The sun had almost touched down on the Island of the Western Sky when the lovers entered the village. That afternoon they had finally reached the road to Mt. Clero. They led their mounts, burdening the weary antelopes only with what supplies the humans could not carry. Overall, their injuries from the day before were light, mostly bruises and strained muscles. A few days rest would have been best, but their one brush with the monsters in Yudoko Territory propelled them on.

            The village was tiny, just handful of houses clustered near the protection of the road. At one end stood a work hall, although the nature of the work they could hear inside was not immediately obvious. At the other end stood a large inn, its size and quality out of keeping with the small size of the village. In fact, all the buildings were in remarkable shape, resembling smaller versions of carefully maintained houses of the craftsmen’s quarter in Tagerden than the slightly shabby appearance of most of the farming villages they had passed through with the caravan.

            Sanura frowned, anticipating the cost of the inn. Whatever it was, they would have to pay for two nights. All of them were too tired and too injured to spend another day traveling unless something forced them to.

            They hitched the antelopes in front of the building and went in. The main room was not what Sanura had been expecting to see. Instead of a bar and tables crowded with locals drinking a bit of ale and chatting, it was stuffed to the rafters with clothes, food, and household goods. Most of it was of the quality found in any village’s general store, but the furniture and wooden icons would have seemed more appropriate in a temple or a noble’s home.

            While Sanura tried to resolve the contradictions of the room’s contents, Celeres was more intent in arranging for their room. Finding no other humans among the clutter, he called out, “Is anyone here?”

            “Yes. May I help you?” asked a man who rose from behind a counter. He had been sitting on the floor while sorting stock, quite invisible from the entrance. The old man was stocky with an open, honest face. Two fingers on his right hand and three on the left were missing or mangled.

            “This is an inn, yes?” Sanura asked dubiously.

            “Certainly, young honorable. Only one in Woodcraft. My name’s Dedo. How long will you be staying with us?” the old man smiled with welcome.

            “Two nights for us and our mounts.”

            “One room?”

            “Yes.”

            “Three silver then. That includes meals. You’re responsible for your own drink, though.”

            That was high, but not as much as she had feared. Sanura met him at the counter and paid him.

            The old man turned to the open door at the back of the room and yelled, “Teja!”

            Turning back, he asked, “Your ‘lopes are out front?”

            “Yes,” Sanura asked, distracted. She berated herself for letting the clutter of the room from properly sizing it up. In addition to the entrance and the door in the back, there was a third to the left. From the counter, she could clearly see through it to a second door beyond which was the taproom she had been expecting to see earlier. In between the doors was a hallway that lead further back in the building.

            A young girl entered the room from the back. “Yes, Grandpa?” she asked.

            “Teja, take our guests’ antelopes around back to the stable. Bring their bags up to the southwest corner on the second floor.

            “Yes, Grandpa,” she said and favored the lovers with a brief smile as she moved past them.

            The old man gestured to the side door. “If you’ll come this way, I’ll show you to your room.”

            They followed him into the hallway, where Dedo gestured to the taproom through the open door. “You can take your meals in there. Just show them the key to your room when they come to serve you.” He led them down the hallway, past many closed doors. At the far end, they could see another door that led outside and a set of stairs on the right that headed up. The wooden floor of the building looked old and well worn where it peeked from behind the throw rugs. It certainly looked older than the paneling on the walls.

            “Interesting building,” Sanura said. “I’ve never seen an inn set up quite this way.”

            “That’s because it wasn’t built as one,” the old man answered. “This used to be where the carpenters of the village worked before the work hall was built. We converted it to an inn to give our clients and merchants a place to stay during their visits.”

            Dedo led them up the stairs and unlocked the door to the first room on the second floor. He opened the door and handed the key to Sanura. “Outhouse is beyond the stables, and a chamber pot is under the bed. Teja should be up with your stuff in a few minutes. Do you need anything else?”

            “No. This is good.”

            “If you need anything, you can usually find me in the store. Now, if you excuse me, I need to get back to my stock.”

            “Thank you, On. Dedo.”

            The old man nodded in farewell and headed back downstairs.

            The lovers waited for Teja to deliver the bags, interrogated her briefly to find the bathing room, then headed down to the taproom. The locals there ignored them with the discrete awareness any locals had of strangers in their territory. Sanura waved her key at the serving wench, who delivered plates of mutton, beans, and cream covered noodles to their table. A couple of coppers brought her back with mugs of ale. Feeling the weight of their journey, they ate their meal, bathed, and went to bed after nothing more than a chaste kiss.

            In the morning, Sanura’s muscles greeted her with complaints and aches. She slipped quietly out of bed, got dressed, and went down for breakfast. Upon her return, Celeres still slept, so she left him the key and headed out the back of the inn. There was a pretty good size yard of roadweed separating the stables and outhouse from the main building. Sanura stretched slowly, then went through her forms, striking at enemies that appeared only in her imagination.

            Celeres found her after an hour. He did not interrupt her exercise. Instead, he leaned against the inn and admired her strength and grace.

            “You look good,” he said when she sheathed her sword.

            “You should learn some more of this stuff, beautiful. If our trip continues to be as eventful as it has been, we’ll need it. Especially if they catch up to us,” she said while pacing to cool herself down.

            “Then I need to replace the dagger. Maybe get a sword?”

            “Maybe. Let’s see what On. Dedo has in his store,” Sanura said and headed up to the front of the inn.

            The taproom was empty, but the store was not. Two women in well kept work clothes chatted while old Dedo waited on a man dressed in red finery. The two men were examining an exquisitely carved rocking horse while the innkeeper praised the piece’s workmanship. They finally settled on a price the would have been a season’s salary for Sanura if she still worked as a city guard in Tagerden. A small box of six carved soldiers were also purchased before the richly dressed man left with his prizes.

            Dedo was helping the women when Sanura finally found the weapons. The selection seemed to be very small, consisting of a few daggers and a single spiked mace. She was so busy looking for steel that she almost missed the rest of it. Next to the display of daggers were several racks of batons, bow, and staffs. They were lacquered and solid, some of the carved with intricate shapes and designs. Celeres pulled out an unremarkable ironwood staff and tried its weight.

            “Huh,” he said meditatively. “I may be able to learn this. Know anything about staff work?”

            “Some. I’m not exactly an expert though,” she said dubiously.
            “It’s a stick. How hard can it be?”

            “I think you’d be surprised.”

            “Well, did you see a sword anywhere?” Celeres asked, taking short strikes at imaginary enemies.

            “No.”

            “Well, this has to be better than just a dagger. At least it will give me some reach.”

            Sanura frowned at him after he pulled back from a strike, tangling the back end of the staff in a bundle of shirts. His attempts to remove it tipped over a stand displaying a richly embroidered dress. Blushing black, Celeres set down the staff and turned the stand back up.

            The two ladies finished their business and left, looking askance at the lovers. Dedo approached them with a polite smile.

            “Sorry about that,” Celeres said, self-consciously brushing off the dress.

            “It’s okay,” the old man said, running a careful eye over the merchandise. “No harm done.”

            “Do you have any swords?” Sanura asked him.

            “I’m afraid not. We specialize in woodwork around here, not smithcraft.”

            “Oh!” Celeres said in sudden comprehension. “That’s why there’s so much furniture and totems in this room.”

            “Yes. We converted this room into a display room when merchants and customers started to seek us out instead of buying from our contacts in Kugiri.

            “Now, if you didn’t come for our fine goods, you’re probably on your way to Mt. Clero, yes?”

            “Actually, yes. Know much about them?” Sanura asked.

            “A bit. Never been up there myself, but Cheldeans come through here all the time. Good people. Their services are expensive, but they do a fair amount of charity. Take things in trade too, like work or odd items. Applicants and supplicants come through here pretty often. Some are turned away empty-handed, but most aren’t.”

            “Well, that’s something anyway,” Sanura said.

            “I still need a weapon,” Celeres said, eyeing the staffs.

            Sanura turned their attention to the daggers and haggled a bit over the price of a new one. After that purchase, Sanura relented and allowed Celeres to acquire a staff. Dedo tried to talk him into one of the elaborately carved poles, but the young man firmly held out for a good price on the one of simple ironwood.

            Celeres insisted Sanura immediately start him on drills for his new weapon. She taught him the few forms she knew for the staff and corrected his posture as he worked. After a while, she left him to his practice while she went to make a few further purchases. She returned to make sure he stretched out properly after his exercise, then they retired to their room.

            The evening meal was a more boisterous affair than the previous day’s. The locals were celebrating the visit of a well dressed stranger in black. Despite his finery, he seemed perfectly comfortable celebrating with the craftsmen in their grubby work clothes. The pace of the party kept the servers busy, and the room boomed with lively singing for hours. In addition to the usual drinking songs, the stranger sang solo about half the evening, mesmerizing the room with his voice. The lovers stuck around to enjoy the entertainment, nursing their drinks and joining in when the rest of the room sang.

            Flitting around the room, adding its own squeaks to the music, was a black, oversized wasp. Its four translucent wings glittered with rainbow colors in the lamps of the room. It kept the green of its multifaceted eyes mostly on the stranger, forgoing its worship occasionally to zip around the room. No one seem particularly bothered by its presence. Indeed, some of the patrons reached out to scratch the tail section of its two-foot long body when the bug landed near them. Celeres watched its flight with fascination, wondering if the bug would land close enough for him to pet it.

            Deep into the evening, the stranger begged off any more singing. The crowd made a token protest, then let the man extract himself from their ranks. The lovers were surprised when he picked up his mug and marched over to their table. The stranger had acknowledged them while he was singing, working the room to make sure everyone was enjoying themselves. Still, they could not imagine why he was approaching them now.

            “Evening, folks,” he said, stretching out a hand. “I’m Arva.”

            Sharp green eyes peered at the lovers from a blue-skinned face. The yellow of his hair almost glowed in the warm light of the room. His rich black clothes were accented with fine gold thread. The expensive diamond-encrusted rings on two of his fingers stood out in sharp contrast to the rough and ready way he had entertained that evening.

            “Hi. I’m Sanura, and this is Celeres,” the solider said, shaking the man’s hand.

            “I hear you’re on your way to Mt. Clero,” he said, turning and taking Celeres’ hand.

            “Yes.”

            “So, what takes you to see the Cheldeans?” Arva asked, taking a seat at the table.

            “We need to see if they can help us. It’s a little complicated,” she said.

            “Usually is. The services of the college aren’t cheap, after all,” the man said sympathetically. “Want to tell me about it? I might be able to tell you what to expect when you get there.”

            “You know a lot about the Cheldeans?” Celeres asked.

            “I should. I’m one of them,” Arva smiled.

            “Oh.”

            “I’ve never seen a Cheldean passing an evening in the company of the common folk,” Sanura said, bemused.

            “I’m a field scholar. I ran patrols up and down this road for two years as part of my training. I don’t think there’s a human between Kugiri and Mt. Clero that I don’t know. The people here in Woodcraft still feel they owe me for chasing off a small army of beasties over a decade ago. I don’t get back very often anymore, so they turn any visit from me into a party.”

            “That would do it,” Celeres agreed.
            “So, what is it that you need us for that badly? Our services are simply too expensive for trivial things, you know. Curing every peasant’s hangnail is not why we exist,” the Cheldean noted.

            “What do you know about the hirudin?”

            “Bits and pieces. They’re not anything that I’ve had a chance to study extensively.”

            “Do you know how to reverse the effects of their bites before it kills their victims?” Celeres asked.

            Arva hesitated.

            Celeres pulled at the collar of his shirt and tilted his head to display the pale scars from the hirudin’s fangs.

            “I don’t know,” Arva admitted.

            Celeres deflated a little in his seat.

            “That doesn’t mean no one knows. Cheldeans chase all sorts of odd knowledge. No one can keep everything in his head, not even Cheldar himself. The library at Mt. Clero might hold the answer. If not, we can contact the other libraries to see if they have it in their collection.”

            “How much will all that cost?” Sanura asked.

            “Quite a bit. If you don’t have enough to pay for it, you could end up spending a long time working for us to cancel your debt. I can tell you that the college probably won’t turn you away if your willing to do things for them. And if we don’t have the answer, we won’t charge you anything if we create a solution. Collecting knowledge is the reason we exist in the first place. New knowledge is its own payment,” Arva told them.

            Sanura and Celeres sat quietly, considering that. Their silence was interrupted by the whip-whip-whip-whip of the insect’s wings. It zipped around them once and landed on the table.

            “Good fun!” it squeaked.

            “Enjoying yourself, bug?” Arva asked it.

            “Much!”

            “Sanura, Celeres-this is Chadder. Chadder, she is Sanura, and he is Celeres,” Arva introduced them.

            “Hi,” the bug bobbed once before Sanura and again before Celeres.

            “Um, hello, Chadder. So, what are you?” Celeres asked.

            “Bug,” Chadder said simply.

            Arva chuckled. “He’s a cliff wasp. They live along the coast of the north-out arm.” The Cheldean reached out and scratched the top of Chadder’s head. The bug hummed with delight.

            “You’ve been to the north-out arm?” Sanura asked, curious.

            “I’ve been all over. Field scholars add to Cheldar’s knowledge by going out into the world. There’s only so much anyone can learn by experimentation alone. The field scholars discover possibilities in the real world that would never occur to scholars ensconced at the colleges or in their towers.”

            Chadder wandered away from the Cheldean while he talked. When he stopped near Celeres, the young man tentatively scratched the bug’s head. He was surprised to find a very fine layer of fur instead of a hard shell. He said so to Arva.

            “Sure,” the Cheldean said. “If he was actually an insect, the weight of his exoskeleton would make it impossible for him to move. He only looks like one.”

            “Oh,” Celeres said, not really understanding the explanation.

            “Are you heading out tomorrow?” Arva asked them.

            “Yes,” Sanura said.

            “Then if you don’t mind, I’ll go with you. Do the introductions at the college and help you with the hassles of getting your questions answered. If I hadn’t run into you tonight after Dedo told me about you, I would have looked you up in the morning. It will make the college’s job easier. Besides, I’ve been on the road for a year and a half, and it’ll be nice to do a bit of library work before heading back out. Sound good to you?”

            “Yes,” Sanura said while Celeres nodded.

            “Good,” Arva smiled. “I’ll see you in the morning then. If I don’t leave to get some sleep, the party will go all night, and I don’t need the village elders ticked at me for keeping their craftsmen up. Sleep well.”

            “You, too,” Celeres waved as the Cheldean left, the cliff wasp flying after him.

            Sanura sipped her ale and watched Celeres. He seemed moderately pleased with the new developments. “Well, that’s something anyway,” he said.

            “Yes,” she answered neutrally.

            Celeres finished off his drink and stood up. “Morning will be here soon enough. Are you coming?”

            Sanura set down her drink and followed her lover down the hall. She thought he might sleep well tonight, comforted by Arva’s interest and confidence. Sanura held her own hopes in reserve, worried how Celeres would react if the Cheldeans found nothing. After all, if the Cheldeans really knew much about the hirudin, the ones in Tagerden would have to realize that Prince Emhyr was one. And they didn’t seem to know that, did they?

* * *

            It was raining again, in the morning. Arva met the lovers in the stable where they were preparing Grass Easter and Longstride to travel. He greeted them cheerfully and set about getting his three beasts ready. Sanura freed Teja from assisting her to go help the Cheldean. Arva chatted with the stablegirl amiably while she harnessed the antelopes, gossiping with her about people in Woodcraft.

            They were soon on their way with the water gorged roadweeds squishing under the antelopes’ hooves. Arva rode with the ease of one used to riding in all conditions, the two pack antelopes his mount led as oblivious to the rain as their owner. Chadder rode one of them, huddling under a custom made cloak to keep dry. The lovers rode up beside Arva, their own cloaks pulled tight against the rain.

            Despite the distraction of the weather, Arva asked Celeres to tell him the story of how the young man had acquired the hirudin bite. Naturally, that led to the encounter with the second hirudin and then Prince Emhyr. At that point, the Cheldean stopped them and insisted they tell him everything that had happened to them from the first attack, leaving nothing out. Celeres took most of the storytelling duties with Sanura chiming in when he missed something important. Arva took the stranger parts in stride. (“I’ve never met Thacker, but I have been to Whisper Point,” he said. “It’s impossible for humans to use it properly.”) He found the revelations about Prince Emhyr disturbing but explained that since Cheldeans do not usually dictate to heads of government about how to run their country, he did not think it likely the Cheldeans would step in unless the situation got really out of hand. They skimmed over their stay with the caravan and briefly touched on their trip through Yudoko Territory.

            “You were lucky against the minhoca. There aren’t many who can escape the compulsions of their songs,” Arva said. “Cheldar only knows where they learned that proxy. Although ‘learn’ may not be the right word. The beast scholars say that its buried in every minhoca’s brain before birth.

            “Sanura, you say you came out of it after trying to say something?”

            “I-I think so. I knew something was wrong, and I really wanted to ask someone what was going on. After that, I was trying too hard to get away to notice its singing.”

            “Interesting. Well, I doubt you or your mounts are fully recovered yet. Would you prefer to stop around midafternoon, today?” the Cheldean asked.

            When they hesitated, he firmly declared, “We’ll be stopping at midafternoon. I could proxy away your injuries, but such healings carry their own cost. If possible, it is best to let injuries heal on their own.”

            The lovers surrendered before the Cheldean’s insistence.

            Their traveling actually ended long before midafternoon but after the rains had slowed. Before cloud-hidden Zonneshin reached the height of his daily flight, they were intercepted at the second village they arrived at. As they rode through the main street, a young woman rushed out of a house they had passed and ran after them.

            “On. Cheldean! On. Cheldean!” she called, her voice urgent.

            Arva looked back and reined in his mount. “Sonnig? What is it, child?”

            “Urlaub was hurt when a monster came through a few days ago. He’s hurt real bad, and we can’t do anything for him. You gotta help him.”

            “I’ll make you no promises, Sonnig, but I’ll see what I can do. Urlaub is Rille’s son? Are they still in the house with the old oak in front of it?” Arva asked.

            The young woman nodded, her eyes wide with worry.

            “I need to help these people,” Arva told the lovers.

            “We’ll come with you,” Sanura said quickly.

            Behind her, Celeres nodded solemnly.

            They rode briskly through the village, Sonnig riding pillion behind the Cheldean. When they reached a well worn track past the houses, Arva urged them into a trot. In ten minutes, they arrived at a cottage with a monstrous oak in front of it. If it ever fell on the house, the tree would flatten it to the ground. Behind the house was a barn and cleared land filled with crops and livestock. A man was standing at the entrance of the barn, his clothes muddy from the morning farm work. He hurried to meet them when they rode into the yard.

            “On. Arva! Bless Maand, you’re here,” said the man as he ran up.

            “Hello, Bilten. Sonnig said there was something wrong with Urlaub,” Arva said as he dismounted.

            “Aye, honorable. Something flew overhead three days ago and scared all the livestock into the woods. We had to go out and round them up. Had to split up to find them all. When Urlaub didn’t come back leading some animals like everyone else, we went looking for him. Found him. Not a mark on him, but he was out. Haven’t been able to wake him since. He ain’t ate or drank either, honorable, and if something ain’t done, that’ll kill him. Can you do anything for him?” the farmer’s voice cracked with worry.

            “Possibly. I need to see him, first,” Arva said, opening the door to the cottage.

            “Of course, honorable,” Bilten said.

            “Chadder, stay with the antelopes,” the Cheldean ordered.

            “Yes, boss.”

            Inside, Bilten’s wife, Rille, greeted the Cheldean’s arrival with sobs and a desperate hug. After a brief attempt to calm the despairing woman, Arva handed her over to Sonnig and followed Bilten to one of the bedrooms.

            The farmer’s young son lay within on a bed, his blue skin an unhealthy shade that was far too pale. His cheeks had all but sunk into his skull, and his eyes bulged distressingly behind their lids. His family has almost buried the boy in blankets to try and fight the shivers that sporadically coursed through his body.

            Arva leaned over the boy, listening to his breath and opening the lids to peer into his eyes. The Cheldean stripped off the blankets and carefully examined the boy’s skin all the way down to his feet. He even peered between the toes and scrapped under the toenails with a fine wooden probe. Finally, the Cheldean chanted over the boy. A slow, steady stream of sharp consonants rolled of his tongue, driving through the air in quiet puffs of power.

            Sanura listened to the performance intently, fascinated by the sounds. On the edge of her consciousness, she could almost sense the true power masked by those noises. That compelling sense of hidden meanings doubled when Arva’s voice split in two. The soldier futilely tried to match the multiple voices coming from the Cheldean with the motions of his mouth. She eventually gave up, deciding that neither of the two voices that Arva was producing originated directly from his lips. She wondered at the proxy used to perform such a trick.

            After a few minutes, Arva stepped back and dragged the sweat from his eyebrows with the back of his hand. The sound of his chanting perversely persisted for several moments after he closed his mouth.

            When he opened it again, his normal single voice emerged. “He’s been infected by a prellung flyer. There isn’t much Urlaub could have done to avoid it once it was close enough. It should not have been anywhere near this area. They live too deep in the forest to get a chance to bother humans.”

            “What are you going to do?” Celeres asked.

            “We are going to remove it, of course. Stay here. I need to get something from my pack.”

            With that, Arva slipped out of the room, leaving the three adults to exchange questioning glances.

            “We?” Celeres asked.

            Before anyone could begin to answer him, Arva swept back into the room. Sanura had half-expected him to return carrying incense and rattles and long elaborate robes. She was oddly disappointed to find he had brought only a handkerchief in one hand and a dagger in the other. The dagger was placed on the young boy’s chest. Arva tucked the handkerchief up a sleeve and motioned for the others to gather around Urlaub.

            “This isn’t going to be easy on the boy,” the Cheldean said. “I’m going to need you to hold him down while we expel the prellung. First, I need to protect the four of us. Are you ready?”

            The three adults nodded with varying amounts of confidence.

            Arva began another chant. This one quickly split into two voices, and then added a third that sang a melody over the others. Again, Sanura was struck by the veiled truths masked by the sounds. Watching Bilten’s face as Arva matched his gaze, Sanura thought she could see a second set of colors distorting her view. When the Cheldean turned the proxy onto her, the soldier realized she was not seeing those colors just with her eyes. Somewhere within her, a different sense was being used that she never knew she had. With no frame of reference for the sensations, her mind was translating it into something she could recognize. Sanura marveled at the not-colors sweeping over her, wondering at the odd sensation. When Arva’s song shifted to Celeres, Sanura found she could still sense the not-colors, but only as dim shadows of the wild rainbow that had washed over her.

            When he finished with the adults, Arva left for a moment to get a drink of water, then returned to sing over Urlaub. Sanura could dimly see the song settled not on the boy, as she had expected, but on the dagger on his chest. Cautiously, she joined Celeres in holding the boy’s legs, waiting minute after minute for spasms that failed to manifest. At Urlaub’s left arm, Bilten clutched his son’s limb and glanced nervously between the Cheldean and the lovers, waiting for something to happen.

            After a quarter of an hour, Arva’s chanting trailed off. He stood quietly for a minute with his eyes closed, then gave himself a little shake.

            “Now,” he said after taking a sip of water, “We begin the real work. I’ve cast proxies to provide all of us with some protection from the creature. They aren’t perfect. The prellung can break through them if it has enough time to work on them. I can drive it away if I have to, but it may settle down closer to the road and human habitation than I’m really comfortable with. It would only be a matter of time before it infected someone else like it did Urlaub. There will be a brief period after the prellung is expelled from the boy where it will still be in the room. I’m going to be busy repairing some of the damage done to Urlaub, so I won’t be able to drive it away until I’m finished. It will probably try to attack one of you to serve as its new host but shouldn’t be able to break your protections before I’m ready to deal with it. Still, we’re not going to take chances, and that is what the dagger is for. Sanura, you’re going to be wielding the blade. Stab the beast if you can. At the very least, keep it off of the rest of us. Bilten and Celeres, the three of us will be holding Urlaub down to keep him from hurting himself. Everyone got that?”

            Celeres and Bilten grimly resumed their grip on the boy’s limbs.

            Sanura took the dagger and stood alert, waiting for any sign of her target. Arva took the boy’s right arm and resumed singing. Again he produced three distinct voice, this time with one chanting and the other two producing soaring melodies that fought each other for dominance in power.

            Urlaub twitched. The men tightened their grips, waiting. The boy twitched again then bucked, fighting to free himself from their grasp. His eyes snapped open and a strangled howling ripped out from his mouth. Bilten blanched, but resolutely held onto his son. Celeres had collapsed under the boy’s vicious kicks. Now he lay on top of the legs, using all of his weight to reduce the attacks to a mere squirming of limbs.

            Sanura almost missed the emergence of the prellung flyer. With all the boy’s howling, she had expected it to leap from his lips as Thacker had from Celeres. Instead, it rose from his chest like a bird trying to pull itself out of the muck at the bottom of a swamp. In normal sight, it actually resembled Thacker, being little more than a distortion of light. In her newly discovered second-sight, the prellung glowed with a sickly not-yellow glow. Its wings popped up, one and the other, before its narrow body pulled itself out of Urlaub’s chest.

            Belatedly, Sanura lunged at it. It jerked out of the way of the dagger, twisting to avoid her second and third strikes. It launched itself at Bilten, only to dodge aside as Sanura warded it off with the dagger. Frustrated, it leapt up to the ceiling and flew over Arva toward the door to the kitchen.

            Horrified, Sanura realized that Sonnig and Rille lay beyond the door, unprotected by Arva’s proxies. She flipped the dagger over and threw it, sinking it deep into the body of the prellung. The flyer collapsed, following the dagger down to clatter on the ground. With her second-sight, Sanura watched the weapon suck the beast into blade, driving the metal into a white-hot glow. In a few seconds, the prellung and the glow were gone, leaving only the mundane looking dagger behind.

            Arva’s singing continued unabated, although the melodies no longer fought each other. Now they flowed in an odd dance, completing each other in a most compelling way. The Cheldean drove them to a peak and then brought them down, ending the song in a whisper suggesting promises and hopes. Then Arva collapsed to sit on the floor.     

            Celeres pushed himself up, marveling at the change in the boy. Where before he was as pale as the foggy eye of a dead fish, now his skin was the deep blue of a clear fireheight day. He no longer looked deathly thin. Indeed, he appeared as hearty as any young boy in a deep sleep.

            “He should wake up in a couple of hours,” Arva said, looking distractedly at the dagger nearby on the floor.

            “Bless you, honorable. We can’t thank you enough. If you hadn’t come when you had, I don’t now what would have happened,” Bilten said gratefully.

            “I do,” Arva said. “One of our trainees would have been through in the next week, and she would have taken care of it. Urlaub would be longer in recovery and the prellung might have escaped, but things like this are the reason we patrol the road.” The Cheldean pulled out the handkerchief and snaked with it out to pick up the dagger.

            “How can we repay you?” the farmer asked.

            “It’s paid for by the tithe to the college, On. Bilten,” he said, wrapping the dagger carefully in the cloth.

            Mother Rille burst into the room, sweeping aside any further conversation in a wave of joyful tears and incoherent cries of relief. Even by speaking firmly and commanding every bit of respect for his station, it still took Arva almost a half hour to extract himself from the thankful household. Bilten was the one who actually saw them off; by that point, Rille had turned her attention to their son, who was awake but groggy.
            At the Cheldean’s insistence, Sonnig rode behind Arva as they made their way back to the village. He wanted to interrogate her a bit about what scattered the livestock Urlaub had been chasing down when he ran into the prellung flyer.

            “So, what did happen three days ago, Sonnig?” he asked her.

            “A screamer passed over the village, honorable. Scared everybody nearly to death,” she said diffidently.

            “Screamer?” he prompted.

            “Yes, honorable. It screamed the entire time it was overhead. Almost shook the teeth loose from my head. It knocked most of the nuts off the walnut in front of the general store.”

            “Anybody get a look at it?”

            “No, honorable. Them that were outside said they didn’t see anything, just heard it. Course, it was just a bit before evening, so maybe there wasn’t enough light.”

            “Huh.”

            “That sounds like what passed over us by the lake,” Celeres chimed in.

            “Yeah, but it was headed straight west. We’re further south than we were,” Sanura added.

            “Which way did it come through the village, Sonnig?” the Cheldean asked.

            “Started out by Makka’s farm and passed over Zyla’s house while it was leaving.”

            “Southwest, then. Must have changed direction after you two ran into it.”

            “Could it have been the prellung flyer? I mean, I could barely see that thing when it came out of the boy. Well, sort of,” Sanura said.

            “No. They don’t have the power to do something like that. They’re basically just parasites. Most things can live for a long time with one attached; humans are unusual with how fast a prellung burns them out. So, no, the screamer had to be something else.”

            “What?” Celeres asked.

            “I don’t know. One more mystery to be explored,” Arva said, grinning like a child with the world’s best hatching day present.