my dear noblewoman. Use that wicked imagination of yours."

 Realisation dawned in hers eyes and all she said was "Oh..."

 Neal had the feeling Vinson had forgotten to look before he leapt.

~*~

 The campfire was burning bright and fierce; Ryan had lit it with a cheeky grin and a snap of his fingers. They were huddled close round it now, eating dry trail rations and swapping jokes. Somehow though, in the eerie silence and smothering darkness, Kel wasn't hungry.

 "You goin' to tell us 'bout those things then?" said Ryan abruptly. His intense grey gaze was fixed on Numair Salamlin. The mage had been quiet and edgy all evening and had even snapped at Bruna when she dared complain about the hardness of the ground.

 "I suppose I should," replied the mage. His dark eyes were like endless pits as Kel looked at his drawn face. "It's one of the secrets of the realm. Only the King and his close advisors know it...and until now, I had never met any of them. No one has. They're a legend in the kingdom's scrolls, but a dangerous legend at that."

 Kel remembered the strange, misshapen creatures that owned these lands and shuddered. Gleams of jagged teeth, of many-jointed arms and hunched backs, of flat, pustule-covered feet. Ryan looked at her in concern and put a reassuring hand on her wrist. She met those dove-grey eyes, surprised, and he shrugged and smiled slightly.

 On the other side of the fire, Bruna, her face lit demonically by the fire stared over at them. Her face looked oddly drawn in the flickering lights, her eyes simply two vortexes that held no light, not even the reflection of the dancing flames.

 "It was a long time ago," began Numair Salmalin softly. His husky voice swelled through the night, beautiful as a wolf's howl and holding some of that wildness in it. "Five hundred years; even our ancestors were children then, playing in a world where magic had just been born. New powers sprang up like volcanoes, sudden and sometimes lethal. They didn't know much then, but as time passed, they learned about the different types of magic. Three types: immortal magic, mortal magic, and the magic of the gods themselves."

 "But-" The mage stilled Ryan by merely holding up a hand. The boy sighed quietly and waited. He wouldn't have done that a week ago, Kel thought.

 "One day, a mage trapped an immortal. It was a unicorn, a beautiful thing, and he killed it and took its blood. But the unicorn cut his flesh with its horn as it tried to escape; and it died, yet not before its blood had mixed with the mage's. He was given new powers; powers to shapeshift into not one creature but many, without the terrible exhaustion that mortal magic - what we call the Gift - caused."

 All of them were silent. Kel could feel a cold wind on her right side, and Ryan on her left, keeping her warm. She glanced up and saw only empty blackness. Not a single star touched the night sky, nothing disturbed that flawless indigo sweep.

 "And so was born Wild Magic. It was not the magic we have today; even Daine Sarrasri," and a faint glimmer of affection touched the mage's swarthy face, "has not one tenth of the power they had then. Because they created Wild Magic in its purest form; countless immortals were trapped and killed for the purity and power of their blood. Wild Mages were more common even than the Gifted. Why, reasoned those who had only a small Gift, should they waste so much time trying to learn spells when they could have such power with a little pain?"

 "What happened?" breathed Kel as he faltered. She was wrapped up in the tale, seeing in her mind's eye the poor and the rich alike, dipping their hands into silvery blood, warping and changing into creature after creature, running in immense packs around an untamed land.

 "It all went wrong," the mage said quietly. "It went so horribly wrong."

 She shivered again, despite her layers of furs and hide.

 "I don't suppose any of you are old enough or powerful enough to understand, but magic is a volatile thing. If it is abused, it can erupt without warning. It is as dangerous as it is helpful." He stared unseeingly at the tongues of red-orange that licked at the night air. "Too many people, too many shapeshifting over and over and over. They stretched their magic to its limits, stretched their bodies and their minds. And once they began to shapeshift, the release and the joy it brought became addictive. They couldn't stop, and they didn't want to."

 In her mind's eyes, she saw those odd hordes of people, their hands shrinking and growing, sprouting claws and fur. Their bodies contorting into new, exciting shapes and doing things they had never been able to before. Leaping vast chasms, flickering through stormy waters without fear of hurt or death, swooping through gleaming azure skies in intricate, easy patterns.

 "And eventually, it rebounded on them. The magic hit back, and it hit back hard. It was all drawn from the same source you see; all our magic is. All those creatures they had tried to become, and suddenly, they could not control their shapeshifting. Parts of them changed, others did not. They became a mix of creatures, forced into grotesque shapes by the magic they abused and stole so thoughtlessly."

 "Those creatures," said Ryan flatly.

 "The halflings. Yes. And of course, their horrific appearance caused such horror among the ordinary people. Most of them couldn't even speak anymore; no one even recognised that they were human. So they hunted down the halflings, they tortured them and killed them. It even became a popular bloodsport for a while. Eventually, one of them made itself heard to the King."

 He took a deep breath. "Of course, King Jonathan the First realised that there would be absolute chaos if this news got out. Some of the halflings had been killed by their own unknowing families. So he struck a deal with them; that they would hold these silent woodland lands, and rule them as they liked. He would tell his trusted counsellors of them, and every year, a toll would be paid to them for wayfarers crossing their lands."

 "So...those were the children of them?"

 There was a high, hard laugh. Bruna's eyes were wild as Kel stared at her, wondering at the girl's expression, somewhere between terror and anger. "Oh no. Those aren't their children."

 "They...can't be the same ones," said Ryan uncertainly. "An' what would you know?"

 "My father's lands border these," she said shortly.

 Her father? But if he owned the lands they were about to enter, the ones that had been scoured of all magic and magic wielders then that would mean-

 "Oh yes," said Bruna. Kel blinked to find the girl's large, bare eyes pinning hers. "My father doesn't like magic. In fact...you might say he'd kill to avoid it."

 Her words sunk in slowly. "He's-" began Kel.

 "A murderer!" the girl snapped, leaping to her feet. There was loathing glittering in her beautiful face, but Kel wasn't sure who it was for. "Nothing but a bigot and a murderer."

 She stood, frozen and breathing hard in the hellish glow of the fire, staring at them like a cornered deer, then she turned and flung herself down on the ground, pulling her cloak over her. As far away from them as she could get in the confines of the warding circle.

 The mage shook his head at them when Ryan opened his mouth to say something. "They cannot die," he murmured softly. "That is the blessing of true Wild Magic; that is its curse. Anyone touched with Wild Magic can survive what would kill normal people. But those whose hearts are aglow with it can survive everything. They are doomed to see eternity, and doomed to be forbidden from truly experiencing it."

 It seemed a dreadful barren existence to Kel. Desperately unfair; maybe some of those people had deserved it, but most, she was sure, were ordinary. Ordinary and they had become nothing but hated monsters.

 He stood up, dusting off his clothes. "That's enough doom and gloom. Get some sleep; we have a long ride tomorrow."

 With a wave of his hand, he extinguished the fire.

~*~

 "I was very young when they took me..."

 Andrea hugged the little girl who sat on her lap in the dank cold dungeon, feeling on a shaft of pity at the dreamy, utterly lost expression on Marc - Marcus of Kennan's - face. The faint traces of a noble's accent still arched in his voice, but his eyes were gentle.

 "I don't remember much," He frowned. "I always knew I was special. They used to treat me so well, encouraging me to use my Gift, rewarding me, cuddling me. I don't suppose the Crown Children were treated better. Mithros, I was an arrogant little bastard! Three years old and with half the damn fief wrapped around my revoltingly fat little finger."

 Oh, the contrast now; his red hair was long and ungroomed, cut untidily around his stark, haunted face. His clothes were rags, his legs wasted from where the Arachon, a cruel magical creature that held them all captive, had attacked him. And not arrogant, but almost amused about his situation.

 "Like I say, I was arrogant. I learned to ride almost as soon as I was born; and at the age of five, they gave me my own pony, hideous screaming brat that I was. I had a voice that could creak walls."

 "It doesn't sound that way now," said Andrea, smiling as the blond child on her lap laid her head down and fell asleep.

 Marc's voice was a soft, sensual husk. He raised his eyebrows.

 "Too much screaming. The Arachon likes to play." At her wince, he smiled again. He had a wide, generous mouth that looked like it was made for happiness, a contrast with the lines and scars on his face. "Sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

 "You didn't," she answered, though that was untrue. Everything about the way this boy had been treated upset her. "Please, carry on."

 "I used to ride out every day. They'd tell me of the dangers; my mother used to say that bandits would get me, or that Carthaki raiders would chop off my head. I loved the idea of that. Excitement, adventure - I couldn't get enough of it. I couldn't wait to be sent to be a page, or a great mage.  I was going to change the world."

 "Stupid. Disobeying their orders. My father was away often, and on the occasions he came back, he gave me the thrashing of my short life. He was the only one I respected. But he wasn't there the day I rode out, furious because one of the other kids had thrown a stone at me...I don't recall exactly. I rode for hours and hours, angry at everything and secretly enjoying how worried they would all be and how much they'd pamper me when I got back."

 He paused, his eyes focusing on her. "I didn't get back. The Arachon caught me while I was drinking from a stream. I was so terrified, I just threw all my Gift at her. What little I had - I had no control, not enough knowledge. It was like using a fly swatter on a cheetah. She hit me into oblivion and I woke up...here."

 "How long?" the girl whispered. He enjoyed looking at her; at her unusual, if not pretty, face, flushed and framed by a halo of cloudy golden hair.

 "Thirteen years, give or take. About. I've lost count. It might be longer - it might be less, time seems to go on forever in here. Sometimes the Arachon wants to talk to me. Wants to use my magic, that means, or torture me. It amuses her. It'll be the same for you."

 "What about escape?" she breathed.

 "Don't bother." Marc hated telling her that and seeing the hope on her face snuffed out swift as a candle, but it was the truth. "She's too powerful."

 He could see she didn't believe him, but tactfully, Andrea said instead, "Do you ever think about them? Your family?"

 Marc sighed. "Often. I always wonder if I have any brothers or sisters, or if my parents blame themselves. I hope they don't. It was all my fault. And I dream about Kennan in the summer. It was so lovely - like the Realms of the Gods fallen to earth."

 "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry."

 "No," Marc said softly. "I am."

~*~

 She couldn't sleep. The images of those poor, deformed creatures, unable even to die slipped through her head. Face after grotesque face until she couldn't bear it anymore. Why do I have to have a conscience? thought Kel glumly. This doesn't bother any of the rest of them. You would have thought all those years in the Yamani Isles, learning to hide my emotions would have taught me to ignore them too.

 She slipped out into the night, taking her sword and moving silently; years of slithering through stone halls in a silk kimono had taught her to move like a jungle cat. She barely hesitated before crossing the wards, needing to be away from everyone else, somewhere she could think. There was no danger here; the halflings had let them pass, and there were no immortals left.

 Kel sat on a mossy log, shivering a little at the coolness of the air, and stared out into the silken quiescence of the shadows. Her eyesight was adjusting slowly; she could make out the shapes of trees swaying in the wind like waving arms.

 "You too, huh?"

 She turned at the voice and saw a slender silhouette detach itself from the darkness. Ryan sat down beside her, his eyes distant. In the night, they were no longer grey but a soft, shadowy black. She could barely see his expression.

 "I keep thinkin' about 'em," he confessed. He picked up a stone and threw it idly. "An' I can't even imagine it. Bein' trapped like that an' hatin' people so much for makin' 'em outcasts. No one should be forced away from their home. It's wrong."

 "They scared me," said Kel softly. It wasn't often she admitted to fear, but somehow, saying it aloud made it better. Now it wasn't just a faint phantom, flitting through the corners of her mind. It was something she could confront.

 "You an' me both, lass." His teeth flashed white in the gloom. It wasn't a smile. "I ain't never seen anythin' like that. An' hearin' that mage just sayin' it so calmly...all the horrible things that happened to 'em."

 "Magic scares me sometimes," said Kel quietly. "The Wildmage...she's so nice, but sometimes, it seems like there's more to her than other people. Like she can see things I can't even imagine."

 "Magic is scary," he agreed. "I can't get angry or upset, or I can't control what happens. An' not bein' in control means people might get hurt. I don't want that. Even Bruna...she's a witch all right, but I wouldn't want to hurt her. No one deserves what magic can do."

 They sat in silence for a moment, then his voice filled the silence, rough and youthful and undeniably strong.

 "But it's beautiful too. I can't tell ye what it's like to feel the magic runnin' through ye." Then an odd, thoughtful note entered his voice. "I can show ye though. If ye want."

 "What do you mean?" said Kel quietly.

 "Master Numair was teachin' us t'other night. How to pour the Gift into someone else an' let them use it. He said it's advanced, but we had the power to cope with it." He laughed quietly. "An' it would teach us control. He's obsessed with bleedin' control."

 "I'd like that." Kel had always wondered what being Gifted really meant.

 "I ought to warn you..." he paused, and she searched for meaning in the shadowed planes of his face. "Look, it might hurt...it worked with Master Salmalin, but I ain't sure if it'll work with non-Gifted, like. He said it would, but..."

 "I trust you," said Kel firmly.

 "You do?" He sounded absolutely amazed. "But ye barely know me!"

 "You saved my life. I saved yours. If I can't trust you after that, I might as well cut my own head off now and save someone else the trouble," she told him simply. "It's only going to get more dangerous from here on. If I couldn't trust you, we'd really be in trouble."

 There was a pause and then, "Thanks."

 His hands came up to cup her face, touch cool and sure. Uncertain what to do, Kel sat still, as she had always been taught with magic, and relaxed. "We need to be touchin'," he explained softly. "Master Salmalin reckons there are points of energy on your body...he called them shamrocks, or somethin'."

 "Chakras," murmured Kel. It was a Yamani teaching; each chakra responded to a different element. There were seven, running down the body.

 "Aye, that's it. Ye've done this afore?" His breath was soft on her face, like the tiny feather touches of mist.

 She tried to shake her head, forgetting he held it still. "They believe that in the Yamani Isles. I was brought up there."

 "Ah. Well anyway, I'm goin' to use the one on your forehead because the others are...um...in other places that...well, let's just say I don't know ye well enough." She had never heard Ryan sound embarrassed before, and it made her mouth twitch with laughter.

 "Now," he instructed softly, "Just breathe and relax."

 He leaned his forehead against hers, and she felt the chakra on her forehead, which she had often sensed in meditation, tingle lightly. She shut her eyes, feeling the warmth that radiated from his hands and body. She had never been this close to anyone she wasn't trying to fight.

 Magic jolted through her and she shivered, feeling waves of what felt like sun-warmed sea-water wash through her in gentle pulses, from her head down to her feet. A glowing turquoise light bubbled across her eyelids, and she could feel power nearby, like a sleeping tiger coiled deep inside.

 "Open your eyes," he said, letting go and she did. Kel gasped. His eyes were a perfect, sparkling blue-green, like a dash of summer seared onto the night. And she could see a faint azure aura glowing around him...and herself. Kel raised her hands, turned them to look at the glittering veil of light spread over it.

 "It's...amazing," she whispered. She turned to look at the woodland and gasped again. The sky was a mad clash of colours, ranging from deepest darkest indigo to an almost white-blue. "Is it...always like this for you?"

 "Is what always like this?" he asked.

 "The sky...there's so many colours. And the stars..." She hadn't been able to see them before, but now she saw rainbow points of light hovering above. And the moon, a ghostly silver orb. "It's...breath-taking."

 "You mean this ain't what you usually see?" She turned back and realised her night vision had improved. Every line of his face was illuminated, even without the eerie blue glow. "I thought it was just the aura that the magic brought. I ain't known about it very long."

 "No," she said wonderingly. "The sky is only one colour. And the stars are white, not every colour..."

 "Sounds borin'," he drawled and she smiled. "Do ye want to try a spell?"

 "How?"

 He took her hands, a glimmer of amusement in his face. "You got to be careful. Controlled, like." He said the words in a wry mockery of Master Salmalin. "Can you feel the Gift?"

 She nodded.

 "Good. Just reach inside and imagine drawing on it, like you were taking a drink from a stream. Then think of what ye want to do, and imagine the magic shinin' round it."

 What did she want to do? Kel thought of her sword, rusty from the rain and travelling, however much she scoured and polished. She imagined the light lifting away the rust, leaving a gleaming blade, and drew on the magic. It filled her head, cool and clean.

 "Nicely done," he said, and she blinked to see her sword good as new.

 "Can you still use the magic too?" she asked.

 "Think so."

 "What do you want to do?" Kel said absently, turning the sword in the light of her new aura.

 She was startled as he put two fingers to her cheek to gently turn her face towards him, her hazel eyes widening to deep bronze. There was an odd, endearing shyness in his face as he said, "This," and kissed her.

Kel was stunned for a moment.

 And then she had neither time nor breath nor desire to be anything but caught in this beautiful, blazing moment.

 She felt the Gift sweep through her in that tender, powerful wave, wrapping both of them in watery wings. She didn't know she had dropped the sword she was holding and had her arms around his neck. She didn't care that the air around them burned with an eerie, lovely cobalt fire. She only knew that this boy was kissing her with passion and affection and it was what she wanted.

 And then he drew back and stared at her with eyes that glowed like sunlight through sapphires. His voice was huskier than usual as he breathed, "Mithros."

 "I know," she whispered, dazed.

 Kissing Neal had been sweet, gentle. Kissing Ryan had been like...lightning and sunshine wrapped together.

 "Mithros," he said again, not letting go of her. "That ain't...never happened afore."

 "No," she said. Her mind didn't seem to be quite working properly.

 She kissed him.

 And that gentle, Gifted lightning twined itself around them again. It was incredible. It felt like every single sense had been heightened, as though she hummed with energy that was completely unearthly; an energy that came from something strangely human. Everything seemed suddenly quite clear-cut.

He drew back, those eyes wide and swirling with emotions she couldn't quite identify. "I'm very glad you're holdin' onto me," he told her, "or I reckon I might just fall off this log an' straight on the ground."

 Kel could hear her heart thundering in her ears, like horses' galloping hooves. "That was...interesting."

 "Ye know this changes things?" he said softly, finally, running a finger down her cheek. "We ain't just friends now, Keladry o' Mindelan."

 Things were already changed, thought Kel. To her surprise, she found thinking of Neal didn't seem to matter much at all now. She was realising that perhaps it hadn't really since she kissed him. Was it really him I wanted? she thought. Or was it just the idea?

"No," she echoed. "We aren't."

He hesitated, those blue-beyond-blue eyes glowing with Gifted fires. "This what you want, Kel? Only...I didn't exactly give ye much choice."

 "If I hadn't liked it, I'd have hurt you," she told him. "How can I put it...right in the base chakra."

 "Oh my," he drawled. "Doin' your bit for natural selection, then."

 His hair was startlingly tousled from where she had run her hands through it, soft to the touch as cat's fur, and that wonderfully firm mouth was slowly curving into a wicked smile. Every inch a streetrat, thought Kel, and liked it.

 "Can I...ask you something?" she said enigmatically.

 "Depends on what it is."

 "Who gave you that scar that the alicorn healed?" she asked, her voice very tentative.

 His face darkened briefly, shadows slipping into his eyes. "My da. He hated me...he never wanted me in the first place, an' after my ma ran out an' left him saddled wi' a useless runt, he loathed me. Used to beat me all the time, till I'd been screamin' so long I hadn't any voice left an' my face hurt so bad I couldn't see or feel anythin' but the pain."

 "But why?" said Kel, bemused. She couldn't understand how anyone could treat a child so.

 He shrugged. "Said I looked like my ma. She left him all alone, an' I think p'raps he really did love her. One day, he just got tired of me, he'd been drinkin', like, an' he cut me wi' a knife. Kept hittin' me, I was so scared, an' I could run by then, so I just scarpered fast as I could, but he caught me, an' kept hittin' an' kickin' me." He paused, and Kel could feel him shaking. "You know what the worst part was?"

 "It all sounds so awful," she whispered, looking at his face because she owed it to him to listen,  not to look away and not to pretend that this dreadful thing hadn't happened.

 "There was people there, Kel, an' they could see him kickin' seven kinds o' hell out of me, an' they did nothin'. I guess they was scared, but it hurt me. I was only a kid, an' I didn't know what to do. Eventually, he left me for dead in the gutter. Maybe the scar's gone now, but I can't forget." Those eyes had dimmed to their soft, shadowed grey again, and Kel could see leagues of pain in them, deeper than the darkest ocean. "I can't forget. I've tried so hard, an' even the Gift ain't any use."

 She didn't have anything that could make what had happened to him better or at all justified, so she let her silence say what all the sympathy in the world would not; that he was here now, and that he was someone she was proud to know.

 "That's enough o' that," he said, seeming to shake himself. "Ye don't need to hear my sob story. Tell me about yourself. All I know is what the rumours say, an' accordin' to them, ye should be eighteen feet high an' a sword-wieldin' maniac."

 Kel snorted. "Rumour got it wrong. As always."

 He grinned. "I guessed that."

 "What do I say?" shrugged Kel. "I want to be a knight. Fighting isn't what I do, it's part of who I am. I love it - I love the challenge and the wit you need, I love the honour it demands. And maybe there are still people who don't like me, but maybe I don't like them much either."

 "That tells me a lot about what ye do, like," said Ryan gently, "but it don't tell me much about who ye are."

 Kel didn't know what to say. Talking about herself just seemed so horribly arrogant - it wasn't her. She would do what she had to, whether she enjoyed it or whether she didn't, and either way, she wouldn't boast about it. It was how she was and that was that.

 "Anyways," he murmured, "I'd best take my Gift back. I ain't been told what happens if I leave it in someone who ain't used to it." Then he flashed her a charming smile and said, "An' we'd best get some sleep. From what Master Salmalin said, tomorrow ain't goin' to be a dream journey."

 She relaxed and closed her eyes, preparing herself for the loss of this colourful, flaring world. The wonder of having the Gift had never struck her before, but now she felt almost saddened by the loss. She thought he would use the crown chakra again; but instead, the streetboy kissed her throat gently, where the third chakra lay and she felt the warming light flood away.

 When she opened her eyes again, the world was strangely dim and grey, a mist of swaying shadows and spiky shapes. She let him guide them back to the safety of the warded circle, her senses still adjusting to the obscurity of the ordinary world.

 They stepped over the sleeping form of Bruna (Kel saw a curious shimmer on her face that Ryan informed her in a low voice was tearstains), proud even in sleep, but Kel still felt sorry for her. She was truly alone.

 "Sweet dreams," yawned Ryan, slithering onto the ground and pulling his cloak over him. "Hope they're as sweet as you." She could make out the mischievous smile he gave her.

 Kel considered throwing something then took it for the compliment it was. "Goddess bless," she told him.

 She heard a half-laugh. "If only."

~*~

Andrea woke up slowly to the first faint strains of delicate dawn light weaving through the tiny skylight. Like a subtle, haunting tune, the light fell over her dusty golden hair, slid over her grimy face and onto the tiny form of the child who hugged close to her. Gliding over the filthy floor, it illuminated the weary, aristocratic features of Marcus of Kennan who slept lightly, ever wary. Andrea's head lay across his legs.

Someone was shaking her.

She sat up, blinking sleep-heavy eyes and saw the cold, elegant features of the red-robed mage close by.

 Andrea gasped and shrank back. She felt Marc stir, his hand reaching out instinctively to check Shari was there before his eyes opened, the deep smooth brown of them hazy and briefly confused.

 "The Arachon wants you, girl," the mage said shortly. Andrea noticed a new set of red weals sweeping across the right side of her face, as if a set of claws had hit her hard. "Up."

 "Leave her alone," said Marc softly. "The Arachon can talk to me."

 "Don't be stupid, Marcus," the woman said. Andrea blinked. They talked as if they knew each other. "The Arachon's tired of you. And you know what happens if it gets bored with something."

 "Laird..." There was a plea in that voice. "Not her. She can't tell that monster anything it doesn't know. She's innocent."

 "Weren't we all once?" snarled the woman bitterly. Her black, slanted eyes were unreadable. That glaring red robe was like a gash of blood against the dimness of the cell, clinging to a tall, willowy body. "I've not spent seven years covering up and protecting you so you can throw it away on the first pretty face that walks in."

 Andrea looked from one stubborn, set face to the other and saw something that she hadn't before. The same haunted look in both eyes. And she realised that the mage was as much a victim as Marc was, as Shari was.

 "Marc?" she said, her clear voice making him look over instantly. "What's going on?"

  Marc sighed. "It's nothing, Andrea."

 "It's something, Marcus of Kennan," she said firmly. "And you're going to tell me what."

 The mage's empty black eyes turned to her. She must have been dazzling once. She was still beautiful, but time and pain had cut lines into her skin and the faint shimmer of scars lay across her face. "So you do have a spine. Well, you may not when the Arachon's done with you, girl."

 "Marc?" persisted Andrea, ignoring the mage.

 The boy looked at her, at her pleading eyes. "It wasn't entirely by accident the Arachon took me," he said slowly. "Or any of us. There's...something she wants from us-"

 "Marcus," the mage cut in. "What business of hers is it?"

 "She's here, isn't she?" snapped Marc. "Do you want her to end up like us?" He gestured to his legs. "I'll never walk. You'll have those scars for the rest of your life..."

 "Scars?" murmured Andrea. Their grimness, their utter lack of hope terrified her. How could anyone have stayed here for years beyond count, unable to escape such a monster?

 "Yes!" spat the mage. "Scars!" She pushed the red robe aside, and lifted up her tunic to show a stomach slashed with four deep red gouges. "I have these all over," she said, her voice shaking with anger and despair. "When the Arachon is angry, I'm what it sees first."

 "Why can't you escape?" she asked, looking up at the unreadable oriental face. "You must be powerful, surely..."

 She thought for a moment the mage wouldn't answer, the bitterness swelling in those fatal eyes like a stormy sea. Then the woman's gravely voice filled the air. "Not powerful enough. Do you know how immortals are made?"

 "Dreams," said Andrea, remembering with pain her mother's silky-soft voice telling her that as Andrea lay shaking with fever one winter. Her hand smoothing Andrea's forehead, warm and tender. And the next winter, that hand lay cold and still, and Andrea was alone.

 "Yes. Normally. But the Arachon wasn't." Startled, Andrea's golden eyes snapped up, liquid as honey, to see the red mage slam her fist into the wall angrily. "It was made by the gods. It has their power, their magic and we are nothing to it. Nothing at all."

 "Have you even tried escaping?"

 "Of course I've tried!" the mage shouted furiously. Her wrath turned on Andrea, potent as steam. "You think this is what I want? To be caged and beaten day after day? I wake up and I envy the dead, because at least they can have peace!" As suddenly her fury was gone, and she said tonelessly, "The Arachon wants to see you. Come on, girl."

 "Laird..." began Marc quietly.

 The mage gripped Andrea by her arm and pulled her up with surprising strength. "No."

 The boy tried to pull himself forward, but he couldn't drag his body fast enough as the mage hauled Andrea after her. "Laird!" he shouted. "Laird, don't, please!"

 And the dead, chill voice made Andrea's bones turn to stone. "Be quiet, Marc. There will be enough screaming soon."

~*~

Neal and the Lioness were fencing when Daine came in. His green eyes were narrowed in concentration, sweat in a fine film across his face. The Lioness was moving fast, a red-haired blur. Swords flashed like fish under water, clashing and sweeping through the air. Neal was clearly losing, and as his knight-master flicked the sword from his hands, he grinned and yielded.

 "That was good," the Lioness remarked approvingly. "You've improved, Neal."

 "Not enough," he replied, picking up his sword and checking it for nicks. "You'd think I'd get tired of being humiliated." He gave her a wry grin.

 "It didn't look too bad to me," the soft voice of Daine Sarrasri interjected.

 Both of them turned to see the Wildmage looking fresh and lovely in a formal wintery blue dress. Her hair was swept up, decorated with glittering blue gems. She looked like she had stepped from a fairytale.

 "Not another Court gathering," groaned Alanna, resistant as ever to anything where she couldn't carry a weapon. "I suppose Jon sent you, the sadist."

 Daine arched an eyebrow. "You know you love the Court really." She giggled, for a moment her age as the Lioness threw her a filthy look. "Jon said he wants his Champion present; he's got some important news. Oh, Neal, you have to be there too. Your friend Phillippa ha Minch told me to tell you..." She frowned, briefly confused. "She choked the grapevine?"

 Neal wondered what Pip had cooked up. "Of course, Daine," he said. "Did she say anything else?"

 "Watch out for fireworks." Daine's blue-grey eyes met his and she shrugged. "The King didn't say anything to me about fireworks tonight. Maybe it's a secret. You know what the nobles are like."

 "Hey!" he and the Lioness said in unison.

 The Wildmage shrugged. A cat wandered in and taking one look at her, leapt up. Startled, Daine caught it and the tabby purred contentedly. "You're not noble. Not really. You work too hard."

 "I don't know if that's a compliment or not," growled Alanna, but she was smiling. "All right, Squire, present yourself at Court tonight and in the meantime, you can go and quiz Jon's squire about what's going on. Then you can have the rest of the afternoon off."

 "Mind if I accompany you?" said Daine. She swept up her skirts as daintily as any court lady and Neal was amused to see she had good sturdy boots on underneath. "Aren't you going to offer me your arm, Neal? Honestly, for someone with such pure blood, you're amazingly unchivalrous sometimes."

 He obeyed, and they strolled around the palace, looking for Zahir abn Nazir, the King's squire.

 "So tell me about Phillippa," commanded Daine suddenly. The question was a lightning bolt; he hadn't been expecting it at all. "I've heard a lot about her, Neal, and knowing the Court, none of it's true."

 "She's just a girl," Neal said and then thought about it. "No. She's not just a girl. She's...different."

 "Neal, you're being about as clear as mud," the Wildmage told him exasperatedly. The cat, now half-slumped over her shoulder and cradled in her free arm, mewed in agreement.

 He grinned at his friend. He had gotten over his crush on her (and it even embarrassed him now to think of it) and found out that being friends with her was far more rewarding. Even if Numair Salmalin was still too old for her.

 "I don't know...she's not like the other noblewomen, all giggly and fluttery, but she's not as rebellious as the Lioness either." Neal thought about it. "She's a noblewoman and intelligent. I didn't know that was possible."

 "Don't let the Queen hear you say that," warned Daine. "Is that Zahir?"

 Squinting against the bright winter sun, Neal could make out the tall, dark figure doing hand-to-hand combat with the Shang Horse. And holding his own. They ambled over, waiting by the fence of the practice square until Zahir finally went flying. "I yield," the Bazhir said reluctantly.

 "Not bad," the Shang Horse said, giving the squire a hand up. Almost exactly what the Lioness had said to Neal. "I think you cracked my rib." He grinned showing white teeth. "Ah, Neal! Feel like a bout?"

 "No."

 "Good, neither do I." The Shang Horse was as merry as ever, his black hair messy and dusty from the fight. "Feel like doing some healing?"

 "Sure." The Shang Horse did have a cracked rib and Neal set to work repairing the bone, green fire sparking from his fingertips. "Zahir, you know what's going on at Court tonight?"

 Zahir shrugged, handsome face expressionless. "Not a clue. Why do you want to know, Queenscove?"

 "The Lioness wants to know. You haven't heard anything?"

 The Bazhir boy was spinning a knife in his hands. He was lethal with any kind of blade, almost as good as the Shangs themselves. "Something to do with Carthak, I think. But apart from that, no. He wanted as many of the knights and mages back as possible." His tone wasn't friendly, but it wasn't hostile either. Zahir didn't seem to care for anyone or anything.

 "Not all of them are," murmured Daine. Other animals had come to twine around her feet as she perched on the fence, uncaring of the damage she was doing to her dress. Neal supposed she would get Kitten, her dragon ward, to clean it up. "Numair's out. So's Keladry of Mindelan. Sir Payton and Joren of Stone Mountain are up in the northern villages. There've been rumours of attacks on the Gifted. I think Inness of Mindelan and his squire are there too. And the Fifth Riders are over at Port Legann."

 "Still, if he wants everyone back at Court..." mused Neal. "That means this is serious."

 "It always is round here." The Wildmage hopped off the fence. "You get used to your life hanging by a thread."

 "Like that hem," pointed out Neal, as the girl looked down and realised she had ripped half the skirt on a nail.

 "Mithros curse it!" She ripped the rest off to reveal that she was still wearing a tunic and breeches underneath. The Shang Horse and Neal burst out laughing - Zahir smouldered, clearly disapproving.

 "You don't change, do you?" said Neal.

 "We have a saying in the Yamani Isles," Hakuin informed them. His dark eyes were bright with laughter. "You can clothe a lamb in silk, but it will still taste the same."

"I hope you aren't planning to cook me!" Daine pulled a face. "I've had that happen too often."

"Well, if you will go around as a deer..." muttered Neal, who had been responsible for hitting her with a slingshot during a university hunt some years back. "You're asking for trouble."

  She glared at him. "And you are begging for it."

 "I don't beg!" Neal said in mock-lofty tones. "I'm a noble."

 "True," she agreed meekly. "Nobles don't beg. They steal." She laughed as Neal mouthed furiously, unable to think of a reply. "Come on, Neal. I have to go and change and you have to get ready for this mysterious soiree!"

~*~

 "Your name."

 Hot, scaly breath wafted over Andrea like misted poison and she thought she might collapse from the sheer fear. She lay quivering against the wall, her broken arm screaming in pain. Pure terror kept her looking into the grotesque reptilian face with its pink scaly skin and three purple eyes.

 "Andrea Kirisra," she answered in a tiny voice.

 She had refused to answer the first time it had asked, and it had backhanded her with one immensely powerful limb.

 "Tell me about the boy."

 For a moment, she was caught off guard,. The boy was her secret; her secret rescuer who was joined to her somehow, who sought her even now and whose magic combined with hers to make a deadly, dazzling force.

 "I..."

 Steel slid into its voice. "Tell me about the boy."

 "I don't know," she whispered. "He's just a boy. I don't even know his name."

 "Tell me how you reach the boy. How you make this joining of your Gifts."

 "I don't know," she said again. "He just...turns up. When I'm in trouble or hurt or-"

 Its claws crushed onto her legs. She was so shocked by the pain that exploded in her, filling her like boiling water, that she couldn't even scream. She even couldn't remember her own name. Her hands scrabbled at it, unaware of how the tiny sharp scales lacerated her hands, how the tendons stood out on her body as she fought against the pain.

 No, she would not scream, she would not give them the satisfaction, but oh the pain, she wouldn't, she wouldn'tthepainshewouldn't…

 She felt something inside her flex, like a bird unfurling its wings, as the pain roared up her body, taking her over.

 Flex. She could feel it, rising against the pain like a rush of cool amber wings, soaring and taking her with it. She felt herself leave her body briefly, leave that pain and reach out across time and space to the one soul she hunted...

She heard his voice, at first thick and foggy, dulled by the distance between them. And as her spirit-body flew across the land winking by in a roll of dark green and brown, it became clearer...

 He was in trouble.

 He was dying.

 "Hurry up, Pip," muttered Neal to himself, straightening his tunic one final time and adjusting the crafted dagger at his side. "Haven't got all evening."

 He was dressed in soft forest green and tawny brown that set off his blazing eyes. Neal shifted anxiously from foot to foot. The thought of facing the court had him more unnerved than if a troop of spidrens had crashed through the window.

 He gave the footman ready to announce the nobles a nervous grin. The man stared impassively back, standing perfectly straight in his powdered wig. As a couple swept past, the lady resplendent in a gold silk dress, he flung open the doors and shouted their names through the door. Neal felt the noise of the court roll over him briefly before the doors were slammed shut.

 He heard a frantic clattering of heels behind him and a squawk from an indignant courtier waiting to enter as Pip rushed in, her face becomingly flushed from what was obviously a mad dash.

 "Oh Neal!" she gasped, "I am so sorry, I was just practising knife throwing-" (Neal quickly made a vow not to let her touch his blade.) "-and I just completely forgot."

 "Hardly surprising, dear," commented a court lady in crimson, looking down her nose at Pip. "From what we hear..." Her male companion was giving Pip a look Neal didn't like at all, while the lady, with her piled up mass of red hair, sneered elegantly, "...knives aren't the only weapon you've been handling."

 "Lady Rhiannon, isn't it?" Neal said smoothly, keeping his anger under control. "And Lord Gregory." The lady's disdainful stare swung to pin him. "How is your husband? Oh, how foolish of me to forget, he ran off with that scullery maid last summer, didn't he? What a scandal that was...the court didn't stop gossiping about you for weeks and Mithros bright, I could tell you some rumours about you that would make you hair stand on end...oh I am sorry, that's a wig ,isn't it?"

 Her companion gave her a horrified look and dropped his hand from the lady's arm.

 "Well!" said Lady Rhiannon, her cheeks mottled with red. "Well, really!" She stormed off through the doors.

 Pip was hysterical with delight. "Oh thank you, Neal!" she said gleefully. "I didn't know you had such venom in you!"

 Neal grinned. Then for the first time, he looked at her. And his jaw fell open.

 Pip had left her hair down in a tumble of shiny brown curls that framed her delicate face. Unlike the fashion, she had used no make-up at all, and had a healthy tan that made her skin glow golden. Her dress was a sleekly-cut deep green that fell mid-way down her calves, slit along one side to the knee, and instead of the elaborate laced-up boots of dragonhide and wolfskin that style demanded, she had on a pair of high-heeled sandals that brought her an inch or two above Neal.

 "My dear," he said, when he had recovered his voice. "You're quite something."

 She grinned. "You don't look too bad yourself."

 "And you're looking positively smug," he said, seeing the wicked glitter in her sea-green eyes. The footman, he noticed from the corner of his eye, was watching them with interest.

 "Vinson of Genlith had better watch out," she declared, flicking her hair back. "I'm about to have the last laugh."

 Neal offered his arm, and she took it daintily, watching the other fussing, flapping peacocks of noblewomen that minced past, clinging to their escorts. Pip held herself away from him, walking in firm strides.

 "Ready?" said Neal under his breath.

 "Into the fire," she replied, and they both fixed smiles on their faces as the footman opened the doors and bellowed,

 "Squire Nealan of Queenscove, protégé of the King's Champion, and Lady Phillippa ha Minch, cousin to the King!"

 Neal nearly stopped still in shock.

~*~

 "Look at that!" said Ryan as they rode along the path, Master Salmalin and Bruna a little way behind. Kel followed his stare to see a glowing crimson sun, hovering on the horizon like a mad red eye. Night was sweeping above in shades of blue and grey, soft as the whisper of silk.

 "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight," Kel quoted, grinning at him. Neither of them had said a word about the night before, but every time he looked at her, they would share an amused, secret smile. She liked seeing the warmth in his eyes.

 "Red sky in the mornin', shepherd's house burnin'," he finished.

 "We're approaching a village, children," Numair Salmalin spoke up. Kel stopped her horse and turned to look at him. His dark eyes were solemn. "Take care to act normally. Make no mention of the Gift."

 "Ain't they goin' to recognise you?" Ryan's dove-grey eyes were fixed sharply on the mage. "Reckon you're pretty well known after t'Immortals War."

 The mage glanced up and down the road, then waved his hand in front of his face. The glow of his silver-shot black magic glittered brightly for an instant, and as he drew his hand over his face, Kel was astonished to see his features change. The dark eyes became a clear hazel, the swarthy skin becoming pale and his hair shortening. He looked like a young knight.

 "I'm sure this will do," the mage said and gave them a boyish grin. "Lady Bruna, keep your face hidden. These are your father's lands, are they not?"

 The girl nodded silently and drew the hood of her cloak over her fine-boned face. "His cursed lands," she said in a low voice. Kel had to wonder why she hated her father so much.

 The mage took a deep breath. "Let's go. Lady Keladry, you are my squire for the day. I doubt news of your appointment to Raoul will have reached this far into the land. Be careful. This is a dangerous place."

 And as they rode towards the smoky shadows of he village, it seemed to Kel that the night began to close in around them with its claws waiting to fall.

~*~

"Cousin to the King?" hissed Neal under his breath as he and Pip stepped down the stairs. He could hear the hubbub rising in the Court and, staring down at them, he felt as though he had stepped into a field of peacocks, dressed in all the gaudy colours of the rainbow. Jewellery flashed at him from every direction, curious faces watching them.

 "We don't advertise the fact," muttered Pip. Her grip on his arm was painful and it was only then he realised how nervous she was.

 They stopped a few feet from the throne, Neal bowed and felt Pip dip into a graceful curtsey.

 "The Lioness is late, Squire Nealan," the King remarked, his sapphire eyes twinkling. "What's her excuse this time?"

 "She's washing her hair, sire," Neal said promptly.

 The King snorted. "Of course she is, Squire Nealan. Sir Alanna always gets an urge to wash her hair extremely thoroughly when I summon her to a Court gathering. And it's amazing how she looks exactly the same as normal when she does finally turn up."

 "Will of the gods, sire," said Neal.

 "Of course. It is nothing at all to do with the fact she detests the Court," King Jonathan sighed. "A shame, when she livens it up so. As do you, Cousin."

 "We haven't seem you much lately," Queen Thayet said, leaning forward on her throne. She smiled kindly at Pip. "I haven't been in the defence classes recently - the Riders are taking up much of my time at the moment - but Buri tells me you have been absent of late."

 "I've been busy, highness," Pip said.

 "Hmmm." The Queen pursed her lips. "Well, Phillippa, I really do think it's a good idea if you go. The realm is dangerous nowadays."

 "Not as dangerous as me, highness," Pip said and grinned wickedly. Neal knew she was thinking about Vinson and wondered just what sort of nasty revenge she had planned.

 The Queen raised an eyebrow. "Arrogance is not a virtue, Phillippa. And my Court tells me you have been displaying rather a lot of it."

 Pip's smile vanished instantly. "The Court has a tendency to invent its entertainment."

 "I know, young lady," Thayet said sternly. "I do not believe a word of what I have been told. However, there are others who are only too happy to. I am sure your friendship with Squire Nealan is just that, as the Lioness has assured me, but take care." She sat back, effectively dismissing them.

 "Oh look," Pip said softly, vengefully as they walked into the crowds. "There's Vinson."

 Sure enough, the thin, skeletal youth was ringed by women and Neal could just pick out his sneering tones, throwing those vultures some scrap of gossip he had made up, no doubt.

 Beside him, Pip stopped, and gave him a catlike, secret smile. "Back in a moment, Neal," she said sweetly. "There's Uline. I must just go and say hello."

 "And if I come with you, it'll spoil the effect?" said Neal, puzzled.

 "Bear with me," she said. "Why don't you go and dance with Tanisa?" Neal looked over and found the vapid smile of the blond girl in the unbelievably tight purple dress fixed on him.

 "Goddess," he muttered, "How can she breathe in that dress?"

 "She doesn't, dear," drawled Pip. Her green eyes glinted at him mischievously. "Why on earth do you she's so vacant?" She paused. "Oh, look, she's coming over. You have fun chatting, now." She flitted away like a sylph in that ivy-green dress, and Neal steeled himself for the painful company of Tanisa.

~*~

 The horses' hooves sounded dull and heavy on the air. Kel couldn't stop her eyes from flicking around. This wasn't right. The people lined the streets, rows and rows of utterly silent black figures standing with arms crossed and weapons tapping meaningfully, faces set and curiously blank.

 "Halt."

 The word was soft, quiet, yet it fell on the dead air like a blast of blazebalm. A noble's voice, Kel realised, shocked.

 She pulled her horse up short, feeling Peachblossom shift and whinny to tell her that he didn't like this either, and subtly pulled her weapons closer to hand.

 The man who had stepped into the road was dressed in black. His face was masked, so only the icy rabid black of his eyes lanced them. Looking into them was like falling into pits where strange creatures lay fingering old bones. Kel swore she could hear their snuffling, their grating breath in her ears before she shook herself.

 "Good day," Numair said mildly, his magically changed face reflecting only polite courtesy. "How may we help?"

 The man moved towards them in an odd, slinky walk. It was as if a serpent had been given legs, and it sent chills wriggling down Kel's back as around them, the village took a step forward in unison. Kel felt Peachblossom shift backwards and cold fear begin to spread through her like a blossoming winter flower.

 "Name yourselves."

 "I am Sir Raimun of Corus," Numair said mildly. "This is my squire, Keladry of Mindelan. We are accompanying this lady and her servant to their home." Ryan looked mortally insulted at being called Bruna's servant, but he kept his eyes fixed on the ground.

 Let it work, Kel prayed, keeping her face Yamani-smooth though her heart beat like a drum gone mad.

 Silence, beat after thundering beat of her heart as the four of them stood there, frozen in the evening gloom with these sinister figures swaying all around with their blank faces, their impassive stares. Kel could see no humanity in them; even the smallest children stood still as statues with their faces clean and emotionless.

 "You lie," hissed the figure. "You lie, Gifted scum."

 "Uh-oh," she heard Ryan mutter softly. "Don't sound like they're ready to whip out the welcomin' banners."

 "We feel your taint," that black figure said coldly, solemnly. "And we will cleanse you from it."

 "We have no Gift," Numair Salmalin said calmly. Kel was astonished at how composed he sounded and looked. "I am but a knight, my squire but a girl. Would that we did; it would make riding the dark nights easier."

 "I see the deceit in your eyes," the man said flatly. His gaze swept over them, and Kel felt her blood run cold. This was not a man she stared at, it was a monster. What was it the alicorn had said?

 ~ Even the gods have been forsaken. Those mortals worship something else now, something evil and rotting. ~

 "Leave us be," said Ryan sharply. "We ain't Gifted. We're just travellers."

 The man laughed; a high, grating sound, it raked at the air like talons. "Why do you let them lie, daughter?"

 For a moment, Kel didn't know who they were addressing, then slowly, oh so slowly, she followed the man's inhuman stare, turning to look at the girl whose face was white as candle wax, her eyes two terrified holes within her head.

 Bruna of Farbrook had no words to answer her father.

~*~

 "Pippa!" Uline cried, throwing her arms around Pip in a typical display of extravagance. She was so lovely, Pip thought, but couldn't be envious of Uline in her electric blue dress with the loose gauze robe thrown across it, as ran the fashion, and the gems sparkling bright at her throat and ears.

 It was impossible to dislike her; she was always so sweet to Pip, treating her like the sister she would soon be and defending her from the sly jibes of other nobles. Now, she handed Pip a glass full of golden-white wine and bade her tell them all the news.

 "Hello, 'Lina," Pip said, smiling. "Kieran, you look so...like you belong in the menagerie."

 Her older brother, with his solemn hazel eyes and extra years, scowled at her. "It's the fashion, Pip."

 "And if the fashion were sackcloth and ashes, Kiery, would you wear that too?" she demanded archly.

 "Don't call me that childish name." He smouldered at her. Pip knew exactly how to annoy Kieran, and took great pleasure in it. "There's no crime in looking good."

 "Yes, but you look atrocious." The latest fashion of gaudy colours and glinting jewellery was most certainly not her staid brother. "Uline, are you really going to marry this fool?"

 Uline smiled up at Kieran, whose face softened fractionally. "If I didn't marry a fool, Pippa, I wouldn't marry at all."

 "And from what we've been hearing round the Court," Kieran said harshly, "You won't marry at all, Pip. What on earth are you thinking, fooling around with the Lioness's squire?"

 Pip glared at him. "You are a fool, brother. Neal is my friend and those rumours were spread by another squire. That noxious little Vinson of Genlith. Honestly, I'd pay to have him turned into a toad if he weren't already one."

 "Why would he do that?" Kieran said scornfully. "He's nothing to do with us, Pippa. And his family are rich merchants."

 "Oh," said Pip softly, "but, my naïve brother, Vinson has a secret of his own that he would like to keep very much concealed."

 "Do tell!" Uline said, her face flushed with excitement. "I always knew there something sinister about that little beast. You know, he once crooned the most obscene thing at me when I was walking past-"

 "Did he, by the gods!" Kieran said angrily. For all her brother's gravity, Pip knew he loved Uline with a passion that he would never show in public. And strange as it was, flirtatious, sunny Uline seemed to love him too. "And I'll bet it's that odious little wretch that's been spreading such filth about Ian!" The rumours about the ha Minch's dead brother had stung them cruelly. Pip knew Kieran had revered Ian, and now his eyes glowed with the heated wrath of a tiger. "I'll-"

 "You will do nothing, Kiery," cut in Pip coolly. She knew what dreadful etiquette it was to silence an older sibling, but her family had become used to her outspokenness.

 "What are you planning, Pippa?" said Uline, in her soft, well-bred voice.

 Pip ran her finger idly around the rim of her wineglass and tapped it, hearing the clear chime. "Plan? Oh, Uline, you make me sound so devious."

 "Out with it, you scheming witch," Kieran said sharply. He knew her too well, Pip thought.

 "I'm planning nothing," she insisted, "but Kiery, wouldn't it be unfortunate if some words...say, about Vinson's...unfortunate secret, happened to simply slip from my mouth, like his syphilis-" She clapped a hand over her mouth "Oops! Oh, how could I?"

 Uline put her hands to her heart. "He has syphilis!"

 Pip smiled sweetly. "Say it loud enough, 'Lina, and someone important will hear...and before that lying fool knows it, it will be true."

 Kieran's eyes glinted with mischief. However ruthlessly he suppressed it, her brother had a streak of the family wildness in him too, and learning that Vinson had insulted his beloved, not to mention his brother, was enough to rouse it. "And how did he come by this...regrettable disease?"

 "Oh, I really couldn't say," Pip drawled, taking a sip from her wineglass. "But young squire are wont to, shall we say, explore...and if one will consort with tavern whores-oh, I've said too much again! It must be the wine."

  "It must be," Kieran agreed darkly, eyeing her glass. "Why don't you drink some more, my devious little sister, and let us see what else falls from that cunning mind of yours."

 Green eyes and hazel met, and the two siblings shared a satisfied smile. He may be dull, Pip thought, but you can always count on your family.

 "And is it not strange," murmured Pip, sipping at the wine. It really was a good vintage, strong and not too dry. "That a tavern whore of that very area was found beaten and battered not so long ago? The whisper of the streets grows loud enough for us to hear...and it tells me that whore lost a bastard child, the beating was so severe."

 "Oh Pippa," Uline said, somewhere between shocked and delighted, "now I know why Kieran says you are the black sheep of the family!"

 "I'm beginning to think she is a wolf in sheep's clothing," Kieran said respectfully. "You've certainly grown some sharp teeth, Phillippa. Is any of this true?" He said the last in a very low voice, so the nobles pretending not to eavesdrop would not hear.

 "No," Pip whispered, "but he has smeared our reputation with mud, so we will smear his with dung."

 "Oh look!" said Uline, unable to hide her luminous smile. "There is my sister, and Jyar." Jyar of Fief Greenwood was Uline's closest friend. "I think I'll go and talk to them..."

 Kieran grinned. "And I recognise Michael and David. They were pages when I was...I think I'll go and see how they've fared."

 Pip sighed contentedly. "Better, I suspect, than Vinson of Genlith." She raised her voice a little. "Such an honourable family...they will be devastated to hear he has been dabbling with commoners."

 Over the other side of the room, Vinson was sneering at her, completely unaware of the whispers that began to flourish all around him as Uline and Kieran's friends, looking shocked and fascinated, slid over to other groups...who moved to speak with other little huddles of flashy, chattering courtiers...the words slid from ear to ear like wildfire, and soon the Court was aflame with the news.

 Pip went to rescue Neal from the clutches of Tanisa, seeing the slightly pained look on his face. Having pried the girl away, murmuring that her friends seemed to want to talk to her about something rather scandalous, she smiled at her noble friend.

 "You look very satisfied, my dear," commented Neal. "Like the cat that got the cream."

 "This cat," she said, smiling as the players struck up a waltz, "just used her claws. That's one mouse who will never threaten me or my family again."

 "Hear hear," Neal said brightly, his emerald eyes glowing at her. He really was striking, Pip thought. Not handsome, but then who needed handsome when you had a wit and charm like his?

 "Oh no," she said coyly, accepting his hand as they stepped onto the dancefloor. "Hearsay."

~*~

 "That's your father?" hissed Ryan, his eyes huge and wide. "He's the one whose been killin' the Gifted an' drivin' away the magic?"

 Bruna didn't answer. Her lips were pressed together and Kel could see her hands trembling on the rein.

 "Tell me truly, daughter," that snaky smooth voice said. Kel thought it was the most terrible, merciless sound she had ever heard. "Who do you travel with?"

 Bruna stayed silent, her beautiful face tight and strained.

 "Tell me!" The iron-hard voice cracked into the air like a whip. "The fire is waiting, foul tainted child, and I am prepared to wait the time it will take for the brands to heat."

 Brands? Kel stared at the hard black eyes, at this lord's, this fiend's ruthless face. Brands were for cattle and goods, not children. And in those eyes, she saw the insanity, grown old and hard like ice. He cares nothing for her, she understood. She is his daughter, but he doesn't feel anything for her.

 Dear Goddess, what had he done to her? She dared not think, for she feared the answer would be too dreadful to contemplate.

 Bruna's shaken voice was bereft of its arrogance, of its richness, a thin grey ghost. "There are three Gifted."

 "You have no Gift!" he said in that flat and dead voice. "Ugly changeling, you are not Gifted. You are Cursed. I have worked so hard to free you from your curse, but still the evil stays inside you, eating away at you. Your soul has decayed. I see it, I see it and there is only one thing for you now."

 His black eyes seemed to widen and swell until they dominated that masked face, two pools of slick black oil.

 "Only death will cleanse you now," he hissed, and to those silent, waiting villagers with their crude weapons and voided faces, he said, "Cleanse them. Destroy their evil!"

 And they attacked, screaming.

 But they were saying no words. They only howled, like beasts driven mad, that eerie ululating sound echoing in the air until it filled Kel's ears and drove into her brain.

 Numair shouted something, words that rent the air in two with a terrible thundering boom and a blinding light exploded into the air. The howls of the village people became frightened, but still they attacked. Kel leapt from Peachblossom, knowing it was safer and saw Ryan and the mage dismounting too.

 Bruna, she saw with horror, put up no resistance as she was dragged from her horse. Gods, was she mad?

 Spells zinged through the air, in flashes of silver-black and turquoise lightning, knocking people out as Kel parried and blocked the rakes and feeble weapons of the people. She was trying not to hurt them, but even the children clawed at her, hissed and spat curses that would have shocked even gutter-children.

 "Kel!" Ryan was street-fighting and magicking his way through the crowd, giving as good as he got and usually better. "You okay?"

 "Fine!" she shouted, stumbling slightly as a fist connected hard with her shoulder. "Need a weapon?"

 "Need a damn miracle!" he said and was beside her, flashing her that bold smile, despite the cuts bleeding all over his face and arms. He snapped a word and a blast of wind threw the people back, briefly leaving a clear circle around him and Kel. "I ain't ever seen anythin' like this. Weapon, lass?"

 "On my back," said Kel hurriedly, catching her breath. "Axe."

 "Cheers." They stood back to back, weapons poised. "Ridin' with you is an adventure, I'll say that."

 "It's your fault we're in this mess!" she said indignantly. The horde weren't attacking...they were just standing there, as if waiting for something. "Ryan...any idea what's going on?"

 "None, an' I don't like it," he said grimly. "Master Numair's shapeshifted, he's gone to see if there's any help an' if not, he comin' back...he said somethin' about Old Thak? Sounded pretty mad."

 Then they saw the black-clad man stepping through the crowd, who parted like curtains drawing back. He stood for a moment, his frenzied eyes glittering at them, then he saw Ryan properly.

 "You!" he snarled. "Monster! You freed another of your foul kind!"

 Ryan stared. "You're the one who hurt Andrea! An' I'd a' freed anyone you caught. Am I the one with the serious sanity complex? I don't think so. I ain't killin' anythin' I don't understand."

 The man stared, then he tilted his head back to the sky, shaggy dark hair tumbling back like a wolf's pelt. And he howled.

 And when they charged, he was at their head, all of them baying crazily.

 Kel braced herself, felt Ryan do the same. But nothing could have prepared her for what happened next. Their bodies seemed to ripple like something moving underwater, undulating and bending unnaturally. And she saw the man's face change, the teeth lengthening to fangs, his eyes turning the eerie, reflective green of a cat's.

 The halflings, she thought suddenly, desperately. Oh gods above, it's happening again.

 And when the pack of wild beast-men hit, they were completely helpless. Kel felt claws scrape along her chest as she was hurled to the ground; she saw Ryan fall back, his throat a crimson mess, and knew he was dead. Desperately she fought, trying not to think about it, fighting for her very life against this terrible magic...that was why they killed the alicorn, that was why they killed the Gifted. For their power, no, no, no...

 The world exploded in a rolling surge of silver fire and-

 That voice she loathed so, that terrible gloating voice filled the silence. She could only wait for its judgement.

 She was in a village. In a village, in her spirit body, pale and insubstantial as a ghost.

 That, Andrea understood. And there was the boy, the streetboy who had travelled so far to save her, riding with three people she didn't know at all. One a noble girl, whose face was icy pale, as though she drowned in chill waters. One a squire, a stocky girl whose eyes were hard with determination. And one a mage, whose true face lay under an enchantment but shone through to her eyes with the iridescence of a dragonfly's wings. All this she saw.

 And her heart turned to lead as she saw the black-clad man.

 Him. The Executioner, who had brought her to the gallows and but for the intervention of the streetboy, would have killed her.

 Beware! She wanted to shout, but knew they would never hear her, this ghost of a girl. Run, run quickly! He is not a man, he is an evil thing!

 And as the man and his crowd of soulless villagers charged, she could only watch, a ghost that no one saw or heard.

~*~

 Cleon of Kennan sighed and stretched lazily. The winter sun was bright and warming on his back. Not far to go now, he thought. Soon be back to the palace for Spring Equinox. It was a comforting thought. Back with all his friends, with know-it-all Neal, quiet Seaver, Faleron who had more noblewomen chasing him than Cleon had hot dinners, and of course, his grin widened, Kel.

 "I don't know what you're looking so cheerful about, squire," Inness, Kel's brother and Cleon's knight-master said grumpily. "We've leagues to ride yet, and in this company too."

 Cleon shrugged happily. He knew Inness didn't really mind travelling with the Fifth Riders, who they had met in Port Legann some weeks back and been travelling through the country with of late, or with Sir Paxton, who, strict old devil that he was, at least didn't talk much.

 No, it was Joren of Stone Mountain Inness didn't like and didn't bother to hide it.

 The blond page rode up ahead, as far away as possible. His hair shone blood-red in the light of the setting sun. More like his true colour, Cleon thought. Yes, Joren and Kel might have called this unlikely truce a while back, but he didn't trust him one bit.

 "You all right there?" said the Riders' leader, a freckled, quirky girl called Miri. She had slowed down to talk to them. "I know this might sound a little strange, Sir Inness, but...we haven't been attacked in weeks."

 Kel's brother frowned, and looked very like his younger sister then. Cleon eavesdropped unashamedly - that was what squires did.  "I know. It's been bothering me too. Since we hit Dunholt and Farbrook, the lands seem to have been empty of immortals. It was quiet when Cleon and I rode up this way too...very strange, this place was overrun but a month or two back."

 "We've not passed a village that's said anything to us about killing one either," remarked the Rider girl, absently patting her horse's head. "And they're usually so proud of it, too."

 "No one in the villages has said anything at all lately," remarked Inness, his frown deepening. "Never mind about immortals."

 "Sir?" Cleon cut in, flushing slightly as they both realised he had been listening. "There was that one village, where you stopped to take a stone out of Nightshade's hoof..."

 Inness shrugged. "Yes, but I went into the smith's to beg a new shoe and he didn't say a word."

 "Not to you, sir," Cleon muttered, "but his apprentice came over and...well, he asked me something very odd."

 "Odd?" Miri's eyebrows arched. "Define odd, Cleon."

 "He asked if either of us were Gifted," Cleon said, faintly puzzled. "And I thought you know, maybe it was because someone was ill, but when I asked, he just told me...that no, everyone here had been cured of their ills. And he laughed. It was...strange."

 "You didn't mention this earlier," Inness said sharply.

 "I didn't think anything of it, truth to tell," he answered. "Village folk can be a bit bizarre. Round my way, they were all half-afraid of me. I don't know why, one of them kept muttering about monsters and my family." Cleon grinned. "We aren't that bad."

 Miri snorted. "You nobles. Such a high opinion of yourselves."

 However, his knight-master didn't seem to be taking it as lightly. "We'd best press on," he said. "Next village-"

 Suddenly they saw a bolt of black streak past them. Cleon whipped round to stare after it; it was a hawk, flying uncommonly low, and as he watched, it turned and pelted back to land amidst them, then shapeshifted into the form of a tall and extremely clothes-less man.

 "Master Numair?" Inness said, throwing him a cloak as Miri went scarlet and turned her head. The mage had bruises all over his face, and a gash bleeding down his side. "What's going on..."

 "Listen!" the mage snapped. They all silenced and faintly, at the very edges of his hearing, Cleon heard-

 Screaming, dreadful and unnatural sounds like a pack of wolves mingled with tigers.

 "The village up ahead," the mage said briefly. "Some of our own are in there - ride fast. You're fighting shapeshifters. Sir Inness-" His voice halted the knight as he began to ride off. Cleon stopped also; Inness was his knight-master.

 "Master Salmalin?" the knight said tersely as the Riders left. "Hurry, if as you say-"

 "Keladry is in there," the mage said, his dark eyes sorrowed and exhausted. "And two of my students, young mages. Do not do anything in haste. I will join you shortly."

 Inness's face tightened at the thought of his younger sister in there and Cleon felt his own heart clench with fear. Mithros guard Kel, he thought. She's a friend I can't bear to lose.

 Inness spurred the horse down the road, his face set with rage. Had he glanced behind him, Cleon would have seen the tall mage collapse, slowly creasing up on himself until he was a black heap in the road.

 But Cleon saw nothing.

 Something else, however, did.

~*~

 Andrea felt Ryan Talver die, felt his life snuff out like a candle without even a wisp of smoke left behind it, and she screamed, throwing all her magic, all her soul after this boy to who she was linked in some inexplicable way by her gods.

 But there was nothing. Not a flicker of his Gift to cling to, only the hollow, hushed space where he should have been.

 Mithros! She shouted for her god, her champion. Mithros, answer me!

 The silence rolled around her. And Andrea got angry.

 How dare he abandon her? How dare he ignore her, and let her be caught and imprisoned by that foul beast that back there, back where her body was, was hurting her? How dare he let this boy, who was the only one who cared enough to search for her, die?

 MITHROS! she shrieked furiously at the sky. You will answer me!

 Winds screamed around her.

 You dare summon me? the voice of her god bellowed in outrage, echoing as the deepest cavern. A mortal?

 Your mortal! Andrea shouted furiously, forgetting his power. You chose me, now you damn well protect me!

 A pause, and then booming laughter filled the air. Mithros appeared in front of her, as ghostly as she herself, his stern eyes hot as the sun, but his mouth smiling. Little mortal, you impress me, he said. Why do you call?

 The boy! she said desperately. In her ghost form, she stepped through the fallen bodies, a silent dancer amongst this dreadful tableau. She was a golden being, a torch within the foul and choking darkness that ringed this place.

 She stopped by her streetboy saviour, and stared down. His face was the bland pale colour of flour, and along his throat ran that thick line of darkening crimson, ragged as a madman's grin.

 For me, she thought in anguish. It is I who did this.

 Please, she said, turning terrified eyes to her god, Please, save him. Bring him back.

 The souls of mortals are beyond my grasp, Mithros answered, and there seemed to be something like sorrow in his voice. Looking into his eyes, which had become dark and silent as an open grave, she saw he spoke true. I can only touch their lives, for life is guided and decided. But death is chance, and it is a game even gods cannot hope to win.

  No, she said softly, denying it. In her face, the god could see something shattering, such loss in her eyes. The only person who has cared anything about me, and you let him die?

 It is so, child, a new voice said.

 Andrea spun, and the Goddess was there, simple in a black shift that seemed to glow with the trapped colours of the nights. She was beautiful beyond any mortal woman, but it was a hard, gemlike beauty. Not warm or living, and perhaps not even real.

  You were supposed to look after him! Andrea said wildly.

 The Goddess's smoky gaze reminded the girl of the fell marshlights, the luminous green lights that lured travellers to their death in the murky waters. This is magic beyond me, child. We gods have little power where belief has been forsaken. Belief is what gives us our strength...and so many of these mortals have traded their belief for the shadow-magic.

 No! Andrea shouted ferociously. Her face was fierce as a vixen defending her den. I won't let it be true! I won't!

She knelt by the boy's body, barely noticing the herd of new people, of horsemen stampeding through the masses of beasts that snuffled and yowled at the swirling edges of night that pushed out the bleeding orange sun. She didn't notice the girl-squire who was close by, still feebly fighting the creatures that attacked her.

 Her magic rolled around her like a golden cloak, making the air curiously warm, though no onlooker would have seen anything amiss. Healing the fatal gash along his throat took but a second, yet though his body was whole, it was empty of his soul.

 Andrea noticed nothing but the flat and fixed grey of this boy's eyes, the gateway to where his spirit had fled. Slowly, slowly, she drew on the Gift that simmered within her. Those dead eyes, with their expanse of stony, shrunken grey and the two black abysses within them. She willed herself down that gloomy tunnel, along the path his soul had flown for the Realms of the Dead, wanted it, craved it with every fibre of her being-

 She was falling, tumbling frantically down that long and empty channel into endless shadows, her magic leaving a trail of golden light behind her to guide her back.

 She fell and thought she heard wisps of voices she had once known floating around her among weeping and wailing and sorrow that weighed on her like fathoms of choking black water.

 "...never have been born..."

 "...must run faster, my daughter..."

"...come back, come back, we miss you so..."

And then a light, looming at the end of this cold tunnel as unearthly winds made her hair stream behind her like a golden veil, a bright blue light that exploded into her eyes-

 She was in the Realms of the Dead.

~*~

 Mithros glanced at the Goddess. "Mortals," he muttered. "They have so little faith in us."

"They can only believe what they know," the Goddess said mildly. Her face, to Mithros, was not that of an inhumanly beautiful woman, but merely the personification of feminism; at one and the same, he saw in her the child, snub-nosed and innocent, the bold and lovely maiden, the shielding mother and even the raddled crone, wise and fearsome. "And all that girl-child has known is prejudice and hatred. We cannot expect her trust."

 The sun-god sighed, making his burnished armour glint golden in the light of the dripping sun. "Still, she was painfully easy to fool," he said with a touch of dourness. "Mortal lives are beyond us indeed!" He snorted. "We're gods. The universe itself is but a toy in our grip."

 "A fragile toy, all the same," the Goddess cautioned. "We must be careful not to break it. What do you think of our young cubs?"

 The god's piercing gaze became thoughtful. "Their magic may one day rival our own," he said finally. "I have seen grown magic-mortals-"

 "Mages," corrected the goddess firmly. Mithros was inclined to have his head in the clouds - no pun intended - most of the time, while she kept herself far more involved with mortal affairs; after all, she was mother as well as maiden and crone, and she kept a benevolent eye on her charges.

 "Very well, grown mages unable to travel to the Realms of the Dead. And yet this child, this Andrea Kirisra, managed in a few breaths."

 "Well," purred a new voice, heavy as silk and slightly rasping, "If the sun-god ever deigned to look down at his oversized feet occasionally, he might have noticed that mortals have grown more powerful. Besides, desperation is a powerful goad."

 A small black cat had simply appeared and twined itself around the Goddess's feet before leaping to her shoulder in one swift, graceful motion.

 "My feet are not oversized," replied Mithros indignantly as the Goddess and the cat shared a secret, feline smile. "I'm a god; therefore, I am perfection. All feet should be measured in relation to mine."

 "Dear me," said the cat disdainfully. "You gods do seem to find the concept of a joke so difficult to grasp."

"Not all of us, little one," the Goddess murmured, stroking the glossy black fur. "You are however right; mortals grow ever stronger. Look."

 All three turned to stare at the carnage before them. "They have so much power they believe they no longer need us," the Goddess said, her voice the soft murmur of a brook.

  "What dark sorcery is this?" scowled Mithros, for the first time noticing the true horror of the scene. Jets of lightning leapt from his hair as he began to smoulder in fury. "Why was I not told of this?"

 "You were too busy ruling the world," the cat muttered. "Obsessive dictators always seem to miss their downfalls."

 "You will tame that beast!" barked the god.

 The Goddess raised a perfect eyebrow. "You can take a cat from the wild, brother, but you can never take the wild from a cat." She stroked the cat, and it wriggled and purred upon her shoulder. "Fidelis is entitled to his opinion."

 The cat blinked its deep purple eyes smugly at the god, who glared back. That stare would have killed anyone mortal, but the cat began to wash its face disinterestedly.

 "As it happens," the Goddess said calmly, "I did not know either. And you spoke true; we have little power here. What will occur is in the hands of the mortals."

 "Oh me," Mithros said fervently.

~*~

 Cleon thought he was going to go insane when he saw the village.

 They had ridden frantically through silent empty houses, hearing that unnatural clamour of feral voices while their horses' hooves thundered fiercely in their ears, kicking up dust.

 And then they came to the other side, and the carnage there made his heart hurt for the horror.

 Animals and people were scattered around, and tired of their prey, the villagers, had turned on one another, maddened by bloodlust and magic they had no concept of. Creatures snarled and tore at one another, howls rising balefully into the air. He was glad of the gloom; at least then he could pretend that those still dark shapes slumped on the ground were sacks, not living beings.

 The creatures were all predators, with hooked claws and muzzles that dripped liquid darkness. Wolves, most, some large felines that yowled and arched their backs, some mere cubs that tore frenziedly at whatever was nearest.

 As the creatures saw the Riders, most fled into the forests around the village, sleek and menacing forms that slid away. But some remained, their lips skinning back. Growls erupted around them and the Riders' horses shied away. They seemed to be led by a huge black wolf that towered above the rest by a hand, a wolf with inhumanly red eyes that glowed like a sullen blood-moon.

 "On foot!" Miri shouted. "Have your weapons to hand before you dismount. Ricken, Vanya, load up those crossbows!"

 "Aim to kill, " Inness's voice cut in flatly. Cleon glanced at his liege lord's face and was shocked at the harsh and grim lines drawn there, like someone had run sharp nails down his skin.

 "Are you sure?" Miri said, her bright eyes wide. She was ashen, Cleon saw, and felt better knowing he wasn't the only one afraid.

 "Hadn't you better make up your mind...sirs..." The clipped and lazy voice of Joren drawled into the silence. He looked completely unflustered by the grotesque scene before them. "Those creatures don't look like they're about to put their feet up and wait for us to decide."

 One leapt, its mouth opening into a red maw. It sprang with a speed and strength no wolf had, aiming at the mounted Rider closest. Cleon could only watch in horror, see the fluid grace in its muscles and realise, staring at its shiny jade eyes, that this was nothing human, not anymore-

 A crossbow twanged.

 The creature folded in mid-air and hit the ground, skidding a foot through the dirt before its dusty corpse came to a halt.

 The Rider it had been aiming at gave the archer, Vanya, shaky thanks.

 "Guess we're aiming to kill then," the girl drawled, reloading her crossbow. She flicked short red hair from her eyes and sighted at another. "Ready, Miri."

 "Dismount," Miri said tersely and they leapt off, weapons drawn and poised. "Wave-walker guard us, advance."

 They walked slowly forward. Cleon could feel sweat between his shoulders blades and his heartbeat seemed to drown out all else. He saw a huddled form to one side, messy with blood, and prayed it wasn't Kel. He had not prayed in a long time, but now he called the name of every god he knew.

 The black wolf raised its head to the darkening sky, and a liquid, eerie howl poured from its throat like sleek oil, curling into the air.

 Then it lowered its raven head, those red eyes stoked from within and glowing hot, and charged, its Pack baying behind it.

 Snarling filled his ears and before he knew it, Cleon was embroiled in a furious, ungainly fight. He struck out wildly, aiming for glinting, slavering muzzles and slashing claws. He heard distantly the sharp twang of the bows, saw animals slump to the ground in pooled heaps and become humans again, waxen in death.

 They were winning, he understood suddenly, as he flung away a wolf that had sunk its teeth into his arm, kicked at some kind of desert dog that clawed his calf. Bloody but exhausted, the Riders and the knights were hanging on, striking back.

 He lifted his sword again, and then realised there was nothing left to fight. As he watched, the black wolf slunk into the woods, leaving only bodies behind.

 The silence hit him like a punch. It was a fey, terrible silence; the hush of a battlefield, broken only by the whimpering of wounded beasts that stared at them with rabid eyes, the soft curse of a Rider whose arm had been broken and-

 "Two hundred nobles of silk, ruined!" carped Joren, his cornflower blue eyes horrified. "And look at my armour! Saliva all over it, do you have any comprehension of how revoltingly difficult that is to clean off?"

 Cleon was debating between breaking his nose or breaking his jaw, when Joren looked at his feet and exclaimed even more loudly,

 "Well, well, Lady Bruna of Farbrook!" He sounded positively gleeful. "So she finally found her place; in the dirt."

 Miri limped over, rubbing at a scrape on her cheek. "Is she all right?" she demanded.

 Joren gave her a cool look. "People like Bruna bounce back," he said serenely. "Haven't you heard that scum always floats to the top?"

 Takes one to know one, Cleon thought silently.

 "I didn't ask for a social analysis," Miri snapped. "Is she injured?"

 "There a large pool of blood around her head," Joren pointed out. "Is she likely to be taking a quick nap? I doubt it." When he saw Miri's face, with a heavy sigh, as though he couldn't believe how unreasonable the Rider was being, he bent down and had a look at her. "Nothing a good healer won't cure."

 "Good." The brown haired young woman turned away from Joren. Cleon saw her lips moving silently, and guessed it wasn't polite praise. "Inness, are those two ours?"

 Inness's voice was slightly strangled. "One's dead," he said, his face bleak. The other's...it's my sister."

 And as he turned the suddenly small, fragile heap over, Cleon's stomach jolted coldly as the head lolled back and he saw the torn, pallid face of Keladry of Mindelan.

~*~

 The gathering was in full swing when the Lioness strode in, her purple eyes ablaze with their usual barely repressed fury at having to spend time with the Court, and the King clapped his hands and called for a halt to the music.

 "What on earth is going on?" Pip whispered to Neal as they left the dancefloor. They hadn't moved from it for a half-hour at least, and he was surprised to find his feet didn't ache at all. Still, he thought, dancing with Pip was a delight; she was graceful as a sylph, and never stopped cracking jokes and making arch comments on everyone around her.  "I've never seen the King stop a dance."

 "I don't know," Neal said softly. "But he called this ball for a reason, and I suppose we're about to discover it."

 "Lady Lioness," the King said sharply. "It is kind of you to grace us with your esteemed presence."

 The Lioness glared back, her red hair as fiery as her temper. "I was washing my hair."

 "Where, in Scanra?" the King said, his sapphire eyes piercing. Neal had to wonder how Lady Alanna managed to hold his stare. On the other side of the room, he could see her husband, the reckless baron, hiding a grin.

 "Would you get to the point?" the Lioness demanded as the Court rippled with amusement. "I assume this isn't a social gathering, despite those out-of-tune musicians."

 The King dismissed her with a curt nod. Alanna spotted Neal and Pip and gave them a wide smile.

 "He's so banal sometimes," she muttered. "And may I assume this is Lady ha Minch?"

 "Lady ha Minch is my mother," Pip said wryly. "I'm Phillippa."

 Neal could tell from the glance the Lioness shot him that she approved of Pip. "The one all the squires have been teaching to fight?"

 "They didn't teach me," Pip corrected in a firm whisper as the King began a welcoming speech - a formality, nothing more, before he got down to business. "They have expanded my knowledge of ways to break bones."

 "I'm glad to hear it," the Lioness said with a chuckle. "Long may it continue. Oh, you are here," she added to the attractive, grinning man who had strolled up, light-footed as a cat. "Phillippa, this is my good-for-nothing husband, Baron George Cooper."

 "Good-for-nothin'?" the former thief said lightly, giving Pip a wink from his hazel eyes. "You weren't sayin' that last night, lady-me-love."

 The Lioness went a colour of furious red as her husband laughed. "As you can see," he said cheerfully, "my noble lass hasn't cured me of all my commoner habits yet." He glanced up. "Good job I was here already," he said with a sigh, "or it would have been a long trip from the Swoop."

 Why Baron Cooper had been there, Neal didn't know, though he was beginning to suspect that the Lioness's fiendishly intelligent husband was the man who kept the King so well informed through a vast network of spies.

 "Do you know what this is about?" the Lioness asked him. She had one hand curled around the sword at her waist, the way she always did when she was unsure. If there was one thing Neal had learned about his knight-master, it was her absolute faith in weaponry.

 George Cooper lost his smile abruptly. "Aye. It's not good, lass. I've never heard of the like..."

 "The like?" Alanna frowned. "Stop being so infuriatingly cryptic!"

 "Jon's about to explain," the one-time thief said grimly.

 Glancing around, Neal realised the King had indeed finished his speech and was gazing around his court with solemn eyes. Silence fell among the nobles, the well-bred and ill-mannered, those dressed in silk while their people wore rags and those who cared, thankfully, more for their own people than for gatherings of this nature.

 "A new danger has been brought to my attention," the King said softly. "Courtiers of Tortall, these past years we have braved fire, fog and flood. Immortals have tried to overwhelm our lands and failed; magic grows ever more powerful and ever more dangerous. Our younglings have been lost to war and illness. And out of the ashes, we have risen again with new alliances and new discoveries. But I fear the darkness is upon us again."

 Neal glanced at Pip, unnerved by this speech. Her face was intent, her sea-green eyes fixed upon the King.

 "The north has fallen," King Jonathon said quietly. The words fell into the unnatural hush like the thud of an axe, clean and sharp. "Not to invaders or immortals, but to evil of the highest order. A new magic has arisen there, a magic which transforms men into beasts."

 "Wild magic!" someone called out. Neal glanced across the room and saw Daine Sarrasri's face, calm and serene. She must have been told earlier, Neal thought, and realised he hadn't seen her since he left her hours earlier to prepare for this meeting.

 "Not so," answered the King. "This foulness is made by the slaughter of those with magic. The people of the north have stolen the powers of countless immortals and Gifted, massacred more than we can ever truly know. They have forsaken our gods, and follow a tainted religion of blood and lunacy."

 The Court was rapt, paralysed by fear and curiosity. People huddled closer, unsettled by the solemnity of the King. Suddenly, their tawdry clothes and gleaming gems seemed out of place.

 "We must stop this madness." That stern sapphire stare swept the mass of nobles. Beside him, Queen Thayet was dignified and pale as a marble statue. "I learned this news but this morning, and I must tell you that at least three of our own walk those shadowy paths. Numair Salmalin, Bruna of Farbrook and Keladry of Mindelan are far from our safety now. But not for long."

 "My liege!" The Lioness's voice rang out. Her purple eyes were brilliant with emotion. "A question."

 "Champion," the King acknowledged.

 "You say that these people have magic that allows them to become beasts. How can we fight this? I mean no offence to Daine, but having seen her fight, I must say I would be hard-pushed to fight one shapeshifter, let alone many, even with the Gift."

 The King nodded his dark head. "True, Lioness, but from what I have been told, few of these people have any great control over what form they take. They are untrained in the arts of magic, and we know too well that magic is never easy to control."

 "What do you propose?"

 "First," the King said grimly, "I must have the names of all who are here tonight. The leader of these...I hesitate to call them people, for no human being would do such abominable deeds...this group, is a noble."

 There was a shocked outcry at that. The King held up a hand. "It is true. I myself spoke to a runner from one of the villages who took flight when he saw what was happening. Had he arrived sooner, we might have been  able to save some of our Gifted. Those of you whose lands lie to the north must return as soon as possible. I will send knights and soldiers with you to protect your lands."

 He looked around. "You will meet no immortals on your way. All immortals are gone from the northern lands. I will send mages with each of you, but be aware that the mages are likely to be the first attacked, so must be the most closely guarded. I would ask that you do not kill unless you must."

 The sapphire eyes darkened almost to black. "But whatever the cost, we must erase this bloodshed from our land."