Chap lunged to the plateau's edge before it vanished, reaching for any memories he might catch.

Fire erupted in his mind.

It burned through Chap until he felt only stinging pain, and the cavern vanished before his eyes in a flash of searing white.

Leesil scrambled toward Magiere as Chap's piercing yelp struck his ears.

The dog fell twitching upon the stone. Chap's prone form shuddered and writhed as if he were trying to thrash free of something.

Leesil closed on Magiere and grabbed the back of her hauberk, but when he reached out for Chap, the dog lay too far off. He flipped Magiere over, put his ear close to her mouth, and heard her low breaths. She was alive, but Chap's piercing whimpers continued. Leesil went for the dog, and a hand snatched his shoulder, jerking him back.

"I will get him," Sgaile shouted. "Gather Magiere's gifts and take her out!"

"What's wrong with Chap?" Magiere whispered.

Leesil swung around to find her eyes barely open.

He didn't mind that Sgaile told him what to do. He wasn't even interested in the strange objects lying beside Magiere. All that mattered was getting her and Chap out of this place, before he collapsed from the heat as well.

"I don't know," he answered, and snatched up the earthy golden loop and the hiltless blade. "Sgaile will bring him."

Leesil hooked the loop over one shoulder, holding the dagger along with his new blades under the same arm. He hoisted Magiere, slipping her arm around his neck, and wrapped his free hand around her waist. Neither of them looked back as they hobbled toward the passage and the stone steps.

Sgaile dropped beside Chap's whimpering form, and his knees ground harshly on the stone. He grabbed hold of the dog, whispering over and over, "Ancestors, protect him… I beg you!"

Chap squirmed wildly, and he was heavier than anticipated. Twice Sgaile shifted his grip until he finally gathered the dog in his arms. The intense heat had no power against the pain of Sgaile's guilt.

He had brought outsiders before the Chein'as. He had brought a pale-skinned predator to this place, and watched as she was "gifted" along with Leshil. And now Chap-who was touched with the ancient Spirit-had fallen in agony. And Sgaile could not fathom any of this.

All because he could not refuse Brot'an'duive.

Each day brought more confusion and cast him into impossible circumstances, until he could do little more than cling blindly to his faith. But he could not bear it if this ancient spirit died in his arms.

"Please, be still," Sgaile whispered in Chap's ear, heaving the dog up and running for the passage.

Chap's bones became coals searing his flesh from within. All around, fire and glowing hot stone half-blinded him. Agony in his heart and mind rose from this stolen memory of the small black visitor from the chasm.

He saw others of its kind who crawled and scampered among mounds of smoking stone surrounding a molten river. Some swam within the orange fluid, small blackened creatures in a wide sluggish stream almost too bright to look upon.

Lost in the memory, Chap saw his own dark and leathery hands. Spindly fingers ended in glossy black claws that caressed the hot ledge on which he crouched.

Please, be still.

The words came like a whisper from somewhere inside of Chap, and his pain began to dwindle, until he felt only the pleasant heat under his black hands and feet.

Then fear rose at the creatures' metallic wails.

Small ebony bodies raced and leaped about the chasm like rodents scattering along an alley to hide. The fissure's charred and smoking walls undulated faintly, becoming roiling black. Soft points of light emerged and flowed across them. Chap lost focus as something new caught his eyes.

It-he-floated in the heat-rippled air above the molten river. The air churned in whirling white-gray about the figure drifting forward.

The surface of his long, hooded robe swirled like oil, and the molten river's red light shimmered on the faint symbols scripted upon its folds. The upper half of the face within the hood was covered by a mask of aged leather that ended above a withered mouth and emaciated chin.

The mask had no eye slits, but the decrepit figure twitched its head about, watching the small black ones flee in terror.

Chap's own memory overlaid the stolen one, and he tasted flesh and blood in his teeth.

Ubad, mad necromancer and engineer of Magiere's birth, floated in an airy vessel made from his enslaved spirits. Pieces of that wispy gray-white globe peeled away in ribbons that dove and harried the fleeing figures. And one struck true.

A small black body screeched in torment as one of Ubad's spirits passed through its gaunt chest. Ubad descended and snatched it by the neck.

Chap leaped forward upon black hands and feet.

He bounded from one stone to the next along the river's shore, trying to close on Ubad. The dark-robed madman began to rise upward in his spirit cocoon, lifting into hot air. Chap clawed his way up the fissure wall and leaped outward.

No, the visitor leaped for its captured kin.

Chap relived the black visitor's memory, as it had tried to reach the one Ubad seized-the one who had been butchered in the keep of Magiere's father to make her birth possible. His black hands caught in the necromancer's robe.

Ubad's face turned downward as he squeezed his captive in his bony grip. His vaporous shell began to turn in a vortex around Chap's narrow black arms.

Intense cold ate away all the heat in Chap's body.

Chap's grip broke from the robe as a metallic scream tore from his throat. And he was falling.

Awaken… please do not die… come back to me!

Another whisper echoed inside of him. He heard it an instant before his spindly black body hit the scorching molten river.

Chap opened his eyes with a convulsive shudder.

He stared into amber eyes sunk deep in a dark-skinned face coated with sweat.

Sgaile sighed raggedly. His head drooped for an instant before he turned on his knees to look the other way.

"He is awake!" Sgaile called.

Chap saw the world tilted sideways where he lay with his head resting on a smooth stone floor. His vision was blurred, but he made out a silver metal oval. The doors were closed, sealing off the passage to the burning chasm below. They were back in the entrance cavern far above.

"How fares Magiere?" Sgaile asked.

Leesil half-sat, half-lay behind her, his arm wrapped around her waist. She breathed in long slow gasps, but her eyes opened now and again.

"She'll make it," Leesil said. "But we need more water for both of them. And we should head further up, out of this heat."

Sgaile nodded agreement. He dug into his pack and pulled out a water bottle. At his shift of position, Chap spotted the pile of metal items on the floor halfway to Magiere and Leesil. His gaze slowly cleared, until he made out the twin winged blades, the hiltless dagger, and the strange arc of earthy golden metal. The last item troubled him most, but he focused on the dagger.

He and his companions had stumbled upon another of the lost races- the uirishg-one of five nonhuman species that were thought to be but a myth.

Like the seyilf at Magiere's trial, that one chein'as upon the plateau had known Magiere and perhaps mistook her for some strangely formed kin. It had brought her tokens-or was there more to those gifts?

The visitor had seen one of its own taken long ago, and knew its lost companion would never return. Was that dagger a token of recognition for the shared blood that had been spilled at Magiere's conception?

Or was it a plea for vengeance?

One that the little visitor, or all the Chein'as, could never gain for themselves, locked away in the searing depths of the earth.