"Wait!" Leesil called to her. "Don't move!"

Magiere thrashed about, pacing the ridge's narrow top, and an anguished whine escaped her mouth. It turned into a screeching snarl that echoed down the ridge.

Sgaile stopped cold and glanced over his shoulder at Leesil.

"Just get up there," Leesil urged.

Sgaile pushed on, and Leesil noticed a flattened roll of canvas strapped to his back, along with Magiere's sheathed falchion.

The jostle of running had shifted the bundle, and the winged tip of one of Leesil's old punching blades peeked out the bottom. Sgaile crested the ridge, and Leesil scrambled over the top, rising to his feet beside Magiere.

Her breath came in vibrating hisses between clenched teeth. Leesil followed her fixed gaze into the distance and his eyes widened.

A vast plain lay trapped in a ring of distant high mountains. Its snow was a pure blanket of undisturbed white. And resting amid that smooth perfection was the shape of a multitowered castle. Even at a distance, its size seemed impossible, like a gray sentinel guarding the empty quiet of the sunken plateau. The castle itself almost seemed an illusion, sitting in this barren place at the top of the world.

"Is that it?" he asked, finding his voice. "The one you've been seeing?"

"Yes," Magiere hissed. She back-stepped once downslope, watching him in anticipation.

Leesil scanned the plain for any movement, anything out there waiting to intercept them.

"There," Osha said. "Tracks!"

A broken trail led away from the rocky slope's bottom and out across the smooth white snow.

Magiere inched downward, with her eyes still on Leesil.

He flipped the straps on his new winged blades and pulled them.

They didn't yet feel as if they belonged to him. His gloves muted his grip on their handles. But the half-loops of metal, rising partway down the wings, made the blades settle solidly on his forearms.

"Everyone on guard. Whatever took Wynn and Chap"-Leesil glanced sidelong at Sgaile-"and killed your friends… just be ready."

Sgaile made no move to hand Magiere her falchion. He just stood there, watching her.

Leesil wondered if he'd have to put Sgaile down to get the sword back. When he turned to Magiere, her black eyes widened, and they fixed on his chest.

In the waning daylight, Leesil hadn't even noticed. The topaz amulet Magiere had given him was glowing.

He grew worried how the others might respond to this clear warning, but Sgaile didn't even flinch at the amulet's light.

"You told us about the guardian undeads before we left Ghoivne Ajhajhe," Sgaile said, "and something here killed our caste brothers before they could defend themselves." He looked to Magiere. "But I am guardian to your purpose. We will find this artifact you seek-and your friends."

Sgaile's certainty didn't squelch Leesil's worry. He saw nothing but the castle, so what had sparked the stone and Magiere's inner nature from such a distance?

"Go on," he said, and Magiere took off down the slope. "But stay within reach!"

They trudged down and followed the trail of broken snow. The closer they came to the castle, the brighter the amulet glowed. It made Leesil even more nervous, and he tucked it inside his coat collar. He didn't want a beacon announcing their arrival.

They reached a bleached stone wall surrounding the castle grounds.

Leesil hadn't noticed it from the ridge. Magiere turned along it, no longer looking to the trail. Leesil followed farther out from the wall, glancing up over its snow-capped top. The castle loomed in the darkening sky. It looked so old, decrepit and decaying.

Magiere halted before a pair of tall, ornate iron gates. One hung slightly ajar at the bottom from a broken lower hinge, leaving an angled space between them. The snow trail led inward toward a wide rise of stone steps that were strangely free of snow.

"No… birds…," Magiere whispered, and tilted back her head to stare at the high arched peak where the gates joined. "Dif… rent. Wrong… old… broken."

She gripped the rusted iron with both hands and peered through the gates at the castle beyond. Her shoulders hunched, as if she were about to tear the tilting gate from its one remaining hinge. Leesil quickly grabbed her forearm, as Sgaile hissed a warning.

"Do not announce our presence!"

Leesil shook his head. "Whatever is here likely knows someone's coming-it might even have taken Wynn and Chap just to bait us."

Magiere looked expectantly into his eyes, but her gloved hands remained clenched on the gate's bars.

"Push the rage down," Leesil urged. "You got us here… now clear your head."

Magiere's brow wrinkled, almost in a snarl, then smoothed again. She appeared to understand. Her jaw muscles worked, and her tongue passed briefly over her teeth. She inhaled deeply, and her breath hissed out, turning to vapor in the cold air.

"Yes," she whispered, and she straightened up, but her irises remained fully black.

Relieved, Leesil turned to Sgaile. "Welstiel used the term 'old ones, but we don't know how many. Your stilettos won't help. Get out my old blades and give one to Osha."

"No, we have not trained with your weapons," Sgaile answered. He held up his left hand, exposing a garrote's handles, its silvery wire looped about his gloved fingers. "But we can still take heads."

Magiere looked at the wire and nodded in approval. "Good."

Rather than ripping the gate from its hinges, she shoved it, widening the space. Leesil slipped through behind her.

"My sword," Magiere said.

Leesil glanced back, and at Sgaile's hesitation, he growled, "Give it to her!"

Sgaile unstrapped the falchion, and Magiere took it and belted it on. Osha held out the long war dagger before she'd even asked. She slipped it into her belt at the small of her back.

The sun had dipped below the western peaks. Though the sky was still light, deep shadows filled the sunken plateau, enveloping the castle and its grounds. Leesil cursed himself again for losing Wynn in the blizzard. If not for his desperation to find her and Chap, he would insist they all return to camp and wait for dawn before entering this place.

The courtyard's smooth white was broken by massive stones fallen from above ages ago. The first step of the wide stairs sank midway along the seam between two of its stones. They all climbed to the top landing. The large iron doors were etched and discolored-but sound enough to be a problem.

Magiere set her shoulder to one door and shoved. It moved barely an inch.

She was stronger than any of them with her dhampir nature awakened. Through the opening crack, Leesil saw only darkness inside.

"I don't like this," he grumbled. "The door isn't even barred."

"It doesn't have to be," Magiere answered. "Help me."

Sgaile joined Leesil, and they put their own efforts behind Magiere's. And they both flinched at the squeal of rusted metal as the door opened wider. Magiere didn't hesitate to slip through before anyone else.

Leesil followed, with Sgaile and Osha behind, and paused to let his eyes adjust. The temperature was no warmer than outside.

He and Magiere had entered the lairs of Noble Dead before-first Rashed and Teesha's warehouse in Miiska, and then Ratboy's lavish home in Bela. Both times, Leesil had had a sense of something therein, by Teesha's needlepoint and the paintings in Ratboy's townhouse. These false impressions of "life" marked a presence. But as his sight adjusted, he saw no such things here.

Dim twilight slipping through the iron doors offered barely enough illumination for his half-elven eyes. He stood in a long stone corridor wider than the council hall in Bela. Paired rows of pillars the breadth of elven trees stood near to either side wall, and each broadened at the base where it met the floor. The open way between was wide enough for seven armed men to walk freely abreast, and it ran on toward the castle's hidden depths. The walls beyond the pillars were difficult to see, but sections of stone appeared deeply etched by age in random patches.