He turned the warm mug in his hands as he studied the Mondyalitko couple. What he had seen in that dank forest left him wondering.
Were this il'Samar and his patron one and the same? If indeed his patron could reach beyond wherever it rested-beyond dreams and into this world-had it done so here and now? Should he trust such fortune appearing when he desired it most?
He had learned all he could from the old couple. He rose and leaned over on the pretense of opening the grain sack. The old man stood as well.
Welstiel drove his elbow back into the man's chest just below his sternum.
The old man buckled, gagging for air. Before Chane's mug hit the frigid earth, his fingers closed on the old woman's throat.
"Wait!" Welstiel shouted. He whirled and smashed his fist into the man's temple, and the aged Mondyalitko dropped limp, face buried in the grain sack.
The pulsing life force of the woman in his hands drove Chane half-mad. He jerked her head back until it seemed her neck might snap, opening his jaws and exposing elongated canine teeth.
She gasped in fear, but couldn't draw enough breath to scream. He bit down hard below her jawline, drinking inward the instant he broke her skin, desperate to draw blood into his body.
Welstiel rushed in and back-fisted Chane across the cheek.
Chane stumbled away. His grip tore from the woman's throat. She screeched once as his fingernails scraped bleeding lines across her neck.
He spun with his teeth bared as Welstiel struck the woman down and she crumpled next to her mate.
"I said wait!" Welstiel shouted.
Chane closed in slowly, enraged enough to rip his companion's throat out instead.
"There is a better way," Welstiel stated."Watch."
Something in his voice cut through Chane's hunger, and he paused warily.
Welstiel held up both hands, palms outward. "Stay there."
He hurried to his horse and retrieved an ornate walnut box from his pack. Chane had never seen it before. Kneeling by the unconscious old woman, Welstiel opened the box and glanced up.
"There are ways to make the life we consume last longer."
Chane crouched and crept forward, forcing himself to hold off from savaging the woman as he looked into the walnut box.
Resting in burgundy padding were three hand-length iron rods, a teacup-sized brass bowl, and a stout bottle of white ceramic with an obsidian stopper. Welstiel removed the rods, each with a loop in its midsection, and intertwined them into a tripod stand. He placed the brass cup upon it and lifted out the white bottle.
"This contains thrice-purified water, boiled in a prepared vessel," he said. "We will replenish the fluid later."
He pulled the stopper and filled half the cup, then rolled the woman onto her back. Chane pressed both hands against the ground and fought the urge to lunge for her throat.
"Bloodletting is a wasteful way to feed," Welstiel said, his voice sounding far away. "It is not blood that matters but the leak of life caused by its loss. Observe."
He drew his dagger and dipped its point into the blood trailing from the woman's nostrils. When the steel point held a tiny red puddle, he carefully tilted the blade over the cup. One drop struck the water.
Blood thinned and diffused beneath the water's dying ripples, and Welstiel began to chant. It started slowly at first, and Chane saw no effect.
Then the woman's skin began to dry and shrivel. Her eyelids sank inward and her cheekbones jutted beneath withering skin. Her body dried inward, shrunken to a husk as her life drained away. When Chane heard her heart stop beating, Welstiel ceased his chant.
The fluid in the cup brimmed near its lip, so dark it appeared black.
Welstiel lifted the small brass vessel and offered it to Chane. "Drink only half. The rest is for me."
Chane blinked. He reached out for the cup, lifted it, and gulped in a mouthful.
"Brace yourself," Welstiel warned and tilted his head back to pour the remaining liquid down his throat.
For a moment, Chane only tasted dregs of ground metal and salt. Then a shock of pain in his gut wrenched a gag from him.
So much life taken in pure form… it burst inside him and rushed through his dead flesh.
It burned, and his head filled with its heat. He waited with jaws and eyes clenched. When the worst passed, he opened his eyes with effort. Welstiel crouched on all fours, gagging and choking.
Chane's convulsions finally eased.
"This is how you feed?" he asked.
For a moment Welstiel didn't answer, then his body stopped shaking. "Yes… and it will be some time before we need to do so again, perhaps half a moon or more."
He crawled to the unconscious old man and repeated the process. But this time, instead of drinking, Welstiel poured the black fluid into the emptied white bottle and sealed the stopper.
"It will keep for a while," he said. "We may need it, with so little life in these peaks."
For the first time in many nights, the painful ache of hunger eased from Chane's body. He rose up, his mind clearing. He felt more… likehimself again, but he turned toward Welstiel with growing suspicion.
"How did you learn this?"
"A good deal of experimentation."Welstiel paused. "I do not share your bloodlust."
A cryptic answer-with a thinly veiled insult.
Welstiel picked up the abandoned kettle and poured tea into two mugs. He held out one to Chane. "Drink this. All of it."
"Why?"
"Does your flesh still feel brittle like dried parchment?"
Chane frowned and absently rubbed at his scarred throat. "Yes… for several nights past."
"Our bodies need fluid to remain supple and functional. Otherwise, even one of ourkind can succumb to slow desiccation.Drink."
Chane took the mug and sipped the contents, annoyed that Welstiel lectured him like a child. But as the liquid flowed down his throat, the ease in his body increased. He retrieved the grain sack, but also untied the donkey and let it go.
Welstiel watched this last act with a confused shake of his head.
Chane kicked the fire apart to kill its flames and headed for his horse, glancing once at Welstiel as if noticing him for the first time.
They mounted up, and Chane led the way southeast until dawn's glow drove them once more into the tent and another day of hiding from the sun. He thought he knew most of Welstiel's secrets-or at least hints of them. What else of import did his companion hide?
Eyes closed in halfsleep, Magiere rolled and reached out across Wynn for Leesil. Her fingers touched hard stone beneath a flattened blanket. She sat up too quickly, and Wynn rolled away, grasping the cloaks and blankets with a grumble.
"Leesil?" Magiere called in a hushed voice.
She teetered with exhaustion and her head swam in the dark. She tried to force her dhampir nature to rise and expand her senses.
No feral hunger heated her insides or rose in her throat. She'd held her dhampir nature in part for too many days, and now it wouldn't come in her exhaustion.
Magiere crawled around Wynn, feeling along the cave's rough floor until her fingers struck sharply against the side of the skulls' chest. She cursed, shook her hand, and followed the chest's contours until she touched the cold lamp crystal atop it. She rubbed it briskly, and it sparked into life between her palms.
Wynn slept rolled in Chane's old cloak beneath Magiere's own and the blanket. The makeshift sling had slipped off the sage's arm. She seemed in no serious pain or she would've fully awoken. There was no sign of Leesil-or Chap-anywhere in the slanted cavern.
Magiere's gaze fell upon something that made her tense, and she shifted to the bottom edge of their makeshift bed. Amid clinging strands of Chap's fur lay a small arrow. She picked it up, glancing warily about the cave.
Its light yellow shaft was too short for any bow and too thin for a crossbow quarrel. Tiny featherings bound at its notched end were a strange mottled white and almost downy at the forward ends. In place of a metal head, it ended in a sharpened point-or would have if it weren't blunted. Its last flight must have dashed it against something hard.