Stygean stood in the training yard of the royal guest mansion, running his finger beneath the heavy iron collar around his thin twelve-year-old neck. With his other hand he gave a moment's expression to nervousness by pulling at the tail of his long, curly black hair. Then he forced his hands down to his sides, squared his shoulders, and tried to look like the son of a soldier that he was. They had broken his father, but slave or not, they would not break him. Once more his hand stole up to the collar on his neck and his thumb passed over the inscription: Stygean Loosestrife, property of Anksha.

He slewed his eyes around to glance at the other children from their corners, not wanting to give himself away. Stygean had wondered how many of the other children had been captured, how many might have escaped, but he feared that any playmates missing from the group gathered here were dead. He counted twenty-seven; less than half the children who had been on his father's estate alone.

An acrid odor laced with something like pork drifted across the yard, making his stomach clench. The victors were still burning bodies on the north side. His father had always told him that the price of being discovered as sa'necari was death; their enemies always burned their bodies. They did not want them rising undead on the third day.

Stygean pulled at his tunic, which was stiff and starched. If he could have refused to put it on, he would have done so; he would have worn the clothes reduced to dirty rags from two weeks spent in the dungeons as a way of spitting in his captors' faces. But he had not wanted the beating it would have earned him. He and the other children were all dressed up to be presented to their owner, Anksha the Beast.

She arrived with two forest-green clad rangers at either side of her. The Beast was a legend used for centuries to frighten children. She was no more than three inches taller than Stygean--around four foot and nine inches tall--and at first glance there was nothing terrifying about her. Yet Stygean sweated beneath her gaze. He had seen her black hair halo around her head when her power rose, the flashing of her powerful fangs in the torchlight of the dungeons, and stared at her claws when she unsheathed them in front of his face as she informed him that she had taken his parents.

He saw his closest friend and age mate, Jingen Scathwick, trembling as she approached. The Beast had slain and eaten Jingen's father in front of his mother. To say that the two boys hated her was too mild a word. Jingen began to tug at a length of his dull umber hair and looked like his knees were going to buckle.

"I am the troll-tamer and demon-eater," Anksha began her usual cant, bouncing on the balls of her feet in front of the children. "Had your parents not attacked my mate, I would not have destroyed them."

Stygean swallowed, wishing this would get over and she would simply tell them why they were gathered. The littlest child, a girl of six, had already started to cry. Stygean wished that he could go to her.

"You are my slaves. You will work for your bread. You will be taught a different path in life," Anksha said.

Stygean's hands tightened into fists. I don't want your path. I don't want it.

"Your parents--those who survive--are my blood-slaves, my food. Once bitten only death frees a blood-slave from my dominance-link."

Stygean wanted to ball up and scream; yet he had to set an example as the oldest of the captive children; he had to be brave for their sakes as much as his own. So he stood straight.

"One by one, I will take you to see your parents. You will watch me feed upon them."

More children began to cry. Stygean knew what she was doing then; she was going to force them all to witness their parents' helplessness in order to destroy their sense of security. Well it wouldn't work with him. He would be strong.

She had already forced Stygean to watch her drink his father Liuthan to the 'edge' before allowing him to revive with the blood of a nibari. This was nothing more than another of her lectures. He would weather it. Stygean's fangs came down from their sheaths, and he forced them back up, keeping his mouth closed around them; to show his fangs in her presence would earn him a beating.

"Consider this," Anksha said. "If it hurts you to watch this, it will hurt others to watch the sa'necari you will grow into hurt their loved ones. Unless you take another path. Lord Dawnreturning's path."

Dawnreturning. The sa'necari renunciate who led the Rowdies, the freeranger company that had destroyed their parents' estates in the city of Ocealay, and seized everything they owned that could be carried off. Stygean's father had been one of the Five Captains who ruled the city-state of Ocealay, and governed all the kandoyarin--mercenary--companies that operated on the western half of the continent. But his father had become Anksha's blood-slave, and the other four captains were electing someone else to serve in his place.

When Anksha had left, Stygean spat where she had been standing. His friend Jingen came and put his arm around Stygean's shoulders. "I hate her."

"I feel the same," Jingen said.

"I'd like to stake her out and stick her," Stygean snarled.

Jingen's voice softened. "Too dangerous to contemplate."

Stygean stared at the ground, his eyes flicking back and forth to make certain no one had come near enough to hear them. "I want her to suffer."

Jingen stepped back from Stygean and shrugged. "She drained four sa'necari for trying to rite the renunciate."

"So?"

"So stick the renunciate. The sight of his dead body would break her heart to kindling."

"That's an idea."

Captain Travis Potshard paused on the training grounds of the guest mansion, watching Jingen and Stygean and wondering what the two boys were talking about. He had spent several minutes listening to Anksha's speech and demonstration, and saw how the two boys huddled together after her rantings. His brown hair was the only thing about him that did not look a bit disheveled, because Darianna had insisted upon brushing his coarse locks back and tying them in a tail. His tanned and weathered skin had the texture of smooth saddle leather. The only thing vaguely imposing about Travis was his six foot height.

Darianna, walking with her arm through his, laid her head on his shoulder, her silver hair with the bright orange streak down the middle contrasted with her eighteen-year-old face. "You don't like them, Old Dog?"

Travis rubbed the back of his thick fingered hand across his stubbled chin: he had not shaved that morning, although Darianna had argued with him over it. "They're trouble, Daree. If my old dog Blue were still around, he'd agree with me. A boy can kill as easily as a man, if he picks his time and his target. A blade in the night or in the back."

He did not feel ready to handle his captaincy, but since the Rowdies--the search and rescue freeranger company he had run with since he was thirteen--had been transformed into the Army of the Renunciate by picking up more than five hundred enlistments once they declared that they would be going north to fight the sa'nekaryiane of Minnoras, Nans had become a general, and Travis and her other three lieutenants had become captains.

"They are sa'necari. Trained in the rites, even if they haven't committed them yet. Which is enough reason to distrust them." Darianna sprouted fur along her arms, which Travis recognized as a sign of tension in her. The freeranger kissed the side of her face, and the lycan scout relaxed back into fully human form. "I hope Isranon knows what he's doing."

Travis' cornflower eyes narrowed. "So do I. Because boys or not, if they hurt Isranon, I'll kill them."

Darianna growled deep in her throat. "You'd have to beat Anksha to them."

"Hey, Travis!" Captain Luck Settlesby crossed the yard and joined them. "We've got more picks to make. More myn have shown up trying to enlist."

Daree excused herself to see about her duties with Nevin, who led their battle-clan, which served as scouts for the Army of the Renunciate as they were now calling themselves, although the banner they marched under was the same that had flown above them when they had been merely Gryphonheart's Rowdies.

The Rowdies were still the Rowdies in their own eyes, but now they were more and it took some getting used to. Travis figured that Luck made a better captain than he did. His phlegmatic friend was neat, clean, and smelled of some kind of spicy cologne that Luck had recently acquired out of a bonus that Isranon had paid out to all of the Rowdies. Travis had a thought that he might ask Darianna if she would enjoy him smelling that way.

As they walked off toward the field where three lines of myn were queuing up for enlistment tryouts, Travis began to scratch his chin again in a preoccupied manner.

"Something wrong, Travis?"

"Yeah, kinda."

"Between you and Daree?"

"That's some of it."

Luck gave Travis a long, hard look. "Spit it out. I know when something's bothering you."

Travis heaved a tremendous unhappy sigh. "She's been getting irritable with me."

Luck glanced across the yard at Darianna disappearing into a crowd of lycans. "She didn't look irritable just now."

Travis ducked his head. "Well, she doesn't do it in public. Just when we're alone. I tell her what's got me worried and she jumps all over me."

"About what?"

"Luck, I don't want kids. At least not right now. Not with a war staring us in the face. She says we're doing it according to the lycan custom of 'wild cousins' and no commitment. But the thought of her getting pregnant scares the shit out of me."

Luck paused and rocked back on his heels. "Exactly what have you been saying to her?"

"I keep asking her if she's taking the herbs so as not to get herself belly bound."

A rueful grin spread across Luck's face. "Is that the way you've been expressing it?"

Travis flushed. "Pretty much."

"And just when have you been telling her this and how often?"

Travis' flush deepened to the brightest crimson that Luck could recall seeing.

"Awww shit, Travis. Tell me you're not bringing this up every time you're about to slip the bone in."

"I guess I am pretty much now that I think on it."

"Travis, you're an idiot. No wonder you've never had much luck with females. Either you trust Daree or you don't. And if you don't, then keep your bone in your pants."

Luck dug in his pocket, grabbed Travis' hands, and put a bunch of something rubbery in them before striding away. Travis looked down at what Luck had given him and blushed again. His hands were filled with eel-skins.

"I want to see the children," Lord Isranon Dawnreturning told Anksha, striding through the great hall and heading for the wing the children had been placed in with the nibari and some others to watch them. The diamond sheathed butt of his staff, Warrior, clicked on the tiled floors in rhythm to his stride. The staff tended to draw people's eyes away from him when they first met, being as incredible as the mon was common.

Warrior was six feet of hard rock maple, its butt sheathed in nine inches of diamond that had been magically grown onto it and incised with Kalirioni runes. The entire length of it was intricately runed amid vines and leaves in jeweled inlays. The upper body, head, and wings of a pegasus topped it, so solidly done in heavy burnished kenda'ryl that it could be used to strike with. It was both a master's and a warrior's staff.

Isranon, on the other hand, was rather plain. He was built more like a blacksmith than a mage with powerful arms, broad shoulders, and a deep chest. His short robes were unadorned black over matching pants. He wore his curly black hair tied back at the base of his neck. While his face still retained the beauty of youth, which was slowly maturing into a rugged comeliness, his haunted eyes, brown to the edge of black, looked far older than his twenty-one years. There was nothing about him to suggest the fact that he was the only mage-paladin to the sun-god, and thus one of the most powerful mages in existence--except when the curls around his forehead shifted, revealing the flame flanked sunburst of his godmark.

"With us leaving in a week or so, I should get to know them. Especially the two who already have their fangs."

"Jingen and Stygean." Anksha ran a hand across her belly. She had taken to checking herself several times a day trying to notice the first tiny swellings of the life within her. Anksha carried Isranon's child in a miracle of magic and love that transcended the huge genetic gap between their species. As the last of her kind, Anksha had never expected to have a child of her own until now. "Nothing's happening." Her usually tightly curled tail drooped.

Isranon laughed. "It's been what? A month?" He squeezed her shoulders, then dragged his fingers through her thick black mane to get out the leaves and twigs that she seemed to be forever accumulating. "I don't know what the gestation for demon-eaters is; however, I doubt there will be anything to see for at least two or three months."

Anksha sighed and her large fangs appeared. "That long?" Another sigh. "I know he's in there--now I know where to look and how." A third sigh.

"Have you thought about a name yet, my Anksha?"

Anksha shivered with delight at his use of the possessive. "Timadi. And he is going to be a boy. I checked him real good. Amiri agrees."

"Timadi is a good name. I don't want any more Isranon, son of Isranon's in this lineage. I want my sons to have a fresh start, without the baggage of the lineage."

Speaking of the lineage made him remember the tale in all its variations, 'once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa'necari.... The two brothers murdered Dawnhand, and forced his descendants to practice the rites of the sa'necari by holding their families hostage.' Dawnhand was Isranon's ancestor and namesake. Isranon had been born sa'necari, yet he had never participated in the rites, rejecting them to become a renunciate and heretic.

Anksha nodded. They had reached the end of the north wing and went into the chamber that Nainee, a nibari, was using as a schoolroom.

They found Nainee reading aloud to the children, who sat at long tables around her with pens, paper, and inkbottles. She stopped reading, closed her book, and flicked back a strand of cornsilk hair before smiling at the newcomers. Instantly, Stygean's head went down and half-turned so that he could look at them from the corner of his eye.

"Class, say 'hello' to Lord Dawnreturning and Anksha," Nainee told them. "You are now part of his company."

"Slaves to his bitch," Stygean muttered under his breath.

All the other children smiled and said hello, Stygean moved his lips only.

Isranon went from child to child, Reading and examining them with his powers. He needed to see how close some of them were to transitioning into sa'necari. He reached Jingen and the boy gave him a bright smile.

"Read me if you wish," Jingen told him, extending his wrist. "I was blooded a year ago, but never participated in the rites. My parents believed I was too young."

Isranon disregarded Jingen's attempt at pleasantries, giving him a severe look. "I'm told you fed on another boy in the dungeons."

A look of utter contrition came over Jingen's face. "I was starving."

"That's no excuse. The boy was badly hurt."

"Forgive me. I had never gone so long without before. I swear it will never happen again. I've been very good since Anksha let me out and began to teach us."

Isranon Read him and nodded. He had had no other negative accounts of Jingen's behavior. The boy was cooperating fully. His age mate, Stygean on the other hand was a constant source of aggravation.

When he reached Stygean the boy tried to shield his core and mask the hatred he felt. Isranon sent a sharp white lance of power through that core and shattered the surface shield as if it were made of thin ice. Stygean paled and his eyes bleared at the painful shock of reaction.

"You don't do that with me," Isranon said, seeing that this one was ripe for the rites and hungry for them. He prayed to his liege-god Kalirion that he could find the strength to turn this boy from the darkness. Otherwise he would be forced to stand aside and allow Anksha to either break or kill Stygean.

The nibari children sitting on the opposite side of the room snickered. Stygean glared. The nibari were meat and should never have been allowed in the same classroom as the sa'necari children. Their genetically altered kind had been bred for docility over thousands of years to satisfy the sa'necari and their rivals in power, the vampires. Yet these nibari children showed him no respect. Stygean might be a slave, but he was still born to be their master, just as they had been born to be his meat.

"Lower your shields the rest of the way, or I will open them myself, and it will be an unpleasant experience for both of us," Isranon told him.

Stygean's lower lip edged from beneath his upper. "Unpleasant for me, you mean."

The nibari children snickered again, but the sa'necari children were focusing intensely on Stygean.

"Quiet!" Nainee told the nibari children. "Enough of that."

They went swiftly silent.

All attention again riveted on Stygean and Isranon.

"I have nothing to hide," Stygean said. "I am proud of what I am."

"Then lower your shields to me completely," Isranon said.

Stygean's breathing emerged in shuddering gasps as he fought panic. He opened his shields to Isranon's probing.

"More," Isranon said. "All the way."

"I've never opened them all the way since I learned to raise them," Stygean protested.

Isranon nodded, enveloped Stygean's shields, and crushed them down to the innermost core. Stygean let out a cry of pain and anguish at the intrusion of Isranon's power, tears ran down his face, and he covered his eyes with his arms. Stygean sobbed as if he had been raped, although Isranon left his most intimate areas untouched. When Isranon had satisfied himself concerning the boy, he withdrew from him, and walked out.

What Isranon had seen disturbed him. Stygean was dangerous. In the beginning, during the age of Waejonan, the sa'necari had all been made through the rites. Over the generations, their genes altered and their children began to be born sa'necari with the appetites and abilities arriving at puberty along with their fangs. Many continued to be made through the rites to serve as sword fodder and to fill the lower castes. These children, however, were all upper caste--the need for blood would come upon them all as it had for Isranon. He wondered if he had the strength to turn them, to prevent them from becoming monsters.

It had been ten years since the massacre of the Dark Brothers of the Light, the sa'necari heretics who did not believe in taking a life in the rites, out of appetite, or for pleasure. Only he and his sister, Yoleema, had escaped the wholesale slaughter of their people. Isranon had been twelve and his sister fifteen, yet it was he who had gotten them both to safety. Nearly three years later, his sister was murdered. Isranon squashed the thought. He had not spoken her name to anyone in five years. Even thinking her name made his stomach squirm.

Considering how young he had been when he found himself without teachers, Isranon felt deep doubts about his ability to train these children in the ways of the Dark Brothers.