Magiere gazed out across the lake.

"Don't light the lanterns yet," Leesil warned. "They might be seen from the ramparts. Moonlight will serve us for now."

Emel frowned. "What exactly are we looking for?"

When Leesil didn't answer, Magiere began with her own questions. "How could any escape route from the keep allow Lady Progae to cross the lake? Would there be a boat hidden in the lower levels, something small that might go unnoticed? Chat won't help us get in, not until she's already out.'

Byrd shook his head. "Too risky. Any escape route in case a siege breached the defenses would have to provide protection for those fleeing. If an enemy force took the keep, their own archers could pick off those in flight across the lake. No, it has to be something created when the keep was built, back in the days of King Timeron."

Leesil approached the lake, and Magiere watched him stare at the water, lost in thought.

"Not across it," he whispered, watching the soft ripples of water. "But under it."

"What nonsense have you got in your head?" Byrd asked.

"The keep was built on a flat depression in the land," Leesil answered. "The lake came afterward."

Magiere didn't follow this. "No one could swim the lake all the way underwater, and especially in the cold."

"That's not what I meant," Leesil replied.

"Oh, bloody deities," Byrd whispered.

Magiere was about to tell him to shut his mouth, but Byrd stared at the water with Lees ills same knowing expression.

"If the keep was here before the lake," Leesil continued, "then what else might Timeron have built down there, hidden beneath the water?"

Byrd shook his head slowly. "It's been right here in front me… all these years of searching."

"A passage?" Magiere asked. "Under the lake?"

Leesil didn't even nod. "We have to get in the water and search below the surface."

Emel finally joined in. "If it is under the lakebed, what could we possibly find?"

Leesil cast a scowl toward the baron but remained civil in his reply. "Anything that would hold up under that water over decades would have to be strongly reinforced. I wouldn't bury it, since flooded water would hide it well enough. And I'd make it out of thick stone that wouldn't decay."

"Yes, but this winter is so…" Byrd paused, at a loss, looking at the thin ice over the lake's edge. "All right, we'll try it."

They all began stripping off gear, and Leesil was chosen to stay onshore to watch their weapons. Magiere stepped into the lake, its fringe ice cracking as her boots sank into the water. Byrd and Emel followed.

Icy cold burrowed into her legs before the water even topped her boots. Both Byrd and Emel began panting quickly as they too felt the cold. She'd expected the water to be bitter, but it was on the verge of freezing. She stepped back out as her toes became numb.

"This is insane," Emel said. "Even if we find something, we will not be fit to breach the keep if we are half-dead with cold."

Leesil stepped past Magiere into the water. He hurried back out, bending to rest his hands on his knees with a moan of frustration. When he looked up at Magiere, there was more doubt in his face than discomfort.

"When you're in… your other state," he asked, "do you feel the cold as much?"

Magiere didn't like where he was going with this. "Not as much, sometimes not at… But I can't just make it happen. That level of… hunger… it has to start, before I can do anything with it."

"Then think or something-anything that gets to you." He grabbed her forearm. "Wynn is in that keep, and the rest of us don't stand half the chance you might in that water. You have to try.'

It wasn't that he was asking her to do something difficult. Magiere would do anything for him. He was asking something she didn't know how to do.

"Remember the schooner to Bela," he said, cocking one white eyebrow. "You gave me com to buy wine, because I was seasick, and I lost it all gambling with sailors. Then you got attacked by thugs, and I was so drunk that…"

Magiere crossed her arms and glared at him. Yes, and it was still one of the stupidest things he'd ever done, but not exactly the kind of thing that would accomplish what he asked of her.

"What?" Emel asked blankly, and looked at Byrd. "What has this to do with anything?"

Byrd shook his head and threw up his hands in disgust. "Why are you asking me? Leesil-"

Leesil shot him an angry glare, and Byrd rolled his eyes, grumbling under his breath.

"This isn't going to work," Magiere said.

Chap loped over, his long, silver-blue fur glinting in the moonlight. His crystalline eyes locked on hers. She felt a tickling at the edge of her thoughts.

Memories began to surface.

The dark world around her flashed white, as if someone had shoved a torch in front of her eyes. She blinked hard to shield her vision.

And there she saw the graveyard of Chemestuk, her home village. The memory was so strong, it blocked out the lake and forest around her for the moment.

Adryan had hated her since childhood, whispering his lies to the other villagers. They'd shunned her, tormented her, and she'd grown up alone but for Aunt Bieja. She saw Adryan's greasy black hair and scarred face as he swung an iron-shod staff in his madness and spite. And she was afraid of him, as she scurried across the damp ground of the graveyard.

Hunger boiled in Magiere's stomach, and rage heated her flesh. She grabbed for her falchion, but it wasn't there.

The night sharpened as her sight expanded. The ache in her jaws brought tears to her eyes. She kept her lips tightly pressed together.

Adryan wasn't truly there, and she wanted something to kill.

"Hold on to it," Leesil ordered, "but don't let it take you. You take it instead. I'm right here with you, always, and Wynn needs us."

Chap's summoned memory of Adryan faded, and Magiere saw only Leesil's narrow face. His hair burned with moonlight, and his amber irises were two suns that pained her eyes. But this was a pain she wanted, and it made her long for him. She clung to his presence, holding him in her awareness against the hunger burning up her throat.

Magiere looked to the lake. She tore at the hauberk with her fingers, and Leesil stepped close to help. He barely had it off of her as Magiere stepped into the water.

"What is she doing?" Emel said, and stepped toward her. "The lake is too cold."

Magiere pivoted toward him and tensed, waiting to see if this were some thing she could fight.

"Get back!" Leesil warned, and shoved Emel away. "Magiere?"

She snapped her head toward him. His face brought clarity again. She nodded and stepped farther out, water rising past her waist and up her rib cage. The wet feeling left a distant sting upon her skin. It balanced the hunger, and she waded in until the water lapped over her shoulders.

"I'm right here," Leesil called. "Don't go under until you're ready."

Magiere kept moving, listening to Leesil's voice. She let hunger stay with her, stronger than she'd ever allowed it by choice.

"Has she found anything yet?" Byrd asked from a distance.

"It has been too long," came Em el's voice. "Get her out of there. She is in danger."

A slight wave of cold passed through Magiere.

Had it been a long time? She shut out their voices. There was only Leesil, and hunger, and Wynn waiting. The cold passed away, and she took another step.

Her boot scraped across something hard. A boulder in the lake bottom?

Magiere let Adryan's face return… then the image of Welstiel stand-ing over her mother's bed, watching Magelia bleed to death… and Chane stalking them into the Apudalsat forest.

Rage spread the hunger into her limbs, until she felt its heat in her face. She dove under, her night sight fully open.