The great wyrm slumping before them had very little effect on Garthag, who simply watched it unfold in silence. He was not appalled by the sight in the slightest, in his eyes they were liberated of another lizard and he could feel a slight tug of comfort as he thought of Kalma`s death. It was true that these creatures were might and magnificent in their own right, but to Garthag dragons had always been more of a threat above anything else. Garthag took a few wobbly steps towards the giant carcass, true the being was of gigantic proportions compared to the rest of it`s species and would have made a magnificent piece of study, that was had it been real.

For a moment he kept his distance as Kendath and Merrin attempted to drive off the vultures away from the carcass. Garthag quietly watched at their efforts to drive the vultures away and the stubborn attempts of the birds to approach the body. That would have been the fate of his loved one`s had they not been burned to bare bones however, he could still see all the burned skeletons and their pitch black bones. The grim faces of bone still screaming in pain even in death and their remains scattered across the ruins of the village. One by one he had buried them below the ruins of their homes and the only gravestone he had left behind was a wall in the mountain side engraved with their names. They had not deserved that kind of a fate.

The images of horror and grief caused his feet to move against his own will, or did he not even notice himself moving? Whatever, he didn`t want to bear to see their pathetic attempts to drive away the birds. Yet he would not help them by any means to drive off the vultures, that preyed upon the carcass. The solution was simple, a corpse that had been reduced to nothing, but bones would not interest such beings. Garthag stepped before the corpse of the creature and for a moment laid his hand on it`s scaly skin. For that moment he remained silent until he gazed at Merrin and Kendath.

"Stop it both of you, idiots! It won`t matter how much you drive them off or kill them, there will always be more. If you wish to `honor` this scaly wyrm then I suggest you let someone, who can still actually put together a rational thought, do the work for you."

Garthag said with an hissing tone and there was a detectable irritation in his voice, but that was also accompanied by tiredness. After these words he concentrated and cast a spell, a magical fire lit in his hand and suddenly sprang onto the carcass. The flame beat like a heart, slowly, but decisively before exploding into an array of flames, which began consuming the carcass. The flames began to eat away the flesh, scales and ripped tissue of the large dragon. The vultures, which had descended suffered the same fate and those above stayed clear of the flames stealing their dinner. Garthag stood back and for a faint moment smiled slightly, he himself even didn`t know why, he guessed it was one of those few things he had come to appreciate besides power. He didn`t even glance at those around him, but only stared at what he had done yet he couldn`t help wondering about their reactions. Would they be appalled by his actions? Would they find such a thing disgraceful? In any case it didn`t matter , the dragon after all was not real nor would be.

However he himself was not even completely sure whether what he was witnessing was real or not, not after what he had gone trough again as it had felt terrifyingly real enough.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Garthag's fireball caught on and danced across the thick scales until it penetrated, plunging into the softer tissue beneath. For a moment, it almost seemed as if the body itself were consuming the flames, sucking them into the dragon's own steaming belly. The tongues of fire wavered, as though uncertain.

Perhaps they found the still-molten core, where the the dragon's own fiery breath had once broiled. Perhaps Garthag's magic was stronger than anyone had ever dreamed, and he'd been concealing it all along. In any case, nothing could have prepared Kendath for what happened next.

The dragon burst like a red star. Jets of spitting heat leaped from flame to flame, scarlet one instant and gold the next, before they dissolved into a blinding corona that flickered white, then blue. The inferno didn't just eat away. It devoured, embracing the corpse and consuming it a full limb at a time. Through the roar sliced the vultures' screams as they fled or burned, their blackened carcasses never even reaching the ground before enflaming yet again and simply disintegrating in midair.

Kendath felt his flesh being seared apart. It was only when the fire died, as quickly as it'd been conceived, that he found himself on the charred ground, a good twenty feet away and hacking up a lung. A column of smoke, black against the gray sky, still billowed up from the bones. In the distance, the last of the screeching vultures were flapping away. Still coughing, he sat up and twisted around to stare at Garthag. "How...?"

_________________

The white robes remained unaffected by the flames as Garthag had conjured a fitting spell to guard himself from the flames, truly he had not anticipated such a reaction from the carcass. The nature of magical fire differed from normal man made, it had the power to consume even the hardest substances, but if only the wielder was potent and skilled in the arts, which he wielded. Destroying the dragon had indeed been his goal from the start, but such a spectacular fashion had not been his intent. Yet in the end it had seemed like a fitting end to the great beast, that once supposedly unleashed great bursts of flames from it`s gaping jaws. Now the winds could carry the ashes of the dead along with it like the mighty dragon had once carried itself, thus even death was not obstacle.

In a momentary state of amusement Garthag chuckled at the ashes before him before turning his attention elsewhere. He looked around himself seeing the others thrown back by the intense reaction and gasping for air, confusion was written all over their faces. Kendath managed to utter one amazed word out of his burnt lungs and Garthag shrugged at his question before staring beyond them for a moment.

"I suppose that it was a fitting end for such a beast, rather poetic when you think of it, perishing in fierce flames like it had breathed in life. As to the spell? Magical fire can consume more than mere firewood yet I did not anticipate for you to get caught in those flames, how careless of me..

In any case... I detest leaving bodies uncared for, unhonored as, if they were meat to be picked by carrion birds."

He said whilst recalling the graves he had dug himself into the snowy ground, he had to make sure every single one was covered deep within the earth, not in snow that might have melted away before the sun. After that brief flashing moment of memories he returned to the present, but remained quiet and gazed around as, if waiting for someone to speak up.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Kendath spent a few more hammering heartbeats squinting up at Garthag. At length he shook his head, cursed under his breath, and clambered to his feet. The motion dislodged the ashes on his tunic, now stained black down the front. He cleared his throat a few more times and let his gaze fall upon the bones, still upright, the ribs reminiscent of enormous fangs stabbing out from the earth. The column of smoke spiraled up and up. It blotched out the sky like a mottled storm cloud and dribbled off into the east, where the faintest finger of saffron brushed the horizon.

And something else, too. Kendath took a step forward, eyes narrowed. Dark shapes, hunkered down in the hazy distance. As he stared, the shapes almost seemed to enlarge, becoming distinguishable as... a rooftop there... a fence here...

"Do you see that?" he murmured, taking another step toward it. His vision sharpened... no, the houses were definitely growing larger, and larger still, until they appeared to be within walking distance. And now he could discern the people moving slowly between the cottages. They seemed oddly formed. Bent over. A village in the middle of this desolation?

A crushing weight bore down on his chest. The dirt beneath his feet smiled up at him, inviting him to lay down and never get back up. A test. A test. It was all a test. Or was it? Was it, really? What mage, no matter how strong, could mold the ground underneath him? What mage, no matter how inspired, could breathe air into the skies and life into those vultures? Could it all be illusion? Did it matter? He flexed the weariness out of his arms. The fingernails biting into his palms felt real, painfully real. He dropped a hand within easy reach of his falchion.

"Let's go," he shot over his shoulder. Without another word, he began the long trek across the wasteland.

The long trek across the wasteland ended just short of ten paces. The village had found them.

Kendath recovered his balance quickly. His hand flew for his falchion, but he stopped himself from drawing. None of them had noticed - the villagers, that is. They went about their business, shoulders hunched over, heads bent under their mops of unkempt hair. The clothes upon their backs hung threadbare and loose. Across the street, a dog whined and licked an empty plate forgotten on the front step. A few cottages down, a child tottered out of a doorway, howling for her mother. The passerbys drifted by her without a second glance.

High overhead, the last trickles of smoke crumbled into the gray skies.

_________________

Merrin coughed once more, feeling ash sting her throat still in the aftermath of Garthag's huge conflagration. Her silver-grey cloak was streaked with soot. Warily, she let her eyes wander over the woebegone village. Nothing could have been further from Riversmeet; and it relieved her to recognize the utter incongruity, to reassure herself that no phantoms from her past would appear from behind a corner.

A hot, dry breeze flickered past, barely touching her skin and then disintegrating into nothing. Merrin sidestepped a hunched farmer with a cart - his eyes flicked once up, as if recognizing vaguely that he knew she was there, before he trudged past once more, leading his likewise lethargic donkey - and ventured tentatively past the first ramshackle house. The gate hung halfway open, nearly ripped off its hinges, and the door beyond was dark and open. On it was a faded symbol, roughly drawn with whitewash that had faded to brown. Merrin twisted, glancing both ways down the hard-packed dirt street, and then ventured to take a few steps.

When she could trace it with her fingers, Merrin just as quickly drew them back. A sunburst? One more uneasy glance about her and she turned, retreating hastily to move once more into the road that circumvented the dilapidated buildings. She assumed it was a road, at least, by the fading tracks of wheels.

Unconsciously, she was toying with the clasp of her cloak, which was stained by ash and missing several of its rays, but unmistakably the same sunburst. For a moment, Merrin debated inwardly. Just superstition...?

This wasn't real. Nothing was superstition.

"I think..." she began uneasily, glancing from Kendath to Adeila to Garthag. "The sun. There." She pointed, noting now that she saw it further away that it was hastily drawn, almost scrawled. "It's Renegade."

_________________

They noticed, then. As soon as the words left Merrin's lips, the nearest hunched figure twisted and, with impossible strength, slammed her into a wall.

Kendath had his falchion out that same instant. He lunged forward but fell short, feeling cold hands grab him from behind. He pulled his arm free and plunged his blade backwards, under his arm. It raked through tattered cloth and pierced the flesh underneath. It pierced deep too, but if the enemy behind him felt the pain, he received no indication - not a gasp of surprise, not a swift recoil.

"Pain," rasped a voice in his ear, so thin it could have sliced through his cheek. Breath stinking of decay rattled down his neck. "What do you know of pain? Nothing!"

He felt himself being shoved forward, but he recovered and spun, slashing his falchion across in a spray of red. He saw to his amazement that it was a woman, stumbling back, her hands flying to her face and coming away drenched in blood. With sudden fragility, she fell onto the ground and blinked up at him, blood streaming down her face. The rest of the villagers had gathered as well. They raised their heads and watched, their jaundiced eyes never blinking. None of them made a move.

The wind hissed through the narrow streets that only seemed to close tighter with every passing second. It plucked at the villagers' torn cloaks and heavy cowls. Nobody spoke a word. Even the child had stopped crying for its mother. She now stood among the crowd. Her eyes were too large in her bony face.

Slowly, almost hesitantly, the man released Merrin. The thin gash of his lips parted in the parody of a grin. "Renegade," he whispered, with a harsh laugh. "Who are you to speak of Renegades?" His eyes seized upon the clasp of her cloak. Lips twisting, he grabbed it and yanked it off. Fabric tore. The sunburst clasp clattered to the ground, and the cloak itself followed not far behind. It fluttered to the dust, its silver threads stalwartly shimmering against the colorless backdrop.

The man shoved his face close. "Speak not of Renegades. Speak not of gods."

_________________

"No - !" The cry was almost involuntary, but even as the cloak dropped from around her shoulders Merrin caught at it. For a moment, she stared at the gaunt apparition of a man before her, silently comprehended his words, and then fell to her knees to gather her cloak in shimmering folds. It wasn't real, her mind was telling her numbly. None of it. The sunburst glittered metallically. Merrin reached for it.

A boot thudded down to grind it into the dirt, obliterating the silver as though it had never been. She stared mutely, then stumbled upright, holding the silver folds of cloak close as though they represented the last shred of her very identity. Merrin Dragonrider. Trepidation began to creep past the fact of which her mind kept assuring her - not real. Not real. Not real.

"That's mine." Merrin hated herself for the tremble in her voice; she would not be afraid of this illusion, this trick of magic. The man - the shell of a man - folded his arms like a wall. The utter lack of emotion in his face was real enough to change her trepidation to the bitter taste of fear.

"There are no symbols of the gods here." His breath reminded her of the hot wind, his face coming closer to hers. "The gods be damned!"

Merrin struck out, her fist meeting flesh, her remaining fistful of cloak dropping, where silver trailed on the ground. Her saber hung forgotten at her belt. "Never!" she shouted, feeling a quivering something snap within her. "How dare you! How dare you! You know nothing of the gods!" No longer was Merrin numb, knowing it all lacked reality - no one, no one treated her gods as these empty-eyed, stone-faced people were. No one.

Trembling, shaking with rage, she turned to the circle of silent, gaunt onlookers, and white fire blazed up briefly from her hand. "What is that, then? What is that, if you scorn the gods? Tell me! What right have you, to treat them like dirt! No right! None!"

_________________

Garthag remained silent, but once he too spotted the village, he almost wanted to curse out loud. It was not his village at least or was it? He was not even certain, no, they could not have shown this vision to all of them, hopefully. Garthag followed the rest of them with weary steps, upon reaching the village he frantically looked for a confirmation, that it was not his own village.

Luckily he at least didn`t think so, but there was little time to think about that as the villagers appeared into sight, attacking Merrin and Kendath. They cursed the gods and spat on their name, how many times had Garthag heard, that from the lips of those, who always had prayed in vain? Garthag had thought of attacking himself at first, but calmed himself and quietly examined the villagers and the situation as a whole.He couldn`t say for sure how they were going to pass this test, but he could try to attack yet doing so he would have been just lying to himself, that he did not know the same pain as these imaginary villagers might have. Garthag took a step forward, but kept his distance to all others around him, his eyes nailed into the back of Merrin`s skull.

"Don`t they?" Garthag suddenly inquired with a surprisingly calm tone, his face was calm and exhausted yet there was a hint of anger reflecting from his eyes. "Merrin... it is only you, who cannot scorn the gods, truly.... You were blessed by them, you were cared and noticed by them. How about those countless many, who have prayed to them yet received no aid or comfort. Do you believe every single villager in our world will be saved by the gods? That a bolt from the clear sky will smite all that dare hurt the innocents because helpless pray for aid?

If I had prayed ever to them, would they have aided me ever? No, the rest of us are supposedly lambs, that are only prey to the wolves fangs. I can relate to these things because I do not view the gods as something as worthy of praise. Certainly the gods have a `good` purpose and goal for doing what they do, but how many do you believe have to pay the ultimate price before that?

It is like you said, they wouldn`t know anything of the gods because the gods never would have told them anything."

He said with a melancholy voice, but there wasn`t a shred of determination missing in his voice. Attacking verbally against the two of them might have seemed inappropriate at the time, but he was hardly going to start killing without a reason or start lying to himself.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

"Prayers!" The man threw back his head and laughed, a sound like metal scraping against metal. The glow from the fire flickering in Merrin's palm bleached his face chalk-white. The other villagers - men and women, children and crones - heard him and joined in. Their laughter crackled on the wind like dry leaves on the coldest autumn night.

Kendath closed his eyes and let his falchion slide back into its sheath. Closing his eyes, however, did little to stopper his ears.

"Nothing!" the man rasped, whirling on Garthag. "What do you know of us? Precisely nothing!" He took a staggering step forward, reaching out to the mage and grabbing the front of his robes. His hands shook. "Who are you? Mage? Wielder of magic? Would that we had your power!" He lurched around to address the villagers, his mouth gaping in another laugh. "What do we know of the gods, my friends?" He spun, eyes darting from Merrin to Kendath to Garthag, then back to Merrin, where they rested, pupils dilated in eerie ecstasy.

He's mad, Kendath thought with silent horror. How can he be anything but mad? And then, in a deeper part of his mind, mocked another voice, always lingering, always doubtful: Are they all mad, then? All the villages that I knew - the villages under Meiltha sway? Men with wives and children and respectable professions. Men who have suffered. The light would not answer their prayers, and so they turned to darkness.

When he looked up again, the hunched man was staring directly at him. A slow grin contorted the cracked lips. He turned his gaze to them all. "What do we know of the gods? Come, then. We'll show you." He turned and started down the street. The rest of the villagers gathered behind him.

Kendath hesitated before following. A cold touch on his arm almost made him reach for his weapon again, but it was only the woman he'd injured earlier. The hideous gash across her face still spurted blood, but she seemed not to notice. She wasn't even a woman, he realized with a start. She was a girl, slender, no older than Merrin. Specks of blue still teased her colorless irises, lost in a sea of jaundiced yellow. "Will you promise me something?" she said softly, her voice a thin breath in the dry air.

He wondered what he had that he could possibly promise her.

She never leaned closer, never raised her voice. But Kendath heard her as clearly as though she'd been breathing right into his ear. "Promise me this. After we're all dead... bury us."

Something about the way she said it - the perfect dispassion, the perfect certainty - sent shivers crawling down his spine. "I... I can't... promise..."

Her expression never wavered. "You... all three of you... carry the power within yourselves to change the world." This time, glancing askance at Merrin, she did raise her voice. "What is a village to you? You see only the glorious ending, the glorious grand design woven by the great gods. How can you understand the suffering of a hundred or even a thousand meaningless innocents?" She turned to Merrin. "You, after all, are chosen of the gods."

"We're here." The villagers had stopped. They parted to allow the outsiders to pass. The hunched man leading them beckoned, a taunting invitation.

Warily, Kendath followed Merrin forward.

The scene laid out before him was one he'd witnessed many, many times before. Perhaps it was the exchange with the girl only a few seconds back, or perhaps it was weariness pervading his limbs... but this time, the scene struck him a blow straight to the heart.

Right before his feet, the ground gaped like an open wound, blackened and putrefying. Tossed into the ditch, with no more ceremony than worms left to rot, were the bodies. Chunks of flesh hung from their bones in tatters, but not even the maggots could eat away their faces - their rictuses of agony, frozen in death. The same faces, the same decaying skeletons. Yet most of them clung to the last vestiges of their former identities. A strip of clothing here, a tangle of hair there. These had been living, breathing people once. Innocents.

The stench was overwhelming. Kendath stumbled back, throwing an arm over his mouth and nose. He thought to demand why they hadn't covered the grave, but stopped short upon sighting the shovels, discarded in the dust. These villagers were too weak, the plague spreading too fast. Promise me this. After we're all dead... bury us.

"You see," the man said quietly. He was bent double now, staring into the mass grave, heedless of the reek. "That one. See her right there?" He raised a trembling finger, toward where Kendath could just barely discern a matted crown of golden hair. "That one's my wife. Lira, her name was. My Lira. Yes. I prayed before she went. I prayed harder than anyone."

Flames. Flames on the temple's shining floor, on the alabaster columns. Flames licking the altars before the marble gods, carved in their intricate perfection. He'd prayed too. He'd prayed all his life. Kendath looked away.

None of the villagers spoke a word. They stood frozen at the edge of the grave. Another gust of wind hissed through the narrow streets and raked the threadbare cloaks upon their bent frames.

Speak not of gods.

_________________

Merrin's heartbeat was loud in her ears. It was the only thing she could hear, the only sound in the still, horrible scene. The stench assaulted her senses briefly, but she hardly noticed it. The mantra in her head - not real, not real, not real - was a distant echo that had faded to almost nothing. She still held her cloak, but Merrin didn't notice any of it. Not the smell, the dull sunlight, the people who were dying even as they stood.

But you can't know! she cried inwardly. No prayer goes unanswered! Sometimes you don't get the answer you want...sometimes life doesn't happen the way you think it should...she couldn't say any of it. All of the words died on her lips, confronted by this unspeakable tragedy. If the gods made your lives always easy, where is your faith? If you cannot stand by someone while it rains, how can you be trusted to stand by in the sunlight, too? You did not tell dying people such things. You didn't say it, when they stood before a grave that held the putrefying remains of people they loved. Merrin didn't know what you said.

How many times had she cried out the same? Gods, why?! How many times had she felt broken, defeated, trampled upon by a world that would not see the way she did? How many times had she felt the rampant, bitter unfairness of life and raised her pleas to heaven - why? Why me, why this, why now?

Suddenly she was aware of the fistfuls of silver cloak she still held close, and the empty eyes that rested, waiting, on her. There was a terrible moment where Merrin felt suffocated by the expectancy and the helplessness that filled her, when confronted by such a scene...suffocated because they could still save themselves, but there was so little time -! And she didn't know, she didn't know what to say. Almost as a penultimate resort, she reached tentatively, white fire at her fingertips.

What had healed them all, what had mended Kendath's broken ribs, Pundy's ankle, died when it began to touch the man before her. Fizzled out, like a candle extinguished. He looked down at her hand, back up. Merrin tried again, only to be struck with a terrible certainty that there was nothing she could do. You can't right all the world's wrongs, Merrin. Who had said that? Her mother? You can't make it all better. There will always be wrong and sadness. It had been her mother. Caire Tanner had smiled, she remembered, and smoothed her daughter's hair. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

The mantra wasn't even a memory now. Merrin had forgotten that these people weren't real. All she could think of was -

"I can't make you believe," she said, voice quivering and steadying. First she turned to the man who seemed a leader, whose wife lay dead and rotting, but then she scanned the whole assembly, weighing every word, measuring every second. "I can't tell you anything that will make this better. I can't make them alive again, or heal you, or erase this all like it never happened."

Her voice was steadying, but her words were in danger of stumbling over themselves, they came so fast and frantically. Merrin met eyes, hopeless eyes, the eyes of dying people. "You'll see her again," she said, this time speaking to the man again. Listen! Listen! "You'll see your wife again - but the gods must know you no longer scorn them! Say it, say it to them, tell them you believe -" and once more she scanned them, all of them, turning to look. The last eyes she met were Kendath's. Merrin heaved a breath. "There's still time."

_________________

The sight of the desolated had not affected Garthag at first, but as more and more villagers slumbered into sight and gathered around he could imagine how this village had been like his own. He knew the faces, faces, which knew agony and pain yet carried on no matter what. As the man at the lead of the villagers came closer to him, screaming his accusations and insane babbles Garthag forced himself to stand still. He could not swear he would survive unscratched, but he did not wish to show fear to these mad visions for they were not his memories. On the outside Garthag remained completely still, completely calm until he noticed the girl pleading something from Kendath.

For a moment, he thought, he had seen his sister in her. She would have been around, that very same age, height and even appearance unless his eyes were not playing tricks on him. It all seemed so ominously familiar yet it was not them, it was not her, they had not died like this and there had been survivor. People like these, they were the same as him, the only thing that had ever set him apart from was power. Yet he had never wished it to be so, the only reason he had ever pursued magic in the first place was because he wanted to be useful, have a meaning to the village. Then the girl spoke to the three of them and Garthag could not help, but look away fearing, that he would see his sister standing before him, torn up and bleeding. He wanted to ask what her name was or just laugh out loud, just do something, that might ease the anguish inside.

Quietly he followed them to the wide grave, where bodies upon bodies were piled as, if the villagers had not bothered to do more in their condition. However unlike his own village, there would be no one left behind to bury them, not a single soul left to care for the rest. The disease ate away their bodies just like slow, slumbering flames, which had consumed Garthag`s own village. It was all an eerie slap across his face as he quietly stared at the faces of the bodies, still writhing in the agony of the plague they had suffered in life. Quietly he gazed at the villagers and then at the mass grave opening before him as Merrin spoke, but this time there was no mock or protest from him. For once she made sense, for once she realized how things were. Garthag grinned slightly before staring at the villagers.

"For once I agree... you for one have time. The time to set things right, to say goodbye before the end. Even tough you are eventually robbed of your lives and loved one`s, you do not have to know the agony of not having the chance to say goodbye. You do not have to witness the faces of your loves one`s writhing in the agony of hellfire, that consumes them until they are nothing more than bones and dust. Nor do you have to witness the one you admire the most betray you or the one you love the most being stolen from you by something.... unearthly."

Garthag said speaking with calm yet a shaken tone as he recalled every single grave he had dug himself, every set of bones he had placed in those graves, hoping their souls would find some rest. As he spoken his eyes were filled with more anger at the villagers for how they had acted, but it was also accompanied by sympathy for what they had gone trough. In the end they were the same as him, only he had been blessed with power and a long life.

"And none of you alone must bury those bones, trying to determine, whose bones you are burying by simply guessing where they at the time of their deaths... you said I do not know anything about you, but truth is I am more akin to you than I wish to be. As the last of my pitiful village, I was once burdened with burying them all and all that time I wondered why I could not protect them with my power.... So stop whining and prepare for the inevitable, praise your gods or whatever the hell it is that you find solace in as she suggested.... You pitiful *beep* your agony does not compare with the horrors, that I have been forced to witness and commit...."

Garthag said before smirking slightly and chuckling whilst shaking his head, truth was he wanted to burst into tears again, but there were none. Instead he chuckled quietly to himself wondering why he had just said what he had said, but in the end he guessed it would not matter. He placed his right hand against his face whilst staring at the mass grave with frantic eyes.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Was it a trick of light, or had the hunched man straightened the smallest fraction of an inch? He gazed long and hard first at Merrin, then at Garthag. "Your words." His voice grated softer, harsher. "Promises of faith. Redemption." He gestured expansively at the dirt cottages, at the drab wasteland beyond. The assembly of villagers shifted among themselves. Their expressions never changed, and the man sighed in resignation. "Look at them. Look at this place. Do you understand? Can you truly understand?"

"No." It was Kendath this time who answered. He looked neither at the man or the other villagers, but somewhere in between, fastening his gaze upon the smeared horizon. The finger of sunlight he'd observed earlier had intensified, climbed farther up, but it only brought to sharper clarity the images of his father.

"Why?" Kendath had asked when, on the hottest of summer afternoons, Amrinev had stripped off his priestly garments in exchange for a thin cloak and a worn burlap sack.

Instead of replying, Amrinev had taken his son's hand and had brought him along, down the back alleyways of the city, where flies swarmed the refuse beneath the eaves and rats escaped into sewers bearing dry crumbs from a happier meal. It was here that the High Priest had moved among the exiles of society - the beggars and the vagabonds, the sick and the elderly. Removing bundles of bread and canteens of cold, clean water from his sack, he'd dished them out freely, assuring the recipients that he himself had plenty to eat, that food and shelter were always available at the temple.

Only his son had known. Only Kendath had known how little in tithes the wealthy lords of the city paid to the temple. Only Kendath had watched his father at meal times everyday - watched Amrinev remove half of his own bread to bundle up and save for others. And after supper, in the darkness of his bedchamber when he thought nobody was watching, Amrinev had sat upon the hard floor and picked the blisters from his feet. Such was the price when one walked barefoot in midsummer.

Kendath now realized that the man and all the other villagers were staring at him. He jolted himself back and shook his head. "No," he repeated, his words barely audible even in the unnatural silence. "Those who have never suffered can never understand the pain of the suffering."

The man who had once been a husband let his head drop to his chest. His fist clenched, and his veins stood out in stark contrast against the flesh stretched too tightly over his bones. "Do you... want... to understand?" He looked up swiftly, ephemeral hope flaring in his yellow eyes. "I can show you. And then... and then... you can bring us our salvation."

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Merrin swallowed, heart pounding loud in her ears. No! cried instinct, shrinking from the offer. No, she didn't want to understand! Wasn't this enough, to be standing here under a dull sky in the middle of a haunted, barren wasteland? Wasn't it enough to be Chosen of the Gods, to have lost Wyvern and Vryngard and be terrified of losing everything else? And now he offered her the chance to understand more suffering?

It had been her, moments before, telling them there was still hope. What kind of bringer of salvation was she, if she cowered in fright from this? The mantra echoed. Not real. Not real. Then why did it feel so real? The people, the land, the desolation...

The hope that she glimpsed in his face, hope she'd brought.

He extended a hand to her. One moment stretched on eternally, a moment in which Merrin teetered on the brink, words tangling in her throat. One more breath.

"Yes," she said, and gave him her hand.

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Bring them salvation? What the hell did that even mean? Was it even possible? Garthag thought to himself as he listened to them speak, but he didn`t interfere. For a moment he threw an angry stare at Kendath when he said that no one, who had not suffered could not understand the pain. Had he not suffered? He had been robbed of all, that he had held dear and then forced to remain obsessed about returning his sister only to stab her to death in order to put her out of her suffering. However he knew, that he could never truly understand what kind of suffering she had endured during those years.

Was that the same kind of suffering these people were speaking of, could they show him what she might have endured? It seemed like a fickle hope, that he did not even want to believe in. Was he just being led along like a sheep now? Like Kendath and Merrin? He did not even want to begin to think of that, but at the moment it seemed like he had no choice, but to follow in order to advance. Garthag made a quiet nod to the villager, but remained farther away from them still staring at the open grave before him.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Adeila stood some distance from the others, one hand covering her nose and mouth as she partially averted her gaze from the gruesome scene before them. The whole place stank not only of dead bodies, but of death itself. Every last one of the villagers was dead or dying. There was no life, no joy, no hope.

It was no more real than the other tests, she reminded herself again. They were all illusions - she had not truly scaled an icy mountain, she had not truly encountered those from her past, and she was not truly surrounded by dying villagers. Wasn't she? Earth, plants, water, wind, even bodies could all be mimicked in a powerful enough illusion. But these people felt real. She could keenly sense each and every individual's agony, see in their eyes the desolation of their souls. Unless they themselves were healers, the Renegade mages could never have known this sensation.

Part of Adeila wanted desperately to run away, to escape the oppressive atmosphere. But even more, she longed to reach out to these people and end their affliction. That was her job as a healer: to stop death when she could, and to make it more bearable when she could not. It tore at her heart to see these people so ravaged by disease, devoid of all hope. She could not - would not - ever fully understand their situation...but she could try.

At length, she faced the others once more and nodded slowly. "To solve a problem, one must first understand it," she said quietly. "I wish to see."

The man turned now to Kendath, who nodded wordlessly. His father had borne the suffering of others for an entire lifetime. What insult to Amrinev's memory would Kendath be, if he couldn't suffer this once?

The villagers hung their heads as one. After a second's hesitation, Kendath followed suit. It happened slowly - so slowly that initially he never felt it. Only when he noticed his breath coming shorter did he feel a strange... inward pull, as though his ribs would collapse upon his lungs, suffocating him. And then he felt the opposite, as though his skin were being yanked outwards in all directions. For a breathtaking moment the two forces contended - in, out, in, out - until... at last...

Weightlessness. Limbo.

And then he was nothing.

-----

No one else thought her beautiful.

No one else saw forests in her hazel eyes or sunlight in her golden hair. No one else caught the warmth of her smile or the clouds upon her feet when she walked - no, danced - down the streets of the village.

Except she didn't come to the village that often. Only on market days. Those were twice every week, but sometimes she didn't even come then. She lived beyond the outskirts, at the edge of the woods where deer grazed in her yard and wolves roamed the shadows at night. The one-roomed cottage with the broken shutters and falling roof had been built many, many years ago by her father. She never spoke of her mother, and nobody ever thought to ask. She never spoke of her father anymore either.

"Look at her," the other maidens whispered when they thought she wasn't listening. "She isn't married yet, but she's past age. Isn't that strange? No, I don't suppose she can afford a dowry. Pity, that. Her mother's dead, so I've heard. Oh, what a lass. What's her name again? No man will ever look at her, poor thing."

But Tain had looked at her, and wasn't he man enough? Tain looked at her everyday when he trudged into the trees to catch his family's dinner. "Lira," he called once as he stopped outside her house, pretending to examine his bow for some imagined crack in the wood. "Lira," he called again, and when she didn't appear, he hung his head and continued on his way. Perhaps she hadn't heard him. Why would she waste her time listening for idiots like himself?

The next week, Tain emerged from the woods gripping a prize catch - an enormous goose he'd shot down in the reeds beside the lake. On the path back to the village, he stopped dead, for he spotted a slender form haloed against the pastel twilight. "Lira," he shouted for the last time.

This time, she noticed him. She glanced up, then quickly back down again, her hair a curtain of honey spilling free to veil her face. She seemed to be concentrating on something.

Ecstatic, Tain raced down the hill to meet her, the dead goose bouncing where he held it by its feet, before stopping short, wondering what she was doing.

She was standing underneath an enormous oak shadowing her cottage. She had her arms oustretched toward a low bough, and she was watching something with rapt intensity. Were those tears streaking down her face? Reaching her, Tain impulsively touched her shoulder. His mind fumbled for words, but none came.

It was then that he glanced up and saw the sparrow. The tiny bird perched precariously on the branch. It took a tottering step, chest puffed as it trilled, and flapped a single wing. It lost its balance instantly and fell over into Lira's palm.

"No," she whispered, tears sparkling on her cheeks. She placed it gently back onto the branch. "Fly, little sister. Fly!"

Tain shook his head. "Lira, it can't. Its wing... look at its other wing."

"No!" Hazel eyes blazing, she whirled on him with such fury that he took a step back. "Anyone can learn how to fly again! Anyone!" She seemed as though she would have liked to say more, but a gasp choked her throat. Instead she collapsed against the trunk of the oak, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.

At utter loss for what to do, Tain stole a glance at the open door of her house. "I'm going to go get your father."

"Don't." Her shoulders stilled to a barely perceptible trembling. When she spoke again, her words were surprisingly clear. "Don't. Please. Father's dead. He left this morning. He was sick for..." Here she closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. "He was sick for a long time."

The goose planned for supper that night slipped from his grasp. It landed on the grass, its graceful neck twisted, its wings bent at awkward angles. Shame flooded him, though he had no idea why. "I'm sorry. I... I can't imagine..." His voice dropped to a murmur. "I can help you bury him."

Her mouth parted in surprise, and for the longest time she seemed to have been rendered aphasic. At length she dropped her head and, placing the sparrow at the base of the tree, beckoned him toward the house.

They were married the next spring - he in his buttoned vest, she in a dress as green as the meadow where they spoke their vows. She was laughing when he gathered her in his arms, and she was laughing still when he carried her away - far away from the village and into the forest, where he laid her upon a bed of moss and kissed her sunlit hair. Six moon-turns later, she was already round-bellied with their first child. A blessing, they called it. The gods had blessed them well.

The plague struck that winter.

The deer and the geese fled to warmer havens. The wolves lamented their empty bellies by moonlight. The people of the village, already bent from cold and hunger, fell easily to the sickness.

And Lira, gaunt from half-filled plates and a difficult pregnancy, was the first to go.

-----

They told her that she was too young to understand. Too young. What was that supposed to mean? She was five and a half years old - that was almost as old as Cenna and two years older than Raul. She could run from her front step to the hill by the forest in three minutes and thirteen seconds. She could make a vegetable soup with mud and leaves and the small clay pot that Da gave her last Yule. She could count to a hundred.

She understood a lot more than grown-ups would ever know. Like how to pick the ripest berries on the bush. Or how to find the perfect spot on Grandpa Notty's cat and scratch it until she heard the perfect purr. Or how to play dirtball with Raul and get away without yelled at. Okay, except for maybe once. Mama had come home from market day and had seen Raul splashing around in puddles, making mud cakes. "Mama!" he'd cried. "Want pie? Eat pie! Jordyn said!"

There was another time too, but that was when she'd accidentally Touched something in Da's workshop. "This is fragile," Da had told her sternly, setting a blue vase on the table. "Don't Touch." Then he'd left to do Something Important.

For the next hour (Da said it was ten minutes, but he must have confused his hours and minutes), she'd gazed at this blue vase. Her eyes had traced the little painted fishes wriggling across the lake. Her mind had pictured a mother duck landing on the table to catch one of the fishes and take it home to feed her five hungry ducklings. For an hour or maybe two or three hours, she'd thought about the dreaded Touch. Would something happen to her if she did it? Would her hand fall off? Would a wolf jump into the room and gobble her up?

Don't be a sissy, she heard Cenna say in her head. Then, with a quick glance over her shoulder, she picked her favorite fish - a pinkish one with a fan-like tail - and brushed her finger against it. She retracted it just as quickly with another glance over her shoulder. No one had seen. She was safe. Her finger tingled.

I'm secretly a princess in disguise, confided the fish. You have my eternal thanks for freeing me from the curse. For this, I can grant you three wishes.

"Can I wish for more wishes?" she asked hopefully.

Only three, else it wouldn't be fair. Sorry.

She thought long and hard about her wishes. At length she proclaimed, "I wish Mama would buy me those rainbow rocks the traders are selling on market day."

The secret fish princess thought about it too. Hmm. Are you sure? They might have prettier rocks next year.

"Not rainbow rocks. Rainbow rocks are special. Besides, the man said they might not be back next year."

Your wish is my command, Lady Jordyn.

She grinned and did a jig until the secret fish princess called her back.

Well, are you going to tell me your second wish?

She flew back to the table. This one required less concentration. "I want my own dragon."

This time the secret fish princess had to think twice as long. Finally, A good choice, Lady Jordyn. Or shall I say "Lady Jordyn Dragonrider." Now, are you ready for your third wish?

Ready? What a question! What should she spend her third wish on? A magical tower? A ball of golden yarn? A silk gown that went all the way to her feet? The choices were endless! She shook her head. Da was always telling her to plan, plan, plan and save, save, save. They might run out of food for the winter. The river might dry up in the summer. The crops might not be ready for harvest this autumn. She shook her head again, chasing away pictures of long-lost damsels and enchanted fairy princes. "I'm saving my third wish."

A wise choice, Lady Jordyn.

Footsteps thudded behind her, and she spun around to see Da stoop through the door. He looked relieved to see the vase still intact. "I have to get this ready for Aunt Ignes. Why don't you see what Cenna's doing down by the river? There's a good lass." But before she could quite make it out the door, Da stopped her again. "Oh, Mama told me to give you this. Early Yule present, she says." He offered her a tiny sack tied with a silver string.

With deft fingers she loosened the string and peered inside. There, nestled within the sack's velvet folds, were three polished stones that glittered a hundred different colors in the sunlight. Clutching the rainbow rocks to her chest, she kissed Da and ran out of the workshop.

She ran and ran until she came to her hidden spot outside the village, where a strong oak stood beside a small cottage. Softly humming a gala night melody to herself, she curled up at the base of the tree, blocked out the world, and dreamed about the secret fish princess and her wonderful third wish.

And a good thing she'd saved that wish, too, on that sunny day in late autumn. "A wee stroke of good fortune," Da would have said with a smile. See - she understood enough. She understood enough to save, save, save that wish for later. She couldn't wait to see their faces.

She burst through the door of her house just as the strange man in the brown robes was getting up to leave. "Don't worry! I'm here!" Flinging out her arms as though she could shower her "wee stroke of good fortune" upon the room like fairy dust, she raced towards the bed. Big hands caught her and pushed her back. She fought herself free from a faceful of brown robes. "Let me go! Let me go!"

But the strange man didn't listen. He reached down, swept her clean off the floor, and carried her outside, where he set her down on the glittering white street. "Your parents are very, very sick," he said in that grown-up voice she hated so much.

She planted her fists on her hips and stomped her foot. "I can help!"

The snow was falling harder now. It gathered on the bridge of the man's nose and frosted his grayish beard. Who was he? She knew every face in the village, but not his. Setting his jaw, he shook his head. "It's not a sight for little girls."

"I'm not listening to you!" The scream ripped itself from her throat like one of those snarling monsters from her nightmares. It scared her. But nobody turned to stare because nobody came outside anymore. It was funny, feeling as though she were the only one in the world and could scream as loudly as she wanted to. She felt taller and bigger, like Cenna or even Da. She liked this feeling, this anger. She took a deep breath to do it again. "I'm not stupid! I'm smarter than you think, 'cept people never believe me! Who are you, anyway? That's my house! Mama and Da live in there! You can't make me... you can't..." Her speech broke. Mama always told her not to cry, but she couldn't help it now. She'd started and now she couldn't stop.

The door was open. The strange man had stepped aside.

"Mama," she breathed, stumbling inside to bounce on her tiptoes beside the bed. "Mama, don't worry. I'm gonna save you. I never told you this but a long time ago, I met a fish who was really a princess and she granted me three wishes. Isn't that funny? And I know those wishes work 'cause... Mama? Aren't you listening?"

Mama hadn't moved. She continued staring up at the ceiling, her expression blank.

Maybe she was tired and wanted to sleep. She rushed around the bed to tap on Da's arm. "Da, guess what? You know that vase you made for Aunt... Aunt Ignes a long time ago? The fish was really a secret princess! And she granted me three wishes and I saved the third wish just like you keep saying..." She trailed off, wide-eyed. The tiniest trickle of blood had dribbled out of Da's mouth and was sliding down the side of his chin. She whirled around and found the tall man in brown robes. "Da's bleeding!"

The man was leaning against the doorframe. "I know, lass. There's nothing I can do."

Make the wish! Make the wish! The secret fish princess's urging echoed in her mind, evoking a gasp. The secret fish princess was right. She had to hurry. After wiping her tears on the sleeve of her jacket, she took Da's hand and reached over for Mama's as well. She had to say this exactly right, or else it might not work.

"Secret fish princess, can you hear me?" she whispered, shutting her eyes. Then, in the most solemn, grown-up voice she could manage, she recited, "I wish for Mama and Da to get better." The trance shattered. Hope brimming, she glanced up first at her parents. Her face fell. She turned to the tall man in the doorway and cocked her head, confused.

Until that day, she'd never seen a grown man cry.

-----

The twins had been born five seconds apart, and from the moment they'd slid from their mother's womb, everyone knew they were something special. Lhark was the first, they later recounted. All the same, it must have been a vicious battle because Allari had emerged a stunned heartbeat later, grabbing on with both hands to her brother's chubby leg and refusing to let go. Ruddy-cheeked, bawling babes - both of them. The wives in the village had talked of nothing else for that entire moon-turn.

Ever since the auspicious day of their birth, the twins were inseparable. Where one went, the other followed. No questions asked. None demanded. Strangely enough, they didn't look anything alike. Lhark was tall and lanky, with their father's freckles and ruffled brown hair. Allari was slender and compact like their mother, with black hair and blue eyes the shade of a cloudless afternoon.

When they were twelve, their fellow playmates dared them to go elf-hunting in the woods outside the village. "If you find one, bring it back!" shouted the band leader, a stocky boy whose sneer and pinched nose had earned him the name Pigface from the other youngsters. "You never know - we might make it dance for us!"

Lhark never turned down a dare, no matter how foolish it seemed, as the more rational Allari had pointed out again and again in past adventures. Thus, a dimming twilight found them both trekking along an animal trail under a tangle of dense canopy, tinted indigo by the fading dusk. They'd carved out niches in the trees to mark their way back home, and the fast dulling edge of Allari's knife was testament to how far they'd come.

Far enough. We've come far enough, she thought, disgruntled, as she dragged the blade through the bark of yet another tree. Her thumb ached from gripping the hilt too hard.

"Just a little bit farther," said Lhark over his shoulder, answering her unspoken complaint. "Come on, don't you want to find an elf?"

"You are so absolutely idiotic that I can't believe we're even related," she replied, with a flip of her raven-black hair and a haughty sniff she'd learned from Mother. "In fact..." She planted both feet on the ground. "I refuse to go a step further."

Lhark stepped around to face her, his eyebrows drawn together in his customary expression of exasperation. The expression that always seemed to say aww-come-on-Al-just-this-one-time-can't-you-do-it-for-your-brother?

Allari shook her head.

"Mother won't worry. She thinks we're over at Darragh's place, remember?"

"That not what's bothering me." It was a bald-faced lie, and both of them knew it.

"Fine. Suit yourself. Just don't go anywhere." With a sigh and a shrug, Lhark continued on down the trail, leaving his sister to stare after him, her jaw hanging open. He'd just walked away! How could he be so stubborn as to simply leave? Who cared what Pigface thought anyway? Pigface was being foolish. And so was Lhark, at least at the moment. Don't go anywhere. As if! Seething, she crossed her arms and cast about for just the right reason to leave and never come back.

That reason presented itself sooner than she'd hoped. It wasn't the reason she'd hoped for, either.

The tree she'd marked just minutes before was gone.

She threw herself at the nearest tree and inspected its bark. Not a mark to be found. Breath catching, she tried the next one. No. And the next. No! You idiot! she cried in desperate silence. You're on the wrong side of the trail. It's that one! A low branch snagged her skirt. She yanked it free, and the tear of fabric split the quiet and rebounded back on her ears. Clutching the torn hem of her skirt to her side, she stumbled across the trail. But she realized before she ever drew near that she'd been wrong. The bark was too thin. She recalled a thick trunk with thick bark. Or was it a thick trunk? Maybe she'd confused it with the one before...

The last trickles of dusk were slipping over the horizon. The trees cast long, looming shadows on the forest floor. Not afraid. Not afraid. Wrapping the folds of her cloak more tightly around her body, she sat down on the bed of leaves to wait for her brother.

She heard the wolf before she saw it. A feral snarl in the shadows behind her made her gasp and jump to her feet. Yellow eyes gleamed. Lips lifted to reveal glittering fangs. But it never attacked. With a growl and a crackle of dry leaves, the creature melted out of sight. Where had it gone? Belatedly remembering the knife, she drew it out and gripped it the way she'd seen Lhark hold it when skinning rabbits for supper. She stood tense, frozen, waiting.

The next snarl ripped through the darkness with such ferocity that she spun around with a hoarse scream, steeling herself for the flash of fangs as the entire pack fell upon her -

All she glimpsed was a whirlwind of fur smudging her vision. She fell to her knees, stabbing her knife blindly to the sky. Hot air rushed over her head. The wolf - one wolf, not a pack - landed opposite her and lurched forward, stumbling. Plopping down on its haunches, it twisted its head to lick a gash on its belly.

Now is the time! But she found herself rooted to the spot, unable to run, unable to charge forth and attack. She opened her mouth to scream for help, but terror had clenched her throat.

Blood smeared the creature's muzzle. Yellow eyes glowing, it approached Allari slowly, with more caution.

It didn't matter. She was shaking so hard that she couldn't even hold steady the knife. She knew without any doubt that she was dead.

She wasn't couldn't recount what happened next.

Something struck the wolf from behind. Enraged, it leaped around to face this new threat. Too late. The offender was already upon it, straddling it, slashing and thrusting with a blade that gleamed scarlet.

The spell broke. Before she knew it, she was charging forward too, yelling and brandishing the knife with a fury she barely recognized as her own. When the red haze cleared at last, the wolf had fled. She and Lhark stood alone under the gloom of the towering trees.

"Are you... are you okay?" Lhark managed.

Bent double and panting for breath, she nodded. She snuck a glance up at him. He was too was crouched, leaning on his knees, gulping down air. "You're... a... a demon," she said weakly. "You could have gotten us both killed."

He stared at her as though he hadn't understood a word she'd just said. At length he snorted and giggled like the boy he was. "We could have both been eaten together, huh Al? Except he would have had to swallow you last. Your skin's so thick, he would have puked you back out and me right along with you."

Allari could only sigh and shake her head.

A few years later, she asked him how he'd known she was in trouble.

He looked up from the bow he was stringing and merely shrugged. "We're twins, remember? Hey pass me that arrow, will you."

For a long time afterwards, Allari never fully comprehended what he'd meant by his odd response. It wasn't until the plague descended in the winter of their eighteenth year that she understood. Implicitly and irrevocably understood.

She was treading carefully across the slick dirt, on her way down to fetch water from the river, when a wave of cold staggered her steps. Cold was only to be expected this time of year. It hadn't stopped snowing since last night. The river was creeping sluggishly, almost frozen solid. She knew this, so at first she thought nothing of it - dismissed it as weariness and hunger finally catching up with her. She picked her pails back up and continued on her way.

So numbing was the second wave that she didn't even feel it until she was on her knees, teeth chattering, her entire body shaking with chills. The empty pails clattered to the ground. She stared straight ahead, unmoving, her darting gaze finding something strangely fascinating about the way the serpentine river slithered along... a snake in a field of white... or perhaps a worm... writhing... The bottom dropped out of her stomach. And suddenly her arms were clenched around her abdomen as her torso contorted in agony. Her mouth gaped open, tongue sagging to make way for the torrent of blood searing up her throat -

Nothing happened. The sensation passed. The river was no longer a thrashing worm, but a river once more.

Lhark.

She staggered to her feet and took off for the village.

"Lhark!" she cried, bursting through the door of their home and diving toward the straw pallet on the floor where he lay, pale and shuddering. The metallic scent of blood assaulted her nostrils. Horrified, she found the entire front of his shirt stained red.

"Allari..." Father reached out as though to restrain her, but she shoved him aside and leaned over the pallet.

"Lhark! Lhark, you fool! You cursed fool, talk to me!"

His eyelids flickered. "Al..."

"How could you do this to me!" She was sobbing now, cupping his cheeks with her hands, tears spilling down her face. One dropped off and landed on his nose, where it stayed, quivering like a shard of glass. Broken. "Don't leave... don't you dare... Lhark, please..."

Before he could answer, another spasm shook his frame. And she was reeling too, collapsing on the floor, her own heartbeat slowly strangling her. She glimpsed movement, figures shouting and reaching out to grab her. Someone was wailing... Mother? She couldn't hear. The pulse in her ears hammered on her skull. Her bowels contracted, squeezing tighter and tighter until they erupted. Ice one moment, fire the next. The blood roared through her veins and flooded her stomach. She opened her mouth -

And Lhark spewed forth a scarlet jet that splattered the pallet, the floor, the walls. Without hesitation, Allari threw herself upon his blood-soaked, quivering body and hung on as though she could ease his agony. As though her embrace could keep his spirit locked inside his body and stopper the life bursting from his throat.

It should have been her blood. Her blood, instead of his. He was always the strong one. He had always protected her. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. She should have gone down with him.

We're twins, remember?

Twins...

Two weeks later, she saddled a horse and bore Lhark's cooling body to the edge of the forest, where she found the animal trail they'd followed six years before. They rode for hours - she and Lhark, alone together like they'd been all their lives - until dusk pooled in shadows upon the snow. Satisfied that no one would find them, she tethered the horse and set off gather wood.

The funeral pyre took half the night to build. When it was completed, she gently laid her brother down and warmed him with a quilt she'd made for him last summer. No need for tearful kisses or last farewells. Lhark had never appreciated those kinds of sentiments, anyway. Besides, he understood. He always had.

Allari sat down in the cold snow and watched the flames at first pause, uncertain, and then begin to burn higher and brighter, a sun in the starless night. She let a small smile toy with her lips. She felt no emptiness, no sorrow. Lhark had simply gone before her. The wolf would have to swallow her last. This she knew with absolute certainty.

Besides, they were twins. And they were inseparable.

-----

It didn't matter how hard his nails dug into his palms, or how painstakingly he fought to forget the world. Forget the world. How ridiculous the notion seemed, now, in the light of all that he'd witnessed. In the light of the lives that he'd lived, the anguish that he'd stifled.

"You see," the man said. His name was Tain, husband of Lira. You see. It sounded emotionless, hollow.

Kendath did see. He saw the villagers, gathered at the edge of the grave - the edge of the love they'd once given, the laughter they'd once shared. He saw the child who'd howled for her mother. The secret fish princess had forgotten to grant her last wish. He saw the girl whose face he'd torn with his own blade. She still waited to rejoin her brother. He saw them all, every last one. He knew them all, as intimately as if he'd lived among them all his life.

The effort of holding it in was pounding at the walls of his head, his chest. At last, he bent his head and let the tears come. Silently, deliberately. They trickled like acid down his skin. He welcomed the pain.

After everything he'd seen, after every love he'd lost, his own suffering was nothing.

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