All its bones and dried flesh were tarnished with streaks of red grime so thick, it made them look pitch black. Another sense of the familiar stirred in her mind. Keeping her back to the others, she pretended to lean in for a closer examination. Removing a loose toe bone with its claw, she palmed it along with the winged creature's finger.

The fifth body rested near enough that she did not have to move. Slender but solid of build like the elf, the creature had strange rows of spikes stuck out along the back side of its forearms, from each vertebra of its spine, and along its crested skull. The bones were cream-white and had not yellowed beneath its decayed filth. Its teeth were also ridged, but with regularly spaced points.

She made a hidden reach for one of the smaller spikes springing from the front of its shin. She took one of these off and added it to her collection.

Her gaze returned to the spikes on its spine, longer near the upper back but growing shorter toward the tailbone.

Like the fin of a sea creature.

Wynn stumbled as she got up and began shaking.

"We will leave you, zupan, to tend your own…" Leesil started to say, and then his eyes widened as he looked at Wynn. "We're done. It's all done. There's no need for tears."

Jan took a step toward her, suspicion and mistrust washed away with concern.

Wynn pulled away from him, suddenly afraid to let anyone near her in this place. She had not even been aware of her own tears, only that she could not stop shaking and found but one word for her thoughts.

"Uirishg!" she said in a whisper tinged with hysteria.

Her gaze passed over one remains to the next, out of control-elf, dwarf, a creature of the air, one of water, and the other… of fire?

'Take her out of here, you fool," Cadell snapped. "This place has driven her beyond wits, as it might do us all."

Leesil reached out and steered Wynn toward the entry way. She let herself to be pulled along, as her mind did little more than reiterate her earliest lessons in the structure of creation.

The elements are Spirit, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire…

Showing states in Essence, Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Energy…

To manifest as Tree, Mountain, Wind, Wave, and Flame…

And within the chamber were an elf of the forest, a dwarf of the mountains…

She did not know the names for the other three. They were so lost back beyond The Forgotten that no one knew them as more than part of the myth of the Uirishg, as the elves called them. The sages translated that word as akin to "Fay-blooded" or "Children of the Fay," but the word was so old that its literal meaning was uncertain.

Old recovered texts revealed scant hints of a myth among her lands that humans were the oldest race. In primordial times, they mingled among the first Fay, and their offspring were the beginning of five new races. It was a legend that tried to explain their origin, perhaps with some hidden truth, though the elves of her continent found it little more than an amusing tale.

It should not become real, not like this… in blood and ritual sacrifice.

Before Leesil guided her all the way up the stairs, Wynn jerked free and ran the rest of the way to the keep's front doors. When the cold night of the courtyard outside wrapped around her, its numbness sank through to her own bones. She collapsed to her knees on the damp ground, sobbing. There was no sign of the two guards.

Leesil caught up to her, crouching to take her by the shoulders.

"Wynn… what did you find?" he asked, and then he saw the three bones in her limp hand. "Oh, for all the dead saints! What have you done?"

Wynn raised her head to look at him.

Leesil reached around her to pull up her hood. He closed the short robe's front more securely around her.

"You have to tell me," he said. "I don't understand what's wrong."

"Uirishg," she whispered again, and held up the three bones.

With effort, she told him of the Children of the Fay who were the five forgotten races. Only two, the elves and dwarves, were known to truly exist, and in that it should have all been but a myth. Leesil listened with the bones between them in Wynn's palm, and in the end she saw there was some understanding in his eyes.

"All right," he said. "But we have to go. I need to find Magiere."

He tried helping her up to her feet, but Wynn began to shake again at the thought of Magiere waiting for them in the village below.

"No more," she cried. "I do not want to know any more."

Leesil gripped her arms and forced her up. She was surprised by the strength in his hands.

"I understand," he said, "but you have to pull yourself together-now! Magiere is already on the edge, and I need you to stay with me."

"What is she?" Wynn asked.

"Don't start that with me," Leesil returned. "She had no more choice than you or I in how she came into this world. She was born a dhampir and-"

"Is that all you think she is?" Wynn said. "I just told you what we found in that room. The vat was so large, it would have taken a long time to make, to engrave. It was left and discarded, as if it could be used only once… because of what it was used for. Have you ever wondered why a Noble Dead-a vampire-for an unknown reason, would labor to create its own kind's hunter?"

Leesil's temper flared. "That's not what she-"

"Yes, she is," Wynn nearly shouted. "It is her nature… but only its thin outer surface. Those victims in that chamber… Leesil, someone searched the world to find them, and three are but a myth so old, it had been forgotten. They were brought here to be slaughtered for Magiere's birth and then sealed in rather than risk disposing of the evidence in another manner."

She shoved him away, and her voice softened. Not in sympathy but in disbelief at his blindness.

"What was done here is close to impossible. And you still think it was just to create an enemy of the Noble Dead?"

Leesil stared back at her, looking lost amid her words. "I have no choice in this, I love her… and I can't turn away. If you don't help me, then I'm alone. Not even Chap seems willing to tell what he knows or why he brought Magiere and me together."

He stepped closer, looking tired and desperate.

"I need you," he said. "You have more knowledge than any of us. All I have is cunning and my past, and that may not be enough. I need you now."

Leesil's plea made Wynn's knees tremble. This was not the world she wanted to live in. She feared these first steps into Magiere's past would inevitably lead them to worse places. In Chap she had found a Fay taken to flesh, who had befriended a half-elf with a black past she still knew too little of. The dog had steered Leesil to Magiere, and they had stumbled on to more of Magiere's nature than Chap wanted anyone to know.

Beneath the city of Bela, Wynn had kept Magiere from killing Chane, though he was revealed as a monster. And she adamantly defended her choice, believing that even Chane might have some good in him… what she felt, how different he had been in the quiet study of the sages' barracks.

Leesil pleaded with little more than his blind faith in someone he loved.

"We had better go," she said.

He blinked in relief. He took her hand, gripping it gently, and pulled her along as he headed down the road.

"Say nothing to Magiere," he told her. "If what you suspect has any truth in it… for now, we'll keep this between us."

Magiere faltered as she passed Aunt Bieja's little home. Even with the shutters closed on its one front window, soft light leaked through the cracks.

Few villagers were about, and those few quickly became none, now that she stood amid the cluster of squalid buildings. When the sound of the closing doors and sliding wooden bolts ended, she was alone in the dark. For the moment, it was too much. She wanted one warm touch of life before her next task. Magiere opened the hut's door and stepped inside.