"I'll humor you this time, but my guards are not yours to command, Karthalan. Not anymore. I decide what they hear. Won't you have a seat?" She offered a smile that didn't quite warm her glittering crimson eyes.

"Very well, High Priestess." Banishing sarcasm, the priest looked around for a place to sit, found none. Smiling wryly, he gracefully knelt before the dais. Like the dais, the tiles beneath him were crafted of a murky, dark violet marble and were very, very cold. He found this a marked contrast to the warm woods, vibrant tapestries, and burnished metals which had gleamed and glittered in the Hall before Alysia had returned to Rhilshen.

Karthalan looked up at her and commented casually, "I don't remember you ever having a throne before, Alysia."

"Before. . . ? I didn't need one, then, or maybe I didn't care enough then. It is an important symbol, particularly in these times. There are certain sects of the populace who have a dangerously inflated sense of their importance and worth to this realm. This . . . formality is one way to remind them of their place." Alysia lowered her right hand, smoothing the hellhound's brow. "But I'm certain you didn't drag yourself away from meditations in your temple to talk about my redecorating efforts."

"Indeed." Karthalan sat back on his heels. He studied the High Priestess for a while, looking resigned. He spoke bluntly. "Javan implied that you had been willing to kill your own son to reclaim that throne you're sitting on. This concerns me."

Karthalan stared intently at Alysia for several moments, ignoring the sneering, drooling canine that kept her company. Aware of the narrow line he was treading, he lowered his head. For a moment, he thought he had seen a flicker of the girl she must have been long ago: a vivacious, golden-haired creature with blue-green eyes, in contrast to the cold, pale woman before him. He kept his sigh to himself.

?I can understand your . . . your frustration, Priestess,? the green-eyed elf eventually ventured calmly. ?And even though your exile was just and lawful, we erred . . . grievously. We did have intimations that Varltesh was stirring again, but it was my thought that once you were out of Rhilshen, you would no longer be a target or a threat, and could enjoy your exile in peace. Your son?s entire Council agreed.?

Alysia growled. ?Obviously not the entire damned Council agreed, since Javan twice tried to send shadowmages to Rhydin as bodyguards. It?s interesting that they never made it. Varltesh?s assassin was remarkably well informed about a great number of things.? She held up her hand, forestalling his protest. ?Never mind. Tell me what you know about the assassin, since he was one of your Guardian Priests.?

?How? I . . .ah. . I must beg your forgiveness, Priestess, for I am not completely certain.? Karthalan could feel her anger building again and the air around his skin crackled faintly. Not daring to glance up at her face, he lowered his head in a display of humility. ?It is my opinion that it may be that the proximity to the Twilight Gates allowed the Dark Ancient to subvert a Guardian.?

In the ensuing silence, the Priest closed his eyes and continued. ?I did visit the Temple in Kaul where the . . . assassin presided. I don?t think the problem originated there, but there was evidence of a certain taint throughout the premises. . . subtle defacement of the icons, missing scrolls, altered wards. I destroyed the building, of course ? it wasn?t safe. ?

Alysia sensed both honesty and evasion from Karthalan. He?s being very careful to speak only truth. Too careful, she thought. ?What about the people in that province??

?What?? Karthalan had to strain to hear her, and he looked up. He briefly held her gaze, unflinching at the lurid crimson glow of her eyes, then quickly looked at the floor again. ?The people? I don?t understand.?

?What was their disposition??

?Well. . . I don?t know,? said Karthalan. He swept his long, gray-streaked hair away from his face, securing it behind pointed ears. ?I didn?t ask them. It seemed more important to investigate the temple, than to waste time chattering with simple-minded townsfolk.?

Hot wind gusted through the deserts south of the Central Province, lifting grains of sand and scouring the stone outer walls of Sethilsway, long considered the Skye family residence. The white stone edifice seemed simple and organic. It was a place of domes and clean lines and open courtyards built by rocky hands, shaped by fingers of fire, and smoothed by rushing water and wind.

In one of the larger courtyards, a gold dragon recently known as Alaric D?Threndtalen sprawled in repose across the sandy flagstones. Full sunlight reflected off his jeweled scales and made the leathery, metallic skin of his wings gleam. The stone beneath the creature glowed and overall, he presented a scintillating figure.

Alysia remained in the shade of an overhang, shielding her eyes with her hand. With a wistful smile, she watched the slow bellows of the dragon?s sides.

?I thought you?d come looking for me here soon. How are you faring, ?Mother??? The dragon-god rasped as he swivelled his head to look at Alysia. The priestess was wearing a simple black silk shift and sandals, with her baldric. Her silver hair was bound up with an etched Dril seashell, and she had foregone any other jewelry.

?I wasn?t sure you?d be at Sethilsway. And I thought you were sleeping,? murmured Alysia. ?Didn?t mean to disturb you.?

?I know you?re there, Alysia,? rasped Karthalan. ?I can feel those eyes of yours, staring hatred through stone and metal and shadow and these infernal wards.? He rattled his chains demonstratively.

Like the door of his dark cell, the shackles and chains which bound him were made of iron. The Destillian elf grimaced at the discomfort movement produced and tried to ignore his limbs. Not surprisingly, he showed signs of ferric poisoning, with a peculiar mottling of angry red and sullen gray burned into the smooth flesh of his wrists and ankles. His skin was pallid and oozed, weeping a pinkish fluid around the iron manacles.

Met with stony silence, the priest continued, pacing as much as his chains permitted. Karthalan?s throat was terribly dry and his voice sounded sick and hoarse. ?I must say your hospitality is lacking, madam. I thought I had taught you better. What a way to treat an old friend!?

?You have a different definition of friend than I, Karthalan,? came Alysia?s low response. He saw her now, an indistinct and slight figure through the small grill in the cell door. ?And it is fortunate that I have had many teachers over the years.?

The suffering elf coughed a little, stifling the urge to retch, then muttered, ?It?s a pity you never learned to trust. Perhaps that?s a failing of your kind. Tell me, Priestess, are you alone out there??

The Destillian priest was suddenly wary, despite his fatigue. He could feel the pressure of Alysia?s will against his foggy mind, prodding relentlessly for the secrets he held. Surrounded by a barely-visible nimbus of golden light, she was staring at him quite fixedly with those glowing crimson eyes. Karthalan took a deep breath, marshaling calm and searching for some acceptable response that would buy him a way out of his imprisonment and safe travel to the west, over the Dragonspine Mountains.

?Deceit,? he finally rasped, aware of her growing impatience. ?No. Alysia, I swear to you on all that I hold sacred that it is none of my doing that Sheag?randis was turned against you. You must know this.? He finished the spiced tea and tumbled the cup carelessly back toward the tray.

Alysia frowned. ?All that you hold sacred....? The silver-haired wraith whispered in a mocking tone. ?What do you hold sacred, Karthalan?? Her voice sounded calm, flat and dim, as if the stone walls of the cell were insulated with heavy shadows.

He made a single, furtive attempt to reach through the layers of sorcerous wards around his cell, searching for a ley line to draw upon and shield himself. Sharp pain lanced through his skull and traveled down his spine, and he tasted burnt metal on his tongue. Damn it all... Hell wards on top of the rest. Attempting to cover his disorientation, he thickly muttered, ?Rhilshen is sacred to me, Priestess.?

?I?m sure it is. What about Dark Ancients? Is Varltesh sacred to you?? Her voice remained calm and steady, and she managed to hide most of her dismay at his evasion.

Karthalan rested his hands on his knees and stared at the dull gilt edging his fingernails in order to avoid Alysia?s smoldering stare. He could sense the almost-tangible force of the magic she brought to bear upon him, an unsettling mix of Chaos and Order. Struggling to distract her, he carefully arranged his grimy features in a sad, resigned expression. ?...you didn?t have to poison me to talk about the Dark Ancient. All you had to do was ask.?

?I didn?t poison you, you damned cur. Have you pledged to Varltesh? How long has it been since you acted as a true Guardian??

The priest heard irritation and suspicion rising in her voice, decided to risk goading her further. Such an emotional creature... He remained motionless, slumped against the wall and spoke with sly pride. ?Who are you to question anyone?s pledge, Priestess, after what you?ve done? I heard you?ve taken yet another mortal lover. . . that brooding, broken old man who carried you through a shadow gate. The rumors in Rhy?din are that -?

?I don?t care about rumors.? She snapped coldly, getting to her feet. ?And he?s not my lover, He?s a friend.?

?A friend... So you trust him? If you knew who he was-?

?Enough!? She looked down at Karthalan. Blue flame flickered at her fingertips, and she considered kicking the bedraggled elf while she reigned in her temper. After a few seconds, she indulged that impulse and kicked him solidly in the chest, forcing the air from his lungs. As he struggled and gasped, both winded and stunned that Alysia had actually physically struck him, she said, icily, ?I?m not the one in chains, Karthalan. Answer my question.?

Gleaming metal blurred before Karthalan, and he heard a sharp snapping noise which he eventually realized was the sound of flesh, tendon, and bone giving way. Echoes of hot/cold sensation radiated up from where his right hand had been. He looked down and, despite his best intentions, voiced a shrill, keening wail of pain.

From the familiar, bloodthirsty expression on Alysia?s features, the priest realized she was fighting the soulsword?s compulsion to do more than just taste agony. ?Ahhghh... wait, there was more than you think. . ? he gasped, trying to distract her from Angylblud?s siren song, stalling for time enough to summon Varltesh?s influence into this little corner of Hell. Tears seeped from his eyes. His words tumbled out like the blood from his severed wrist.

?Wait! Your firstborn, Alialynteri was tainted from the start, by sheer virtue of who her father was. Then Aliara, Varltesh?s sweet little Blood Empress, she almost succeeded, too. . . . if she hadn?t taken your mortal consort as a hostage. . . and if that damned demon mage hadn?t betrayed her. . . ? Karthalan added almost slyly. ?That certainly opened your eyes, didn?t it.?

?Give me a reason,? said the Priestess in a low, deadly voice, ?not to kill you slowly, as is proper payment for treachery to me and mine.? She smiled a little. Distantly. Detached. The point of her sword dipped into the spreading slick of blood, lifted to carve a serpentine S across his hip. ?I think you have nothing to say that I do not already know.?

I was not meant to endure pain such as this, thought the thin priest. Karthalan cradled his bleeding stump against his body, pushed aside the thought that he should have devoted himself to the assassin training he had insisted on for Sheag?randis and the other corrupted priests. ?There is much you don?t yet know. Much.? His voice came muffled, as he interspersed the hissing syllables of a summoning spell between his words. ?The Dark Ancient offered me power, the secrets of the Ancients, but that wasn?t enough. So. . . Varltesh named me his High Priest, and with those I trained, we would be a new order in Rhilshen. Your son would have been part of that, though a mindless puppet prince.?

?I get it now. You wanted my job.? The priestess snorted, apparently unaware of the bubbling darkness which crawled across the surface of Karthalan?s blood puddle. ?I?m glad Alaric didn?t listen to you.?

The Destillian?s mouth twisted in an grin which was ugly and out of place on his almost delicate features. ?Your job, pah! Rhilshen was never meant to be ruled by woman. You . . . Priestesses have always been too devoted to the Guardian to realize that the truth about this realm. The Morning Realm can only remain strong if it conquers its enemies.?

?You sought to sell the Morning Realm to its enemies. That?s not conquering.? She sneered and pressed a booted heel against his left shoulder, roughly shoving him onto his back. ?Not by any stretch of your twisted imagination. Get up. Stand or kneel, it makes no difference to me.?

The corpse was remarkably well-preserved. Save for the obvious wounds and the sheen of tiny ice crystals coating naked flesh, the Destillian priest could have been sleeping, rather than dead. He lay neatly composed, blank eyes staring sightless at the stone ceiling above. Narrow fingers, pointed ears, and brow were all bare, stripped of ornament or emblem of rank.

Karthalan's body was one of many recently killed, not yet reduced to ash as was the custom in Rhilshen. The forms of nine other former Guardian Priests lay stretched out beside him, hands folded in a curious posture over their respective chests. They were, in nearly all respects, identical. More than half of them bore the evidence around their necks of a Shadow-garrotte.

However, the latest addition to their number had apparently had his throat torn out and his his hand cut off. There was a note pinned viciously through the skin of his belly. It was handwritten in dark green ink on parchment, dusted with glittering fragments of shattered opal and dated three years prior, reading:

Weakness. My chi continues to spiral out of me. It's more than an inability to successfully cast spells or perform the physical feats I am accustomed to. I ache... my thoughts are fuzzy and senses are increasingly dull. The opal I used as the spell focus and storage shows cracks now. It's too fragile to reverse the spell, at this point.

Serves me right to try to change myself to save a broken love. Ahh... the wisdom in hindsight. It won't happen again, even if it could.

I did effect a brief trip home to Rhilshen, to consult with my counterpart in the Priesthood of D'Threndtalen. Sea travel makes me irritable enough as it is. Karthalan was no help, of course. Elves generally aren't helpful. Combine that with several lifetimes spent in the Priesthood, and you end up with an individual who is entirely too damn arrogant and self-possessed of a sense of mystery. He's always been that way.

He suggested that my current condition was the punishment of the Dragon God D'threndtalen, who had obviously never approved of my relationship with Lucien. As if I hadn't heard that from my priests enough already! He also flat out stated that I would be best served cultivating a relationship with a "suitable" consort, so as to set a proper example for my son and people.

Bastard priests. I wanted tear his throat out for that.

Lledrith met with me briefly and informally before I headed back to the Province of Forboding. She mentioned a Clan she had worked with, called Tremere, and suggested I stay the hell away from Orodreth.

We'll see.

And appended, apparently in the tainted priest's own blood:

The vengeance of D'Threndtalen is not wielded by profane hands.

As the days cycled past, dawn giving way to dusk again and again, these words sank slowly into the dead elf's flesh, as surely as if they'd been scribed there with ink and scar.

They had been ordered to silence.

Jodiah Ayreg had been drilling the members of Rhilshen's fledgling Legion for weeks on end, and the precision that Alysia's military had was plain in the stoic, hard faces of the men and women through the openings of the helmets that were worn by all of them. A detachment had been selected for this mission, specifically chosen so that none of those faces bore the swarthy, dark features of Destil, and those Legionnaires were on the march. Black cloaks were worn by all as well, to better serve for blending into the night. And while they had been ordered to silence, there was no mistaking the footfalls and the soft sound of armor chinks made in unison as they moved in a perfect column up the street.

Faces appeared in the windows of those that were still awake and not inebriated to the point of being unable to care. The column of helmeted soldiers continued up the street, lock-step, flooding the width from one row of buildings across to the other. Two hundred Legionnaires in all, stretching back in a winding flow of the street, and every one of them in the glory of a parade formation.

But this was no military parade they were partaking in, and the number was decided upon for the ease of keeping them hidden and secret until this exact moment, tempered by the need of having more than enough to overwhelm any resistance found.

Their horses had long since been abandoned outside of the city, with a unit of guardsmen left to keep watch over the hastily-made camp. Jodiah Ayreg himself was on foot as well, dressed far more appropriately for battle than for a ball. His breastplate, enameled black, shone dully in the light cast from streetlamps as he moved away from the column of troops toward the shadow of the obelisk wherein Alysia Skye resided. An upraised hand was all it took to bring the Legion to a halt.

They had, after all, been ordered to silence. No verbal order was required.

"You are certain, Emperess?" Ayreg's voice was low. Were he any other man, it might have been considered a whisper, but that grinding, gravel-throated rumble of his voice could never truly be so hushed as that.