
LORACLE'S WHEEL: Guardians Of The Fate

Excerpts from the Epic Fantasy Novel

by

Rowan Lefwyn

Other Titles by Rowan Lefwyn:

**DIRECTIVE 303**
Copyright © 2014 by Rowan Lefwyn

Smashwords Edition

_Prelude..._

__"Haste now. Flight, child! Wyte, child!"__

Carried on a swirl of white mists the loud voices sang in melody, a booming call between Shay's ears as she fled through the dark forests of Ephomoiire. Other voices—angry shouts—bore down on her from behind. The chain leash dangling from her iron collar clanked and clattered. Clutching it tight in her fist, she ran faster until the heels of her boots tattooed the forest floor. Now she wasn't sure if she ran from those who hunted her or the haunting song in her head.

Gasping for breath, she slowed to a stumbling trot near a thicket beneath a towering laoden elm. Above her, the ominous weight of Elfenweire glowed dim in the moonlight. Behind her, the angry shouts grew closer. Within her, the voices took up their call again, gusting on a blaze of crystalline white, dulling her fright even as it fired her resolve to flee: " ** _Wait now, wyte child,"_** they sang. **_"Abide here for a time."_**

Hesitating for just a moment, Shay veered into the thick brush, batting aside leafy fronds and scrubby vines among the elm's lower branches. Heart hammering, she waded deeper into her hiding place. Even the blazing torches of her pursuers couldn't fathom these shadowy depths and those who chased her wouldn't risk snagging their fine uniforms searching the brush for her. Matters would have to grow much worse before the fastidious Watchwoode elves went so far as that.

After an endless passage of the time, the shouts of Lord Nherhon and his guards moved away. Shay allowed herself a deep breath.

**_"Heed us, wyte one. Wait here. We've brought you here. We shall not fail you,"_** came the voices again, relentless as the northern breezes shivering down from the sky spans of Elfenweire, the elegant main keep of Watchewood.

No! She covered her ears, refusing the song and the swirling, effervescent white. Providence, not the voices, left this area around the tree unkempt enough for her to hide in.

The voices faded to silence and so did their glimmering mists although she sensed both waiting in the back of her thoughts, holding her in expectancy. Listening hard for her hunters, she knelt and loosened the trailing edges of her gown snagged in the prickly scrub. The chain attached to the iron collar around her neck rattled. It seemed but another clamoring voice, this one beckoning to those who hunted her—"She's here, she's here!"

Shay unclipped the chain from her collar and stuffed it into a knothole in the elm's trunk. Her fingers trailed hesitantly over the heavy iron collar sitting rough and chaffing around her neck. Whilst a means of controlling her, the collar could keep someone from cutting her throat. Which is exactly what her hunters planned. This time she'd strayed too far over the path they set for her to walk.

"Wait here, and then north, north, north," the call within resumed, singing from the white inside, scattering her thoughts, interfering with her plans for escape.

Digging into the bodice of the despised gown—Lord Nherhon's way of hobbling her—she drew out the Moon Rhombic. Only the crystal could sooth away the lunatic urgency of the song. She mustn't lose her wits now. Panic would mean her life. Turning the Rhombic to the moonlight filtering through the branches, she listened with an inner ear to the crystal. It sparkled in the dim light but the deva within remained silent, neither offering comfort nor making any comment on her theft of it. On the rare occasions when Erril roused herself from gloomy reverie to speak, she told how a healing spirit animated the stone. Or her mournful mother would tell old tales about elf maji consumed by the stone's spirit to the point where they could work rejuvenation majik with just a touch of their fingers.

"Oh, Erril." Shay stared into the crystal as if she could find her mother there. Sudden grief clenched tight in her chest and she had to lean against the trunk of the elm, hoping the tree's stately strength would steady her. There was no surcease in its rough bark. The elm felt weighed too, not by remorse or regret like she but laden with the cold elf realm it supported. Shay raised her head to look above, among the twisting tiers and skyways of Elfenweire. Somewhere, up there, her mother lay dead. Erril, whose immortal soul should have shined forever, now flickered out, doused by shame.

"Shame of me," she muttered, fist clenching hard around the crystal, driving back mourning for the mother who'd fallen dead at her feet mere minutes before. Erril, a high-borne elven lady, bore Shay in shame and then lived a life of disgrace because of her daughter's blunted ears and odd ways.

"Witch ways, wicked ways," the elf folk of Watchwoode whispered. Although not outwardly or publicly acknowledged, Shay was neither mortal nor immortal, but something in between. Abomination.

She tucked the rock into her bodice again.

"Stealing is bad," she told herself.  Abomination she might be, a grievous mistake of the natural order, but she knew thievery was wrong. Ever since the voices began their siren call shortly before Erril's death, Shay couldn't care very much even though darkness lived in the song. At least she thought they were dark voices. The Hierophant Loran said goodness spoke to all; it didn't single out one person from many to whisper secrets to. Only evil did that.

The snap of a branch sent Shay's heart to her throat. She spun to find a marmot staring back from a leafy limb, the little creature's wide-eyed anxiety reflecting her own. It scampered on with a flick of its tail, away from the uproar all around the keep.

Through the roaring pulse in her ears, Shay could no longer hear her pursuers nearby. She edged forward again, ready to break cover. The voices held her, blinding her in hazy white, urging her to remain in the thicket. **_"Stay, child."_**

Shay rubbed at the druinmark nestled in the hollow of her throat, three tiny purplish dots arranged in a roughly triangular pattern. The voices made this mark tingle every time they sang.

**_"Wait here and then north. To the north,"_** they repeated their litany.

North? she wondered. Surely the song did not mean for her to flee north to Khorrin. Her father ruled those wild horse lands, but he'd kill her if she were to return to the lands of her shameful birth. A knot of fright tightened in Shay's chest. What if the voices meant beyond Khorrin, to someplace darker? To Blackwashe, realm of the dark maj. Loran Hierophant always said her destiny lay with his dark bidding.

Naughtily, she refused to believe the Loran then but now she couldn't, not entirely, not with the voices urging her to take the crystal and ride north. Nor could she leave Rhombic here. Erril warned her to never lend the Moon Rhombic to those who would abuse it. But if she took the crystal north, it might very well fall into hands of one who'd destroy the last remaining relic of an ancient, elven majik.

The shouts of her hunters drew suddenly nearer, catching Shay off guard. The light from their torches touched her. She ducked deeper into the brush. Through the branches, she watched a lieutenant-piker rush by, leading his squadron. She held herself motionless as the lieutenant split his pikers into search parties of three. They should have done that earlier when she first snatched the crystal—right from Erril's prone body—and fled. They underestimated her, though. Nor could they know about the voices driving her on.

"You bucks," she heard the lieutenant give instruction. "Take the lower tiers—she liked to skulk in the store rooms. Tear the keep apart! Leave no bough unturned." The lieutenant paused and then added. "But be sure you put everything back where it belongs afterward. Lord Nherhon will have our heads if you don't."

Despite her dire situation, Shay rolled her eyes. Some desperate hunt! The fastidious pikers of Watchwoode might very well pause to shine the silverware while they searched for her. This prim decorum was typical of the eastern elves.  Appearances were paramount, even during a crisis.

A moment later the flickering torchlights scattered as the pikers spread throughout the trees. Others ran up into the skyways above, their torches sending crazy, dancing shadows all over the forest. Limp with relief, Shay let out a breath she didn't know she held.

_"NORTH, NORTH, NORTH..."_

Trying hard to ignore the sing-song voices, Shay touched thought to her horse waiting in the stable, to ask Ghalaxi if the pikers searched there yet.

Only silence answered for long moments. The horse eventually made an affirmative noise. A brief image of the pikers watching the barns and paddocks came to her on the horse's returned thought. Frustration ground the heel of her boot into the loamy soil. Only with Ghalaxi would she feel safe, but how to get to her mount? The horse assured her he'd take care of that bit of business and to wait for his call.

"Ghalaxi do you hear ... _voices_ between us?" she whispered.

I hear only my Rider.

"There is a white in my head," she fretted. "A glowing, sparkling white. It sings to me and I think I am going mad."

She could hear the horse turning this confession around and around in his thoughts _. It is your instinct_ , he said in a decisive manner. _The Riders may call it birthright_.

Birthright? She bore no rights, birth or otherwise. The births of her kind were not even recorded. But then madness had ever been the birthright of the helvish; perhaps that's what Ghalaxi meant.

Anxiety wrung her hands together into a restless knot as another worry fed her escalating fear. If she didn't make good her escape, the pikers might very well put a spear through her beloved mount. The Hierophant claimed a dark enchantment bound her and Ghalaxi both. "Can you free yourself from the stall?"

_Yes!_ Ghalaxi took offense to the suggestion he couldn't nose his stall latch open, and his affront reassured her somehow.

Fixing her gaze on the lights of the stable, Shay waited. Tension welled higher, flaming panic. Just when she could bear it no longer, she froze at the sound of pounding hooves and low squeals in the distance—the carriage horses in Nherhon's private barns on the other side of the keep.

**_"GO NOW! NORTH, NORTH, NORTH,"_** the voices bellowed their relentless song until Shay thought her heart would burst. She remained motionless.

Ghalaxi's calm presence intruded then, drowning out the urgent, inner song. _The lower beasts are put to stampede. The guards will think Rider has disturbed them._

**_"GO NOW!"_** the voices chimed quick agreement.

Slipping from the cover of the thicket, Shay darted from her hiding place. Running in a low crouch, she made her careful way from tree to tree. Not far now, but slow going. The long, cumbersome gown Nherhon made her wear tangled around her ankles. From her boot, she slid out the knife hidden there—another stolen article—and wended it through the heavy fabric, ripping the gown to her knee, and then around. Legs freed, she bolted to the danger of the stable, and the safety of her horse.

Lit only a single low lamp, the run-down stable stood ominous in its silence. Even the voices ceased their relentless song. Moving with caution, Shay entered and allowed herself to relax a little at the sight of the elderly war charger waiting in the aisle way. Ghalaxi gave a comforting rumble and lowered his head. _Come Rider._

Sick with relief, Shay went to her companion. In one easy leap, she was astride, hugging his neck tight. As soon as she settled on his broad back, Ghalaxi began to move toward the doors. Then a shadow separated itself from the gloomy depths of the barn. She started but Ghalaxi reassured her. _It's only Bhren,_ he said, as the young man stepped into the low light of the aisle.

Mouth working soundlessly, Bhren edged near. Bright blue eyes wide with shock, he stared at her. In his hands, he held her cloak. Her hapless conspirator. Blood still stained her thighs from the incident which kindled this even's dreadful mess, phantom pains from what they wrought between them stinging her belly still.

Foreboding for him flared. "If they find you here with me—"

"I told Lord Nherhon I'd search for you, lure you in—"

"To reaffirm your dedication to Watchwoode, to the Pathe of Prophecy?" a faint scorn tinged her words.

"I don't know what else to do."

"You don't know the worst of it and I don't either," she hissed. "We don't know anything. I never did, and I don't now but something is bad wrong with this elf realm, Bhren. Erril felt it and said it boded not well for the crystal she guarded with her life."

"Shay." He stretched his hand out to her. "Don't take the crystal. For the love of life, please don't. I know this looks bad now, but I can...I can make it right...explain to Lord Nherhon."

"Whether I give the rock up or not, the Hierophant will have me. For good this time."

"It's just the asylum." Bhren stepped nearer. "You've been there before, and it's only for a while." He paused and flapped his hands at her torn, filthy gown. "If you would just try to do as the priests say. Or at least not make yourself so conspicuous, your ....your corrupt blood might be forgiven. A little, anyway."

Shay stared down at her legs, immodest and bare, dangling down Ghalaxi's smooth sides. She did try, but every time the Hierophant said only wicked ladies rode astraddle, she found herself roaming the woods on Ghalaxi's back. When Lord Nherhon forbid her to read any book, she defied him by poking her nose into tomes of history and lands, and even forbidden majik. Now, with the theft of the crystal, she'd strayed far from the lands of naughtiness and into realms of iniquity.

Tears filled Bhren's eyes. "The Rhombic belongs to Prince Iluminaiire. He's your mother's kin," he pleaded. "Do it for that reason, if naught else."

Shay trembled at his words. More shame for Erril. Yet, her mother said the crystal must never leave her hand 'til granted to the prince. Now with Erril's death, only Shay, abominable or not, had the hand closest to her mother's. On her dying breath, Erril made Shay promise she would never let the jewel go to those who would destroy the stone.

The voices pushed her on. _**"North, hold hard to the crystal and ride north,**_ " they cried in a blinding blaze of white.

"Let me have the rock," Bhren said with firmness not typical of him. "I'll say I found it. I'll find some way to give it to Prince Iluminaiire without retribution."

"I daren't. Erril said no one might have the rock but a blooded one of Silfenlei."

"Iluminaiire _is_ the blood of Silfenlei. Like Erril. But you Shay, you are not. I'm warning you, Iluminaiire will take what is rightfully his. He is a predator with a blade. He can track a shadow "

_That's what I am_ , Shay thought, tremors rattling her from head to foot. _I'm a shadow_.

Neither race would claim her. She was a half-bred ghost, haunting a land that didn't want her.

"If Iluminaiire comes for you, there is nowhere you can hide."

This she knew. Shay heard tales of this Iluminaiire, fiercest warrior in all Anetherea. She had nothing, no weapon against him except the elderly bay horse between her knees. On their own accord, her fingers twined in Ghalaxi's coarse mane, seeking comfort from the only creature who did not care about her blunted ears or the mark at her throat.

"The Pathe willed the Rhombic to Iluminaiire. You will defy the Goddess herself."

Shay's hand clenched tighter in Ghalaxi's mane. She didn't know about gods or prophecies. She didn't have a god of her own to beg mercy from. They denied abomination like her.

_Rider, we must go_ , Ghalaxi shifted uneasily beneath her.

Trilling to a crescendo now, the voices rose again in a swirl of maddening white, urging her north.

Bhren edged closer. "Why, Shay?" he urged, "Why are you doing this!"

"Voices call to me," she blurted. "I hear them between my ears. They bid me north, telling me to take the crystal and flee."

Bhren stared at her as if she'd suddenly grown another head.

"It's a Lady, who sends them," she gasped in a rush, desperate for someone—anyone!—to understand. "She haunts my dreams..." She trailed off, and tried again. "The L-lady rides a great silver horse. Her armor gleams gold, and so does her hair. She stands near a colorless sea. Its waves rise and fall on tides of glimmering white, and the waves call to me, and tell me I.. must do this."

"No." Bhren backed away, holding his hands over his ears. "No, Shay. That's crazy talk. Ladies don't wear armor, don't ride horses." His hands fell away, and his eyes became hard and accusing now as they slid down her wicked bare legs—legs that hadn't bothered him when he'd forced himself between them earlier. "The dark maj Dhrevhin speaks to lost souls like that. He calls to you now, wanting you for his own. Shay, give me the crystal before Dhrevhin finds his way to it, too!"

Instead, she offered her hand. "Come with me?"

Taken aback, Bhren lifted his confused gaze to hers. "I am the heir to the throne of Bel Feire. My legacy awaits me here."

Watchwoode spoke through Bhren's lips now. The tidy, proper woods that watched. She nodded slightly. There seemed to be nothing more to say. The line was now drawn between him and her. Ghalaxi stepped over it, heading for the stable door.

"I hate that...you will not be my f-friend anymore." Bhren took a stumbling step after, looking lost and alone now that she was actually leaving.

Ghalaxi halted, switching his tail in irritation. Bhren held out her cloak.

Shay looked at it, and then at him, pity making her breath come hard. Bhren standing, in the shadows of Watchwoode, as much a prisoner as she.

She took the cloak, offering her hand again, and this time he grabbed on tight.

Then the voices took her on a tide-swell of glistening, white mist. High and haunting, their song became compulsion now, driving her north. When she spoke again, her voice was not her own. "There will never be a time I'll not be your friend." She looked to an unknown horizon beyond the stable door. "If you can remember that, Bhren, maybe you will know why I have to do this. Why I am...what I am."

"You will be dead," he said voice hoarse with finality, releasing his hold on her hand. "Iluminaiire will find you."

Shay hardly heard him. The sounds of pursuit came to her ears mingling with the voices' song. Ghalaxi plunged for the door. But it was the voices that carried her gone.

Twenty-two years later...

## PROCRASTINATION

Immortal borne of silver glade,

Destiny wields the scything Blade

Cut the shadows of a wounded land

Bears a Promise, warrior's hand

On thru the plight

Illuminate the night

~Loracle's Wheel, the Forging of The Blade.

Even in the bright light of day, the forests of Withy are dark. Perversion stalks innocence here. Corruption scents the freshening breeze. A presence slinks through the gnarled trees, one of haunting and flesh—the last remaining poison from a devastating alchemy of old. The trees whisper green secrets in defense of the dark creatures which call this forest home: _Nay, tis not that way t'all._

Trying his best to ignore the ominous rustle of the gnarled, moss-shrouded trees, Captain Liiam Bladeswythe looked around the small clearing deep in the Forest Withy where he stood. Great swathes of blood splashed red stains on the ground along with a few severed limbs, and the hardening bodies of thirty or so _ormulaiint_ men. The aftermath of a thwarted ambush. Across the clearing, close to the track winding through the forest, a wagon lay overturned on its side, one wheel still spinning round and round. A horse sprawled dead on the ground, caught in the wagon's traces  amid a scattered load of early autumn apples. Their sweet scent mingled with the smell of blood on the still air.

"Best get it over with, Cap'n, the sooner the better," an amused voice called across the dawn-dim clearing. Liiam turned to the blonde elf buck lounging against an oak tree. "Funny," the buck added with an insolent wink. "I took you for a soldier, not a knacker man."

Liiam tugged at his sharp ear and gave an equally sharp retort to his squire. "Isn't your turn to sort through this mess, Rheise?"

"Nom," Rheise grinned. "I won pardon the last time we threw dice. You lost if I'm 'membering correct-like."

Disgruntled, Liiam hesitated for just a moment more and then bent to the familiar, if somewhat disgusting task of searching the dead _ormulaiint_ he and Rheise brought down. Rolling over the closest one with the flat of his blade, he quickly went through the pockets of its filthy, tattered trousers. He found only a length of rotted twine and what looked like a desiccated toad. The twine he tossed away, but curiosity made give the toad a closer look.

A delicious shiver of the mysterious and unknown ran up his back. _Ormulaiint_ often dabbled in forbidden druin majik, and this bit of grisly treasure might be a dockery used in their glam work. He tucked the toad into his quiver for further examination later. Just because something was forbidden didn't make it uninteresting.

Striding away to the next _ormulaiint_ , and then another, he made a careful search of each one. Long, pale braids sweeping the ground, he pushed the last creature onto its back, its face grinning up at him in a gruesome rictus of death. The gaping wound across its throat looked like a jagged slash of an extra mouth below its chin.

"Now there's a pretty one," Rheise laughed. "He's better off now than before he met your blade."

With an absent nod, Liiam returned the corpse's grimace. As if it's extra, stunted arm hanging from its shoulder weren't bad enough. Unnatural things!

_Ormulaiint_ —altered men—were a curse laid on Anetherea by Dhrevhin, dark guard of the daunted lands of Blackwashe. Cleverly twisted by their creator, _ormulaiint_ seemed nearly indistinguishable from a normal human at first glance. Closer inspection revealed appendages too many fingers, half-formed extra legs and arms, and even milky, superfluous eyes bulging from their foreheads. The dark lord Dhrevhin's mocking tribute to humanity. The maj malignantly twisted pure blooded mortals with a lingering, ill-favored majik the ancients once used to bring down Earth's Doom ages before. Now, over the last centuries, Dhrevhin set this curse to wreak havoc on these fair lands. The twisted ones were rapers, pillagers, thieves, and carriers of the pestilence which frequently ravaged the mortal lands to the north, tempting men and leaving women barren.

Liiam checked the pockets of the last _ormulaiint_ with extra care. It quickly came apparent what he searched for eluded him again. "The Moon Rhombic isn't here, Rhei."

"Is it ever?" His squire gave a careless shrug, wiping at the smears of blood on his knife.

Shaking his head, and increasingly aware Darkmoon rose on the horizon of this land's fate, just month's away, Liiam looked around the clearing. Ever since he'd first picked up a blade more than three hundred years ago, he hunted these creations of Dhrevhin's to thin their ever increasing numbers. With the Moon Rhombic's theft more than two decades before, he searched every _ormulaiint_ he could bring down looking for the healing crystal he absolutely must have in hand on Darkmoon's rise. It was all to no avail. Although murderous scavengers and thieves, the mutant men never possessed anything of practical value let alone a sacred crystal relic.

Yet, Liiam searched on. It was well known an abominable creature spirited away the Moon Rhombic, so important to the Pathe's happy conclusion. He tried hard not to think one of these agents of the dark maj already delivered the crystal to their master. Besides, one never knew when the Lady Lore's Luck might shine and fortune now seemed the only way left to recover the Moon Rhombic.

_Nooo,_ the leaves and limbs of the trees overhead began to stir in the wind again, their soft voice tingling along his keen elf senses. A call felt, not heard: _Nooo, tis not that way t'all, elf warrior._

Although often given to fanciful notions, Liiam rolled his dark eyes at this mournful warning. What could the elms and oaks of Withy know about the missing Rhombic? If trees knew between ill and good, they wouldn't allow _ormulaiint_ to roost among their boughs, would they?

The sound of wheels rattling up the track hushed the tree's doleful warning. Liiam jumped to his feat just as a low cart pulled into the clearing. The pony pulling it came to stop at the edge of the carnage.

"Lord Ahven," Liiam politely greeted the elderly driver.

Ahven made no response. He looked at the dead creatures and then at his frightened servants for a long moment. Finally he turned to Liiam and gave a respectful nod. "When my houseman told me an elf cut down a swarm of attacking _ormulaiint_ , I knew I'd find you here, Prince of Silfenlei. Only prophecy's Blade could take down so many."

Liiam gave the sword belted at his hip an affectionate pat, and then noticed the cross look on Rheise's face. He gave a teasing grin in return, two impish dimples playing on his cheeks, as he found opportunity to torment Rheise over his earlier jibes. A fox shot, the best in all the Silfen Bow save for Liiam himself, Rheise's skill was a tender point for the otherwise amiable, level-headed elf buck. "Oh, I can't take all the bounty, lord. Rheise claimed a few of the creatures," he said casually.

"A... _few?_ " Outraged, Rheise shook his hand at the many creatures bristling with shafts sprang from his bow. "My Lord Ahven, that is far more than a few!"

Ahven appeared not to hear. The lord looked around the slain _ormulaiint_ with ill-contained pleasure before he spoke again. "Good. Dead right down to their cursed bones."

"Be lief, they were lively enough an hour ago," Rheise assured him, rubbing  at a deep slash across his knuckles.

"What happened?"

Liiam said. "We overtook your man servants on the Gheminhall track just as the _ormulaiint_ attacked. We drove the creatures off direct-like, but not before..." he nodded at the dead bondsman.

Lord Ahven barely glanced at his slain servant and Liiam found this callous disregard disturbing. Although Ahven could well afford to arm his servants properly, the men carried no weapons—a dire necessity in this dark and poisonous wood.

Liiam shook his head at this reasoning for mortal customs were often incomprehensible to him. Not that it was any of his business. His business this gray morning was the prophecy's Pathe, and he best start heading down it again.

From his seat on the cart, Ahven beckoned to his servants. "Get this mess cleaned up and take the creatures back to Wythelinke. Burn them in the sou' fields. Maybe their ashes will seed something besides destruction." He turned back to Liiam and addressed him in that exasperatingly formal human way. "Prince Iluminaiire—"

"Liiam. The prince likes to be called Liiam," Rheise interrupted.

Lord Ahven gave the squire an annoyed look and raised his voice. "Prince _Iluminaiire_ , this is a poor welcome to Bel Feire for you."

"Don't give it a thought," Liiam gave his sword another pat. "A little blade play first thing in the morn gets a body's blood warmed."

"'Sides," Rheise added. "The Cap'n takes his pleasures with the blade the way some men take them with the fallen woman of the fair town."

Avhen's seamed face drew into a scowl, and Liiam bit his lip to hide a smile. Humans grew so nervy about earthy talk. The only thing to rile them more was talk of—

"A majik user!" one of the bondsmen shouted.

Liiam turned to see one of the slaves holding up the arm of an _ormulaiint_. Three tiny red dots stippled the crook of the creature's elbow in a roughly triangular pattern. The druinmark of a majik user all right. Common enough, he supposed, but not interesting. Then again, mortals grew overly irrational about forbidden, if interesting, things like majik.

As if on command, Ahven demonstrated this human leeriness by leaping from the wagon seat with a nimbleness incongruent with his years. Face red with fury, the old lord advanced on his servants, brandishing his cane. "Majik, did you say? The work of Dhrevhin is what this is and I won't hear another word about it. You'll bring the priests of the Loreich down on us with your talk of majik and we'll all be packed off to the asylums!"

Cowering away, the servants began to right the overturned wagon, gathering its scattered cargo. Ahven clambered back into his cart and shook his pony's reins. "Come along then, Prince. The least I can do is take you lads back to Wythelinke and feed you up before you go on your way."

A niggling flit in the back of Liiam's mind said he should decline this invitation, but his belly rumbled loud encouragement. Giving in to hunger's call, he whistled for their mounts. Two dainty fen horses stepped from the trees, rolling their eyes at the smell of blood in the air. With an easy leap, he took to his saddle, settling his nervous horse with a pat. He and Rheise fell in beside Avhen's low cart at it headed down the track, leaving the bondsmen to take care of the grisly dead.

"You're on your way to Watchwoode then?" The old lord lit his pipe as they trotted along through the gloomy-dark silence of Forest Withy.

"Aye, how did you know, my Lord?"

Ahven pulled a chit from his vest pocket. "A dispatch from Lord Nherhon arrived last week. He inquired to see if you stopped by Wythelinke on your way north."

Leaning in his saddle, Liiam took the dispatch and shoved it into his quiver without looking. He was a fortnight overdue at Watchwoode, and the lord of that place did not like to be kept waiting. He didn't need to read the dispatch to know it contained a scathing diatribe about his tardiness.

Duty seldom took him the fussy, easternmost immortal realm but he observed enough to know Watchwoode wasn't a place where a Silfen elf would linger long. Cool and elegant, the elves of Watchwoode subscribed to a code of conduct so rigid it verged on human fussiness. Because of this, Liiam took every detour he could to delay his arrival there.

"You'll escort Lord Bhren's party north to the Congress in Fallowmere?" Ahven prompted.

Liiam nodded. Something to look forward to, at least. Bhren's fusty primness was of a more entertaining nature than a disconcerting one. "Aye, then on to Lore's blest lands."

"A pilgrimage to bring the Pathe of Prophecy to an end." Ahven assumed the pious manner most every human did when they spoke of The Wheel turning on its Pathe. "We stand on the Promise of a bright new age."

Hardly. Liiam exchanged a quick look with Rheise. Without the missing Rhombic, the ages-old Wheel would more likely come to a grinding halt, taking mortal and immortal down with it.

Another incomprehensible quandary. Humans possessed such complicated customs and peculiar protocols, all of them spun from a profound trust in the Pathe. Unlike the elf folk who tended to let the prophecies unfurl on their own, humanity bore an overwhelming need to drag the Pathe into every aspect of their life. No doubt, Ahven kept an unwavering faith the Rhombic would just pop up from no place as impossible as it seemed right now.

"The Pathe will take care of it," mortals chimed brightly when confronted with some thorny predicament of prophecy. As if the Pathe and the Wheel it rolled on was some manner of mystical cure-all to belay every trouble in the land. He kept his silence about this prickly matter. To suggest otherwise would just cause unnecessary consternation. Like talking about majik.

An uneasy feeling began to gnaw at Liiam then, although he couldn't say why. Elf sense, eye and ear, told there was no danger about. He looked up at the early morning light struggling through the thick canopy of mossy limbs overhead. Perhaps the trees and their mournful whispering set his nervy on edge? Certainly, the Forest Withy shared no resemblance to his warm wood on the southern shores. Even at night Silfenlei glowed radiant especially when the moon rose, fat and high, gleaming a silvery path on the ocean. Then the willow and birch danced as the south wind soughed across the fens, rippling the sedge grass with nightsong.

In Withy, only the dark of death haunted the day and night.

Liiam's skin crawled at the thought of his silvery wood reduced to the gloomy shadows of this forest, adding to his unease. A fear not without foundation; the poison lurking in Withy might shadow his Silfenlei if he did not find the Moon Rhombic.

At last the trees began to thin, opening into a sunny meadow; a haven of golden light away from the darkness of the wood. Ahven turned off the track onto a gated drive guarded by several armed men. Liiam followed after, pushing aside his thoughts of poisoned forests and missing crystals.

However, the uneasy flit of caution remained.

Avhen's dining hall was a vast, vaulted room raftered with warm oak, its four large braziers burning with cheery warmth, their flames gleaming on the polished flagstone floor. The old lord made Liiam and his squire comfortable on either side of a long, narrow table and then ordered his servants to make a feast fit for a couple of hungry elf warriors. Ahven settled in next to Rheise and gave Liiam a cheery wink across the table. "Lady Olahn shall be happy to see you again, Iluminaiire."

Liiam froze when Ahven gave name to his earlier, unknown uneasiness. Lady Olahn. His usual light heart now burned with dread and the thought of rolling dead _ormulaiint_ didn't seem so bad after all. But he couldn't just cast Avhen's hospitality to the wind and walk back out the door. He glanced at the wide doors to the hall. Could he?

He straightened in his seat and gave a slight, non-committal nod which looked more like a wince. He'd just have to bear his imminent ordeal bravely. Twas he who forgot all about Avhen's pushy daughter. Now he'd suffer the consequences for it.

"We'll not mention the attack to Olahn," Ahven told them. "Matters such as _ormulaiint_ , war, and death are best kept from women. You know how delicate they are."

Liiam knew. At least that's what folk said him over and again: _Ladies are delicate creatures and must be handled carefully at all times._ Often times the tales told of mortal women didn't jig in tune with his observations of them.

A servant slid a plate in front of him, piled high with ham, eggs, and gravy. His belly began to make strenuous protest. These were no longer the complaints of ordinary hunger, but the onset of _oca'ri_ , an odd little phenomenon which occurred when Silfen elves stayed too long away from the ocean fens which nourished them.

Rheise dug into his food. Liiam did likewise, hardly tasting what he shoveled into his mouth until he noticed Ahven staring at their bulging cheeks. "Food's good," he made excuse for their gluttony rather than explain the complicated matter of _oca'ri_. Mouth full, Rheise could only grunt agreement.

With hunger dampened a little, Liiam began to relax. He'd even begun to entertain the notion that he'd leave Wythelinke unscathed when the high doors of the hall opened. An elderly man stood in the entry, a young woman by his side.

Liiam flinched. Lady Olahn had made her grand, late entrance.

"Steady Cap'n," Rheise murmured when Liiam flinched. "Just make nice and it will be over in no time."

Cheeks flushed, red hair gleaming with scented pomade Liiam could smell all the way across the hall, Lady Olahn glided in, led by her governor.

Swallowing back his sudden nervy, Liiam watched her approach from the corner of his eye. She moved slowly, forced to take cautious, mincing steps because of the trailing ends of the voluminous gown pooling at her feet. All the ladies of Bel Feire wore these cumbersome frocks. High necked, the sleeves falling well past the wrist, the gowns were considered becoming in their modesty. Liiam thought they looked like a herder's tent. One could hide a flock of sheep under them anyway.

Although he didn't much involve himself with _ladythings_ like clothing, he often wondered how it felt to drag all that gear around after you. He glanced at Olahn's governor. The old man stooped under the weight of the sturdy-looking woman clinging to his arm. Liiam could commiserate. During previous visits to Wythelinke, Olahn hung on his arm like a wet horse rug for hour after hour. His shoulders began to ache now just at the thought of it.

The odor of pomade grew cloying, an outright assault on his sensitive nose. Hand tightening on his knife, he braced for imminent attack. Olahn's shadow fell over him, followed by her breathless voice. "Why, Iluminaiire. How splendid of you to visit me."

Trapped like a deer in the torchlight, the elf warrior who single handily forced a dozen _ormulaiint_ into death just an hour before found himself froze, unable to look up into the Lady Olahn's eager face. Time froze, sticking his usual nimble mind into a morass of gluey ideas he thought might be some sort of polite but non-committal greeting trying to find its way from brain to tongue. He wasn't afraid of Olahn exactly, it was just...well, she was a _woman._

With all that that implied.

## I

Vigilance is paramount, for the light may blind the dark is ever watchful.

~The Loracle's Wheel

Although he remained quite unaware of the fact, someone else besides Lady Olahn had their eye on Liiam. This distant observer kept track of Liiam with a great deal of interest ever since the prince's birth in the warm waters of the Sio Loc Sea one early spring night more than three hundred years before. The apt observer knew when Liiam first nocked a bow in his tenth season, and made his first blood kill during his eleventh. Now, from many, many leagues north of central Bel Feire, Liiam's remote observer watched as the warrior-prince began his ultimate journey of duty for the Pathe.

Far beyond the rough mining lands of Ghranock, north from the wilders of Khorrin, this interested witness stands in his usual station above the daunted plains of Blackwashe, the ruined land from where all evil springs. Blackwashe lies riddled with deep pits and arid tablelands. Pale, alien-looking plants run riot amid the branches of grotesque, stunted trees. For leagues to the east and west, a great chasm splits this wasteland—the Abysm of Er. Cold, radiant vapors drift from fathomless Er, invisible to a mortal eye but like the heat waver seen in the distance on a hot summer's day to keener elf sight. All of Blackwashe is poisoned by this vapor, a lingering, unnatural alchemy of the ancient people who brought Earthsdoom to the world ages before. A poison running unchecked in the fairlands far below.

Nestled in the foothills of the Blackwashe Mountains, on the edge of this devastated plain stands the dark fortress Wyfren's Wail; a gloomy-sentinel guarding a wasted land. The crumbling gray-stone fortress appears deserted save for the dusty study at the very top of its lone tower. Cluttered with scrolls, pots of unguents, packets of dockeries, and cipher wands, the study reeks of fragrant of elementai majik. The same druin craft forbidden in all Anetherea.

In the middle of this majikical disorder stands a scrying seer, perched on a marble pedestal. Disk shaped, its mirror-like surface looks liquid and rolling like quicksilver, but feels dry to the touch. It casts no reflection of the slim hands moving over it.

Dhrevhin, All-Lord of Blackwashe, considers the seer thoughtfully, his hands coming to rest on its far-seeing surface. The seer serves as his window to the world below. The same device he used to mire the Wheel of Pathe in its own muck two ages before, not long after his banishment from the fairlands. The same device he used to keep an eye on Liiam and all matters concerning the Pathe. And, perhaps, to meddle some more.

Tilting his dark head towards the seer, Dhrevhin poured all his concentrated thought into it on three words of elven rune-speak: _"Vist, en nui."_ The seer flickered to animation, its smooth surface whirling with a series of disjointed images before slowing to reveal the green and brown tangle of the Forest Withy. Focusing in close, the disk revealed two Silfen elf bucks engaged in a heated battle with a dozen _ormulaiint_ men.

The air sizzled with bow fire as the shorter, stockier elf sank one shaft after another into the swarming creatures. The taller elf buck wielded a blade which fells the creatures as if they were just so many stalks of wheat before a scythe. Prince Iluminaiire.

Even though Dhrevhin watched the Blade of Pathe for hundreds of years, he still found himself startled by the prince's lovely countenance. With his long flaxen hair and indigo-purple eyes—signature of the blood-royal of Silfenlei—Iluminaiire rivaled any maiden in the land for fairness. A strange contrast to his skill with a blade. Dhrevhin suspected this warrior-faere appearance no accident at all but something the Pathe instigated. Every female in the lands hung Iluminaiire's arm, and it wasn't because of his finely honed social graces or his mostly nonexistent reputation as a ladies buck.

Intent on the battle raging in the seer, Dhrevhin flinched when a mace whizzed past the prince's head missing him by a hair's breadth. Iluminaiire ducked, tensing into a crouch until the spiked ball arced back towards his aggressor. Then he uncoiled into a leap, booting the _ormulaiint_ in the face. The man-like creature flew away, knocking down two of his companions and the prince whirled into the next attacker, his sudden offensive taking it off guard.

The _ormulaiint_ backed away and grinned, exposing row after row of jagged teeth. Iluminaiire grinned back, feinting to the left. A rusty sword rose to block, and the warrior-prince's sword disappeared behind his back to reappear as sudden right hand thrust to the belly. The _ormulaiint_ bent double over the blade and a splash of hot blood showered over the prince's boots. He shook the creature from his weapon just as the keen edge of an ax flew past his nose.

Iluminaiire's blade sang again, and Dhrevhin gave a faint, disdainful smile as the prince whistled along with it. Another lunged from behind, and the prince took a cut to his shoulder even as his blade flicked up to take off most the _ormulaiint's_ face.

"Coward's work," Dhrevhin heard Iluminaiire say. "Better off dead than yellow," he added as his backstabbing opponent collapsed into death.

Although Dhrevhin loathed the Pathe and all it stood for, he couldn't help but chuckle at these glib words. He found the tools of prophecy tiresome, usually pestersome, but he often counted on them for a moment's entertainment now and again. The tools of prophecy were no threat to him, not really. Of course, they went through all the right motions, dutifully blathered all the right words, and actually believed the Pathe would conclude in its Promise of a bright new world. But ever since Dhrevhin brought the Wheel to a halt ages past, all which remained of the Pathe were those who futilely served it faithfully.

Or so they thought.

In an odd way, the Pathe's tools served _him,_ and Prince Iluminaiire was no exception.

Leaning over the seer until his breath fogged its surface, Dhrevhin tsked a little at the sight of so many __ormulaiint__ , his 'minions', scattered in death along the trackside. Their demise didn't concern him much. The man-creatures bred like rats and their fallen ranks would quickly swell again. _Ormulaiint_ multiplied in a swift manner simply because it was in their nature to do so, and he'd learned long ago not to tamper with one's true nature.

Now, within the depths of the seer, Iluminaiire and his squire began to search the pockets of the slain _ormulaiint_. Dhrevhin smiled slyly. "I know what you hunt, prince of the silfer fen lands."

The seer shifted again, washing Iluminaiire away in a kaleidoscope of colorful images. The disc flashed a fiery red before it slowed to show the hot, green highlands of wild Khorrin. Dhrevhin stood straighter as a big, gold war charger came into view, its haunch and shoulder flexing with the power lurking beneath its hide. The stallion was an O'mun, a bearer of high majik, and what the beast bore was a high, if improbable, majik indeed. A helvish doe.

"Shay," he spoke out loud, tracing her blunted ears on the surface of the seer. Ears much like his own, for he and Shay were of the same nature. Upon the seer, he tapped the indigo crystal nestled at the hollow of her throat hiding the druinmark lurking there. Shaped like a saber to show it belonged to the hand of the Blade, the crystal happened to be the very article Prince Iluminaiire hunted for so futilely.

"Iluminaiire may as well look for the Rhombic on the bottoms of the Sio 'Loc Sea," Dhrevhin remarked to the seer. "If anyone can keep the crystal of rejuvenation from him, it would be this chary doe."

"Shay'da," he said her name again, trying to put an elven inflection on the name although it wasn't the least bit elven, or even her real name. Watchwoode stripped Shay of her birth name, along with everything else commonly regarded as immortal. In the coarse eld tongues of yore, Shay simply meant shadow. Fitting enough, he supposed, for she lived as a shade of a half-elf haunting a land of denizens which could not be so easily defined. The Khorrinish didn't much care for outlanders of any ilk, mortal or not, but oddly she remained safe there in a way she wouldn't in the more civilized portions of Bel Feire. A paradox of sorts.

Dhrevhin's fascination with the pariah Shay went far beyond her theft of the Moon Rhombic. She possessed a majik far more powerful than any found in the talismans of the elder elf folk for Shay carried the glam of blood-wyte behind her eyes. A living, breathing majik of the mind which spoke to those willing to behold it. A majik which should reside in the dead crystal currently hanging around the Overlord's of Anatherea's neck but did not.

A majik surpassing Dhrevhin's own.

He first sensed the blood-wyte moving across the lands, for the first time in centuries, when Shay escaped Watchwoode more than twenty years before. All these years, the maj plotted to have the blood-wyte for his own. So it served his purpose for the time being that Shay remain safely out of Iluminaiire's reach in Khorrin but wasn't the only reason he kept a close watch over her.

Indeed, she could very well breath life back into the faltering Pathe he spent a lifetime thwarting. However, the thought of this amused him rather than troubled him. Just another paradox for, of course, the Loreich would never allow a helven to walk the Pathe of Prophecy. In a land where racial purity stood paramount, the guardians of the fate would execute Shay for her corrupt blood if not for the theft of the crystal. Never would they realize the wealth of improbable power behind her eyes.

As if sensing his thoughts of the Loreich, the seer flashed again, whirling through a multitude of disjointed images: Peasant uprisings in Bel Feire, burnings, asylums filled with subversives found guilty of conducting druin majik. The orphanages and poor houses spilled over with fallen women and their bastard offspring; labor camps crammed with men accused of subversion.

"Nothing new in Bel Feire," Dhrevhin shrugged, and the seer moved on to show a familiar, domed building standing in the Forest Ephomoiire. The Temple of Lore, the realm of Watchwoode.

Dhrevhin gave a dreary sigh. He found the elvenwood, Cradle of the Pathe, as stuffy and dull as Prince Iluminaiire did. But no matter how boring, vigilance commanded he keep watch over all aspects of the prophecy. In the past, the Wheel often moved, for no apparent reason, to wobble down its Pathe again. He'd take no chances now, not with the end of the dying prophecy terminating for good when the dark moon rose.

The seer closed in on the dome, moving through its ivory granite walls into the Hall of the Dyad within.

Only the flames from the altars sanctioned to the goddess Lore lit the Hall. Those who crossed Her Pathe with druin majik ended up here, always, for the Rites of Rebuke.

"My minions," Dhrevhin laughed, no more disturbed by their chastisement than by the deaths of the twisted _ormulaiint_ Iluminaiire hunted. There would always be someone willing to serve his purpose.

It was simply in the nature for some folk to do so.

When the seer slowed, Dhrevhin studied the Hall without interest. Tiered galleries lined the curved walls, filled with those subjects of the crown summoned to witness Lore's judgment. The altar to the Dyad Lore stood in the center, two shallow saucers situated on the twin crystal globes of white and blue representing the goddess-crystals of blue rejuvenation and blood-wyte wonder. Flames danced in the saucers, sending dark shadows across the still faces of the divine knights of the Loreich flanking the globes. A narrow, marble table stretched before the altar, three seats on one side for the accusers, and one seat on the other for the unfortunate accused. Dhrevhin could not recall a time when anyone sat in the latter and managed to leave the Hall of Dyad unscathed.

This day the Loran, Hierophant of the Loreich, reclined in one of the seats of judgment. Wispy-haired and pale, the Loran's eyes reflect the fervent heat of altar's flames, his robes the rich blue and white of its twin globes. Nherhon, the sour-faced elf lord of Watchwoode, sat to the hierophant's left. Both seemed intent on the punishments the Loreich's divine knights meted out under the Loran's ecclesiastical direction.

Glancing to the hierophant's right, Dhrevhin noticed a dark-haired man slumped in the sovereign's chair. Closer examination proved him to be Lord Bhrendehlen, Overlord of all Bel Feire. Yet another pawn of Pathe known as the Shield. The overlord's head lolled against the back of his chair, his stocky frame sprawled in a limp way between its arms. A dim and lifeless white quatar crystal hung from his neck, emptied of its blood-wyte. Although the Hall echoed with the screams of the chastened and the stench of charred flesh, the overlord seemed quite unaware of the bloody clerical proceedings conducted right before his nose.

Dhrevhin frowned into the seer. In fact, Lord Bhrendehlen appeared to be fast asleep.

"Asleep at the judgment seat, eh?" Dhrevhin grinned, pleased by this sudden chance to tamper with prophecy even if it was just a simple mischief. Drawing a small vial from the breast pocket of his tunic, he prized its cork loose, wrinkling his nose at the bitterly acrid smell that wafted out.

"Smoke of Atar," he told Bhrendehlen's oblivious image in the seer. "A vapory tincture of elementai majik, excellent for promoting prophetic dreams." Tilting the vial, Dhrevhin allowed one drop to splash across the image of the sleeping Shield of Pathe in the seer.

"Sweet dreams, Overlord," Dhrevhin whispered as he settled in to watch judgment day at the Cradle of the dying Pathe.

## II

Under his reign, shelters his domain.

He is champion, he is word

Raised to voice, the Wheel is heard

Bear bright the Shield

The Wheel will halt if he should yield.

~Loracle's Wheel, the Bearing of the Shield

_"Kinravener? Patheslayer?"_

Bhren tried to ignore the insinuating voices intruding on the familiar, lovely dream he drifted in. A languid white mist cocooned with warmth, suspended him in a place beyond reality. A piece of mind, or perhaps, a place of mind beyond all the thorny problems of sovereignty. Here in the white, there were no peasant uprisings, no subversive subjects to chasten, no burnings or treason to haunt him. There existed no uncertain Pathe to follow.

Like a babe cradled in Mother's arms, Bhren smiled in his sleep.

Then an acrid stench filled his nose, driving the peaceful white back, sending him into a spiraling free fall. His belly lurched—up turned down, and down up—until he landed hard, jolted into a familiar nightmare. No longer snugly cradled, he now found himself on a hard, black jetty stretching without end into a colorless sea. All around, a twilight world closed in, dark without shadow, light without brilliance.

"This is not a place you want to fox around with," he mumbled in his sleep, a shiver running up his spine. Good and evil lived side by side in this otherworld and neither seemed to care what happened to him. He stood stranded on this dark jetty, not as Overlord or Shield of the Pathe, but as just another wave rising and falling on the vast expanse of colorless sea. Like the waves calling to him now: _"Patheslayer, kinrivener?"_

Mindful of the slick surface, Bhren crept over and looked over the jetty's edge. "I'm not," he told the waves. "I'm not a kinrivener."

_"Ravener, look into your destiny."_

Unwillingly, Bhren did and then flinched when he saw an elven face framed with dark shiny braids floating on the dead-looking waters. But the ears on either side this fair, elven face were blunted, neither human nor elven...

The dark maj Dhrevhin! Bhren covered his eyes.

_"No,"_ the waves taunted. _"Look again, Ravener of the Eldred. Look here, and behold what you have become."_

Trembling, he peeked through his fingers to find his own human face staring back at him from the water.

_"It is_ you, _slayer of the Eldred,"_ the waves crowed in triumph. _"Here you will remain until the waters of time run blue again."_

Before Bhren could make sense of the cryptic words, the jetty tilted. He scrambled for purchase on the slick sides, only to slide into depths without color, falling into reflection, falling into the dark helven, falling into himself. Because _he_ was the dark maj, _he_ was Dhrevhin—

He felt a hard poke ot his arm. Brhen jerked, then blinked to foggy wakefulness, half expecting to find himself standing in the midst of a colorless sea. Instead, he became aware of the consecrated fires of the altar to the Dyad Lore. _From water to flame_ , his mind gave up this random thought as a flash of steel flickered across his field of vision—a knife to refine a soul gone astray. Deadly sleek and wicked-sharp, the blade reflected the flames of the altar as it rose, arced, and then began to descend. Faster and faster it fell until time suspended and blade struck flesh and bone with grisly thunk.

A piercing scream filled Bhren's ears. Another scream joined it to mingle into a single high cry of pain and horror. His eyes widened when his gaze fell on the woman seated at the judgment table before him, her index finger shorn from her hand. A bright stream of blood spurted from the stump where her finger lived just a moment before, lewdly bright in the sacred dimness of the Hall. Blood trickled over the thick text her hand rested on—the testament of Loreid—to pool on the creamy marble of the judgment table.

Stricken with shock, Bhren watched as the woman slumped over the table. A divine knight caught her before she fell to the marble floor of the Hall of the Dyad. Even after she fainted, Bhren could hear the woman's screams ringing in his ears. They rose higher, deafening now and he realized the panicked cry unraveling into the still air issued from his own mouth. Reality thrust itself fully onto his sleep-muzzy consciousness and he clamped his mouth shut.

Except for the snap of the fires from the altar, silence reigned. Bhren remained motionless, unable to take his eyes from the woman. She appeared lifeless, back lit by the pyre of sacred flame. Her pale face made her look very young, but he thought she was just a bit older than he, maybe in her —

"Bhrendehlen, would you wake up!" an irritated voice barked in his ear.

With stiff effort, he turned his head find a face near his. Glittering green eyes flashed in the firelight. The black braids hanging on either side of this elfin face made him draw a sharp breath—braids like those of the blank face floating on the colorless waters of his dream! He nearly screamed again before he realized this face belonged to his father-in-law. This was somehow worse, though. "L-lord Nherhon?"

"Never have I been so humiliated," Nherhon hissed. "As if the Overlord of Bel Feire falling asleep at the gavel on judgment day isn't bad enough, you wake up shrieking like a stricken auek."

Ignoring the low titters coming from the witness gallery, Bhren chanced a quick look to Hierophant Loran. The holy man watched him with cool, speculative eyes so he turned back to the woman before him. A divine knight bound her hand, and then lifted her into his arms to carry her back to the asylum where she would stay for the remainder of her rehabilitation.

At the slight crinkle felt between his fingers, he noticed the parchment clenched in his fist—the woman's execution of judgment. Smoothing it flat, Bhren scanned it. The woman proclaimed herself a prophetess, stirring up trouble in her village with ominous visions of another Earthsdoom dawning on the near horizon if folk continued to follow the Pathe they were on. Her words roused her village to protest and riot. The Loreich found out druincraft caused the woman's insurrection.

Bhren frowned down at the judgment. The Loran originally recommended a light sentence;six months of asylum and revocation of the woman's Dhis Staff. Yet, there was no mention of the removal of riming finger. He knew this for he approved this judgment himself. His signature, seals, and various titles filled the very bottom of the parchment: Bhrendehlen Kheliburtam, exalted Shield of Lore's Pathe; King of Bal Moorhen; Overlord of Bel Feire, and the confederated nations of Gheminhall; Khorrin; Ghranock; and Watchwoode. Defender of the Loreich.

After he'd signed the writ of judgment, the Loran read the Rites of Rebuke, a rather lengthy and dull admonishment. _That's when I must have dozed off,_ Bhren thought.

Mortified, he cringed at the enormity of his careless behavior. Granted, he'd not slept well of late; dreams of colorless seas haunted his nights and now, it seemed, his days. But did he really fall asleep during the most solemn of Pathe obligations, the witnessing of Dyad Lore's justice?

"Sit up straight." Nherhon jabbed a sharp elbow into Bhren's ribs.

Willing his heart to slow to a more sedate speed, Bhren straightened and then made apology to Lord Nherhon and the Loran both. "Forgive me your lordship, and your Reverence. I don't know what befell me."

"I should say not," Nherhon snapped. "Appearances and conduct are paramount, Bhrendehlen," he added, tugging at his cravat, and then smoothing his braids—as if this careful tidying could somehow smooth over Bhren's awful gaffe. Figuring if it worked for Nherhon, it might work for him Bhren ran his fingers through his brown hair, but only succeeded in snarling the dark strands in his sovereign ring. Shaking his hand free, he switched face saving tactics and directed a stern and kingly look to the amused witnesses in the gallery. His subjects hastily lost interest in their overlord's illicit nap and fell to talking in hushed whispers among themselves.

As always when Bhren lost his composure, he found it hard to regain it. Taking another deep breath he let it loose on a question. "I...did we have enough evidence to remove the riming finger? It's not listed on the judgment order."

"You would know if you'd seen fit to remain vigilant in your duty," Nherhon sniffed. "Instead, you drowse through the solemnest of obligations—"

"There _was_ something else," Loran broke in before Nherhon could work himself into one his famous blustering fits of temper. "A cleric found this in the woman's asylum cell, just after I issued the writ of judgment." The hierophant slipped a book from beneath his rich robe. Bhren began to take it, and then jerked his hand away. The book's cover identified it as a Tome of Alabine, the text of dark majik. Every verse within its pages directly defied the Pathe.

"She's a druin then?"

Loran nodded, laying the Tome on the judgment table.

"But could she sneak a Tome of Alabine onto the hallowed grounds of the asylum?"

"We're not sure. The woman denied it belonged to her but..." Nherhon gave a slight tilt of his shoulder that said, "What do you expect from a druin?"

"During the Rites of Rebuke my commune with Dyad Lore revealed the finger should be removed," Loran confided. "The woman summoned the malignant powers of druincraft. In doing so, she cast a shadow on all that is feminine," he added, taking opportunity to give moral instruction. "Dhrevhin taints wild majik even as it's drawn near, poisoning everything in its Pathe. She put us all in peril."

Loran leaned over and patted the bloody cover of the Loreid lying on the table. It was stained rustred with the leavenings of many chastisements. "Only the testament of Loreid, contains the truth of the Dyad," he raised his piping voice to address everyone in the Hall of the Dyad. "This woman twisted the intentions of a goddess to please herself, as our forebears of the Earthsdoom did ages ago. Let this be a lesson for us all."

Bhren stared at the Tome on the judgment table. Majik of any sort unnerved him, even the unadulterated enchantments of the Pathe like the ivory crystal at his neck. His hand strayed up to fidget with the stone. Once a vessel for the high majik the Blood Stone lay dim now, its blood-wyte majik mute.

In the privacy of his own thoughts, Bhren was relieved the crystal remained without blood-wyte animation. Even having a Pathe-sanctioned majik dangling around his neck would set his nervy on edge. Regardless of his feelings about the matter, Nherhon claimed the Blood Stone would flare with the fyre of wyte before Darkmoon rose early next summer just as his lordship insisted the Moon Rhombic would be restored.

Loran concluded his lecture, and a divine knight cast the Tome of Alabine into the fires of the altar along with the woman's finger and her Dhis Staff. The torches flamed high with Dyad Lore's approval of the punishments, filling the chamber with the reek of burning parchment and flesh. Loran called a recess until three on the clock.

Rising on shaking legs, Bhren wobbled up out of his chair and the hierophant ushered him from the Hall. Nherhon followed along behind, a kerchief held to his nose against the smell of charred flesh. When they reached the open air corridors of Elfenweire, Bhren leaned against the rail of the skywalk and took a deep breath as he looked around the elegant main keep of Watchwoode.

"Must you gawk, Bhrendehlen?" Nherhon grabbed his elbow, prodding him down the promenade.

Staggering sideways, Bhren tripped and nearly fell on his face. "I didn't even find out her name," he blurted out in rush as if forceful words could somehow drive the awful images of the woman's disfigurement from his thoughts.

Nherhon and the Loran stopped and stared at him for a long moment before exchanging a meaningful look. The elf lord made a low sound of disgust at Bhren's squeamishness but Loran took his arm, leading him along as he offered reassurance. "Sire, I know this is hard for you to understand, but you must trust in me." The hierophant raised his right hand; it was missing a forefinger, too. "We of the Loreich do this willingly. The riming finger is the conduit for druin majik, and its power is a temptation even for holy men."

Bhren managed to catch his breath but his face reddened as an unbidden, and unwanted thought rose to mind at Loran's words: Fingers weren't the only things the priests removed when joining the order of the Holy Loreich. With effort, he resisted the urge to protectively cross his legs.

"Sometimes we fallible mortals cannot resist the deva of the riming finger and it must be removed," the Loran waggled his stump in a somehow grotesque manner. "Our lands are sterile enough, Sire. We can't risk exposing women to the stress of conducting even high majik. The fortitude it takes to wield such power weakens females, leaving them barren."

"It's just so awful," Bhren muttered as they stepped onto the lush forest gardens surrounding the temple.

"A hard lesson," Loran agreed. "But we do not wish to leave a single soul lingering in iniquity when the prophecies conclude at Darkmoon's rising. It would put us all in peril."

With that, Bhren allowed the hierophant's wise words to envelope him in a kind of uncertain peace. Loran could always see the broader horizons of the Pathe Bhren couldn't.

By the time they walked across the forest lawns to the temple gazing pools, he managed to collect his reeling thoughts to order. They stood in silence for a moment, while Nherhon looked over the gardens with a critical eye before turning that scathing gaze to his son-in-law. "It is fortunate the woman was not helvish," he said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. "I don't think our overlord could have remained awake long enough to witness an execution."

Helvishness. Not a subject Bhren was particularly fond of and his belly began to churn all over again as Nherhon's words hung suspended in the quiet air.

"Speak not of corruption in Lore's presence," Loran admonished without rancor. "I am more concerned with the elven element of the Pathe. Oh, not Watchwoode, of course," he smiled at Nherhon. "Watchwoode's integrity is sterling."

"You're speaking of Silfenlei, then," Bhren prompted.

"Of course he speaks of Silfenlei!" Nherhon cried, spinning on his son-in-law as if the Loran's concerns were his fault. "The behavior of the fen elves is a travesty, an outrage bordering on sacrilege."

"Now, Nherhon. I meant not Silfenlei at all..." the hierophant began but Nherhon's frustration took full howl. Two hectic blotches of color rising on his pinched face. "As Torch of the Pathe, I have made sure to light the way so Watchwoode remains steadfastly progressive. Even now, as the Pathe neared its end, the Silfen elves run about without conduct or protocol like heathens from a darker time. Gad-abouts, concerned only with war and sailing."

"Nay, the silfer lands are properly blest no matter how boisterous their folk may be." Loran smiled benevolently. "I meant Oakfell, my lord. I suspect they engage still in the darker traditions like the forbidden ritual concerning matrimonials."

"The Soulsforge, the melding of the immortal souls," Bhren said absently watching a woodpeck tackle a laoden elm.

Nherhon glared at him. "It's improper to speak so openly of such a gamy matter! And in front of a priest, too! Really, Bhren. You've grown as vulgar as Prince Iluminaiire!"

Loran frowned. "What has happened to Prince Iluminaiire, isn't he supposed to be here this day?" The hierophant looked around as though the prince might be lurking in the trees.

"Er...yes. Well, you see, it seems..." Bhren cast about for a way to excuse Liiam. There seemed to be no excuse at hand for his friend's tardiness. In just a matter of days,every instrument of prophecy and leader in Anetherea would begin a historic journey to far away Fallowmere, the sacred lands of Lore where the Wheel of Pathe rest in physical embodiment. An uncertain journey. The blest lands remained closed to outsiders until this time, just months before the prophecy's close. A long journey. Fallowmere lay far across the mountainous wilders on Anetherea's remote, westernmost border far, far beyond known areas of civilization. Nherhon wanted take these last few days before their departure to instruct Liiam on certain matters. Unfortunately, Liiam was not here.

"Perhaps Iluminaiire is lost?" Nherhon suggested.

His father-in-law spoke lightly, but Bhren knew this joviality hid a bitter frustration. An expert at wood lore and tracking, it was doubtful Liiam would lose his way on the plainly marked tracks crisscrossing Bhren's kingdoms. He knew the elf's tardiness as a deliberate tweak to Nherhon's nose. As if Liiam's refusal to come to Watchwoode for immersion in the Pathe's complexities weren't bad enough. The warrior-prince disdained scholarly matters. Liiam claimed he already served the Pathe as a soldier; there wasn't any reason to act like a scroll-hawker, too.

However, since the subject of the rogue prince was broached, Nherhon wouldn't let it go. Bhren exchanged a worried glance with the Loran as the elf lord gave voice in a furious litany, listing all of Liiam's various transgressions: An inappropriate eagerness for blood battle, his casual attitude towards sobriety, and even the strangely insatiable curiosity Liiam possessed, one which led him to investigate anything—majik or mayhem—no matter how distasteful. A curiosity, Nherhon promised rather smugly, would one day be Liiam's undoing.

Now his lordship's rant crescendoed with sudden, pent up fury. "I think a few dispatches to Silfenlei are in order—now."

Nherhon spun on his heel and stalked away.

Bhren turned to hurry after his father-in-law but the Loran pulled him back.

"You mustn't fret, Sire. Nor should we judge too harshly." The hierophant tsked at Nherhon's stiff retreat. "Poor soul. He's suffered such trauma keeping the Wheel on Pathe." Loran's face hardened then and he gave Bhren an accusing look. "I don't think he'll ever recover from the theft of the Moon Rhombic."

At this slanted mention of Shay, Bhren's flush crept down his face and into his collar, making his chest tight. Shay's helvish nature and her theft of the crystal were not fondly embraced subjects. His face broke into a sweat from the hot flare of guilt in his heart. Suddenly, he wanted a drink even though he stood on hallowed ground and shouldn't be thinking of drinking at all.

"Er... yes, Reverence," he muttered.

Nodding in somehow knowing manner, Loran reached into the pocket of his rich robes and cast a handful of acrid-smelling powder over the temple gazing pool. The divining waters within its shallow depths began to churn, swirling with a series of disjointed images before settling into a twilight indigo color. A crescent moon rose to drift across the surface, glowing a soft blue. "The Moon Rhombic, spirited away by a minion of Dhrevhin," the hierophant intoned.

"Then you think Shay—"

"Do not speak her foul name in my presence." Loran's pale eyes lit with emotion.

"Liiam could have tracked Sh—her," Bhren reminded timidly.

Jaw clenched tight, the hierophant held himself motionless, staring into the pool for long moments. Finally, he seemed to relax and spoke absently, as if to himself. "The future calls to me. The Rhombic _will_ be found." He sighed, a sound of regret, a sound of certainty. "Nherhon and I made a wise decision not to send Iluminaiire after the thief. We could not allow Silfenlei, or anyone, to know of the helvish iniquity which sprang from their ancient blood. Iluminaiire's credibility might have been compromised. Nor could we take the chance of exposing him to the sway of her evil."

Bhren could quite understand this. In his youth, he'd nearly succumbed to Shay's treachery himself. Another guilty flush burned his cheeks when Loran gave him a sidelong look—a warning. "But the helvish beast of your childhood is an omen. It's not enough to simply walk the Pathe, one must embrace it fully, body and soul." "

Loran cast his charm on the pool again. The waters shifted to show a billowing cloud of dust kicked up by the hooves of many horses and soldiers rushing into battle.

Sentaurs, Bhren thought, Sentries of the Pathe.

"The battle of Darkmoon, when the dark voices tormenting this land will be silenced by the Lady's Horse," Loran confirmed his guess. The waters stirred again turning to the color of blood. Sudden flames danced across the surface of the pool, making Bhren jump.

"The lost Fiery Blood of ancient Dhunhult," Loran exalted, raising his hands in supplication to the bright sky overhead. "This _is_ a portent from on high. The Pathe of Prophecy will be fulfilled." His hands fell to his sides and he turned to Bhren, face sober. "But it's a paradox. We stand on the edge of utopia even as we stand on the brink of war."

Bhren had no idea what a utopia was, but nodded anyway. The pool, he regarded with a dubious eye. A paradox, indeed. Not only did the fulfillment of the Pathe hinge on finding the Moon Rhombic, but also Elder Dhunhult's missing bloodline. The birth of the prophecy began with Eldred Dhunhult joining with a princess of Silfenlei. Now the Pathe would conclude when Liiam joined with a woman of Dhunhult's Fiery Blood.

A union to prove the unity of all, immortal and mortal, brining the Wheel full circle and to closure. He scowled at the divining waters. You'd think a majik pool would tell them where to find the Rhombic and flappin', fiery Old Blood instead of showing other such cryptic things. Bhren absently toyed with the dead crystal at his neck.

_Blood-wyte?_ a soft interior voice insinuated and he hastily jerked his fingers from the Blood Stone.

As if sensing his thought, the Loran turned from the pool. "Is Iluminaiire distressed about the absence of his betrothed's blood line?"

"Er...I would imagine so," Bhren replied rather evasively. Loyalty to his friend commanded he not reveal the elf warrior's reluctance to marry a mortal—or anyone for that matter—regardless of bloodline. Liiam grew tongue-tied with maids he'd known his whole life. What would he do with a strange human woman from a wild land? Another paradox, one easier for Bhren to understand. For centuries, the Pathe held an injunction against the joining of mortal and immortal lest a helvish abomination spring from that duty.

Some incomprehensible factor betwist elven and human blood lured the helvish to druincraft. They bargained away their souls for it. Now and again though, the Pathe demanded these unions and only the prophecy could sanction them. Nherhon said it was a test of faith, and no abomination ever sprang from a Pathe sanctioned joining. Still the conditioning to keep the races from interbreeding remained difficult to overcome even when prophecy commended a mortal and immortal union.

"Answers unknown will be revealed at the Loraculine Congress." Loran gave Bhren's arm a comforting pat. "There we will witness the Loracle's Wheel in all its glory." The hierophant offered his ring hand to Bhren.

Lost in his own thoughts, Bhren absently kissed the stump on the Loran's hand instead. His face burned bright when he realized what he'd done. Hastily, he touched his lips to the ornate ring on the hierophant's next finger, a great show of reverence to make up for his gaffe.

"Be of good spirit, Sire," Loran said as he glided away, heading back to the temple.

Bhren sank back into a bench at the poolside and buried his face in his hands. Any spirit would do him now. Brandy, beer, or even the elf draught the immortals favored. Perhaps he shouldn't think of drunkenness on Lore's hallowed grounds at all. Prankishly, his thoughts turned back to Shay.

A shudder ran up his spine and he covered his face again. No, he most certainly shouldn't think of her either.

## III

The Brand, The Beast & The Mark...

~The Loracle's Wheel

Shay eased the door open, wincing as it squealed on its hinges, and eased herself into the dark cots holding. Holding the door ajar, she gave a last peek out into the lane. Lights began to flicker in the barracks and village homes at this misty early hour; the sun still rested well below the eastern Khorrin sky. Softly, she shut the door so not to alert the sleeping ones within. Well-worn calfskins boots treaded silently on the plank floors as she skulked through the scullery. Embers glowed in the banked fire of its place, a pot hung off to one side of the coals to keep it warm.

Ignoring the pot holder hanging within reach, she slid the lid off the pot and sniffed its contents. A venison stew savored with carrots and onions. Without regard to knife or folk, she picked a piece from the pot dropping it in her mouth whole, settling on the hearth to enjoy her stolen meal. After weeks of rough camp food, these leftovers were fit for a table set for the Goddess. She fished around in the pot again and found a flavorful bit of vegetable dripping with pot liquor.

A shadow passed the open window of the scullery. A moment later, a huge head poked through. Pradhan. The golden stallion spoke hopefully behind her eyes. _Is that a carrot you're eating?_

"Aye, but it's my carrot," Shay said greedily, licking her fingers. "Go find your own feed bag, Long Face."

The stallion gave a grunt of annoyance and ambled off towards the barracks where there were grooms and bootjacks to could coax apples and carrots from without all this hostility.

She was just reaching into the pot for a chunk of potato when another spoke in the dark. "Only heatheners eat with their fingers and direct-like from the pot." A light suddenly flared behind this judgment as if in accusation of Shay's theft. Squinting into the lamp hovering before her, she hid greasy fingers behind her back and assumed an air of innocence. "Just warming myself near to the fire, Mam."

The lamp lowered and then turned down to reveal an elderly woman behind it. She set the lamp on the table, and tied an apron over her split riding skirt. "Something wrong with the fire in _yer_ cot holding."

"Cold is all, I just arrived in and the hearth was dead," Shay plucked another slice of meat from the stew pot.

"That's all?"

"It's a habit to come here, Mam," Shay tilted her head in an engaging way she seen other lasses do to win people over. It didn't much work for her. It didn't do much for Mam either. The old woman gave her an amused look. "Like a milch cow that finds its way back to its barrow in the evening?"

Taking a seat near to Shay, Mam regarded the younger woman's windblown hair and stained leather rigging. "You look like a league o' broken track, gal. When be the last time your head was properly plaited?"

Shrugging, Shay reached into the pot again. Mam slapped her hands away. Then she quickly ladled stew into a bowl and handed over a spoon. Moving with an ease belying her age, Mam swiftly stirred the embers in the fireplace, added logs, and then put the kettle to warm. Just as nimbly she loaded the range and set the draft.

Settling back in her seat at the hearth, she watched her fosterling, one raised under this very roof since the day she returned from the brual outlands more than a score of years before. A lass raised properly with such manners and courtesies as the lands of Khorrin possessed. Social niceties were few in this wild land, but Mam did her best to uphold certain customs. Yet, here Shay sat today, groping in the stew pot like a scrounger in a low pub.

Mam shook her head in despair. Not about Shay or her bad table manners precisely. The gossip of the drovers passing through this small village a fortnight ago shriveled the old woman's heart. Talk of the Wheel moving on its Pathe again. Slanted, furtive whispers about the outlander lords forcing the prophecy into motion again, trying to bring it to fulfillment by some sneaky meeting of sorts.

Mam turned the anxiety generated by this gossip into criticism of Shay who sat at her place in the hearth spooning up stew like a man trenching in the tavern. Mam felt helpless over the lass she'd looked after these last two decades as if her own. There didn't seem much to be done with her. Shay was such a queer thing, so odd looking with her strange hair like the sun and moon trying to shine at once, and those dark, dark eyes, the color of nothing ever seen in the horselands before. Still, the gal couldn't help what she looked like so Mam took another track. "Where you been little gal, I haven't seen you all season?"

"To the north, along the border. There be plague there, Mam." Shay gestured at the blue, blade-shaped crystal at her neck. "I rode back in with the storm warriors last evening."

"And you were out only where Gods know how to tread and now you're here thieving my stew pot?"

"If I thieve a crystal from the Lords of the Pathe, what protection does a stew pot have?"

Mam blinked and Shay tapped the crystal at her neck. "Duty called me away most of the season."

"This is good," she added taking another bite of the stew by way of spoon hoping her proper use of utensils would stall whatever grievance Mam herded together to direct at her this morning.

Mam sighed. "How long will you wander the outposts like a wind demon?"

"Till duty stops calling,"

This answer didn't please the old woman either. Mam leaned over to wipe at the spotless scullery table with one faded hand. "I thought ye'd be settling down after all this time."

A familiar question, one asked of Shay by Mam often. She spooned up a particularly tender piece of venison and chewed it thoughtfully before she gave her standard response. "Too old for that anyway, I ken," she said at last.

"Not unusual for the widows and spinsters to hove down after their courses are finished." A certain tension crept into Mam's seemingly idle conversation. "Twouldn't be anything the least bit hooky about finding a Captain to cozy with. Less odd than trailing after a regiment of Sentaurs."

Shay scooped an enormous quantity of broth into her mouth to still her sharp retort. She swallowed and spoke in her nearly too-soft-to-be-heard voice. "Not odd. Just out 'ter the question. I agreed to keep this rock safe and keep it safe I will. It is first in my mind and comes before all else. One day, the Wheel may move on and I'll be relieved of the Rhombic."

Mam frowned recalling the gossip of the drovers again.

"Or," Shay continued, "the Wheel and its Pathe will remain as they are and I'll remain as I am."

"Those are duties you trucked up for yourself," Mam snapped. "Some sort o' elvish nonsense yer poor, demented mother took up with, Lore rest her immortal soul."

"Erril did what she had to, and now so do I."

"They are not a duty a woman of Khorrin takes upon herself. "

"They were responsibilities requiring assumption. And since I happened to be in possession of the article needing assumption," Shay rapped her knuckles against the Rhombic once more, "I assumed them."

Shrinking back a little, Mam felt the same fear she always did when the lass dropped the brogue of the horsefolk and took up the fancy tones (as Mam referred to them) living at snooty Watchwoode had taught her. Khorrin folks by lot and large were mostly uneducated, and the complex words Shay used stymied her. She looked uneasily away from the Moon Rhombic hanging around the lass's neck; Mam ever lived in fear its rightful owner would take Shay's head to possess it again.

Shay looked beyond Mam's confusion out the broad window to the dawning day beyond. The sun just edged over the horizon. At the garden gate Pradhan stood. Delicately and with dignity, he accepted apple after carrot from the bootjacks. The young, untried soldiers looked content to stuff the stallion's vast maw all day. _Poor lads,_ she thought absently, _my old gold charger has you conned good._

Further beyond, past the barracks, on a steep knoll rest the ruins and remains of the fortress Dhunskaralt. Three ages past, the crumbled castle was once the domain of the first regent of Khorrin, Eld Dhunhult. There he and his elven bride Vhale joined to stir the newly born prophecy to bring the horselands into existence. Now, the ruins remained as the only monument to the lost Fiery Blood of Dhunhult and Vhale.

Shay sometimes wandered in the ruins although there wasn't much to look at anymore. The KinRivener War assured anything of value left behind by Khorrin's originating bloodline was long ago destroyed; the stud books stolen, the family lines once so carefully preserved now scattered to the fourtresses of the wind. All pillaged and lost, centuries and centuries ago. Then a usurping line, one not even of the Horse, replaced the Fiery Blood, for outlanders feared corruption might infiltrate the monarchy as it did before to bring the Wheel to a grinding halt. A corruption not so different from Shay. Yet, that same corruption rose again in spite of the efforts of the Loreich. A prophecy-paradox; that which grew to preserve the prophecy ultimately destroyed it. And when the Fiery Blood died, so did the prophecy that created it.

It was the feel of the old ruins which drew Shay there time and time again. A lingering sense of honor, valor, and majik still permeated the ancient stone keep in spite of the death and destruction it fell to.

Shay looked away from the window to find Mam studying her. The old woman was on the verge of tears.

"I watched your own natural dam sit where you are now, looking at those same ancient ruins. She liked to wander them too, ye see." Mam's eyes closed against this memory of the King's unwanted wife who once sought refuge in her home. Just as the King's unwanted daughter did now.

"I reckon Erril looked to Lady Vhale the way the horsefolk look to Eldred Dhunhult," Shay shrugged. "There were from the same elf-lands."

"That may be so but yer dam, she found some contentment here, fer a time, in these wildlands." Mam's eyes popped open. "But Erril was able to content herself roaming the old halls of Dhunhult and Vhale without having to trek from stable to outpost living on the back of a horse like a common enlisted man, the way ye do."

"I'm content, Mam," Shay said earnestly. "Truly I am."

"Yer not," Mam insisted. "You wander like a demon possessed. I've seen you lass, staring at the maps of the Aerie Forest, looking off into the west with a glint in yer eye like a stallion gets in his when he scents a welcoming mare. You've got it in yer head when the Wheel turns again you'll exile yourself to that barren place, the same place my own Fa perished at."

Shay shot back shrewdly, "Where'd _ye_ get the notion the Wheel would turn on its Pathe again after mired in the muck of its own paradox fer an age?"

Mam clenched her jaw and thought of the drover gossip. Perhaps it was just biddy-old chat and she stirred a hornet's nest for no cause? Suddenly she felt the fosterling and not the Mam.

"Aye," Shay gave a knowing nod. "Per'aps the Wheel that never turns won't. Then ye'll have turned your under drawers in a twist for naught."

When Mam looked again Shay's casual attitude had dropped. Her chin gave a regal lift, and she gazed back with such penetration Mam felt as if some agent of the aetherealms peered into her very soul. Her eyes dropped to the curious mark nestled in the hollow of Shay's neck crowned by a thin, silvery scar. Three small purple dots arranged in roughly triangular manner. A reverent thrill ran up Mam's spine, and she bit her lip against threatening tears.

The thrill faded and she longed for nothing more than to move backwards two decades. When the lass used to lay her head in her lap while Mam stroked and soothed at the terrible grief Shay bore over the death of her strange, insane mother. Then Mam felt like a _Mam_ , plaiting the lass's hair, petting her like the odd, funny-looking doll she appeared to be. Now felt she barely knew the creature sitting beside her.

_Crossing a line, I be. And I can't stop myself._ Mam lower lip trembled. She looked towards the ruins, her fist clenched to her mouth knowing the crumbling stones represented the honor and glory of a long departed time much as Shay did herself in an awful way.

_What is revered will be reviled_ , a snatch of prophecy winded its way into Mam's troubled thoughts, _When the conflicts of Dark Moon harry the lands._ As if these words drove her from her seat, the old woman jumped up and snatched the unfinished bowl from Shay's hand. Hurrying to the counterpane, she spilled it into the slop jar. "That's from last night's supper; not fit for the likes of you. I'll swill the hogs with it and make aigs."

Nodding agreeably, Shay remained silent, certain whatever Mam carried on about had nothing to do with husbands, babes, and settling down to raise a brood.

"I'll take aigs too since someone's laying them!"

Shay looked up with some relief at the thump of boot on planking to find Kharitas striding into the scullery, carrying the scent of the stables with him. The old Captain paused to bind up his long graying locks as was proper before entering one's home. His eyes lit with a twinkle when he caught sight of Shay at the hearthside. "Well, look what the fortresses of the wind blew in! Where's my soldier gal been marching this season?"

"Don't encourage her, Kharitas!" Mam's previous irritation flared again with the arrival of her brother. She slammed a pan on the range. "She should be looking to her future, to her life, not traipsing after the Sentaurs like a chucker." After peeling off a quantity of fat to grease the pan, she spun on the old man. "Ye know I'm not one to tell a man his business—"

"But ye will anyway," Kharitas winked at Shay.

"'Ware me Brother, its time our filly was reined in!"

"A woman would be burnt at the altar for speaking to a man like that in the fairlands," Shay commented. "At the very least sent to an asylum." She made this offhand remark to lighten the escalating tension. Instead her words angered Mam even more. The old woman regarded her equally-aged brother and her wayward fosterling with a frigid look. Her lips tightened to hold back tears. Abruptly, she turned to crack eggs into the fry pan. The set of her shoulders prompted Kharitas and Shay to whisper so not to further upset her.

"How sits the king's favorite counsel?" Shay patted the hearth bricks next to her, inviting her foster Fa to sit near.

"The king's counsel," Kharitas eased himself onto the fire bricks mindful of his rheumatism. The kettle over the fire began to shriek. He moved it to the range. Mam angrily poured tea and flounced away again.

"The King's Counsel sits the way he always does, spending his day listening to the crazy-talk  of a demented monarch." Kharitas gave her a teasing smile and yanked at her windblown hair. "Ye wanting to be presented at the court of the mad king? He sired ye after all?"

Shay's lip twitched as she imagined such as herself presented to the King's Sight. The throne room would collapse. She shook her head, watching Mam with some concern. The Wheel had actually turned on the Pathe then? And Mam was in a flither wondering how it would affect her fosterling.

Of course, Shay was well past the age or need of fostering even when she first returned to Khorrin decades back. Unfortunately, Khorrin could be a brutal place to live, and orphans an all too common occurrence. But just as his father before him had to wrestle with the thorny problem of Shay's mother, Kharitas had to deal with Shay. The easiest and most obvious thing to do was simply take Shay in as his father took in her mother before him. Family ties remained a hard bond in a land built on bloodlines, even if one were not blood related at all.

Mam slammed down two plates of eggs and sizzling bacon on the table, further expressing her discontent. Kharitas and Shay moved to their seats to eat. The door opened and shut, and a tall, dark-haired man entered the scullery. He wore soldier's rigging much like Shay's, composed of leather trousers, chaps and a bandal laced tightly up his broad chest. Without a word, he thrust a handful of dispatches at Kharitas, and snatched a pastry from the sideboard.

The wrath of Mam turned on the new comer. She thrust a plate of egg and bacon under his pastry, and lit in before he could seat himself at the table by the hearth. "Can I have jes one fambly member who will eat proper-like?" She paused and ire of Dhrevhin himself glowed in her eyes. "Kharek! Don't ye dare come in this home with unbound hair!"

"Fine way to speak to the Lord-Captain of the all the Khorrin Horse." Kharitas murmured into his tea as he began to sort through the dispatches. Lord Captain or not, Kharek hastily tied his uruly mane back.

"Heatheners! An army of them under my Lore-fearing roof," Mam looked about savagely for some offending filthy thing to swipe, clean or wipe up.

Kharek grimaced, taking a seat near to Kharitas. "What's bit her bag?"

"She wants me to get joined, preferably to some Captain or another, dunnit matter who," Shay told him. "She's fashed at me, not you, Kharek."

Kharek scowled. "Heave off, Mam, she can't do that".

"Stay of it Cap'n High and Mighty. You don't know the partings of it lest it's putting a mare under stallion."

"Aye, I jes crawled out from under an auek's nest," Kharek grumbled.

Kharitas chuckled. Shay, who seldom smiled, felt a twitch of one tug on her lips. She hid her mirth by slathering a piece of toast in butter.

"Tend your armies, and keep to what you know," Mam slapped at her rising bread dough and then promptly fluffed it again.

"I know she can't be married," Kharek told her.

"She's well able." Mam waggled her doughy finger. "She's just bullheaded. Like you. It runs in this fambly even if there's not a bit of common blood 'tween us.

"It has nothing to do with blood. She just can't."

"Shay just won't."

"Can't!" Kharek shouted jumping from his seat, red-faced. "Don't ye know what can't is? Even if she could I won't sanction it anyhow!"

Kharek's stallion squealed from the barrack. Pradhan gave a warning rumble in return.

"Kharek," Shay said quietly, finding his trip-trigger anger disturbing when it affected the Horse. Exposure to heated domestic disputes the beasts didn't understand only served to distress them. _Mam's just doing what she does best which is fuss. Leave her to fume, and she'll be fine by dinner time._ she thought hard at him.

"I'm not fussing," Mam eavesdropped this silent thought.

Shay sighed. Conversational privacy was hard won in a land full of empaths. After a moment, the young Lord-Captain subsided to glower over his eggs. Attempting to steer this morning into something of what it should be, Shay liberally coated another pastry with jam and handed it to Kharek. "Any word from Bek? It's been years since he took furlough."

Wincing a little, Kharek's eyes met hers then darted away to look elsewhere. His face reddened. Nor did he answer. Shay eased closer to him, sensing he hid something. "What are you up to?"

"I'm not doing anything."

"You are." Shay said, feeble voice rising. "And don't ever let me catch wind of you doing what I see on your mind."

Kharitas frowned and lowered the dispatches he read. "Ye best not be driving a herd that ain't yorn, son."

"You're not my master! And neither is she."

"Nice fambly morning," Kharitas commented to no one in particular. "What's Kharek planning on doing, little gal?"

He's planning on venturing down to Watchwoode to Bek. But he won't. Will you, Kharek?"

Kharitas' usually merry face assumed a sternness not typical of him. "The Khorrinish do not leave their borders lest their droving a herd to the fairlands. You aren't a drover, Kharek. You are Lord of all the Khorrin Horse. Yer place is here."

"So is Bek's. Yet there he be, in the Woods that Watch, catering to Lord Nherhon and our weasel of an Overlord!" Kharek snarled. "Far from home, rotting away—" He abruptly trailed off and savagely tore a bite from his pastry.

"The enemy isn't here, Kharek, and don't you think about inviting it here either," Shay warned. Chewing hard, Kharek moodily stared at the floor.

"See, see," Mam said victoriously, flapping her hand at the angry Captain. "That's what I have to put up with you, little gal. Like herding air horses ain't it?"

Shay's head began to hurt. "I don't shout at you," she began to protest when the door opened again. A young woman eased herself in the scullery, a squirming baby in her arms. Relieved that someone showed up to distract Mam, Shay squinted at the new arrival trying to place her. After a moment, it came. Dhelane.

_Dhelane from up the Lane_ , Mam called her when she was in whimsical turn of mind. Dhelane dropped in twice a fortnight to help Mam give the cotsholding a thorough cleaning. The lass came from an important bloodline although Shay couldn't remember how at the moment.

"I'm late," the young woman apologized. "And," she raised the babe, "I hope you give no mind, but my sister couldn't watch him today..."

"Don't mind a bit," Mam said fiddling with another bread set. She gave a pointed look at Shay over her shoulder. " _I_ like to have the babes about. Nobody else will bring them here."

Dhelane turned to see who Mam spoke at. She grew immediately flustered the way people often did in Shay's presence. She gave quick bob of her head then one to Kharek for good measure.

Shay brow quirked up at the quick longing Dhelane gave to Kharek who nodded back politely but didn't notice the invitation in the young woman's eyes. Kharek made eyes for armies, horses, battle, and not much else.

Giving another thoughtful look to her angry foster mam and then to Kharek, Shay rose and gestured to the babe. "Let me have him. I'll take him on Pradhan down to the lake. We'll have ourselfs a splash."

Dhelane gave an uncertain look to Mam, who shrugged her indifference. The old woman turned her anger onto the frying pan, viciously scrubbing at it.

"But...Pradhan is an O'mun," Dhelane began hesitantly. "I'm not sure it's fit...you see, for him to carry a mere babe."

"Or is it you think the mount of helvish corruption shouldn't cart around _yer_ high-blooded bastard?" Kharek lashed out. The young Lord-Captain would strike out at anything or anyone when tipped over the edge. Something more than Mam's frettings bothered him this morning. Pradhan apparently thought so, too. The stallion issued an angry rumble from the barracks, warning the Lord-Captain to watch his footing.

_Mhystress-Rider, rein him in,_ Pradhan complained.

"Kharek!" Shay spoke sharply, startling the Captain for she seldom raised her voice. Immediately, a spray of fine, purple blood stippled her lips from the effort it took to be heard. One hand moved to the mark on her throat. "That is unworthy of you and Dhelane both," she rasped, wiping the blood from her lips with the hem of her shirt. "Dhelane's family once honorably served a Fiery Blood just as yours did." She nodded at the ruins of Dhunskaralt in the distance. "They gave their lives to preserve it even."

Something nosed open the door to the sitting room entry. Shay cringed, darting a quick look at Mam who'd fly through the rafters if she knew what entered her home this moment. Dhelane gasped, backing up a step. The floor shook with the sudden fall of hooves muffled by the rug in the sitting room. A moment later, Pradhan's enormous head poked into the scullery.

_"EEEEEEEEEE!"_ Mam screeched, snapping her cleaning rag at the stallion. Pradhan ignored her and fixed Kharek with his great brown eyes. The stallion said nothing and under that ominous glare Kharek eventually managed to look ashamed. He turned his head aside and spoke to the floor, making as much apology as he could with his next words. "Well, Miss Dhelaney, never you mind. Pradhan´ll bear wee majik as well as large if there's a bit of carrot found in the bargain."

Satisfied at the Captain's response, Pradhan awkwardly began to reverse his massive haunches back through the sitting room, rumbling and grumbling to himself. He struck something. It fell over with a crash, eliciting another wail from Mam who felt quite beleaguered this morning when even the beasties invaded her Lore–fearing home.

Shay rose from her seat and took the babe, granting him one of her rare smiles. He giggled back, kicking dimpled legs. A fine, fat happy baby. She hugged him close, enjoying his clean scent.

Outside, Pradhan ceased his annoyed grumble and looked curiously through Shay's eyes at the babe. She held the child aloft again. He was her favorite kind, and not at all like the squallers who kept a body up all hours of the night and 'til the daylight.

She glanced again at Kharek and then at Mam. She liked babes well enough. Fate simply did not intend such things for her is all. She accepted it readily enough even if Mam wouldn't. With a swish of her cloak, she slipped through the sitting room after Pradhan, her stealthy movements emphasizing the name given to her: Shay, which meant shadow in the crude eld tongues of old.

"Have one of your own 'stead of taking off with other's kith and kin," Mam called after.

"Did I 'trupt something," Dhelane looked from Mam's set face to Kharitas.

"Didn't trupt a thing that's new, Dhelaney," Kharek reassured her. "If ye come back this time next season, you'll hear the same over again."

"Aye," Kharitas grumbled, plying fork to cooling eggs. "If ye have complaint, now's the time to make it since the house is a-boil anyway. By mid aftermorn we'll have our bolts and blades out hackin' at each other."

Understanding a certain tension enveloped the home of the King's Counsel this morn, Dhelane picked up a clout and retreated to the sitting room to clean up the mess Pradhan left behind. Mam began to scrub for the second time at the pristine table until Kharitas caught up her wrist and stilled her. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Dhelane was out of earshot. "Yer too hard on the lass."

"And you never curbed Shay enough!" Mam cried. "Not the way you did Kharek!"

"How do you curb a creature when you don't what that creature is?"

"She's a woman, you old boar!" she twisted free to slap her brother with the rag. Kharek looked from one elder to the other. Opening his mouth as if to speak, he thought better of it and closed it again.

"No, old woman, we don't know what she is. She may have been born here and she may have returned here but Shay ...Shay, she doesn't belong here. She's not of the Khorrin folk and the lass knows it."

"Then where does she belong if not here?"

Kharitas fumbled his pipe from his pocket. Absently he rubbed it as he thought.

"She doesn't belong in Silfenlei," Mam shot back even though her brother had said naught. "If that's the notion you've taken in yer weyrdlin' head. Not when her own immortal mother couldn't be kept there."

Finally he said. "Take a look at that rock around her neck, old woman, lest ye forget what Shay be. Then tell me if there's a place on this earth she belongs."

"Stop your heathener talk," Mam looked fearful now. "You sound like an outlander."

"And you stop riding Shay like she's an ornery mule. She's neither of the elf folk or the humans. Either or neither and none of t' other.

"She's no half breed! No more than the folk of Khorrin are!" Mam shouted.

"Hush!" Kharitas commanded. He glanced quickly into the sitting room to make sure Dhelane hadn't overheard. "We are bound in secrecy to what Shay may be, a pact our own perished Fa made so."

"Fa knew the old tales and so do we."

"Time's long past for knowing such things our f'bears knew," Kharek stretched his legs out to the fire in the hearth although the morning was warm.

"As if the Khorrin folk were either or," Mam snorted. "There's no place else for the gal but amongst those who are like her."

"What yer asking of her may not be something she can give. We don't know what happened to her in the fairlands. Asylums, chains, manacles, iron collars and the Loreich branding her with a mark not of the Horse..." Kharitas drew a deep breath and let it out on a sigh.  "What we do know is that whatever happened at Watchwoode wasn't right. There's a great bit that lass don't speak of." He looked at Kharek. "Kharek knows of it, though."

Troubled, Kharek nodded then shrugged as if to say he didn't know nearly enough. Or, perhaps, too much.

"So does Bek, I think he'd have to with him serving useless duty at Watchwoode." Kharitas added.

Kharek winced again at the mention of Bek.

"So she should just gad about 'til the end of days, without care to home or hearth?"

"It may mean the death of her to throw her life's stake down here. Don't make the lass choose between a husband and kith, if one day she has to hightail it to the forests of exiles."

"But the Forest Aerie is what she _wants,_ " Mam pleaded. "What sort of star is that to stake a life in— a fabled kingdom of tree towers, half-elf majik, and madness."

"It may be the only sort 'o life granted her," Kharitas said quietly. "Better'n what the Loriech would offer."

"I won't sanction what you want of her Mam," Kharek's brows bristled. "Neither will the Horse. Pradhan won't allow it and when a beast prohibits a breeding Rider I trust the beastie's instinct. For that reason I won't defy him in the matter."

Kharitas gripped Mam's hands in his and spoke almost tenderly. "Ye said it for yerself. See, Shay's not gadding. Something's driving her from one end of Khorrin to the other and she's running from it. Why do you think she returns here instead of to her own hearth time after time? Ye think it's 'cause she doesn't want a home? This is the only home she has and here she always returns. Til whatever is in her head stirs again and she's off galloping away from it."

Mam then appealed to Kharek. "She's cut for more than roaming a thousand leagues of grassland and forest."

"That's not the only place she wanders to," Kharitas said. "She goes places you and I can't ken 'cause their not of this world, and she's not either. She may not be cut for wandering but she's not cut for bearing babes and warming the bed of a Sentaur either."

"You speak as if she's a ghost!" Mam whispered biting fretfully at her gnarled knuckle.

"Could be she is. She's given to us by accident, and she'll leave by the same." Kharitas gestured with his pipe. "'Fact is, the old witch who keeps our demented king on a tether says she's but a child still. If she were back in that 'cursed land her dam sprung from she'd not be old enough to leave her sire's home. Mayhap that's why Pradhan prevents her breeding. You 'member that next time you ride her to be dropping a foal ever' other season."

Confused, Mam looked at Kharek who avoided her eyes. She straightened abruptly. "It's that rock then, it's done something to her. She should be rid of it."

Kharek tore another piece of bread from the loaf. "Ye don't know the crysal isn't the very article keeping her in Khorrin."

Kharitas added. "Prince Illuminaire'd remove it from her ready enough with a swipe of his blade. Careful what you dream for."

"Aye. I'd not be so nervy for her to be rid of it." Kharek pushed his long hair from his face, revealing a sharply pointed ear, an ear of odd contrast to his plainly mortal, if handsome, face.

Mam shivered again thinking the Lord-Captain as strange as Shay herself. Still, the old woman came from good Khorrin stock. Their family also once served the Fiery Blood and she'd not back down from her position. "Shay's not the only one who ever held an article of majik. She's well able to live a life with it as a growed woman."

"Then why do you treat as a child still?" Kharitas demanded, losing all patience with his sister. "Brushing her hair and plaiting her braids and running after her with plates of crumble. Fussin' and frettin and stewin' over her as if she were anything but able to manage herself. You be knowin' something you don't know you know?"

Cornered now, Mam gave him a scornful look. Unable to reply, she whisked the unfinished plate away from her brother. For good measure, she snatched Kharek's breakfast away as well, dumping both to the slop jar in the only retaliation she knew how. Then she turned and faced them defiantly. It was her scullery after all.

Sighing, Kharitas stood and cast mournful eyes to his morning meal now residing in the hog swill. He said to Kharek, "I reckon that's Mam's way o' telling us we speak hog wash."

Kharek watched his foster Mam with a shrewdness belying his young age. "You've heard talk from the drovers coming back from the fair town, haven't ye? That's what set a thorn on yer saddle side. Talk of the prophecy stirring again, talk of outlander meetings, and congress. Gossip about The Wheel turning on its Pathe again."

"And how the turnin' plays on our gal here," Kharitas added.

"What of it?" Mam sulked.

"What of it, 'deed? Those things have nothing to do with the horsefolk."

"Ah, not 'zactly Fa," Kharek began but Mam desperately interrupted. "Give Shay to Bek then since he's so keen to have her hand."

"Fer all 'tents and purposes Bek is her ha' blood brother," Kharitas lips tightened in disapproval.

"But she's _not,_ for all 'tent and purposes!" Mam shouted. "Shay's clothed in so many secrets she can't even know whom she belongs to, can't know her own blood family from who isn't—"

"Fer all 'tents and purposes Bek is dead," Kharek spoke up loudly.

The first silence the scullery knew known since sunrise fell over the three. Mam and Kharitas turned to the Lord-Captain shocked. White-faced, Dhelane crept to the entry to listen. Kharek pulled a dispatch from his pocket and handed it to Kharitas. "Didn't want to show it til later, Fa. Til Shay was away."

"My Lore," Mam gasped sinking into a seat. "Not Bek."

Kharitas scanned the dispatch, once and then twice. He closed his fist and his eyes against the news. Plainly, the Prince of Khorrin had been murdered. "And that's why you be thinking of freighting yourself to the fairlands? To take retaliation?"

Kharek shrugged angrily. "Bek wasted his life in that evil wood; he deserves a proper place in death here."

Kharitas shook his head. No.

"Gods dammit all, Fa! Watchwoode _buried_ him!" Kharek pleaded, beyond rage now at the blasphemous treatment the prince of Khorrin received. Horror struck, Mam sprang from her seat, tears running on her wrinkled cheeks to stare at the ruins of Eld Dhunhult.

"An action o' the sort would prompt a general war, son."

"Good!" Kharek hissed, jumping to his feet to slam his hands on the table, a sound to ring through the scullery like a horse kicking a stall. Dhelane retreated back to the sitting room at the thunderous fury on the Lord Captain's face.

"Then war we will have! The blood is wasted, the bond is broken. Now nothing can stop us from sweeping the fairlands under the might of the Horse! Let the Sentaurs take back what is properly ours! We can make the Loreich and Watchwoode pay for ravening our kin!" His fist shot in the direction of the ruins beyond.

Motionless, Kharitas stared into the bowl of his dead pipe. After all these long, empty centuries the ancient enemy would soon spill over the borders of Khorrin. Years of feigning dedication to the Loreich's version of the Pathe ould finally come to an end at last. He was nearly relieved although this ending would almost surely end, as Kharek insisted, in warfare. War with the fairlands.

He looked out the window to the lake near the edge of the village. Shay held the baby in one arm, clutching Pradhan's mane for balance as they waded through the shallows. Khorrin was never ruled merely by whoever happened to park their saddle side on the throne. Those were merely appearances to thwart the Loreich ever since outlanders cut the nation's Fiery Blood down and replaced it with a bloodline not of the Horse.

Bek was different though, the only Crown Prince of outlander blood to come along in five hundred years who bore the potential to rule Khorrin as the horselands should without need to wrap a curbing enchantment around his heart.

And for his potential, young prince Bek perished. Certainly his death was no accident but a warning. Now at the closure of the bloody, bitter Pathe, someone in the outlands wanted all of Khorrin to know their centuries-long subterfuge was to be punished.

"Outlanders don't rule here Fa, we do!"

Kharitas nodded slightly to show he understood. But what Kharek wished couldn't be allowed either.  Khorrin feigned adherence to the Pathe as a matter of survival. Their true loyalties remained to a prophecy lost in time, ground under a Wheel manipulated out of control. Come doom or dust, the desires of the Sentaurians could never rule Khorrin anymore than the whims of the Loreich. An eons-old commitment graven on the very souls of the Khorrinish commanded the Horse. That oath proved them like the brands charred upon their backs.

Mam looked over her shoulder. Kharitas met and held her eyes. "If the implications of Bek's murder is what I think them to be then trouble'll stare us in the face soon enough without traipsing down to Watchwoode to look for it. Kharek, have you told the king his son is dead?"

His wrath evaporating nearly as fast as it had sprung up, Kharek shook his head, wrinkling his nose at the thought of his mad monarch. "I'd sooner speak to a grelf."

"Then it falls to the King's Counsel to inform him. Not that he will know or ker much." Kharitas unbound his long graying locks as he rose from the table. "Mind what I said," he told Mam. "Come on, Kharek."

With an uncertain look to Mam's stricken face, Kharek loosed his own windblown hair. He followed his foster Fa out to the barracks behind the cots holding.

Mam remained at her tense position at the window, her hand tightening on her wash rag. That proved it right there. It wasn't just nervy over idle drover gossip, after all. The Wheel of Prophecy _had_ rolled on its Pathe again. No need to spell out what the demise of good Prince Bek meant in terms of Shay. The Wheel would roll over her, too. Or roll her into Aaerie, the forest of exiles.

She glared out the window at the retreating men. "You mind yourself old man, you and your wooden words," she whispered. "And you too, Lord-Captain. For all our 'tend talk you know what Shay be as well I do."

## IV

Might the error you own, be not your possession at all?

~The Loracle's Wheel

Time froze as Lord Avhen's giggling, flirtatious daughter hovered over Liiam. He knew she wanted something and he should deliver. Whatever that something might be entirely escaped his mind for the present. Liiam became acutely aware he no longer felt like the Prince of Silfenlei. Or even a soldier, let alone the Captain of the Silfen Bow not to mention an instrument of the bloody, damned Wheel which rolled him into situations like this! He was warrior, not a courtier! Actually, he felt a like a five-seasoned elfling lost in a dark wood.

A sharp rap struck his shin—Rheise kicked him under the table. Liiam snapped from his trance. His knife rattled against plate as he bounded from his seat.

Backing away on a bow, he presented his chair to Lady Olahn. There, that was good. Humans liked florid displays of good manners. He even remembered to offer his hand to help her into the seat. Unfortunately, his knife remained clutched in his fist and he nearly gutted her instead. Olahn shrank away, and the governor gasped.

Snatching his knife hand back, Liiam offered the other. Olahn peered down at the red _ormulaiint_ blood stippling his knuckles and the governor made a faint sound of disgust.

Desperate now, the warrior-prince patted the empty chair. "A seat, my Lady?"

She nodded to the vacant place next to Lord Ahven. "I have one, thank you, Iluminaiire." Giggling, she held her hand out to him.

Liiam stared down at the intricately embroidered sleeve hovering under his chin. It rose higher, practically under his nose now, Olahn's fingers wiggling under the thick folds of lace hiding her hand. What did she want? He thought he should know, but every last wit fled, leaving him stranded in a land riddled with the perils and pitfalls of mortal protocol.

Teeth clenching in an agony of frustration, he glanced to the governor for help. The old man snorted and looked away. Another awkward moment passed and Olahn's hand finally fell to her governor's arm; the old man led her away to her father's side.

"She wanted you to kiss her hand, daftling," Rheise hissed across the table.

Defeated, Liiam slumped back into his seat. Who could find her hand under all that cloth? He couldn't very well shove her sleeve back, either. Pious Lord Ahven would have a plexer of a fit. The Loreich frowned on bared skin. The priests of that vaunted Pathe institution said it promoted 'unnecessary lusts.'

A notion incomprehensible to his elven sensibilities. In the absence of lust, how many elflings would be born?  Not that many were these days anyway, you had to admit. Still, he remained stymied by the complexity of it all.

"Olahn just received her Dhis Staff," Ahven announced, beaming with pride.

At his nod, her ladyship passed a short baton down the table to Rheise who didn't seem overly enthused by the article. Liiam didn't blame him. A Dhis Staff was a _ladything_ and didn't rouse much excitement in soldiers. After a cursory once over, Rheise hastily passed the staff off to Liiam who had no idea what to do with it either. Still, he felt he should make up for his earlier blunder, so he examined the baton with feigned interest.

Because Dhis Staffs were a fairly new mortal contrivance he couldn't quite remember their importance. Afterall, the staff didn't appear to be anything more than a gilt-lacquered stick capped with a silver clef engraved with scrawly verse:

_Modesty, duty, piousness, and virtue are the hallmarks of a woman true to the Law of Lore. This staff bears the blessed portents of life from the Goddess the Dyad Lore, and a lady will reserve all her strength for those sacred endeavors of Her renewal._

Liiam took this to mean a lady should keep covered up and think about nothing except bearing babes. "What is it for?" he risked exposing his ignorance.

Rheise cleared his throat. "I think the priests of the Loreich hand them out. When a lady reaches a certain standard of..."

"Of what?"Liiam prompted.

"How should I know? Ladyish-ness?"

"Hu?"

Ahven broke in impatiently. "The Loreich grants the Dhis Staff to young women when they achieve all the goddess Lore intends for them. The staff is sacred, bestowing virtue, piousness, purity, modesty and assures society young ladies are suitable for marriage."

"It does all that, eh?" Impressed, Liiam twirled the staff in his fingers, looking at it in a new light. "Just like majik!"

"Of course, it's not majik!" Ahven glared at Liiam.

"Calm down, my Lord," Rheise said quickly. "He's joking. The Cap'n, he jokes lot. Don't you, Cap'n?"

Liiam scowled. He wasn't joking, and he'd not say he spoke in jest just so Ahven wouldn't get his under drawers in a twist. He was about to say as much when Rheise warned him into silence with a jerk of his head.

"Majik is no laughing matter," Ahven told them. "Bel Feire is overrun with the dark minions of Dhrevhin. You've seen that for yourself just this morning. A tool of prophecy should know better."

Under Avhen's cold stare, Liiam gave up and handed the staff back. While at home in easy Silfenlei, he often forgot the numerous customs and fine distinctions governing life in this very mortal part of Anetherea. Now, it seemed he was getting a fast, if awkward, reminder of them.

Olahn leaned across the table, eyes glinting with interest. "The elf ladies of Silfenlei do not have Dhis Staffs, then?"

He opened his mouth but nothing came out because Olahn's slippered foot now nudged its way up his leg—right under the table—practically under her father's nose. "Nom," Liiam managed to croak after he scooted his chair—and himself—out of fondling range

Olahn gave her father an uncertain look. "It's my understanding the elven folk once had some peculiar matrimonial rituals."

"They did." Ahven confirmed. "Until the Pathe brought the elves to reason. Nothing that concerns you now, pet."

Anxious to not to appear the weyrdling, Liiam explained that in the days of the elders, elves mated by binding their souls together through an immortal instinct known as the Soulsforge. Unlike mortals, whose deaths took their souls to the etherealms, the immortal soul remained eternally earthbound. Because of this, elf pairs forged their souls to one another so they might never be separated. When one perished, the other did shortly after and neither had to wander this life or the next, alone.

Olahn tittered, and Avhen's frigid look let Liiam know he'd put his foot down wrong again.

"Just a romantic notion," Rheise spoke up to save his blundering captain, "Perhaps just an old tale."

"It sounds like druin majik," Avhen's face reddened.

Liiam nodded but he secretly liked the practicality of the Soulsforge: Let instinct take over and skip over all those tedious courting rituals humans were so obsessed with. He kept this heretical notion to himself. Besides, the elf folk obeyed the Pathe and set the Soulsforge aside centuries before so it mattered naught in these modern times. Didn't matter enough to create a stink over anyway. Pushing his plate away, he tried to turn the talk back to something of a less treacherous nature. "Lord, what news of Bel Feire, please? It's been seasons since I was last in the fairlands."

"More of what you encountered this morning." Avhen's face clouded. " _Ormulaiint_ overrunning the lands, pillaging and thieving." The lord's old, rheumy eyes glittered with anger. "Divine knights found a half-bred agent of Dhrevhin's in northern Gheminhall."

"A helven, then?" Liiam's sharp ears began to quiver with curiosity. "I've never seen one!"

The old lord frowned. "Just uttering that loathsome word is enough to bring a half-breed into your midst."

"Surely not, my lord," Rheise waved his fork dismissively. "That's superstitious nonsense. Helvens only answer to the call of the dark maj of Blackwashe."

"What is a helven, exactly?" Olahn ventured.

"They're an abominable corruption of human and elven blood," Ahven told his daughter. "A curse set by Dhrevhin, and worse than any _ormulaiint._ Nothing for you to concern yourself about, my love." He gave Liiam another glowering look. "Nor do I think this is appropriate talk for a young lady's ears."

Liiam wanted to point out how Lord Ahven brought up the subject of helvish evil in the first place. Instead, he exchanged a puzzled look with Rheise. "No offense, Lord, but that is the first rule of soldiering — know your enemy. Even the Loreich says so."

"Olahn is not a soldier."

She could be though, Liiam thought rebelliously. Olahn possessed the nervy of a predator and wouldn't that staff of hers make a fair weapon? An opinion he kept to himself for, of course, ladies did not carry weapons. Or ride, hunt, sail or do anything interesting besides involving themselves in __ladythings.__..

"Have you ever seen a helven, Squire Rheise?" Olahn asked, her hand fluttering nervously to the high neck of her gown.

"Who knows?" Rheise answered in a rather cryptic manner. "They're a tricky git, helvens are. They can appear human but might be immortal. Sometimes they look elven but have mortal souls."

"Helvens do not have souls," Ahven corrected. "They are dark gaards. Soulless ones."

"Good Lore," Olahn gasped. "One could skulk anywhere and you'd never know it."

"Nom," Rheise said. "Just like _ormulaiint_ , helvens are marked by their black master's hand so decent folk know they're in the presence of wickedness. Not to worry, though. The Loreich hunts them down and they're ever rare to begin with."

"That's because elves and humans don't mate." Liiam again felt he should add something to the conversation. "Not unless the Pathe says for them to, lest a helven result from the union."

Another thick silence fell over the table at this innocent remark, and all eyes turned his way. Olahn hid a smile behind her lace-covered hand but Ahven pursed his lips into a thin, white line. Belatedly, Liiam realized humans didn't talk about matings at mealtimes. Or ever, probably. Once again foiled by stuffy, mortal protocol.

Suddenly the hall seemed stifling in its humanity. He poked one last biscuit into his mouth and stood. "I thank you for the meal, my Lord Ahven, but we should be on our way. I'm long overdue for duty to the prophecy at Watchwoode."

Ahven helped his daughter from her seat. With a tinkling little laugh, she escaped her father's hand. Eel-quick, she slipped around the table and grabbed onto Liiam's arm, tiny fingers grasping his elbow like a manacle. He gave a surreptitious shrug to see if he could shake her off but Olahn dug in harder, fortifying for a long siege. Snared in her clutches, he could only watch helplessly as Ahven clapped a hand to Rheise's shoulder, leading the squire from the dining hall. The door closed behind with all the finality of a gaol cell slamming shut, leaving him alone with Lady Olahn.

Sensing somehow Olahn had ambushed him, Liiam glanced at her ladyship.

She thrust out her chin, lips pursed for a kiss.

Liiam broke for the door. Olahn clung like a limpet, tripping and slipping beside him. She giggled as the trailing ends of her flowing gown tangled around Liiam's spurs nearly tripping him as well. As he frantically kicked at the slithery fabric, Olahn's free hand drifted to a place he was certain her father wouldn't want it. He squirmed away, leaving one of his trouser laces in her groping hand. Fumbling the dining hall door open, he staggered through the foyer and out into the courtyard, Olahn in tow.

"Ah, there you are Iluminaiire," Ahven hailed him. "I thought you courted Olahn away."

"Oh no," Liiam said quickly lest Ahven—or Olahn—get any ideas.

When help from his lordship was not forth coming (Ahven seemed quite content to let his delicate daughter maul him like a bear with a carcass), Liiam switched tactics. Carefully, he worked his fingers under Olahn's, prying them one by one from his arm. How did these female creatures come to possess this barnacle strength if the Pathe said they were so bloody delicate?

Finally, finally, he freed himself and leapt for the safety of his waiting horse.

Outmaneuvered, Olahn pouted. Ahven took his daughter's arm with an indulgent pat before turning to look up at the unnerved prince. "Good journey on your Pathe. The prophecies have set a hard task on you, and evil has taken the only light to guide your way."

Anxious to get away, Liiam gave a hurried salute. "I'll make do without the Rhombic, I'm sure." Lord Ahven gave him a doubtful look but bid them both farewell before guiding his determined daughter back into the manor.

Liiam slumped in his saddle as the hot tension of the dining hall drained away, leaving him feeling limp as a piece of seaweed. He drew a deep breath and looked up to find his squire watching him with sorrowful eyes.

"Oh Cap'n, I've seen you take on a dozen _ormulaiint_ at once, aueks, robbers and any other vile thin' to walk the lands without flinching," Rheise's eyes widened with increduality. "But an itty, bitty little lass sends you into a plexer."

Liiam nodded on a vast, self-disgusted sigh. He _had_ run out of there with his bow half-nocked. He adjusted the quiver on his back, trying to think of a way to explain himself. "It wouldn't be so bad, Rhei, if ladies just acted the way everybody said they're supposed to act, all delicate and docile. One would know what to expect, at least."

"Good Lore, it wasn't as if she were armed to the teeth and out for blood," Rheise said, exasperated. "Cap'n, I think the task the Pathe laid on you is beginning to addle your brains."

With the arm-clinger Olahn safely behind closed doors, Liiam felt the return of his usual good humor. He laughed, scaring up a flock of rock hens from the manor courtyard. "Is that what you think, Rheise? That my mind is running away?"

"Nom." Rheise turned his horse down the drive. "I ain't never seen you run from a thin' in your life." He paused and looked over his shoulder. "Unless, it was a lady, of course."

There lay the whole problem. With a sigh, Liiam picked up his reins. That's exactly what the Pathe of Prophecy promised him.

A lady.

A _human_ lady.
