Cadell regained composure from his son's words. "All right then, we will do as you say," he answered, and turned to Leesil. "Now get out, and let us deal with this."
"Soon… in a moment," Leesil answered with forced calm and a frown at Wynn. "Finish, please."
Wynn returned to the winged remains among the wooden frame with its shreds of aged canvas. What would Domin Tilswith do if he was faced with these bodies… with these sacrifices? He had sent her on this journey with his deepest trust. She was determined to try to act as he would. There was still something lost in her memories that stirred when she looked at the physical make of this winged body, and, as she knelt with her back to the others, she did something that shamed her.
She quietly loosened one of its finger bones to secret it in her palm.
Wynn kept her hands in front of herself, so the others could not see. She lingered long enough to note as much of it as she could for later recounting in her journal, and then she moved on to the fourth and fifth skeletons.
They had fallen near each other. One lay before an open iron box the height of her leg, and the other near a huge clay urn lashed into a wooden frame, likely for hauling. The urn was as tall as her head, and its side had been smashed in.
The insides of the iron box had gouges in the metal, visible even beneath the grime and thin coat of rust. The bones of the creature next to it were more disturbing than the winged one. In place of teeth, its jaws had sharpened ridges, and the final bones of its toes and fingers ended in sharp curved points. The creature, locked within the box, had tried to claw its way out.
All its bones and dried flesh were tarnished with streaks of red grime so thick, it made them look pitch black. Another sense of the familiar stirred in her mind. Keeping her back to the others, she pretended to lean in for a closer examination. Removing a loose toe bone with its claw, she palmed it along with the winged creature's finger.
The fifth body rested near enough that she did not have to move. Slender but solid of build like the elf, the creature had strange rows of spikes stuck out along the back side of its forearms, from each vertebra of its spine, and along its crested skull. The bones were cream-white and had not yellowed beneath its decayed filth. Its teeth were also ridged, but with regularly spaced points.
She made a hidden reach for one of the smaller spikes springing from the front of its shin. She took one of these off and added it to her collection.
Her gaze returned to the spikes on its spine, longer near the upper back but growing shorter toward the tailbone.
Like the fin of a sea creature.
Wynn stumbled as she got up and began shaking.
"We will leave you, zupan, to tend your own…" Leesil started to say, and then his eyes widened as he looked at Wynn. "We're done. It's all done. There's no need for tears."
Jan took a step toward her, suspicion and mistrust washed away with concern.
Wynn pulled away from him, suddenly afraid to let anyone near her in this place. She had not even been aware of her own tears, only that she could not stop shaking and found but one word for her thoughts.
"Uirishg!" she said in a whisper tinged with hysteria.
Her gaze passed over one remains to the next, out of control-elf, dwarf, a creature of the air, one of water, and the other… of fire?
'Take her out of here, you fool," Cadell snapped. "This place has driven her beyond wits, as it might do us all."
Leesil reached out and steered Wynn toward the entry way. She let herself to be pulled along, as her mind did little more than reiterate her earliest lessons in the structure of creation.
The elements are Spirit, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire…
Showing states in Essence, Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Energy…
To manifest as Tree, Mountain, Wind, Wave, and Flame…
And within the chamber were an elf of the forest, a dwarf of the mountains…
She did not know the names for the other three. They were so lost back beyond The Forgotten that no one knew them as more than part of the myth of the Uirishg, as the elves called them. The sages translated that word as akin to "Fay-blooded" or "Children of the Fay," but the word was so old that its literal meaning was uncertain.
Old recovered texts revealed scant hints of a myth among her lands that humans were the oldest race. In primordial times, they mingled among the first Fay, and their offspring were the beginning of five new races. It was a legend that tried to explain their origin, perhaps with some hidden truth, though the elves of her continent found it little more than an amusing tale.
It should not become real, not like this… in blood and ritual sacrifice.
Before Leesil guided her all the way up the stairs, Wynn jerked free and ran the rest of the way to the keep's front doors. When the cold night of the courtyard outside wrapped around her, its numbness sank through to her own bones. She collapsed to her knees on the damp ground, sobbing. There was no sign of the two guards.
Leesil caught up to her, crouching to take her by the shoulders.
"Wynn… what did you find?" he asked, and then he saw the three bones in her limp hand. "Oh, for all the dead saints! What have you done?"
Wynn raised her head to look at him.
Leesil reached around her to pull up her hood. He closed the short robe's front more securely around her.
"You have to tell me," he said. "I don't understand what's wrong."
"Uirishg," she whispered again, and held up the three bones.
With effort, she told him of the Children of the Fay who were the five forgotten races. Only two, the elves and dwarves, were known to truly exist, and in that it should have all been but a myth. Leesil listened with the bones between them in Wynn's palm, and in the end she saw there was some understanding in his eyes.
"All right," he said. "But we have to go. I need to find Magiere."
He tried helping her up to her feet, but Wynn began to shake again at the thought of Magiere waiting for them in the village below.
"No more," she cried. "I do not want to know any more."
Leesil gripped her arms and forced her up. She was surprised by the strength in his hands.
"I understand," he said, "but you have to pull yourself together-now! Magiere is already on the edge, and I need you to stay with me."
"What is she?" Wynn asked.
"Don't start that with me," Leesil returned. "She had no more choice than you or I in how she came into this world. She was born a dhampir and-"
"Is that all you think she is?" Wynn said. "I just told you what we found in that room. The vat was so large, it would have taken a long time to make, to engrave. It was left and discarded, as if it could be used only once… because of what it was used for. Have you ever wondered why a Noble Dead-a vampire-for an unknown reason, would labor to create its own kind's hunter?"
Leesil's temper flared. "That's not what she-"
"Yes, she is," Wynn nearly shouted. "It is her nature… but only its thin outer surface. Those victims in that chamber… Leesil, someone searched the world to find them, and three are but a myth so old, it had been forgotten. They were brought here to be slaughtered for Magiere's birth and then sealed in rather than risk disposing of the evidence in another manner."
She shoved him away, and her voice softened. Not in sympathy but in disbelief at his blindness.
"What was done here is close to impossible. And you still think it was just to create an enemy of the Noble Dead?"
Leesil stared back at her, looking lost amid her words. "I have no choice in this, I love her… and I can't turn away. If you don't help me, then I'm alone. Not even Chap seems willing to tell what he knows or why he brought Magiere and me together."