Josiah rode into the City of the Dead with Laelyn, a captain of ha'taren guard, on his way to see King Aejys, his lover. He had known Laelyn for barely more than a month, but liked the quiet mon. There was something very solid about her considering manner. She did not rush into things when they were important, and yet he had witnessed her rare displays of humor with relish. A few soldiers on foot and mounted ha'taren passed them, giving quick nods to Laelyn and him as they went.

He had felt stronger for the last two days, and had pressed the healers to allow him to leave their camp and enter the city. His injuries still dragged at him dangerously in a recurrent fashion that had many worried, yet Josiah refused to give into it more than he was forced to. He wanted to see the banyan forest that Dynarien--divine knight-errant and son of the Woodland God Willodarus--and the mages had raised to destroy the undead army that had risen from the sewers to battle the invaders.

The ruins of the city were lost in a forest that had been raised in mere moments. Growth enveloped everything except this one densely shaded path that led through the city walls to the gates of the keep itself. All Josiah could see was green and brown, leaves and trunks, with here and there a glimpse of gray stone walls and broken roofs. He dismounted to see it better, and marvelled at the incredible vegetation.

Laelyn frowned, fully aware of the healers' orders that he not tire himself, and swung out of the saddle to saunter along beside him. Josiah walked with the reins of his horse loosely in his hand; taking small steps, his head back as far as he could lean, trying not to trip while glancing frequently back and forth between his feet and the dark green ceiling of leaves dappled by sunlight.

"It's truly miraculous," Josiah said. "I've never seen anything like it."

Laelyn chuckled softly. "You should have seen it happen. One moment the undead was all around me and the next ... Well, I can't describe it really. It just happened too fast."

"I imagine so. Mages can't compare to the divines."

Josiah had managed to assemble a fairly solid account of what had happened, just from the various things that people had told him over the past few days--Dynarien especially. He had shared a tent with Dynarien while they were both under Laurelyanne's care in the days following the battle.

Dynarien was healing at a phenomenal rate, and they would not be sharing quarters much longer. So Josiah had gotten as much of the tale out of him as he could, while he could.

"Dynarien said the memories lodged in the earth itself awakened."

In a single act of desperation, Dynarien had reached out to his father, and in that moment the Twice-Born Son and the Valdren earthmages became vessels of Willodarus to draw the divine power into this place of death, to bring life here. It must have been wondrous. Those mages would speak of it for the rest of their lives. As would every one who had witnessed the miracle. Josiah wished he could have seen it happen, but his wounds from an earlier battle and the recurrent fever they brought had prevented him.

"I wouldn't know about that," Laelyn said. "I'm not a mage. What I do know is the undead were going down like grain before the scythes."

Josiah wondered why Laelyn bothered with him. Maybe it was a favor to Aejys. He was afraid to ask, knowing how easily the question could be misinterpreted, and just asking it could led to revealing more than he wished to if she hadn't heard the rumors. On the other hand, there were so many Vorgeni in the ranks of his lover's army that he had no doubt that most, if not all, of the Sharani, like Laelyn, had to have heard at least some of it.

Those from the city of Vorgensburg still tended to think of him as Josh the Sot--the town drunk. He had overheard their gossiping about him. Sometimes they got in his face, openly disputing his right to a place in Aejys' bed. No matter what he did, it never seemed to be enough to stop the talking, as if they were all watching for him to fall on his face again. It hurt. A wave of desolation swirled up inside him and he fought it.

He almost told her what he was feeling, responding to that quiet way of hers. But Josiah held it in, tried hard to close it out and deal with it, barely managing to keep his silence. After all, he still felt the seiryn's call of the liquor when his nightmares pressed down upon him in the middle of the nights, and he had been fighting hard not to reach for the comfort of the whiskey.

Laelyn's wynderjyn drifted along beside them, it was a dappled grey equine, cloven hooved and dish-faced with a narrow delicate muzzle, large intelligent eyes and a deadly looking sword's length of twisted horn. The wynderjyns were sterile hybrids, the get of a unicorn stud on specially selected horse mares. The bradae, priests of Aroana, were bringing a large herd of mares, and six studs to Rowanhart--the studs had volunteered themselves for the journey and chosen the mares. Josiah could tell by the bemused look on the paladin's face that the pair had an animated conversation in full swing.

"What's her name?" Josiah asked, moving to a safer topic, afraid that if he allowed his inner desolation to show she would be offended or think less of him.

"His," Laelyn corrected. "Wylyeo. He's an ass-biter. Be careful." Her quiet face and easy bearing gave way to a flicker of impishness that surprised Josiah. Laelyn's skin was burnished bronze like all Sharani and her coarse hair was black, hanging in a thick braid down her back. She wore brown leathers with a coat of fine chain over it and a scarf in Rowan azure tied to one arm to indicate which army she belonged to. Her people had gathered and ridden out too swiftly for tabards or other signs of allegiances once they learned that Aejys Rowan, the Lion of Rowanslea, had founded her own kingdom and required an army to fight for her in Norendel. In their line of march, they purchased or bartered for every bolt of azure cloth they could lay hands upon.

The wynderjyn gave a whickering noise that could only be a laugh.

Laelyn thumped his cheek. "You know how the ha'taren are chosen?"

Josiah shook his head.

"They take the children up to the High Meadows in late spring. We get a bowl of porridge. Small bowl, small glass of water before dawn. Meditation is better when you're empty--or nearly so. Daylight is spent in prayer, meditation, fasting out on the meadows among the herds. I was so deep in my prayers that when he came to announce to me that our god had deemed me worthy and therefore he had been allowed to choose me, I did not hear him. After several tries he bit me on the ass to get my attention. The bond came upon me as a startling experience." Laelyn grinned. "Some are found to be unsuitable and other paths are suggested. Some are rejected entirely with no explanations. Some are told to train only for knighthood. Others are bid to deepen themselves in the sacred teachings and return again the next spring. All these matters are decided during that season of prayer on the High Meadows. This year there will be male children on the High Meadows. The first in a thousand years."

"Do you approve?"

Only one in four Sharani had been born male since the curse ended nearly twenty years ago, but that was considerably better than when there were none--except along the fringes of the kingdom where the affects of the curse frayed out.

Laelyn's manner reflected that inner stillness again that Josiah could not penetrate. "Yes. One of them is my youngest grandson."

Josiah looked startled at the youthful mon and almost lost his step, staggering to regain it as his foot came down in a nest of shattered cobblestones and twisted roots. He still had trouble getting used to the slow aging of the long-lived Sharani who often saw two hundred years, starting new families in their seventies although they achieved sexual maturity early and had an easy-going attitude toward precocious sexual exploration among their children--something they could afford since the magical energy called the kyndi protected them from pregnancy before their bodies were mature enough to handle it.

"You're tiring," Laelyn observed, seeing his steps falter. She cupped his elbows, steadying him. Then she caught Josiah by the waist, swinging him into the saddle as if he weighed nothing before he could protest. The Sharani were all at least half again as strong as they looked and Laelyn was as muscular as a blacksmith.

"Rest you, mage. I get you to your lover exhausted and she'll have me in irons on suspicion of having taken my liberties," Laelyn grinned widely. "I'll bet you were handsome when you were young."

Josiah's stomach clenched, yet he said nothing. He looked to be deeply into his forties; yet, he was only twenty-five

Long years of hard drinking, combined with the rite that had burned the magic from him as a small child, had given his seamed, battered face its abraded complexion. His drinking had started when he was barely seven, soon after the loss of the magic. He begged and stole drinks before he was old enough to have money in his pocket to buy them. Josiah spent every odd coin he could get on the burning liquor long before he was a man, trying vainly to close out the anguish of finding himself mage-blind while not understanding what it was, because it had happened so young.

The healers did not want him drinking, but Aejys would not say anything if he did so. Private matters, she called them, and her philosophy did not include harassing or persecuting anyone for their private matters. It was one of the things he loved about her.

Laelyn, grateful for a chance to stretch her legs, led his horse rather than mounting when he did.

The keep rose up before them. Josiah could see the smoke blackened walls where the strafing runs by the fireborn, the giant birds of Vallimrah that some called phoenix, had destroyed the defenders upon it. The keep had been breached by the fireborn and a strange fishing dragon, a quetzlcoatlyz, who had allied with them.

Inside they found soldiers shoving a huddled group of myn in tattered finery into a corner of the outer courtyard while another six soldiers began throwing fagots around seven stakes in the center preparing for another burning. Josiah's lover, King Aejys of Rowanhart--the Sharani had no gender endings to their titles of power, calling both male and female rulers king--had ordered all captured sa'necari burned alive. A small band of Valdren rangers rested in the shade of a pair of sheds, watching the scene with passing interest.

Laurelyanne spied them, crossing quickly as Laelyn helped Josiah from his horse. She was a tall, elegant Valdren earthmage, walking with her staff, a moonstone orb clutched in the fingers at its top. Streaks of white contrasted against the dark auburn of her hair that she wore pulled back in a tight knot.

"Who are those people?" Josiah asked.

"Most of them are nibari," Laurelyanne explained, reaching for his wrist to Read him.

Josiah suspected the answer, suspected it was something that he did not wish to know, and yet he had to ask. "What's that?"

"Genetic-altered human cattle. The sa'necari and other hemovores have bred docility and dependance into them, while resistance and independence have been bred out. They have to be bled frequently or they become ill. Those with the skull brands, you can see there are a few of them if you get closer, are the depnane--full meal humans, or sylvans marked for complete consumption and death and reserved for the rites, like mortgiefan--usually slaves purchased at market, captives from the occupied zone, or nibari that have displeased their owners. Aejys is trying to get them to identify their masters."

"Will they?" His knowledge of the sa'necari, hemovore necromancers with the powers and appetites of the undead, was limited to what it required to destroy them on the battlefield.

"No. Mostly the Readers and mages are culling them out from among the prisoners. You brought the medicine?" Laurelyanne asked, frowning slightly at what she Read and that made Josiah uncomfortable.

"Yes." Josiah had not told Aejys that he was dying, and had no intention of doing so. He did not want her pity. He wanted her love.

"You need to take some of it immediately."

Josiah pulled the bottle from his saddlebags along with a jigger glass, measured it to the mark Laurelyanne had drawn earlier and drank it. His body warmed. He replaced both, pulled the bags off, slung them across his shoulder, and turned.

"You'll take over now?" Laelyn asked.

"Yes, get on with your duties, Captain." Laurelyanne dismissed her with a wave.

The healers did not want Josiah wandering around alone, since they feared he might collapse and not be found in time. They believed it was only his wounds coupled with the effects of his prolonged alcoholism that was killing him. Laurelyanne knew different. He had used his damaged, twisted magic to cast a dangerous spell to save Aejys in full knowledge that the casting would probably kill him. And the lingering effects of it was.

Laelyn gave the mages a bow, departing.

Laurelyanne led Josiah into the keep through the foyer and into the Great Hall, a sweep of her arm banishing a group of rangers from a couch near the front. She stretched Josiah out on it, claimed a large piece of half shredded drapery and folded it as a pillow that she placed under his head. Then she pulled a chair close and sat beside him. She Read him again, wishing he had remained in bed back at camp. It was a trade, being near Aejys was good for his spirits, but taxed his strength badly.

Soldiers dragged two sa'necari into the middle of the floor. Their wrists had been spellcorded and the cords sealed with silver runes of Aroana by one of the bradae, the fighting priests, so that they could not be removed by anyone--except an Aroanan priest--without killing the sa'necari. Josiah shivered at the sight of the cords; most mages dreaded the sight of those bands woven of enchantary fibers, puce, ebony, cerulean, and gold, which could seal a mage from all access to his magic. Some mages were condemned to wear them for life--no mage would speak to them, no mage shops or apothecaries would sell to them, no libraries would allow them to enter. Josiah rubbed his own wrists uncomfortably and then stared down at them. He could almost feel them tightening around him, imprisoning his powers--ripping away what little he had regained. He shuddered. Josh had been subject to visions and presentiments, but never Josiah. The merging of his incarnations had been less than perfect. Was this a vision of the future? Would he be corded one day? He folded his arms across his chest, hiding his wrists beneath his arms.

The vision tried to force its way out.

Josiah could feel the cords tighten around his wrists, the fangs entering his throat as a blade slid into his ribs, and the savage pressure against his buttocks of the most barbarous violation imaginable: mortgiefan.

For a moment he wanted to scream. Then he thrust it out of his mind. Josiah was stronger than Josh had been. This would not come to pass. It was just seeing the cords and the sa'necari, knowing their rites.

He forced himself to look at them. Wearing the cords, the sa'necari could not conceal the single most condemning evidence of their true nature: their eyes. The first time they took mortgiefan their eyes changed to amaranthine, lacking in iris, whites, and pupils.

Sa'necari, necromancers, had stolen all of the powers and abilities of the undead that they could take or control, assuming them through their rites, mastering and perfecting them in addition to their native arcane talents. This had been gained at a price, for they also had the needs and cravings of the undead, the unnatural appetites for blood. After generations of sa'necari being created in the rites, their very genes had altered until more and more of their descendants began to be born sa'necari with those appetites and powers manifesting in puberty. Their rites of blood, rape, and death had become merely the means for increasing their powers through the shattering of souls.

That much Josiah knew about them, but there was so much that he did not and keenly felt the holes in his knowledge.

These two sa'necari were male, their faces bruised and beaten, their robes torn. The soldiers had to support them to keep them standing. Josiah had never seen sa'necari so terribly reduced and battered. One of them had a long string of burn scars on his face, as if he had been dabbed with the end of a hot poker in a deliberate manner. The Sharani had tortured them.

Josiah understood the need of this with his mind, but his stomach tightened with a rebellious rush of bile to his throat. He remembered the single act of torture he had participated in back in Vorgensburg: Talons had systematically butchered a sa'necari, who had nearly killed Aejys, while Josiah watched. Somehow that seemed different because it had been personal. He suddenly wished Aejys would simply grant them a clean death and then burn the bodies--not the living.

Hoon's banners had been ripped from the walls and for the first time in five hundred years Rowan blue hung above the throne in the great hall of Castle Errilyn and the last scion of the lineage of Rowan sat there in judgment. Aejys regarded the sa'necari harshly with Spiritdancer lying unsheathed across her knees.

"Have they told us anything about where Mephistis and Hoon have fled to?" Aejys demanded.

Josiah wanted to know the answer to that as fervently as she did. They would be back, he was certain of it. Mephistis had been her traitorous sister Margren's lover and co-conspirator, equal in responsibility for the deaths of Aejys' family and the attacks on Aejys' and her properties, as well as an attempted coup against the Sharani realm. Hoon was Mephistis' ally. She had sworn to see all of them in hell--they both had.

"Nothing, my liege," Soren answered. "Sa'necari are notoriously hard to break." Soren Deontaramei, a spry woman who had stopped counting her birthdays after she passed one hundred, served as Aejystrys Rowan's general. She was Laelyn's ma'aram

Aejys' voice was chill as a blade of ice. "I will find Hoon and Mephistis eventually. Burn them."

It continued in that wise until there were no stakes left to fill and then Aejys rose, walking to the couch where she had spotted Josiah. She dropped to her haunches, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him. "I love you."

"You know, daughter," Laurelyanne interrupted when they parted. Her son Brendorn had been Aejys' first ba'halaef, husband. An assassin sent by Margren and Mephistis murdered him nearly a year ago. "The nibari are your people, the descendants of those who served the brother of your ancestor."

Aejys stiffened, straightened, and whipped round on her. "They are not mine. I don't want them."

"You do not understand them. Have some compassion," Laurelyanne pleaded, looking to Josiah to help her, but he only shook his head. He refused to become involved in this, knowing his beloved's reasons far better than anyone else, since he had witnessed them. However, the story was not his to tell. Should Aejys choose to tell someone, then that was her decision.

"Anyone who would enjoy having monsters feed upon them ... who would protect those same monsters..." Aejys snarled, her hands tightening into fists. "No. I don't want them."

Aejys stalked off.

Laurelyanne had ruined the moment--to have a single moment with Aejys spoiled, twisted his heart. Four months ago Josiah had believed that he and Aejys would have a lifetime together, now they might have a year at most. Dynarien had said autumn, six months of life; Laurelyanne believed she might find a way to stretch that to a year with luck. He grabbed at the Valdren mage. "Help me up. I must go after her."

Laurelyanne's lips parted, her eyes reflecting confusion. "I do not understand why she became so angry. She was always one to understand the misunderstood..."

"You asked too much." Josiah caught at the edge of the couch as he nearly fell in his haste to get up. "Aejys!" His chest tightened suddenly. His whole body seized up. He collapsed, panting and gasping. "I can't breathe. I can't breathe." Consciousness deserted him.

Laurelyanne sat down, turning him in her arms so that he leaned against her chest while she dug in the saddlebags, bringing out a vial of finely ground amphereon, which she administered to the mucous membranes of his nostrils and gums. It acted like adrenaline. She followed that with more of the medicine. He shivered violently, although it was a warm day, and showed no signs of returning awareness.

"Someone get me a blanket!" Laurelyanne shouted at those who lingered in the Great Hall.

Laelyn and two other Sharani appeared at her shoulder, they had been crossing the Great Hall together when they saw him collapse. One of them looked rather young, not more than sixteen and large, easily topping Aejys' six three by at least two. The other was close to that. Nearly all Sharani tended to reach and often top six feet.

"What's wrong?" Laelyn squatted on her haunches, one foot pushing up on the ball, her arms draped loosely across her knees, eyes scanning Josiah. The youngest of her companions leaned against the wall, watching casually outward like a guardian that did not want to be immediately noticed while the other bent forward, hands on knees. "My granddaughter, Bryngaryn," she indicated the one closest and then the mon leaning against the wall, "My youngest niece, Maranya."

"He's had another bad spell."

Laelyn could see him shivering. "He's chilled. Bryngaryn?"

Bryngaryn removed her cloak wrapping him in it. "He's light, grandma'aram. I can handle him." Bryngaryn had the open, willing helpfulness of youth in her eyes and kindness in the concerned tilt of her lips.

Laelyn nodded and Bryngaryn lifted him easily.

"He put his life between hers and the blades of the unseen foe as they erupted out of the forest," Laurelyanne said, not noticing the odd, startled look passing between Bryngaryn and Maranya at her turn of phrase, while they walked beside her.

"They must have hurt him badly if he still cannot seemed to fully recover," Laelyn observed.

"The tools of the enemy..." Laurelyanne left the rest to their imagination.

"What happens here? Someone is hurt?" The blunt voiced query came from a stout mon of middling height, wearing a mar'ajan's coronet with a bit of gray ribbon attached to indicate she wore it in trust for another as regent. Anaria Dovane de Danae, Regent of Danae looked more like a farmwife than the ruler of one of the most powerful mar'ajanates of Shaurone. She pulled off her gloves as she approached, shoving them through her belt. Two ha'taren flanked her. They wore the golden gryphon on green of Danae on their tunics. The mon limped heavily, having been crippled in the early days of the Great War by one of the hellblades of the Waejontori. The spell-breakers had acted quickly with the menders following behind them, yet could not entirely spare her the residual effects. Anaria had suffered less than some and more than others who had felt the bite of those blades.

They recognized her immediately; all bowing slightly with their shoulders, except Bryngaryn whose arms were laden with Josiah.

"Your grace," Laelyn acknowledged Anaria Dovane, Regent of Danae. "It's Josiah Abelard. He was sorely wounded in Norendel defending our king, overtaxed himself today and had a bad spell."

"Where is Aejys?"

"In the yard, watching another burning."

Anaria frowned. "She's become a grim one."

"She has."

"Well, let's go find her."