Chap rose slowly to all fours. For a moment, Wynn readied to pounce on the dog should he lunge at Brot'an. Chap turned his eyes upon Magiere.

"Go on," she said. "You stay with Wynn."

Chap trotted out. Wynn followed and found herself amid Osha and two other anmagiahk. She wondered what Brot'an had to say to Magiere that no one else should hear. Leanalham already headed off under the escort of another anmagiahk. The girl looked back long enough to wave in parting before fading among the night trees of Crijheaiche.

Something more occurred to Wynn. When Leanalham had said, "No matter what they face," she referred to Roise Charmune.

The nametaking rite ofthe an'Croan was unfamiliar to Wynn. She had never heard of such among the elves of her land. All here went to hallowed ground when they came of age to be given-or was it "to take"? — a name other than what their parents chose at birth. Leanalham was about sixteen, if Wynn remembered right.Old enough to have gone herself.

But by the way the girl spoke of this sacred place, Leanalham had never been there.

Leesil stopped behind Sgaile near a dank oak. The silence was wrong.

He should hear something-bugs, maybe a cricket, or even leaves shifting in a breeze. But he heard nothing, now thattheir own footfalls had ceased.

The forest thinned ahead, and he saw an open space screened by branches. It was so dark, the masses of leaves and trailing moss were little more than black silhouettes. Yet beyond them was soft light, like what a full moon might provide.

Leesil glanced up. He wasn't certain, with the forest canopy thick overhead, but the rest of the forest was too dark for a moon, full or not. He tried to make out what was hidden beyond in the clearing. He only caught a hint of glistening ocher limbs behind surrounding gnarled oaks draped in moss.

"Do not move," Sgaile whispered. "Do not look for it."

He glanced at Sgaile, uncertain what this meant.

Something slid wetly across the forest mulch. Faint and soft, it carried from directly ahead.

Leesil did look. He saw nothing but the glow of the clearing beyond the black shapes of the oaks. Sgaile's final words after their meal echoed in Leesil's head.

Unless you reach hallowed ground…I do not believe you will come back.

For the first time since starting this task, fear tickled the back of Leesil's neck-not of death but of failure. What if he didn't return to Magiere? What would happen to her? He clenched one hand, ready to face whatever this place threw at him.

The sound grew subtly louder, closing off to his left, as if something circled around the clearing instead of passing through it. A wet dragging sound came between pauses in slow rhythm.

"Repeat my words," Sgaile whispered quickly, "exactly as I say them."

Leesil barely heard him, still searching for whatever came. He was prepared for a fight, not a speech. Then he glanced at Sgaile.

The elf stood frozen in place, staring straight at the silhouette trees. His eyes twitched once to the left toward the sound and then quickly turned back ahead.

"Ahdrneiv!" Sgaile began. "En pajij navajean'am le jhaiv…"

The dark base of one oak bulged near the ground.

The swelling rolled and flowed across the forest floor toward Leesil. It turned into the path toward the half-hidden clearing.

The soft glow beyond the silhouette oaks caught on the piece of slithering darkness, and its surface glinted to iridescent green.

A long body, as thick as Leesil's own torso, was covered in fist-sized scales. Their deep green shimmered to opalescence as it came closer. Leesil caught the yellow glint of two eyes that marked its approaching head, like massive spiral-cracked crystals in an oblong boulder pushed along at a hand's-breadth above the ground.

A snake… no, a serpent, too large to be real.

Leesil reached slowly down his thighs, but his blades weren't there. He slid one foot back to retreat.

"No!" Sgaile whispered. "Do not move! Repeat my words… quickly!"

The serpent's body knotted and coiled, gathering into a mass. Its scaled and plated head rose to hover before Leesil, swaying gently. A long forked tongue whipped at his face with a hiss.

Slit irises in its yellow eyes watched him steadily.

The serpent's jaw dropped open. Fangs as long as Leesil's forearm glistened in the dark maw of its mouth. It could swallow half of him at once.

"Leshil!" Sgaile whispered. "If you would save Magiere, you must speak my words."

The serpent undulated as its head swung toward Sgaile's voice.

Leesil heard the man's shuddering breath as he felt some part of the serpent's scaled body scrape across his leg. He was still prepared to fight his way past this thing if he had to. He glanced quickly at Sgaile, and the sight was like ice pressed into his eyes, feeding its chill into his body.

Sgaile averted his gaze, anywhere but at the serpent's massive head. He closed his eyes tightly. He was shaking, his muscles rigid.

An anmaglahk was frozen in terror, and Sgaile's fear bled rapidly into Leesil.

"I… I can't," Leesil whispered.

But if he died here, Magiere would die too. The serpent swung back, yellow eyes centered on him.

"I can't speak your language," he said, despair mounting. "I won't get it right."

Magiere wanted to beat answers out of Brot'an's scarred face. She had trusted him, and Leesil might pay for her mistake. Brot'an spoke before she uttered her first demand.

"There is more at stake than just your freedom. Even if Most Aged Father's claim is dismissed, neither you nor Leesil will leave this land alive. You are interlopers, humans, so do not be naive. Am I clear so far?"

Magiere's ire held beneath her uncertainty.

"Very well," Brot'an added quietly, and settled upon the chamber floor before her. "All balances on whether Leshil steps onto hallowed ground… as much as whether or not he gains the branch of Roise Charmune."

Magiere wasn't certain what this meant.

"To be elven, as you call it," Brot'an said, his voice tainted with distaste, "is notan'Croan. We are our heritage, our blood, more than whatever race you see us as. Only asan'Croan can Leshil plead for Cuirin'nen'a before the elders."

"If he's elven," she snapped back, "then he's got as much right as anyone, under your laws."

"No, he does not," Brot'an countered, quiet and sharp. "Do you think an outsider could demand Cuirin'nen'a's freedom? To bean'Croan — to be of the blood-is all that matters to my people."

Magiere looked awayThe last thing Leesil-or she-wanted was to be snared even deeper among these people and their ways. What arrogance, what nonsense and superstition!

"What are you talking about?"

"I mean you no malice," Brot'an said. "And only wish you to understand what is truly at stake. There was no time to waste in arguing this, so I chose not to give you that chance. The only way Leshil will be seen as one of us is if he can step onto hallowed ground. That is as important as the reason he goes there."

"If?" Magiere snapped.

"Sgailsheilleache will guide him… teach him the words to ask entrance. There is no other way."

"Ask who?The ancestors?"

Brot'an shook his head. "None of us have seen what guards Roise Charmune, as no one has gone there before but a full-blooded an'Croan. And none have been rejected, to my knowledge. Leesil must gain entrance before he reaches it or the ancestors."

Gain entrance? What did that mean?

"What did you see at this Roi-say… this Seed of Sanctuary?" she demanded. "What's guarding it? Just tell me what you know."

"A sound," he answered, "something moving in the forest surrounding hallowed ground. I know no more than that. When I spoke the words my father taught me, all was silent again. I stood a long while before I tried to walk in. Even when I left, I neither saw nor heard anything more."