"You said it looked wrong," he whispered to Magiere. "Do you mean compared to your dreams?"

"Older," she answered. "What I saw was sound and clean, even in the snow and ice."

"Maybe you saw it from the past?" he asked. "Through the eyes of who… whatever guided you here."

Magiere closed on one pillar and sniffed sharply.

"Pull out the amulet," Sgaile whispered.

"It won't be much use for tracking this close," Leesil answered.

"For its light," Sgaile insisted. "There is something wrong with these walls."

Magiere's gaze wandered as she sniffed again, and this time her nose wrinkled.

Leesil pulled the amulet out. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head. "Something familiar but… I'm not sure. Thin- and all around."

Osha watched her intently. "Wynn? Or Chap?"

"No," Magiere answered.

Sgaile tapped Leesil's shoulder. "Come."

He stepped around the first left pillar toward the wall beyond. Leesil followed, and his gaze fell on a patch of stone etched by decay. The amulet's light spilled across it, but the roughened age didn't vanish.

It became a wild patch of worn and faded black writing scattered along the wall.

Some crude implement had been used for the rough strokes, and even so, Leesil couldn't make out what it said. Once or twice he spotted Belaskian lettering, or something like it, but the characters didn't spell out words he recognized.

"Elven… and some Sumanese, I believe," Sgaile whispered. He crouched low, his fingers tracing a wandering line. "Here… and again, but not words in my people's language."

"More here," Osha called.

Leesil spotted him near the next pillar down the wall. The young elf lifted his gaze up the stone wall.

"More above," Osha whispered, and he looked to a height no person could have reached.

Magiere pushed in beside Leesil, flattening her hand upon the writing. She sniffed again and shuddered in revulsion.

Sgaile watched her. "What are you doing?"

"Magiere?" Leesil whispered.

Her eyes moved across the gibberish on the walls. She pressed her face even closer to the stone and inhaled deeply.

Magiere spun away, choking as she stumbled in the open corridor. She reached for her falchion and cast about, as if looking for a threat.

"Blood," she whispered. "From one of them… written with its blood!"

Osha lunged backward into the open corridor.

"What nonsense do you speak?" Sgaile asked Magiere. "This is not blood."

Leesil grabbed Sgaile's tunic shoulder and pulled him up. "Not from the living-from the dead… undead… the ones we've fought, the vampires, their fluids are black."

Both he and Sgaile backed away.

"I can smell it," Magiere hissed. "Faint… but everywhere."

"Who do such sick writing?" Osha asked.

Leesil remembered that an'Croan were repulsed by any mutilation of the dead. Even he didn't want to imagine how this demented practice had been accomplished.

"Is there harm in touching it?" Sgaile asked.

Leesil shook his head. "Not that we've experienced. But let's move on."

He turned down the long corridor with Magiere close beside him. They stuck to the center between the pillars.

Farther on, they spotted a massive archway straight ahead, shaped in a peaked echo of the iron doors and the outer gates. Its frame stones were rounded and smooth but unadorned, and through the opening lay a wide stone stairway leading to upper floors. As they stepped through the arch, narrow passages stretched into the dark on the left and right.

"No central hall," Sgaile said. "No main meeting or feasting place."

"What?" Leesil asked.

"Human fortifications usually have a main hall from the entrance, where visitors are greeted and formal meals are held. But not here-this place is strangely built."

"It wasn't made for the living," Magiere said, looking down one side passage. "The dead don't take in visitors or host feasts."

Leesil thought he saw a flicker in the dim side passage beyond Magiere. Then it was gone, and he turned away.

Magiere suddenly flipped the falchion between her hands. She ripped off her coat and let it fall.

A mute shape, darker than a shadow, sailed toward them through the dark air in the side passage.

Leesil quickly shed his coat. He'd barely separated his blades back into both hands when the darting shadow shot into the stairway chamber. It rose higher… and spread into a set of wings.

An enormous black raven wheeled in the chamber's heights. It tucked wings and began to fall. When it spread out again at the bottom of its diving arc, Leesil saw the landing of the stairs behind it-through it-in the amulet's light. He remembered Ubad's ghostly guardians in the Apudalsat forest.

The black winged shadow leveled straight at Osha.

"Don't let it hit you!" Leesil shouted.

Another shadow shot out of the passage, rising behind its falling twin.

He raised his blades out, fanning them in the air as he shouted, "Here!"

As Osha dodged away, the first shadow raven swerved toward Leesil. He dropped and rolled forward beneath the bird's dive.

It slammed into the archway's wall and vanished.

Leesil heard the flutter of wings out in the pillared corridor, and the second raven flew at Sgaile. At the last instant, Sgaile lunged aside, out of its way.

"Stay off the stairs and in the open!" Magiere shouted. "Don't get penned in."

An eerie caw sounded loudly, and Leesil saw the first bird coming in low along the pillared corridor. When it neared the peaked archway, the amulet's light seemed to shine upon its black feathers.

Magiere stepped into its path.

Leesil went cold with panic, but the raven stalled, wheeling up in a flutter of wings.

"We need light!" Sgaile shouted.

Leesil spun about, still uncertain what Magiere was doing. The amulet's light turned with him, spreading over the chamber and stairs. He spotted the second raven diving along the central stairway, straight for Sgaile's back.

"Down!" he shouted.

Sgaile dropped flat, and the raven passed an arm's length above him. It swerved suddenly, straight at Leesil's face.

He had no defense against something that could pass through solid walls and threw himself aside. His shoulder hit the floor, and his hauberk's rings grated along the cold stone. As he rolled, he grabbed the amulet's leather cord, trying not to stab himself with his own blade. The cord snapped, and he cast the amulet to the chamber's center for light. Then he saw Magiere.

She turned to face the bird swerving toward her and just stood there, waiting before the archway. Her arms opened wide, as if challenging the thing coming at her.

"Magiere!" Leesil shouted.

She whipped her arms together and under as the second raven darted for her chest. And her falchion swiped upward.

The tip's arc caught the bird, dead center. A screech filled the chamber as it exploded into smoke.

Trails of sooty vapors blasted around Magiere, driven by the bird's momentum. They collected beyond her, smoke gathering again into the raven's form. It shot out the peaked archway as its twin dove in from the corridor.

The first shadow raven slammed into Magiere's back.

She buckled as it shot out her chest and rose up the center stairs. Sgaile's eyes widened at the sight just before he had to duck away from the bird's passing.

A rumbling growl escaped Magiere's mouth as she straightened.

Leesil took a shaky breath. These things had no more effect upon her than did the ghosts of Apudalsat.

"How?" Osha cried out from where he crouched by the archway's near side.

"She can't be hurt by such things," Leesil shouted. "But we can, so watch yourself!"

The first raven turned for another pass. Magiere couldn't get her blade up in time. She swung at it with her free hand as the amulet's light glimmered on the bird's form.