"With the four who attacked us," she said, "there should be a clear trail to follow. Except Chap is too injured to track."

"We may not have to search anymore," he whispered. "They're coming to us now. And that suits me."

"We have to find the lair," she insisted. "This won't be over until we're sure we've gotten them all."

He didn't answer, and in a little while, his breathing deepened.

The cold lamp burned brightly from the table. Magiere wasn't certain she'd be able to sleep. She lay listening to Leesil's deep, slow breaths and the occasional creak of the bunks when he shifted. She closed her eyes against the light.

Blind in one eye, his body trembling with exhaustion and lost fluids, Toret shoved open the front door of his house, and he, Chane, and Tibor staggered into the foyer.

Sapphire sat in the parlor in her mustard silk gown. Her jaw dropped. Toret knew they were an ugly sight.

Tibor had long gashes all over his arms and face. There was a blackened hole in the middle of his throat, and his dirty clothes were a shredded mess. Chane wasn't wearing his cloak. Something sharp had slashed through the shoulder of his vestment and shirt, leaving a black oozing mess down his sleeve. The wound wouldn't close.

Toret was the worst of all. In place of his right eye was a gore-seeping cavity. His upper chest was split open, his ribs and severed breastbone exposed in the wide wound. The whole front of his split vestment was soaked black like Chane's sleeve. But he was home now, and Sapphire was waiting. Toret stumbled toward her.

"My sweet," he managed to say.

Her horror grew as he closed the gap between them and put his hands on her shoulders for support. She stepped back and pushed him away.

"Toret! This is real silk."

Toret leaned on the divan in confusion, sending fresh black fluids trickling down one arm. Why didn't she comfort him?

"That's a velvet divan," she said. "Chane, do something! And don't you dare let that sailor in here."

Toret stared at her through his one good eye. "Sapphire… my love. We're in a bad way. We need your help."

She frowned, as if this scene were simply too much, and whirled out of the room without a word.

Toret watched Sapphire's departing yellow-clad backside in disbelief. He could order her to stay. He could order her to help him, but he didn't. She should be caring for him, as Teesha had cared for Rashed, yet now she walked away in disgust because he was bleeding.

Lacking his usual grace, Chane stumbled in to assist him.

"You need rest," he said flatly. "So does Tibor."

"I need to feed," Toret answered. "Can you find me something?"

Chane moved to the window, lifted the curtain aside, and looked out.

"Dawn is too close, but rest will help, and I will go out the moment the sun sets tonight." He looked at his own open wound. "This is not closing. What do you know of the dhampir's sword?"

Toret sank upon the divan and leaned back. "Enchanted-or cursed," he replied. "I've felt its sting myself."

Chane pointed to Tibor standing in the foyer. "What about his throat? A quarrel should not do that to one of us."

"Simple trick. It was soaked in garlic water… poison to us." Toret closed his eye. "Send Tibor up to rest and then assist me."

It shouldn't be Chane helping him but Sapphire. Through the nightmare of making their way home unseen, Toret's mind was filled with images of Sapphire's concern for him, of how she would care for him as he had cared for her.

He felt strong hands pulling him up, but he pushed Chane away.

"Go downstairs and rest."

"Yes… master."

Toret walked to the stairs and grabbed the railing. As he climbed, he hoped feeding later would restore his mutilated eye. The half-blood had used mundane weapons, not like the dhampir's sword, so time and life force should heal his wounds completely. But when he saw Sapphire's closed door, he wondered if all wounds would heal.

He went to his room alone.

Welstiel sat at a small table in his room, thinking. At the bedside in the frosted-glass globe on its plain iron pedestal, the three dancing sparks dimly illuminated the small room. It was the oldest thing he possessed, having been the first thing he'd ever created in his long studies. That seemed so very long ago.

His fingers laced, and he absently traced the stub of the severed smallest finger with his other hand. His plan was not proceeding smoothly, and he was troubled. Lanjov was ready to dismiss the dhampir, and this was not a contingency Welstiel had considered. Magiere was an excellent hunter. This alone should outweigh any of her social shortcomings, even in Lanjov's world. Or so he had thought.

In addition, the pathetic Ratboy-or Toret-was not proving the challenge Welstiel had hoped. Magiere required practice and training. She needed to learn to handle multiple opponents, and to expect that older prey might have additional skills at their disposal beyond the varied abilities and strengths of the Noble Dead. Ratboy's lackey, Chane, was obviously a conjuror, and perhaps more, and yet for all Rat-boy's efforts and resources, he bumbled about like a fool.

Welstiel leaned back, exhausted. He had used his own methods to keep the dreams at bay for several days now-to keep himself from the coils of his dream patron. But he had to rest, at least a little while, before anything further could be addressed. He rose, made sure the door was tightly locked, and collapsed on the bed.

He barely noticed the room. A typical inn, and suitable for the kind of man who frequented the Knight's House, but he had seen the inside of too many inns. In recent years, they'd all begun to look the same. He reached into his baggage under the bed and pulled out a pewter vial, sipped its content lightly, and murmured a soft chant. Willing himself not to sink into dreams and merely to lie down for a while, he closed his eyes.

But it had been too long since he'd rested.

The world around him shifted and rolled like tall desert dunes, the countless grains of sand threatening to bury or pull him under. But there was no sand. The dunes were black. Movement sharpened slowly into clarity and sand grains became the glitter of light reflected upon black reptilian scales. Scale-covered dunes became a mammoth serpent's coils, circling on all sides of him. They slowly writhed with no beginning and no end and no space between.

"Where?" Welstiel asked. "Where is it? It has been so many years. Am I closer?"

They were the same questions he always asked.

High… to the cold and ice, came the whispered answer that penetrated his thoughts. Guarded by old ones… oldest of predecessors.

"How do I find it?"

As always, he tried to peer beyond the black coils to find what he sought, but he still did not know what it looked like-only what the coils promised it would do for him.

A jewel or gem-something unique and long forgotten to the world. It would be endowed with a divine essence able to free him of his current existence. He let his mind roll with the coils around him.

The old ones.

He did not know for certain, but he suspected what the coils tried to tell him. And to battle these guards was why he needed and prepared Magiere. She would be the most useful tool for his task.

The constantly roiling coils of his patron exhausted him, but he languished amid its dream. Words slipped like an echo through his mind. He could not tell if they came from his own thoughts or his faceless, scaled patron.

The sister of the dead will lead you.