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Magiere known his long lost name?
"What else haven't you told me?" he asked her a little too harshly.
Magiere didn't answer.
Wynn flinched in fear, over and over, at the words Chap poured through her.
As the tale swept on to the night following the battle, Leesil saw strange
recognition in Magiere's face. More than once she mouthed a name before Wynn
even spoke it aloud.
"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?"' Wynn asked. "Vampires& in the form of risen soldiers?"
Magiere looked at her. "He& they didn't know what was happening. They just
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ran inland toward On-nis Lo& Lon& "
Wynn sat upright. "Aonnis Lhoin'n?"
Magiere nodded. "I don't know if they made it, though obviously Sorhkafâré&
Most Aged Father is still alive."
"You are certain you heard it right?" Wynn demanded. "Aonnis Lhoin'n?"
Magiere lifted her head. "Why? Have you read of it somewhere?"
"No," Wynn answered. "It still exists."
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?
Wynn shook her head. "It is what the elves of my continent call the
cen-termost place in their land First Glade but no one in my guild knew it was
that old."
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."
Wynn started at his voice. "No, we have long tried to determine when the war
occurred. Some do not believe it ever happened, that it is all myth and legend
spun out of proportion. But I have seen old scrolls and parchments, stone
carvings and other things& from centuries back. Malourné, my country, goes
back more than four centuries. The king's city of Calm Seatt is even older.
And what we've found was much older still."
"What does that have to do with this& First Glade?" Leesil asked.
"Because my order has been deceived!" Wynn answered sharply. "There are three
branches of the Guild of Sagecraft. The first was in my Malourné, decreed by
our own kings of old. Shortly thereafter, the elves established their own to
match ours. And one is in the Suman Empire along the eastern coast of my
continent. It was all to help preserve civilization, present and past& should
the worst ever come again."
Wynn turned to Magiere.
"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 Wynn's far-off elven neighbors kept this to themselves, an ancient place
hidden in plain sight?
"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.
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"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."
"I don't understand," Leesil said, sounding exasperated even to himself.
She grabbed his arms, fingers biting in. "Most Aged Father Sorhkafâré didn't
have a name for what he saw. Undead, vampire, or anything in his own tongue.
None of his comrades did. He didn't know& their own dead coming to feed upon
them that night."
More disjointed pieces of a past that didn't matter here and now. None of it
would help Magiere face the council of the an'Cróan.
"They had never seen or heard of an undead?" Wynn whispered. She paused, and
then exclaimed, "There were no undead& until the war?"
"Dead history can wait!" Leesil snapped. "It's no good to us now, so enough "
Chap snarled, and Wynn flinched as if her head ached. She looked at the dog
and said, "Yes, a good question."
She held up one finger at Leesil before he could argue, and she turned to
Magiere.
"I want no more secrets between us," Wynn said pointedly. "I told you,
remember, as we sat at the campfire outside Venjetz? You nearly collapsed when
we entered Most Aged Father's home. You tell me now what is happening to you?"
Leesil waited tensely. Wynn had grown far less timid in the moons they'd
spent together, but Magiere didn't take kindly to challenges. The last thing
he needed was these two going at each other. Magiere dropped her head until
Chap snarled at her again.
"I haven't slept in eight& maybe nine nights," she said quietly. "And not
much before that& since we entered this land."
Leesil knew she was having trouble, but he'd had no idea it was this bad. He
hadn't had many restful nights himself.
"But do I look it?" Magiere added, almost as a challenge. "I'm not tired, but
I can't stop shaking. It gets worse when I'm inside these trees. I have to
force myself to eat because I'm never hungry, not in any real way. Did you see
the tree in Nein'a's clearing, the one I touched?"
Leesil shook his head, but Wynn sucked in a sharp breath.
"Your hands. Chap saw in your memories& they marked the tree."
Magiere faced Leesil. "Before I slipped into Sorhkafâré's memory, the shaking
sharpened. Something ran through me as I backed into the tree, and then I was
there, in his past. I didn't know what it was, and only guessed afterward,
when I called for you."
She heaved a deep breath.
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