"I will serve the defense of our people and the honor of the Anmaglahk."

Sgaile flipped both blades, catching their tips. As he held out the stilettos, Osha lifted his head.

Osha's large wide eyes filled with relief, but his hands shook as they closed on the offered hilts.

"It is a great privilege," he whispered, and stood up, unsteady on his feet.

At Sgaile's silence, Osha bowed once, turning toward the city. Sgaile fell in beside his one and only student.

Something struck Chane's leg hard, jerking him awake. He lay by the hearth in the monastery's entryway, and Welstiel stood over him.

"Time to feed them…," Welstiel said. "Just a morsel to fight over."

Chane did not like the sound of this.

"Search the front passage," Welstiel ordered, heading for the stairs. "We need something to bind any resistant candidates."

Still groggy from dormancy, Chane watched Welstiel disappear above. He snatched a burning stick from the hearth for light and walked down the front passage.

Small storage rooms lined the hallway, each containing varied items from barrels of dried goods to stacks of blankets and clothing. He saw little of interest until he passed through a doorless opening at the far end, which led into a larger room.

Long, low tables were bordered by benches instead of chairs-a communal meal hall. Tall, unlit lanterns decorated each table. He picked one up, lifting its glass to light the wick with his smoldering stick.

He spotted another door in the far back corner and approached to crack it open. Beyond it, he found a kitchen and scullery, neither likely to have any rope, so he turned away, intent upon scavenging further among the outer storerooms. Before he got two steps, he paused.

A sheaf of papers bound between plain wood planks lay on a rear table.

Part of Chane did not want to learn any more of this place, but curiosity held him there. He jerked the sheaf's leather lace, slid aside the top wood panel, and stared at more strange writing.

Old Stravinan-but mixed with other languages, each passage apparently written by a different author, and with a date above each entry. He flipped through several sheets, finding headings in Belaskian and contemporary Stravinan.

The entries he could read appeared to be notes regarding treatment of the ill and injured. One set of scribbles explained efforts against a lung ailment spreading through several villages in a Warland province. In places, the notes went beyond accounting, with detailed observations of what had been tried and failed, or had succeeded in caring for the ailing. In some cases, the authors had stated or suggested conclusions concerning future remedies.

Chane was reading the field notes of healers.

He shoved sheets aside, scattering them as he paged toward the stack's bottom. Entry dates below names and places only went back seven years. Yet this place was far older than that. So where had this sheaf come from, and were there more?

He had already been gone too long. Welstiel would grow agitated by the delay. He had no more time to search.

Chane hurried to the storerooms. Finding a stack of blankets, he tore one into strips and sprinted for the stairwell to the second floor.

Welstiel stood scowling with impatience before the first door on the right-the doors of the living. With a sharp jerk, he pulled the wood shard from the handle and opened it. Three monks cowered inside.

"Why are you doing this?" an elderly man asked in Stravinan. "What do you want with us?"

White-peppered stubble shadowed his jaw, though he did not look so old. Welstiel ignored him, turning his eyes on the other two in the cell. Both were male and younger than their vocal companion. Welstiel stepped in and snatched one by the neck of his robe.

The young man tried to pull Welstiel's fingers apart, but his attempt to dislodge the grip was futile.

"Where are you taking him?" demanded the elder, rising up.

Welstiel slammed his free palm into the man's face.

The elderly monk toppled, one leg swinging from under him as he fell against a narrow, disheveled bed. The other young one scrambled away into the room's far corner.

Chane took half a step toward Welstiel's back, then choked down the sudden anger he couldn't understand. He held his ground as Welstiel wheeled and flung the one he was choking into the passage.

The young monk tumbled across the floor, slamming against the stone wall between the first two iron-barred doors. A flurry of screeching and battering rose up beyond both those portals.

"Bind him!" Welstiel snapped, and slammed the door shut on the remaining two monks, returning the wood shard to its handle. "I want no excess difficulty when we take him away from those we feed."

Chane did not understand what this meant, but he fell on the groveling young monk, pinning him facedown and pulling the man's arms back to tie his wrists.

"No, please!" the man shouted. "Whatever you want, I will give you! Violence is not our way!"

Chane hardened himself against the young man's pleas and declaration- as anyone who refused to fight for his own life disgusted him.

"Gag him as well," Welstiel ordered. "I do not want him speaking to his lost companions awaiting him."

Chane wrapped a blanket strip three times around the young man's head and pulled it tight. An iron bar scraped free of a door handle. Chane whirled about in panic as he heard Welstiel shout.

"Get back! Both of you!"

Welstiel stood before the open door, his face twisted in a grimace as he hissed. Chane stepped along the middle of the passage, peering around Welstiel.

The door's inner surface was stained and splintered, as if gouging claws had left dark smeared trails. A pool of viscous black fluid had congealed on the cell's floor. One monk lay in the mess, or what was left of her.

Her throat was a shredded mass, and her robe and undergarments had been ripped into tatters, exposing pale skin slashed and torn down to sinew. Worse still, she tried to move. Her head lolled toward the door, and her colorless crystalline eyes opened wide at Welstiel, not in fright or pain but in hunger.

Her expression filled with bloodlust that echoed in Chane as he stared at her. Her mouth opened, her own black fluids dribbling out its corner.

Two others crouched beyond her, one upon the spattered bed and the other behind a tiny side table, clinging to one of its stout wooden legs. Both shuddered continuously, muscles spasming, as if they wanted to rise but could not.

Chane knew that state well. He had felt the same struggle against the commands of his own maker, Toret.

Their glittering eyes, set deep in pale and spatter-marked faces, were locked on Welstiel. And their black-stained lips quivered with soft animal mewling.

"Take a long look, Chane," Welstiel whispered. "Look upon yourself! This is what you are, deep inside-a beast hiding beneath a masquerade of intellect. Remember this… with your one foot always poised upon the Feral Path. It is your choice whether or not to succumb and follow them. Now bring me the food."

Those words cut through Chane's rapt fixation on the cell's inhabitants. He reached down with one hand and jerked up the bound monk.

The young man made one attempt to struggle, but his whole body locked up at what he saw in the cell.

Welstiel ripped the monk from Chane's grip and shoved the man inside. The monk toppled, hitting the floor, and immediately tried to wriggle back toward the door. Welstiel lifted a foot and shoved him back.

"Feed," he commanded.

The two monks still functional leaped upon their living comrade.

Both made for his throat. The larger male slashed the smaller one's face, driving him off, then wrapped straining fingers across the living monk's face and pulled his jaw upward. A high-pitched scream filled the stone cell, muffled by the victim's gag. The sound broke into chokes as the large male's teeth sank into the squirming monk's throat.