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like animals disturbed from slumber in their unearthed burrow.
One appeared to roll its head, and as Leesil stopped, the shadows froze all
around him.
A mass on the floor in the left front corner took shape in the light as
Magiere gripped his shoulder.
It was a body in a sitting position. Rotted clothing par-tially obscured the
bones but not the skull. It narrowed toward the dangling lower jaw, hinting at
a triangular face it once wore. Its dark eye sockets were larger than those of
human skulls Leesil had been forced by his parents to study in his youth. And
upon it still clung wisps of white-blond hair. Slender fingers too long for a
human rested on a narrow rib cage.
Leesil didn't need a closer look to recognize the tall lithe stature. This
elf had died and been entombed without ceremony in the dark forests of
Droevinka, far from its homeland.
Magiere's other hand flattened against Leesil's side. Her grip on his
shoulder tightened as she pulled him around to face the chamber's back wall
again.
Around the base of the walls were the remains of more bodies.
Chapter 5
Thinly veiled by a night mist, the keep appeared to have aged a century in
the brief decades since Welstiel had last seen it. From beneath the branches
of a spruce at the clearing's edge, he watched two men with spears walk slowly
across the courtyard.
"She is inside?" Chane asked. He crouched nearby, and moonlight peeked
through a break in the clouds to wash over his pale features.
Welstiel nodded. He peered about the forest with his senses open wide,
letting not only sight but also sound and scent flood into him. Being this
close to the keep, this close to the beginning, made him wary. Magiere was
inside of that much he felt certain but what concerned him more was who else
might still have a keen interest in this place, and in any visitors from the
past.
"We wait, " he said. "Stay close to me if she appears, or I will not be able
to hide you from her awareness. "
Chane looked at him expectantly, waiting for an explanation of how this could
be accomplished. Welstiel silently kept his attention upon the keep.
The two would-be guards walked the grounds' circumference together rather
than separately. Simple villagers, their presence was one more hint that this
place might well have been forgotten by all who knew what had happened here.
Somewhere inside those stone walls, Magiere wandered, unaware of the ghosts of
her own past. Welstiel willed that she remain ignorant.
As the guards passed from sight around the stables, the crumbled keep
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appeared still as a headstone in a forgotten, hallowed place. This illusion of
peace and serenity masked a long-ago madness, and Welstiel's mind slipped
back....
IIt was nearly twenty-six years earlier, and Welstiel's father dragged
Magelia from her village home. She rode behind Welstiel, clinging silently to
his waist all the way to the keep. Her sister ran after them as far as she
could, screaming Magelia's name in a frenzy of fear and anger.
Someone loves her, Welstiel thought without feeling. Someone was frightened
for her.
It hadn't mattered. It hadn't changed anything.
Lord Bryen Massing was tall, but Welstiel had not inherited his father's
imposing height. They shared dark brown hair, square faces, and the shallow
bump at the bridge of their noses, but heritage and a few features were all
they had in common. Most notable to all who saw them together, the father did
not have the white patches of hair at his temples that the son wore.
The fief his father had been assigned was primitive compared with others they
had tended over the years, with a squat tower keep of mortared rock with crude
barracks and stable attached, built near the central village of Chemestuk.
Welstiel rode into the keep's muddy courtyard that night following his father.
Their family retainer, the robed and masked Master Ubad, stood waiting for
them.
The torch-lit courtyard was alive with activity. Men-at-arms and a few
conscripted villagers attempted to unload the contents of five sturdy wagons.
Along with family baggage, each wagon carried a square crate at least
two-thirds the height of man and covered by a thick canvas tarp. Seeing the
lord and his son arrive, the men grew openly nervous and too hurried in their
tasks. They pulled a tarp aside to reveal one of the crates.
It was constructed of oak held together with steel straps and bound to the
wagon bed with chains instead of rope. As two guardsmen unhooked the chains, a
deep muffled voice howled out from within the container:"Shairsnisag mi, na mi
taitagag craiui ag shiui ag cher!"
The words Welstiel heard sounded Elvish but were more guttural, and he could
make no sense of them. A thunderous boom issued from the crate's walls, and it
slammed sideways into one guard. The impact crushed the man's legs against the
wagon's side with an audible crack of bone. His companion leaped out the other
side and scrambled clear. The guard screamed and toppled over to dangle
against the rear wheel with his legs pinned against the vehicle's sidewall.
Master Ubad glided toward the wagon. His dark robe showed no sway from
footsteps.
"Fools!" he hissed, ignoring the trapped man's squeals of pain. "The contents
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