Raidon began again, "My father is a son of the east, and he raised me in Telflamm, some thirty… nay, forty years ago. But disregard that; I am a resident of Nathlekh. I kept my residence here before the Spellplague. My daughter lives here even now. You cannot deny me entry to my home."

The guard tried to meet Raidon's gaze. And failed. Apparently he was unused to opposition from people in donkey carts. He scowled. "Stay here. I'll get the captain." The man stalked off.

Raidon usually passed as Shou, but sometimes strangers noticed his fey ancestry. His long-absent mother's blood manifest in him only faintly, but was visible to those sensitive to such differences. Raidon's ears were ever so slightly pointed, the shape of his skull was perhaps narrower than other Shou, and his bearing was straight, though no straighter than any other practitioner of Xiang Do. He thought of himself as Shou. Usually, his mother's blood didn't cause any problems… except sometimes among other Shou.

The farmer ventured, "The city folk have seen too many horrors during and after the Year of Blue Fire. They outlawed refugees and fey from entering the city five years ago. Xenophobia and nationalism grip even those who were once counted as wise."

Raidon grunted.

Normally when he suffered such slights, he imagined his mind a depthless pool of water in which insult, injury, and pain were feeble pebbles, easily swallowed.

Today his foot hurt, and he was worried about his daughter.

His focus was askew, and without its calming influence, he anticipated the possibility of the captain proving difficult. Raidon imagined what he might do in response. The teachings of Xiang Temple stirred, scolding him for holding himself beyond their guiding principles. Raidon clenched his fists, and then allowed them to relax a finger at a time, exhaling as he did so.

The captain strode up with the hateful guard in tow. The captain was a tall Shou in laminated mail. He gave Raidon an extended look, and then said, "Allow these through." He turned and stomped back to the commandery.

The original guard's frown deepened and he muttered, "You don't fool me. Don't think this is over." With that, he stepped aside and allowed them to proceed. The man's hate-filled stare followed them until the side of the gate blocked Raidon's view.

Once inside, the farmer let Raidon down from the cart. The farmer wished him luck in finding his child. Raidon nodded, thanking the man. He did not dishonor the man's generosity by offering payment. Sincerity was enough reward for those raised according to eastern traditions.

As the sound of the creaking cart diminished into the distance, Raidon studied Nathlekh's vista. But his thoughts were on Ailyn. What had come of a child so young, left alone save for paid servants, in the face of the greatest calamity of the age without a parent's guidance?

Nothing good, his apprehension insisted.

His worry proved unbearably accurate.

Three days later, Raidon's search concluded at the foot of a four-foot-high, hardened clay structure resembling a beehive. All around him were similar structures. Clusters of clay markers of various dimension protruded from the ground, though the largest ones were central, and the smaller ones spiraled around them.

Raidon stood in Nathlekh's "city of the dead," where the deceased were interred.

He stood before one of the smallest clay markers, a desolate and broken man.

It was Ailyn's grave.

From an inner pocket of his jacket, he pulled with shaking hands a weathered, corroded bell.

He whispered, "I brought this for you, as I promised…"

He laid the gift before the marker. The tinkling, glad sound it made drew hot tears to his cheek.

Grief squeezed his heart. His chest was a hollow, gasping emptiness. He could barely draw in air, his throat was so tight.

Raidon had learned Ailyn perished in the first tremors preceding Nathlekh's sudden rise in altitude. She'd been dead more than ten years.

That knowledge did nothing to lessen Raidon's grief.

The staff he'd paid to watch over her in his absence had scattered to the four winds after her death, but Raidon had found one working in a scullery. This one described Ailyn's fate to Raidon in shaking, terrified tones.

The monk wondered again what thoughts had flashed through her head, as the walls of their dwelling collapsed, and the servants had rushed from the domicile, leaving her alone. Had she cried out for him?

An anguished sob escaped Raidon, and he collapsed across the grave marker.

According to Shou tradition, if surviving relatives and descendants pay sufficient respect to their dead, the dead in their turn exercise a benevolent influence over the lives and prosperity of their family. Thus it was not uncommon for a Shou household to set aside a small area called a shrine, where small carved representations of one or more dead relatives were set. While a few shrines were populated with a plethora of figures with a one-to-one correspondence to dead ancestors, most Shou households kept only a single figure to represent all those loved and lost.

In his absence, Raidon hadn't been able to see to it that this simplest and oldest Shou tradition of mourning was followed.

Even after her death, he had disappointed his adopted daughter, Raidon thought, his head pressed against the cool clay of Ailyn's grave marker. He was despicable.

It was as if scales dropped from his eyes, revealing Raidon to himself with hideous new understanding. All his philosophy and mental disciplines, his Xiang Do and pride in his skill- were these anything more than crutches he used to hold up his own ego? No. They were but facades that hid his true, demonstrated deficits for the things that mattered most in the mortal world. He'd allowed his "monster hunting" and vapid search for his long-vanished mother to distract him from the one thing in his life with true meaning.

His daughter.

His dead daughter.

Raidon screamed, clutched at his queue and pulled, thinking he would rip it out. "Raidon!"

The monk paused. Who'd spoken? His grief had broken his mind, and now he hallucinated. The idea of descending into the innocence that madness offered was sickening and appealing in equal measure.

"Raidon, look to the cemetery entrance," came a voice from nowhere. The voice had a familiar cadence.

His overmastering, sorrow couldn't prevent his eyes' quick flick upward. He saw through the press of clay markers to the cemetery's granite entry arch.

A small mob of people poured through the graveyard gate, chanting a slogan over and over, though not in any particular harmony. The unruly group was led by none other than the guard who'd tried to refuse the monk entry into Nathlekh. The guard was not wearing his official tabard of the city-instead, a liquor-stained smock.

The slogan they chanted abruptly became intelligible to Raidon: "No fey in Nathlekh! No fey in Nathlekh!"

A distant part of himself was surprised how quickly his desolation ignited to red fury.

Before he quite realized it, Raidon was striding toward the mob. His hands itched to strike something, and these small-minded bigots had just volunteered to be his targets. That which remained of his training attempted to forestall his path. But Raidon's impulse would not be quelled.

Ailyn was dead because he'd failed her. What else mattered?

When thirty paces separated the mob from Raidon, the guard called for the chant to cease with an upraised fist. He began, "The new kingdom of Nathlan does not accept non-Shou! Especially not Shou with blood polluted by the half-breed elves! I told you before to stay out. Since you were too arrogant to listen, we…" The guard's shouted speech trailed off. The mob around him continued their inane chant.