Welstiel and his father dismounted, and Lord Massing lifted Magelia to the ground and grasped her wrist to drag her inside. Her black hair hung in waves to the middle of her slender back, and her blue dress made her skin appear ivory. She struggled and tried to jerk away, but her captor kept walking, unhindered by her efforts.

Master Ubad's bony hand motioned Welstiel to follow, as he moved smoothly toward the keep's main doors. Welstiel abhorred being so close to the creature, but he had little choice and followed.

"I can walk on my own!" Magelia shouted. "Leave me be."

Some part of Welstiel was capable of pity, but this woman was just a peasant. He found these unfolding events more and more distasteful. They entered the main hall, furnished only by an aged table, a few chairs, and dusty rushes covering the floor. Welstiel shivered in the cold. He was always cold in this foreign land and rarely removed his cloak even when indoors.

His father suffered no such discomfort, not since Wel-stiel's youth and the first appearance of Ubad in their lives. Lord Massing released the woman and removed his own cloak with one hand, tossing it onto the table.

Magelia backed into the nearest wall, and Ubad's head turned as if he could see her clearly through the leather covering his eyes.

"Do not allow your guard to drop, Bryen," he said. "She must not escape."

It grated on Welstiel that this creature spoke to his father in such a manner. Welstiel called him "Father," of course, but all others conducted themselves with suitable decorum, even Prince Rodek of the Antes. At the counsel gatherings of the house's nobles, his father was announced as "Lord Bryen Massing."

Ubad did not show his father the proper respect.

Withered, faceless, conjurer of spirits of the dead-such rare specialization earning the title of necromancer-Ubad's forecasting ability was questionable at best. He amounted to little more than a servant in Welstiel's eyes and yet addressed Welstiel's father in a familiar way.

Lord Massing raised a hand to his temple. His left eyelid twitched as he whispered inaudibly to himself.

Welstiel no longer asked what troubled him. His father's unnerving habit of speaking to himself was becoming common. Ubad did not hesitate, sliding closer.

"Your son can lock up the woman until all is arranged. You should rest… slumber… and commune."

Bryen Massing stared blankly into Ubad's mask, then nodded.

"Yes, see to matters here," he said, and turned toward the stairs curving up the inner wall, his vacant gaze passing briefly over Welstiel. "Lock her in the cellar and assist Master Ubad as needed."

Lord Massing walked heavily up the stone steps, leaving Welstiel to handle Magelia. He did not want to touch her for any reason, even on the orders of his father. This arranged joining was not of his making or desire. He pointed toward the stairs leading down the opposite way to the lower chambers.

"Go," he said.

Beneath the fright in Magelia's dark eyes was anger, and she was watchful, studying everything around her. Welstiel noted for the first time that her face was attractive, with a long straight nose and delicate jaw framed by her mass of black hair. Her wrists and fingers were slender to the point of fragility. He pitied her as he might pity a sack of kittens just before they were thrown into a river.

With a tilt of his head, he motioned again to the stairs and took a step toward her. She slid away from him along the wall and proceeded on her own. As they reached the stairs, a crate was pulled in through the keep's doors, and Welstiel glanced back.

It was not the one that had crushed the man-at-arms. Built like a cage of wooden struts, thick canvas panels were stretched inside its bars to hide or protect what it held.

As Welstiel descended behind Magelia, he heard the thrash of beating wings against the canvas.

Late the same night, Welstiel descended into the cellar passage. He passed the doors of the six small rooms, the first of which held Magelia locked within. He did not stop, but walked on to the end and the seventh room. Inside, he found a flurry of activity.

Five crates had been unloaded. Several conscripted villagers and a few men-at-arms were settling the crates in place and removing their tarps.

First the steel-bound oak box containing the muffled rage of its occupant, and then the framed canvas with its soft sounds of fluttering misery within. The third was cedar, and silent inside, while the fourth was a framework of oak surrounding an urn large enough for a man to crawl inside. The latter's weight was three or four times that of the others and, when moved, it sloshed liquid inside. Even when the box sat undisturbed, Welstiel occasionally heard liquid lap against the leather-sealed opening at its top.

The fifth container was by far the most unsettling and intriguing.

It measured less than half a man's height in all dimensions and was made of bound steel plates that were discolored and blackened. Steam rose with a sizzling crackle from the damp floor when it was set down, and erratic scraping came from within the metal walls. The frantic noise grew until a screech from the steel made everyone in the room flinch. Every nerve in Welstiel quivered at the sound. Then the crate sat silent.

A villager was freeing a chain used to drag it along and brushed a hand against the discolored metal. The sizzle of his flesh filled the room and he cried out and pulled back, putting his hand to his mouth. He crumpled to the floor, whimpering, until a man-at-arms kicked him into motion again.

Welstiel left the seventh room. He stopped outside Magelia's locked door for a moment, and then walked back up the curving stairs.

Several nights passed. Welstiel had come down for supper in the main hall when a roaring and clanging resounded from the cellar below. He hurried down the stairs, taking them two at time. Ubad's screeching voice echoed in his ears before he reached the landing chamber.

"Alive, you fools. He must remain alive!"

Welstiel ran to the passage's end. The door to the seventh room was ajar. As he grabbed its edge to swing it open, he looked through the crack. A body leaned in the near left corner.

Fingers crooked in anguish, the elf's hands rested limp upon his chest. His head tilted back into the corner, and his eyes gawked unblinking at the ceiling, wide balls of white with amber centers. The hanging gap of his mouth was mimicked by a slash across his throat so deep that it had split through to his windpipe. Little blood seeped from the wound, and the corpse was too pale for one of the forest people.

Welstiel's view was suddenly blocked as a man-at-arms crashed into the chamber's front wall. He pushed the door wide.

Near the center of the room, Ubad stood behind a large brass vat with his bony hands clenched.

"Get up!" he shouted. "Break his legs, if you must."

The guard clawed up the wall to his feet, and he rushed across the room with an iron bar in his hand.

Among the shattered remains of the oak crate stood a man, or so it appeared, struggling with Lord Massing.

Bryen's opponent was thick and gnarled, his muscular limbs sprouting from a torso almost twice the width of a human's but only two-thirds as tall. His bushy brows and beard were coarse like chestnut horsehair around bulky rough features that made it hard to see his eyes. Iron shackles encompassed his wide wrists and ankles, but their connecting chains had been snapped and dangled loose.

The guard stepped in, swinging the iron bar low into the prisoner's leg.

The squat man's bare foot did not even move. The thudding impact had no more effect than striking a column of stone. He slapped the guard aside with little effort. The guard's body smashed headfirst into the back wall, and he fell to the floor, his neck broken. The iron bar rolled away.