"A spy?"

  "Worshiping Sennha? Doubtful. They probably stole it."

  "Probably, Sennha doesn't work openly."

  He shrugged. "However, none of this is our problem now. They're dead, we're not. It's over."

  "I don't know," she said. "I run into these fellows all the time. They're my enemy." She shrugged. "I'm not too worried about them though. Sennha's followers are a joke, and a pretty bad one at that."

  "Did you know that the Blackhound was a follower of Sennha?"

  "No! The man who singlehandedly killed the Empire? You're telling me that one of them was actually competent? Is this some sort of jest?"

  He turned toward her and raised an eyebrow.

  She rolled her eyes. "Oh, right. You never joke. You have no humor."

  "Yes, I do."

  "Well, you don't share it."

  "Is there any reason why I should?" He glared at her and all she saw were two brilliantly green slits so bright they glowed.

  She slouched. "Well, no. You're still a mysterious stranger."

  "I know. It's not an accident." He glanced around. "We'll camp now." He watched Der nearly overbalance as she dismounted. "No, you just sit here. I'll go build a fire."

  Her eyes shot to the horse before she could stop herself.

  Tom sighed. "On another thought, you're helping me gather firewood."

  "How about I take care of the horse?" she offered through a forced, brittle smile.

  He shook his head and smiled coldly. "No. Now, you get the firewood and I'll see to the horse."

  She started to protest but looked around the darkened forest. She'd found hiding places in Darkreign, in the chemmen homeworld. By comparison, a dark forest was child's play, and it far exceeded the chance she had in Hughling. She exhaled dramatically. "Fine! I'll go fetch some wood!"

  Tom quirked an eyebrow. "You're a truly pathetic liar. I think we'll just settle for doing everything together. Besides, you can still barely limp."

  By the time they had the fire built, the horse was dozing. Der sullenly chewed her meat. Tom's meal sat in his lap, and he hadn't touched it yet. She swallowed "What-"

  "No."

  "What is-"

  "No."

  "What are we-"

  "No!" He glared hotly over the flames.

  She leaned her head to the side. "Come on, man. What is it we're after?"

  He pointed to himself. "What I'm after is my concern."

  "Well, your concern has me abducted, so I want to know."

  "Tools exist for their function, not their conversation."

  She rolled her eyes. "You're not answering me. You haven't even given me a hint. Is this honestly about saving a child's life. And why me?"

  "I'll tell you what you need to do when I need you to do it."

  "How do I know if I can even do whatever?"

  His mouth twisted into a closed, grotesque smile. "Oh, I know you can. Now, shut up and eat."

  She took another bite. "Fine. So, tell me about this child. You didn't lie about her, did you?"

  "I did not."

  "Then what is her name?"

  He sighed. "I'll tell you if you shut your mouth."

  "So, what's her name?

  He held up a finger. "First, you must agree."

  She rolled her eyes and nodded.

  He closed his eyes and sat his back straight as if he were meditating. He didn't speak immediately. "Chloe."

  "Sweet name."

  "You'd said you'd be quiet."

  "All I said was sweet name." She fiddled with a pebble. "What is she dying of and how much longer does she have?"

  Tom silently shook his head.

  The young woman huffed. "I'm trying to help. I have a friend with an excellent physician in his service. Personally, I do not get on with the man, but he is a genius at what he does."

  Again, Tom shook his head. "A surgeon couldn't understand her illness. I can heal her. I just need something to do it."

  "Yes, but how much time do you have? He can get there soon."

  "Listen, girl, I don't need anyone, no physician, no priest, not even you, so stay the hell out of my affair!"

  "Wait! You obviously need me! I want to know!"

  "And you're a damn fool for thinking you'll get an answer!" His glare singed more than the fire between them and his voice faded like thunder around the campsite.

  Der finished her meal quickly in the echoing silence. She looked up to see how far Tom was into his and saw that all the food had neatly disappeared from his hands and lap.

  * * *

  Der blinked at a flash of light from the ring on his hand. That woke her back up. It was so hard to stay awake around him because he was always up all night! The fire was burning very low, but it still reflected the ring brightly. She'd tried to stifle a yawn and wondered how long she'd been dozing. They'd long done away with their food, but Der wasn't going to sleep with him still up and wandering around. So, she sat stubbornly by the fire. Of course, it hadn't worked exactly like she'd planned. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. "That's an interesting ring."

  Tom pulled his hands back out of the firelight.

  "Can I see it?" She shuffled back up into a sitting position.

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's mine."

  "Please?"

  He rolled his eyes. "Ha. Now you're being polite. No."

  Grumbling, she grabbed her waterskin.

  "Good girl. This ring is mine and you're not even allowed to look at it. Understand?"

  "Yes, but that's not going to stop me."

  He scowled and looked away.

  After another yawn, Der pushed herself to her feet and limped around the fire and sat next to him. He inched away. "Tell me about Chloe, please."

  "No."

  "I'm helping to save her too."

  "No." He pointed at her. "You are a means to an end."

  She ducked her head and stared at the ring as he extended his hand. A platinum circle knotted around a light blue stone. There was a very detailed picture of something cut inside the gem itself, but she couldn't make it out.

  She gasped. "That's an elvish ring!"

  Tom leapt to his feet and covered the ring with his other hand. "Get away from me!"

  "I'd recognize that style of cutting gems anywhere. There are pictures inside too, and only elves do that!" She rose to her feet and advanced. "So, why do you have an elvish ring?"

  He whipped his hot, angry gaze at her. His green eyes burned brighter than the fire. "Like I've said a hundred times before, my father traded with the elves!" His left hand still obscured the ring.

  "The elves seldom give away rings and they don't sell them."

  "The elves sell plenty of jewelry, you naïf."

  "Well, yes, they do," she admitted. "But, not ones like that! The elves make a different style that they sell to the other races - and those are quite different than the ones they make for themselves. They don't share those."

  "Oh? Then how do you know so much about the elves?"

  She tapped her ear. "I am part elven, one sixteenth. I also spent last winter in Arborn." She pointed stubbornly to his hand. "I know well the elves wouldn't trade for a ring like that. It's one of their own."

  "Then perhaps I found it somewhere. I could have stolen it for all you know."

  She tightened her jaw.

  "Shut the hell up, girl." He turned away, and reached down to his backpack to lift out the scroll case.

  She opened her mouth.

  He tilted his handsome face to the side. "You know, I'm beginning to wonder how well you would scream with your tongue torn out." Reverently, he unrolled the map. The fine lines of his pen were so thin they were almost invisible, and yet the thousands of the delicate lines added up to a delicious treat for the eye. She still had troubles believing he drew it himself. He traced his left index finger over the parchment. "We're going northwest. To here."

  She found Hughling and pointed to their approximate location northwest of the town. "Only one more village along the way too."

  "We're going around it." He pulled the map away from her.

  "Why?"

  He began to roll up the parchment. "Because you seem unable to avoid trouble in villages."

  She sighed. "Alright, I have to admit you're right about that."

  "What? You're bowing to agree with me?" He caught himself between a snicker and a cough.

  She shot him a look and pushed her hair behind her ears. "I am not. It's just the way things are." She followed her eyes to where he had pointed. "The Dead Forest. So, where are we going in the Dead Forest? That's a rather disconcerting name too, I might add."

  "An old monastery."

  She blinked. "Pardon? A monastery?" She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "There's a temple to Ahtome back in Malfax if you need a holy man."

  He shook his head. "There's something particular at this monastery, and it's abandoned now."

  She scratched her head. "But why is it in the middle of a forest with a sinister name?"

  He sighed audibly. "You know so little. After the fall of the Empire, monasteries were no longer built in the cities and instead excluded themselves from society, like they originally were even before Pallens existed."

  "What?" She blinked.

  He inhaled deeply. "Alright, even before monasteries existed, monks were men who chose to separate themselves from society and went out into the Un Desert or other very austere locations to pray. These were the first monks, and nuns too, probably. Soon, those people gathered followers."

  "Even living out on the edge of nowhere?"

  "Yes, now shut up. Alright, they attracted people and thus, founded monasteries. Over time, these orders moved into cities, especially with the rise of the paladin empire. However, after the destruction of Pallens, monasteries went back to a life of seclusion from society. Follow?"

  "I think so." She nodded.

  "Some say that people wanted them out of the cities, because they failed to protect them."

  "Why did people blame them? It's the Blackhound's deed! Besides, isn't it the army's job to protect the people? What's a monk going to do anyway? Stab an armored man with a quill?"

  He smiled his tight toothless smirk. "People aren't rational creatures."

  "They can be." She shook her head. "So, how does that explain why this monastery is in the middle of a forgotten forest?"

  "Weren't you listening?

  "Yeah, but that still doesn't say why this thing you're after is there."

  "Yes, it does. Look, during the centuries after the Empire, monastic orders were the keepers of knowledge. People stopped learning how to read and write, and became farmers and ignorant peasants for the most part. It was the monks who preserved the ancient texts that survived the Centum Wars, until the world slowly began to rise back onto its feet in the last century or so."

  "Knowledge!" She snapped her fingers. "There must be some knowledge that you're after that's stored in this monastery. A spell or something."

  He looked at her coldly and didn't answer.

  She smirked. "And if it's abandoned, that mean no one's guarding the precious tomes there."

  He rolled his eyes. "Mayhap."

  Her grin unfurled. "So, is it something from Pallens?"

  "What? Why would it be? Do you know how rare items from the Empire actually are?"

  She shrugged. "The elves had some things, and I got - well, I've seen them."

  "No, it's not. It's...older." He rolled his eyes. "And what you do truly know about the Empire? Honestly?"

  She squirmed under his gaze. "A little. The Blackhound and King Midan the Merciful."

  "Just that?" He sighed. "Nothing about the thousands of years of history?"

  "Um, um. A little."

  "Right," he drawled. "So, did you know that Pallens at her end was a democracy?"

  Der frowned. "Uh, yes, I did. It means, they, uh, got to pick their king or queen and their vassals."

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Do you even know what a democracy is?"

  "Yes," she said confidently. "The people got to pick the king."

  Tom sighed. "No, that's not what it means." He rubbed his forehead. "Never mind."

  She leaned closer toward the map, and didn't see Tom leaning away from her. She sighed. "You don't have my village. No one knows about it."

  He gently tugged the scroll away from her and carefully sealed it in its tube. "Who cares about your two plough village?"

  "Everyone in the village, we even got a caravan of dwarves last year!"

  "I'm sure they lost money in the deal." He reached down to replace the tube in his pack tied on the back of his saddle. He dropped it and hissed.

  She whirled to see him bent over his hand. "What is it?"

  "I cut myself on your sword. Damn! That hurts!" He bent over his hand.

  She frowned. "But, you had it wrapped in a blanket and it was sheathed." She looked down at his pack. The blade had slipped out of its sheath and out the side of the rolls of the blanket. She frowned; the odds of that happening were pretty severe. Her eyes fell onto the sword and she gasped. Even though the hilt was covered by the partially unrolled blanket, the reflection of the blade was unmistakable. It wasn't reflecting normally any more, but instead its ethereal blue-gold sheen.

  "Let me see your hand." But, she still stared at her own blade.

  "No." He was already wrapping a cloth around it. "Damn, your sword is sharp!" He dropped the rest of the length of cloth and stared at the blade. "What's that?"

  "It's a sword!" She pointed. "Hey! You ruined the disguise spell! How did you do that?" Gingerly, she shook the sword free of the blanket. The beautiful hilt glowed in the moonlight.

  He scrambled backward so quickly he left fingernail grooves in the ground. "Pallens! That's a sword from Pallens!"

  "The art on the hilt is rather obvious if you've seen any Pallens art at all. It's the way they use melted gems, however they did that." She scratched her head. "But, why is the disguise spell ruined?"

  Tom kept staring, and his complexion faded even paler than usual; he was truly white. "Perhaps it was a weak spell on a very powerful object." He raised his voice, "Why do you have a Pallens sword?"

  "Because I found it. Raiding chemmen."

  He jerked as if he was twisting with spasms. "You weren't lying? That war truly did happen? I mean, I saw that you thought you were telling the truth, but I believed you were just insane!" He grabbed the sides of his head. "And you can use it? But, no, they were all destroyed!" He pawed at his face. "Why - how? No!"

  She shrugged. "I don't know, but I found it."

  "And you can use it?"

  Der ran her fingers soothingly over the blade. "Yes. Why wouldn't I be able to?"

  "Because that - that thing was probably a paladin's sword!" He inched further away. "And paladins don't exist anymore!"

  She found herself fighting against grinning. "I've always wondered about that, but, honestly?"

  "Most likely!"

  "I didn't dare get my hopes up about that! It's not as if we'll ever know, like."

  "You didn't dare to dream something, Der?"

  She shrugged. "Dreams can be broken, especially if they're told." A smile leaped onto her face. "But, it truly could be?"

  "Yes!"

  "But, hold on..." She turned to look at him. "You don't sound like that's a good thing."

  He inched further away. "Well, I don't think it is! When Pallens was destroyed, the Blackhound ordered that all of its weapons be destroyed as well."

  She cradled the hilt in the crook of her arm. "Well, they missed one. I don't know why the chemmen had it, and from what I saw they didn't like the Blackhound either."

  "And you just happen to have it?"

  "Yes, I do!"

  "Wait. Where did you say you found it?"

  "Raiding chemmen, in Zazocorma in Darkreign, but I don't think you've heard of that place."

  "I don't believe you." He could not tear his eyes away from the elegant weapon. His mouth slipped open as he stared.

  She looked at him. "What? You sound -" She bit her own tongue and stared right back. Slowly, almost carelessly, she let the sword drift between them.

  Tom followed her line of sight back to his own face. Carefully, he brought his hand to his mouth and fingered the long, deathly sharp canines. Silence bounced between the two of them for an endless moment.

  "Oh." Above anything else, she sounded disappointed.

  He gave her a long, heavy stare. "Don't let this bother you."

  She tried to smile, but didn't move the point of her sword away from him. "Um..."

  His hand had already healed. He threw his arms wide. "I am a vampire!"

  "So I see." She very carefully did not move a muscle.

  "And you're not afraid?" He snarled and ground his teeth.

  Der thought she saw sparks when he mashed his molars together. "I'll admit I'm a bit surprised." She narrowed her eyes. "Then again, I should've been able to guess it. Now, it's obvious. I mean dead obvious."

  His mouth fell open again.

  "Sorry." She swallowed a cheap laugh and shrugged.

  Tom materialized in her face, nose to nose. Nothing living could move that quickly. He pointed to his elongated fangs. "Did you miss these by any chance?"

  She leaned away from him. "No-o. Um..." She raised her index finger and poked the bottom of one of them.

  His emerald eyes exploded wide. He reeled back and shoved her away simultaneously. "What the hell are you doing?!"

  When she sat up, she held her bleeding finger out in front of her. She tried to shake the blood off. The sword tip still aimed at his throat in her other hand.

  The vampire leveled an accusing finger. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  "I just wanted to see how sharp they were." She looked back to her finger. "I think they're a little sharper than my sword even. How do you not constantly cut your lip?"

  He retreated into a shocked silence. His mouth opened and closed several times. "You're crazy," was all that came out.

 

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