The white man ducked and hopped to the side, avoiding the blade. She took advantage and shifted the opposite way to get her back away from the river. The man's disturbing laugh echoed off the surrounding trees.

"Poor hunter," he moaned playfully, raising fingers with stained nails and straightening from his crouch.

Magiere took a step back. "I just want the dog. I don't want to hurt you."

He laughed again, eyes half closed until their glow resembled sparkling slashes in his face.

"Of course, you don't," the man said, his voice as hollow as his cheeks.

Then he sprang.

It was the same dream, but this time wine-soaked slumber couldn't wash it away.

Leesil, only twelve years old, squatted on the floor of the dark room beneath his parents' home, listening to his father's lesson.

"Here-" his father pointed to the base of the human skull in his hand-"is where thin straight blades can be applied while the individual is distracted. This will cause instant and silent death in most large-skulled humanoids."

Father rolled the skull over to expose the opening where the spine would have been attached.

"It is a most difficult stroke. If you fail to execute it correctly"-he scowled briefly at Leesil-"a hard side stroke on withdrawal may save you before the target can make any sound. Always use the stiletto or similar thin strong blades for this-never a dagger or knife. Wide blades will jam in the base of the skull, or be deflected by the top vertebrae."

The man stared at his son. A thick, peppered beard hid the lower half of his thin angular face. He held out the skull. Young Leesil looked at it, but mostly noticed how slender and almost delicate his father's hands were, so graceful in everything they did, no matter how vicious.

"Do you understand?" his father asked.

Leesil looked up, the stiletto in his own hand a little too large for a boy. In waking hours, he remembered nodding silently in answer to his father's question, but the dream was always different than memory. He was about to take the bone skull, but hesitated.

"No, Father," young Leesil answered, "I don't understand."

Out of the shadows rose a second figure, seeming to sprout from the dark ground in the corner of the room. She was tall, slightly more so than his father, and delicately slender, with skin the honey-brown of Leesil's own, though smooth and more perfect than any person's he had ever seen. Long hair and narrow, feathery eyebrows glistened pale gold like threads of a sunlit spiderweb. The points of her ears rarely showed from beneath those polished tresses. Her large amber-brown eyes slanted up at the sides, matching the angle of her brows.

"The proper answer is yes, Leesil," she said in her sweet voice, a loving mother's admonishment for misbehavior.

Her eyes looked calmly down at him and made him ache inside for want of pleasing her, even when it made him sick inside to do what she asked.

"Yes, Mother… yes, Father," he whispered. "I understand."

Leesil rolled over in his sleep and moaned, pulled suddenly awake, but uncertain what had interrupted his slumber. For a moment, he was grateful for whatever had roused him. His head hurt from exhaustion and too much wine. He'd drunk too little to block out the dream on this night, yet barely enough to achieve slumber. With his vision blurred, it took several moments for him to realize the camp around him lay empty.

"Magiere?" he called. "Chap?"

There was no answer. Fear began to clear the alcohol daze from his thoughts.

From a distance came a wailing he couldn't call human or animal. Leesil pulled himself to his feet, shoved two stilettos up his sleeves into wrist sheathes, and staggered through the forest toward the sound.

Magiere shifted away again, holding her assailant at bay with short swipes of her blade, which wouldn't break her guard. Her breath was coming harder now from exhaustion, but all her feints and maneuvers hadn't discouraged her opponent. He ducked and dodged each swing, grinning one moment, or letting out a short, cackling laugh as he hopped and danced. Her foot brushed something low to the ground, a bush or a downed branch, and she realized he'd maneuvered her back toward the trees.

Panic rose in her throat. She'd barely managed to keep him at bay, not taking her eyes from him for fear he'd make another leap that she couldn't stop. If she had to concentrate on not losing her footing in the forest, she'd either stumble and fall or, worse, get distracted and lose her guard.

"Hunter, hunter," the white man sang as he leaped to her right, landing in a crouch, all fours poised together. "Come catch your prey!"

Panic became tinged with anger.

Playing his game was a losing battle, and she began to suspect that this fever-maddened villager somehow knew more of her occupation than he should. Still, she preferred to avoid killing him if at all possible. A madman babbling about a charlatan hunter of the dead would be a questionable accuser. A dead body cut down with a sword on the night she'd passed by would raise many questions, perhaps enough for the villagers to insist that the local lord hunt her down. Magiere settled herself, waiting for him to move again and looking for an opening to bludgeon him unconscious with the flat of her blade.

A whining growl came from the riverside, and she remembered Chap tumbling hard to the ground. Reflexively, both Magiere and the man glanced to the side, then back quickly enough to see the other's mistake. He lunged, hooked fingers aimed for her throat. Magiere had no time to think and acted on instinct. She brought the falchion down in a sharp slash.

The claw-hand missed its mark, slamming into her chest. The sword blade smacked against his collarbone. Fingernails scraped across leather armor. Sharp steel slit away tattered cloth and bit into white flesh.

Magiere felt the ground jerked from under her feet as she was knocked backward. Her head and back slammed against a tree trunk, and she tumbled dizzily to the side, landing hard on the ground. Her heart pounded one beat as she waited for the weight of her opponent to land upon her, but it didn't come. Magiere looked up, trying to will her vision to clear.

The white man stood over her. His wide eyes stared down at the shallow wound running across his chest as if the thought of the blade harming him had never entered his thoughts until that moment. Sickly humor vanished as his face twisted into a mask of anger.

"Not possible…" he murmured.

There was no more hope for not killing the man. Magiere tightened her grip and tried to lift the falchion to protect herself. Before she could finish, the man jerked from his stupor and fell upon her. One bony hand grabbed her throat, pinning her neck to the ground. She tried to swing the falchion at his head, but he caught her wrist and smashed it down as well.

"You cannot do this to me," he snarled at her. "Not possible!"

Magiere's vision blurred again as his hand squeezed tighter around her throat.

"You cannot hurt Parko." It was a denial more than anything else.

She could feel the dizziness growing from lack of air. With the spinning of the forest came the sensation of cold seeping into her flesh. The fingers around her throat seemed to squeeze the heat from her body.

Magiere struck out with her free hand, at the oval haze of the man's head. Her fist stopped on impact, and the blow sent a jarring shock through her arm that made her shoulder ache. His head barely moved. She wrapped her hand across the blurred face and pushed as hard as she could.

His flesh felt as unyielding as the bone across which it was stretched, and a cold sensation seeped into her again through her hand.

Terror rose in Magiere as the white face faded completely from view and she knew she was not far from unconsciousness. The cold burrowed deeper until she felt it in her chest, until even her fear wavered and was smothered in the sensation. The chill seeped in from her throat as well, and the wrist of her pinned sword arm.