A figure darted from one shadowed alley to the next, tracing an oblique path away from the wharves. Eliane was so slender, her movements so quick and light, that only a careful observer would have seen anything in the shifting darkness but an adolescent boy. Loose pants, shapeless tunic and sandals identified her as Bharim.

She halted under the eaves of a dilapidated tavern. Two patrons tumbled through the doors and into the darkness. In the street beyond, white-robed Hounds raced by.

"Kill the accursed ones!" the Hounds chanted. "Kill them all!"

Eliane half-closed her eyes, questing outward with her mind, knowing that in doing so, she took a terrible risk. The amulets of the Hounds rendered them sensitive to the use of magic. She prayed that in the confusion, they would not be able to track her.

Matthias... Eliane sent her silent call into the night. There was no answer. Bharim magic was personal, limited in range. Of all of them, only Eliane could reach halfway across the city.

She had separated from her foster father when the first of the riots began. The speed and viciousness of the attacks left them stunned. Friends had sent word of the impending arrival of Hound and Questioner, but time had run out before ships could be found, captains bribed, families taken by circuitous routes to the harbor. Matthias led the first group and Eliane another, all children. Eliane had expected to find Matthias at the ship before her and when he was not, had returned to the old city, now ablaze, to find him.

In the little courtyard before the Bharim temple, bodies lashed to a row of upright stakes twisted and screamed as they blackened. At the far end, soldiers in the Duke's gold and red stood guard.

Eliane pushed through the crowd. She did not recognize any of the burning bodies. She did not want to. Beside the splintered temple doors, a single soldier stood over a knot of children. Their heads and shoulders had been smeared with ashes, and their hands bound and linked together, but they appeared otherwise unharmed. There were four of them, two stripling boys, one of them naked, a girl, and a boy of six or seven. She knew all of them, had sung their intertwined lineages on many midnight gatherings.

The children looked so frightened, they might not run when she called them. Then, as if the Mother of Blessings had heard her prayer, an explosion rocked the courtyard. Stones and slate shingles from surrounding buildings clattered to the pavement. Gouts of brilliance erupted above the roof line, from the direction of the Duke's armory. The soldiers abandoned the stakes and hurried toward the citadel. Only the one holding the tether of the children remained.

Eliane wavered, but for only an instant. Calm settled over her. The crowd dispersed, opening a path.

The soldier saw her coming. When he lunged, Eliane pivoted out of the direct path of his sword and glided past him. She moved without thinking, in that quicksilver flow of speed and wiry strength which marked her difference from the stolid, scholarly Bharim. All the care her foster family had lavished on her could not make her one of them.