"No," Wynn said. "I requested that he halt what he was doing."

"So you told him to stop," Magiere added. "He's smart enough to know that, though I don't know why he listens to you now instead of us." But she still stepped to the side, trying to see where Chap had gone.

"No!" Wynn shouted this time, and both Magiere and Leesil were taken back by her tone.

Wynn tried to compose herself and panted as if out of breath.

"It was not an order," she continued more calmly, "and he could not have… should not have known, even if raised hearing your mother speak some of the language."

"Make sense," Magiere snapped at her.

Wynn took several more deep breaths. "I requested-not ordered-that he end what he was doing… formally." She paused, then held up a hand before anyone could interrupt. "I formed it in the Elvish that I speak. Any one root word in Elvish can be transformed into an action, thing, or rather verb, noun, and so on. The little Elvish I've heard or read since arriving in Bela is not formed the same way as from my region, though I'm not certain why."

Magiere was utterly confused now and only barely followed what the young sage was saying. Wynn gasped in exasperation.

"I formed the request in the Elvish I know, not what Chap would have heard. And even so, a dog would not have understood without interpreting the differences of dialect, let alone the formality of phrasing."

Finished, she waited for the words to sink in.

An unsettling chill crept over Magiere as she began to comprehend the explanation, though it didn't quite explain much. Leesil crouched down to peer through the legs of the room's furniture.

"Chap?" he said, half-voiced.

Magiere crouched down as well.

The dog hunkered in the shadows beneath the table in the farthest rear corner of the room. His glittering eyes sparked, shifting between her and Leesil. He looked in Wynn's direction with a slight show of teeth, as if she were a threat he wouldn't even come out to face.

Wynn returned to her frantic search and then suddenly stopped, snatching up an item from a box of quills, styluses, and charcoals. She scurried to the middle of the room between the dog's hiding place and Leesil and dropped to the floor.

"Please stay behind me," she instructed. "I think he knows what we are saying… and is very upset."

Chap twisted about beneath the table, eyes fixed on the young sage. He snarled at her with exposed teeth.

"Chap, stop it," Leesil ordered, but the dog barely glanced at him.

"That is ridiculous," Magiere muttered, but readied to jerk Wynn back if Chap lunged at her.

Wynn held a lump of white chalk, and she poised it on the floor.

"Call to him," she said to Leesil.

Leesil looked at her suspiciously, and with a sigh of resignation, did as she asked. "Come on, boy."

Chap growled at him, and dropped his head low to the floor.

"Come out," Leesil insisted.

The hound inched forward, gaze shifting between the three of them, but mostly still glaring at Wynn. When he'd crossed half the distance, Wynn began drawing on the floor with the chalk. She scripted two sets of symbols a hand breadth apart, but Magiere couldn't read either of them. Wynn pointed to the first and then the second.

"Bithd… na-bitha," she said, looking to Chap.

She scrawled a second set of words below the first, this time in Belaskian.

"Yes… no."

Chap immediately backed away with a pathetic whine.

"Come here," Magiere ordered him.

The hound dipped his muzzle to the floor with a loud, resistant rumble. He limped forward again, stopping before the chalked words and wrinkling his jowls at the young sage. It took another moment before Wynn could speak.

"Majay-hi?"

Chap turned slowly toward Leesil, staring at him for a moment. His paw reached out to the first set of words on the floor.

Yes.

"Oh…" Wynn whispered, sitting back upon her folded legs. "Oh…"

Chap hung his head.

Leesil dropped hard to sit on the floor and ran a hand across his face. He looked like a peasant mourner in a dank Droevinkan burial ground, lost and abandoned.

Wynn's hand, still holding the chalk, was shaking.

"Fay," the young sage whispered, gazing at the dog.

"What?" Magiere asked, but when no answer came, she shook Wynn by the shoulder. "What do you mean, 'Fay'?"

Wynn looked back at her.

"He is Fay," she said, and swallowed hard. "An elemental spirit."

Magiere shook her head with a grunt of disgust. "That's just something that loon Welstiel called him. You told us yourself it was probably a folk term for his breed, even if he's a rare kind at that."

Wynn regained some of her composure, her attention split between Magiere and the hound.

"He senses death and life, has intelligence, understands language as well as dialect, heals miraculously… and his injuries are slight compared to what they should have been. I know of no breed such as his, and he does not have the look of mongrel or mix. You both have told me how powerful he is in battle, enough to face an undead."

She looked back to Chap, leaning down and trying to catch the dog's attention, but Chap swiveled away.

"Possession cannot change an animal's innate intellect, not that I know of," Wynn continued. "So his intelligence is part of his nature. I know of no way such could be created through magic." She fingered the chalk markings on the floor. "And when asked, he confirms it himself."

Magiere was on her guard now. Chap had been with them for years-had been with Leesil most of his life. In all that time, the hound had understood everything they'd said and done? True, Chap displayed uncanny intelligence for an animal, but this was nonsense.

"How is this possible?" Magiere demanded. "Even if he is capable? Leesil's had him since they were both young… and why are we only now finding this out?"

Wynn swallowed hard and shook her head.

"I don't give a damn," Leesil muttered. "I'm sick of every day revealing more… things"-he looked suspiciously at the dog-"pulling and pushing us around like unwitting puppets."

Magiere couldn't help but share Leesil's suspicion. Years ago, she'd stepped from a tavern into the dank, cold night of a Stravinan town so far inland and remote she no longer remembered its name.

A trembling itch had run up her spine as her senses came alive to the smallest sound and scent, followed by an urgency that told her to turn about. Something approached from behind.

It was the barest, tiniest rustle she shouldn't have heard, but she had heard rather than felt the hand digging in the cloth sack over her shoulder.

When Magiere whirled, ready to deal with this thief, she halted with his wrist in her grip. They stood there, she and he, staring at each other. Neither tried to move away. There was complete surprise on the thief's tan face.

Leesil's face.

Now, in the sages' barracks, Magiere looked into Leesil's amber eyes.

Something had prompted Leesil to steal from a well-armed woman. Something had piqued her awareness of a thief. After all the skill and cunning Leesil displayed over the years, she shouldn't have caught him. And somewhere nearby had been a dog.

If any of what Wynn concluded was true, then why of all people did this creature choose to keep company with a couple of peasant-cheating rogues?

Magiere shivered at the sudden recollection of the night she'd chased Chap into the street from the Burdock. There had been an urge to find Leesil, built upon her memory of their first meeting. Why was she recalling these two events now?

Leesil's eyes widened at her, and a sickening knot formed in her stomach.

"What…?" she asked hesitantly. "What're you thinking?"

"The first night…" he said, uncertainly. "I remember the first night we met."