Leesil barely found his voice. "I had no-"

"Choice?" Progae supplied. "I understand. You followed orders, and undoubtedly were in no position to disobey

None of us under Darmouth's sway ever were. But I wonder about them. " He looked down at the ground. "Was this necessary? Did you have to let this happen?"

Leesil stepped around Progae, keeping a careful distance from the man.

He stood on the lip of a shallow and wide depression in the earth, ringed about by a handful of trees. There lay three curled bodies, a woman with her arms wrapped about two girl children.

There was little flesh left on them, their skin pulled tight over bone in starvation's last day before death. The children's eyes were closed, but not the woman's. The rag she'd wrapped around her head didn't hide her thinned hair.

Leesil had slid a stiletto into Progae's skull while he was alone in bed.

His wife and daughters were turned into the streets. The eldest was taken as an additional mistress by a lord who was loyal to Lord Darmouth. There had been no such half-salvation for the wife and the two younger daughters. As the family of a traitor to Darmouth, they'd found no noble or commoner who'd risk taking them in. Leesil never found them and heard only later that they'd starved to death in an alley.

"Couldn't you have done something?" Progae asked. "It's not as if they tried to usurp Darmouth."

Leesil still felt blood on his hands and wiped them on his gray vestment, but it continued to run between his fingers. He backstepped until Progae faded from his elven night sight.

Another voice carried through the forest. "We have a tenuous position here, Leshil."

High and lilting, it was touched with a strange accent he hadn't heard in many years. Not unlike the voice of Sgaile, used to the Elvish tongue and not wholly comfortable with a human language.

"Mother?" Leesil whispered.

"You are anmaglahk" came his mother's voice through the night forest.

It was a quiet and hollow statement of fact with no pride in it. She had said this to him long ago… not long before he'd taken Progae's life.

He spun about, searching for the voice. There was movement in the trees, but no more than shadowed silhouettes. Lord Darmouth's first mistress, Damilia, who'd conspired with Progae, stepped forward into his sight. She wore a deep green gown and ermine wrap, and a stray lock of auburn hair hung across her left eye. Her neck was deeply bruised around the welt left by a garrote wire. Leesil drew back from her.

"Leesil!" A woman's voice called again.

"Nein'a?" he shouted. "Mother, where are you?"

Among the trees, more figures closed in, stepping out into his way as he tried to evade them.

Latatz, Progae's sergeant at arms, bleeding from a double wound to the heart. The blacksmith of Koyva, his throat cut. Lady Kersten Petzka, wrapped only in her towel, her skin sallow from a deadly taint in her bath. They had all committed horrendous acts in service to Lord Darmouth or in their schemes against him. Or both.

But not Josiah.

The little old minister with his white hair and mirthful violet eyes stepped from the shadows, mouth spread by a swelled and blackened tongue. He'd never once raised hand or word against Darmouth. With no suspicion, the old man took in a young half-elf to train in a scribe's skills. Leesil had betrayed him to a hangman's noose because of Darmouth's paranoia.

Leesil raised bloodied hands to shield his eyes and fled.

Farther out in the forest, he caught glimpses of one lone shadow as it lunged through the trees like an animal on the hunt.

"Here. I am here," his mother called out through the night.

"Mother?" Leesil called back.

He could find her if he moved quickly, but a second voice called from behind him. "Wait for me! I am coming for you!"

Leesil glanced back. The hunting shadow raced after him. He glimpsed a pale face before the figure seemed to dive out of sight, into the brush.

"Magiere?" he whispered, not wanting to rouse the shadows of the dead once again. "She's here… My mother is here. We have to hurry!"

He raced on through the forest until a shimmer of white appeared ahead.

A tall, lithe woman sat before an ancient oak with her back turned. White-blond hair hung to the small of her back in a straight, silky wave. Leesil remembered her dress from the last evening of his youth, when he'd fled the Warlands at the sight of Minister Josiah hanging by his neck in the town square. Caramel like her skin, the gown's pattern of fine green leaves seemed like a wild vine printed upon her slender body. He dropped to the ground behind her, reaching out for her shoulder.

Slowly, Nein'a turned toward him.

Her once beautiful face was shriveled dried flesh across her skull. Large and slanted eyes were now empty sockets. She was long dead.

"Too long… too late," whispered Nein'a's corpse. "You're far too late for me."

She crumpled to dust before Leesil's eyes.

He couldn't move, couldn't even cry, and knelt there alone in the dark. Dusty grit from her corpse caked in the blood on his outstretched hands.

Magiere landed before him in a feral crouch, sending the dust of his mother billowing up around them. Her irises were full black, teeth extended in a canine snarl.

"Come back to me, Leesil," she said. "Please, I need you."

Wynn ran up the inland road, but once outside the town, she did not know which way to turn. The blue-white mist still plagued her vision, making her steps uncertain, but at least the eddies and currents had stopped moving. Vordana was certainly gone.

And further clouding her thoughts was Chane.

"Leesil!" Wynn called out. "Chap… Magiere?"

She could not ask for Chane's help, and she hoped with all her heart that he was on his horse and gone. If Magiere found him following them, she would destroy him, and part of Wynn now understood the dhampir's way.

And still, Chane had come in search of her, to bring her back to sages' guild and the warm comfort of her own life. This was not the action of a monster.

"Chap!" she shouted again.

She stumbled along the road, looking both ways through the dense forest and calling their names over and over.

"Mother…" a voice cried out. "Nein'a?"

It was Leesil.

Wynn took off through the woods. "Wait for me!" she called. "I am coining for you!"

Her short robe caught on a bramble. She stumbled and jerked it free. When she turned to hurry on, she caught sight of something vivid amid the forest's weave of blue-white essence. It was the back of Leesil's glowing white-blond hair, and she rushed toward him.

His amber eyes were the same bright yellow sparks that hurt to look at, but he stared through her vacantly.

"Come back to me, Leesil," she said in a moan. "Please, I need you."

Leesil did not move. Wynn tried shaking him, but she could barely move his body. Scarf missing, his long hair was tangled with tree needles and leaves.

'Too late…" he whispered. "Oh, Magiere, we took too long… and she died… alone."

He was lost in delusion. Wynn bit her lower lip, unwilling to start weeping again. She needed some way to rouse him, or at least make him recognize her.

Wynn reached into her robe pocket and felt the cold lamp crystal. She squeezed and ground it until its sharp edges hurt her palm. She kept rubbing, hard and quick, making certain its light would burn painfully bright.

"Look at me," she said sharply. "I am Wynn… see we!"

She grasped his jaw with her free hand, pulled out the crystal, and thrust it directly in front his eyes. The light was intense.

Leesil jerked his head away from her hand and grabbed both her wrists.

"Wynn?" he asked, and then sucked in a sharp breath. "My mother… dead. I'm too late."