And it had spoken to her.
This last event troubled him deeply, though he did not know what it meant. There would be more trials ahead, some worse than those of this past season. He would be with her- and Leesil, another whose spirit was dark and yet chose to live in the light.
Chap heard Wynn's breath deepen into a slumbering rhythm. He cared for this little sage but was as surprised as Magiere that a Noble Dead had shadowed them. This undead had come too far without him knowing. More disturbing, the sage had hid it from him. She would have to be watched.
Chap closed his eyes and let the quiet of the room, filled only with Wynn's soft breaths, settle around him. All else was too much to consider now, and there was time enough for one more quiet night of warmth.
Magiere sat in an old chair in the corner when Leesil entered their room. He didn't speak at first and, instead, handed her a tin cup. The smell of mint tea filled her nose before she saw the leaf settled to the cup's bottom. She put the cup down on the floor without tasting the tea.
She was quiet as well, but not angry at him. Was she even angry at all anymore? This left her bereft, as anger had always been her strength.
Leesil looked about the room. "It's too familiar. We started this journey in a small inn not much different than this."
"Yes," Magiere answered, and now that he spoke, she didn't want him to stop. It made all things better just to hear his voice. "It's over. There's nothing left to find."
He held his hand out. She'd always liked his hands, so tan and slender.
"Come sit with me," he said.
She came to the bed with him, wishing they were curled beneath a blanket by a campfire instead. It felt strange to be indoors.
"Tell me what your mother showed you," he said.
She longed for them to speak more freely of the things that mattered, but old habits ingrained by earlier years together were hard to break. That he simply asked seemed new and pleasing, and he deserved to know. If he was to link his life to hers, he needed the truth as much as she did.
He listened in silence as she told him everything. From her father drinking the blood of the five to Magelia's rape and Bryen's death. She told Leesil of Welstiel's involvement and the murdered infant, and how he'd had carried her away while Magelia bled to death.
"Oh, Magiere," Leesil whispered.
"There's more behind all of this," she said. "Ubad sacrificed a lifetime of effort to create me. And my mother showed me that something whispers to Welstiel. Ubad referred to it as his patron. But I'm not what they think… what Ubad thought I would be."
She told him of the tendrils that had trapped her and Chap, and how Ubad had tried to force her to feed upon the forest's summoned spirit within them, to drain life from them.
"It didn't work, Leesil. I am not what he thought."
"You are Magiere," he said as if it were an obvious fact.
When she spoke of the black-scaled coils that appeared at Ubad's call, Leesil looked about the room as if watching for something.
"Whatever it was," she finished, "it abandoned Ubad and spoke to me. 'Sister of the dead, lead on, it said."
Leesil was silent, lost in thought, almost as if he'd not even heard this strange message she'd received. He took her hand, not yet looking at her, and Magiere's thoughts would not stop turning.
"The coils' voice… could it be what whispered to Wel-stiel in my mother's vision?"
Leesil frowned. "Welstiel."
"I am his sister," she said.
"And he tried to use you, no less than that old death-monger. If he comes near you again, I'll take his head."
His protective manner both warmed and annoyed her. She pulled her hand away, took off her boots, and crawled up to lay on the pillow.
"And what makes you think I need your protection?" she taunted him, but he didn't smile. "It's over, and we can head north to find your mother… I'm sorry this took so long."
"I'm sorry the answers you found were worse than the questions." He scooted up to lie beside her. "For better or worse, you've learned where you came from. But it's not over. Something started here, and I fear it will follow us."
There was no hint of the humor in his amber eyes that she had grown so accustomed to.
"Ubad and Vordana are dead," she insisted. "As well as Chane. There is no one left here to get in our way as we look for Nein'a."
Leesil stared up at the ceiling, then sat up to look at her with a hard expression. His voice was flat and full of warning.
"When rumors of a hunter of the dead reached Ubad, he placed servants in fiefs throughout the Antes and Sclaven to watch for you. They're still there, and whatever this black coiled thing was in the forest, we must get you out of this land."
Magiere knew all that he spoke of before he said it. She wasn't blind to what they'd uncovered and didn't yet understand. But she wanted to pretend for one night that it was over. She looked into his face, and he seemed to know how disheartened his words made her.
Leesil closed his eyes, and Magiere saw him swallow hard. He placed his dark hand on her pale one.
"I helped you all the way to the end of your search," he whispered. "I need to get you out of this land quickly, so now will you follow me to the end of my journey?"
"Of course… how can you even ask that?"
He was so somber. Leesil could usually be counted upon to lighten the mood, even when his methods were in poor taste. He lay back with his face near hers, and she reached out to touch his cheek.
'Tomorrow," she whispered. "We'll start at first light… all the way to the end."
Then he smiled. "And I love you, my dragon."
Epilogue
Welstiel dragged another half-conscious peasant through the trees and dropped him next to the other two, all of them bound and gagged.
It had taken two nights of weary travel to find a place where he could accomplish what was now necessary. Within the hilly outskirts of a village off the main road, he'd found an outlying cottage. He had waited anxiously as dawn approached, and a man and his two tall sons left for their day's labors.
The sun had almost breached the horizon, and Welstiel felt a warning sting upon his skin. When the men were out of sight, he rushed into the cottage and struck down the middle-aged woman preparing clothes to be washed.
He filled his teacup brass bowl with purified water and drained the woman to a husk to replenish his energies. Then he settled to wait out the day until the men returned near dusk. One by one, he'd dragged them back into the forest, back to Chane's corpse.
In a shallow hollow he had dug in the earth, barely deep enough for a grave, he laid out Chane's body and carefully adjusted his head in place. A lowly end for one who had been born a noble. Yet the importance of a proper burial, according to one's station, was another superstition to be dismissed.
Welstiel dragged the father to the grave, drew his dagger, and slit the man's throat. He tossed the dying man into the grave atop Chane's body. The two sons quickly joined their father, all bleeding out their lives, like loved ones of ancient days who chose to die with their fallen patriarch rather than live on in sorrow.
He settled upon a nearby downed tree with folded hands, leaning his elbows upon his knees as he stared at the piled bodies and waited.
Welstiel rubbed his temples and tried to clear his mind. Half the night passed as he sat in vigil. He looked upon Chane's face again.
"Are you awake yet?" he asked.
Chane opened his eyes.