assist me."

It shouldn't be Chane helping him but Sapphire. Through the nightmare of making their way home unseen, Toret's mind was filled with images of Sapphire's concern for him, of how she would care for him as he had cared for her.

He felt strong hands pulling him up, but he pushed Chane away.

"Go downstairs and rest."

"Yes… master."

Toret walked to the stairs and grabbed the railing. As he climbed, he hoped feeding later would restore his mutilated eye. The half-blood had used mundane weapons, not like the dhampir's sword, so time and life force should heal his wounds completely. But when he saw Sapphire's closed door, he wondered if all wounds would heal.

He went to his room alone.

Welstiel sat at a small table in his room, thinking. At the bedside in the frosted-glass globe on its plain iron pedestal, the three dancing sparks dimly illuminated the small room. It was the oldest thing he possessed, having been the first thing he'd ever created in his long studies. That seemed so very long ago.

His fingers laced, and he absently traced the stub of the severed smallest finger with his other hand. His plan was not proceeding smoothly, and he was troubled. Lanjov was ready to dismiss the dhampir, and this was not a contingency Welstiel had considered. Magiere was an excellent hunter. This alone should outweigh any of her social shortcomings, even in Lanjov's world. Or so he had thought.

In addition, the pathetic Ratboy—or Toret—was not proving the challenge Welstiel had hoped. Magiere required practice and training. She needed to learn to handle multiple opponents, and to expect that older prey might have additional skills at their disposal beyond the varied abilities and strengths of the Noble Dead. Ratboy's lackey, Chane, was obviously a conjuror, and perhaps more, and yet for all Rat-boy's efforts and resources, he bumbled about like a fool.

Welstiel leaned back, exhausted. He had used his own methods to keep the dreams at bay for several days now— to keep himself from the coils of his dream patron. But he had to rest, at least a little while, before anything further could be addressed. He rose, made sure the door was tightly locked, and collapsed on the bed.

He barely noticed the room. A typical inn, and suitable for the kind of man who frequented the Knight's House, but he had seen the inside of too many inns. In recent years, they'd all begun to look the same. He reached into his baggage under the bed and pulled out a pewter vial, sipped its content lightly, and murmured a soft chant. Willing himself not to sink into dreams and merely to lie down for a while, he closed his eyes.

But it had been too long since he'd rested.

The world around him shifted and rolled like tall desert dunes, the countless grains of sand threatening to bury or pull him under. But there was no sand. The dunes were black. Movement sharpened slowly into clarity and sand grains became the glitter of light reflected upon black reptilian scales. Scale-covered dunes became a mammoth serpent's coils, circling on all sides of him. They slowly writhed with no beginning and no end and no space between.

"Where?" Welstiel asked. "Where is it? It has been so many years. Am I closer?"

They were the same questions he always asked.

High… to the cold and ice, came the whispered answer that penetrated his thoughts. Guarded by old ones… oldest of predecessors.

"How do I find it?"

As always, he tried to peer beyond the black coils to find what he sought, but he still did not know what it looked like—only what the coils promised it would do for him.

A jewel or gem—something unique and long forgotten to the world. It would be endowed with a divine essence able to free him of his current existence. He let his mind roll with the coils around him.

The old ones.

He did not know for certain, but he suspected what the coils tried to tell him. And to battle these guards was why he needed and prepared Magiere. She would be the most useful tool for his task.

The constantly roiling coils of his patron exhausted him, but he languished amid its dream. Words slipped like an echo through his mind. He could not tell if they came from his own thoughts or his faceless, scaled patron.

The sister of the dead will lead you.

Chapter 15

Sgaile neared the end of the district outside of Bela's third ring wall. He slipped off his cloak and