Rebel Fay

She raised only her dark eyes to him-the same look she gave him when she thought he was being thickheaded or purposefully evasive. But her face wasmore weary than a

"Do not do that!" Wy

Leesil pivoted to find Wy

"Stop it!" Wy

"Keep your voice down," Leesil warned. "What's going on?"

Both of them ceased fighting over the parchments. Chap growled at the sage, barking once for "yes."

Wy

"Spit it out," Leesil demanded, and Chap barked agreement.

Wy

"I can hear Chap," she said.

"What?" Magiere asked, her voice hushed.

"And I hear when he communes with his kin," Wy

Leesil couldn't even form a question. The more Wy

Chap watched him silently in turn.

Leesil understood being an outcast in this world. He'd been alone but for Chap, without a place of his own, until he'd stumbled into Magiere-with Chap's meddling, of course. But now it seemed the dog didn't know everything concerning his own purpose.

Chap had been played by his own kind-one more unwitting tool manipulated by the Fay. Leesil wanted to sympathize with his oldest companion, but right now the last thing he needed to hear was that Chap was almost as ignorant as the rest of them.

And Wy

"The mantic sight," Wy

"But you still hear him, even without the sight?" Magiere asked.

Wy

Magiere's leg muscles knotted under Leesil's hands.

Wy

Chap ignored her and focused on Magiere, and Leesil turned his eyes on the woman he loved.

That word-or name-did it mean something to her? Magiere's pallid skin made it hard to be certain, but she looked suddenly ill.

"Where did you hear that name?" she whispered.

"Not me," Wy

Leesil followed Magiere's rapt attention back to Chap, as Wy

Most Aged Father had been alive during the war in what the sages called the Forgotten History. How long ago wasn't clear. Even his own people didn't remember where or when he had come from.

The sages still argued over when this war took place, and even Chap couldn't guess, for his memories didn't give him any measure of time. However long ago, Sorhkafare had not been old. Now he was the decrepit leader of the Anmaglahk and impossibly ancient.

What Leesil heard still didn't explain the man's fanatical hatred of humans, strong enough to teach generations of his people to fear them. But how had Magiere known his long lost name?

"What else haven't you told me?" he asked her a little too harshly.

Magiere didn't answer.

Wy

"I know them," Magiere whispered. "I was there… I was him that night… when I blacked out in Nein'a's clearing."

"How?" Leesil asked.

Magiere's voice carried none of its old bite as she glared at Chap. "You've been in my head again."

Leesil remembered the first time she'd had a vision. In Bela, she'd held cloth from a victim's body. She had walked the place where the corpse had been found and relived the moment that an undead had slaughtered the woman, a nobleman's daughter. Nothing like that had happened in Nein'a's clearing.

Magiere slowly shook her head. "All I wanted was to kill anything that got in the way of finding you. I touched the tree, and I was there… inside Most Aged Father… or his memory, at least."

"You saw undeads?" Wy

Magiere looked at her. "He… they didn't know what was happening. They just ran inland toward On-nis Lo… Lon…"

Wy

Magiere nodded. "I don't know if they made it, though obviously Sorhkafare… Most Aged Father is still alive."

"You are certain you heard it right?" Wy

Magiere lifted her head. "Why? Have you read of it somewhere?"

"No," Wy

The sage looked as if she'd uncovered something astonishing. Her brown eyes wandered, growing doubtful, until a scowl spread across her round face.

"Wait," Leesil said. "You've seen this place… and it still bears the same name?

Wy

She blinked rapidly, lost for an instant somewhere other than this moment.

Leesil wasn't certain what all this meant. "Perhaps the war wasn't as long ago as the sages think."

Wy

"What does that have to do with this…First Glade?" Leesil asked.

"Because my order has been deceived!" Wy

Wy

"If you heard right, a piece of what was lost has been within reach all along. Its past and history could never have been forgotten-not by the elves. It lay right before our eyes… and they said nothing of it!"

Leesil didn't care for this one bit. It was enough they had to deal with the secrets and lies that had tangled them among the elves of this land. How long had Wy

"They were taken unaware, unprepared," Magiere whispered. "They didn't even know what to do… with what came at them in the night."

Leesil frowned until he caught up. Magiere's thoughts had turned back to her vision in the glade.

"No name," she whispered, as if searching for one, then her dark eyes settled upon him. "They didn't have a name for what they saw."