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silvery fur of varied shades and crystalline blue eyes. They were sensitive to
life and its balance or imbalance, and thereby sensed its unnatural
opposite the undead. But there had not been amajay-hi likeChap for so long
that even the elves did not remember.
Not since the humans' Forgotten History and the war between the living of the
world and the Enemy.
In the conflict's final days, a number of the Fay chose to defend the world
of their making by taking flesh. They also wished to keep their presence
unknown to most. Some of them entered the unborn young of animals, so they
might live in flesh and blood. Among other forms chosen were the wolves of the
forestlands. When the war ended, the conflict won but the world in ruins, the
born-Fay remained bound in flesh. Some took solace in one another.
For decades they drifted near many forest settlements, and then gradually
gravitated toward the varied lands of the elves. Rarely, a small group
lingered near an elven clan for a time. One night, a female ready to give
birth lumbered into an elven village, and they took her in. Her puppies were
not Fay, but neitherwere they wolves. The first litter was born with coats of
varied shades of silver-gray and crystalline eyes, unlike the wolf forms of
born-Fay.
And these first ones mated, and the females gave birth to a second
generation.
From these descended what were called themajay-hi , an ancient elvish word
Wynn simplistically translated as "Fay-hound" or "hound of the Fay." The
original born-Fay, though long-lived, passed away once their mortal flesh gave
out. The descendants or their flesh still thrived in seclusion, roaming the
elven forest as one of its natural guardians.Though more than animals,
themajay-hi were but a shadow and a whisper of the original born-Fay.
Since the Forgotten History, no Fay had chosen to be born in flesh until
Chap.
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One moment or one eternity he was with his kin, singular and many, all in
one. In an instant, the first measure of time in his new awareness, he was a
wet, squirming pup struggling against his siblings for a place to nurse from
his mother. His birth was his own choice, for once again the Fay needed one
oftheir own among mortals.
Unlike his brothers and sisters, he was fully aware of who and what he was.
His first emotion was loneliness. His second was fear in isolation. Though
flesh made him one of thelitter , he was apart from them in his awareness.And
apart from his kin, the Fay, lost in a prison of flesh.
Gone was his "touch" upon the essence of anything in existence, to both know
and be all that it truly was in its innate nature. He had only this body now.
Gone was also his awareness of eternity as a whole, and he lived in "moments,"
one after the other. Even memory of his place among the Fay became mute and
cloudy. For a living "mind" could never hold full awareness of all that was
theFay.
At first his small body seemed so useless. It took many days and nights
before he understood the "how" and necessity of walking on legs. Then he was
running before his siblings stopped falling on their snouts. He gained his
first reprieve from grief and panic over all that he had given up.
He learned the delight of whipping grass and wind, the joy of mother's tongue
on his stomach, and the comfort of sleep and food. There was also wrestling
with his brothers and sisters. He learned compassion when he tried not to
exploit his greater sentience by winning too often.
Memories were a thing for the living, limited and fragile. Not like the
awareness within the Fay that Chap just barely& remembered.Like anyone's
memories of an earlier past time.
And Leesil hid from his.
Chap stood alone outside the smithy, his frustration mounting. Part of the
purpose he carried into flesh was to bring Leesil to Magiere, to save her from
the Enemy.But what of saving Leesil?
Intimacy of body and spirit bonded them, but the bond now grew fragile as
Leesil stepped farther into the past. Perhaps Magiere was all there was to
keep him from being lost in the past he struggled against. Chap was uncertain
how to foster this. And how much could Magiere herself face of what she
learned of Leesil in this place the humans called the Warlands?
Something tugged on Chap's tail, and he jumped, startled.
A smudge-faced girl with bone-thin arms grasped at his switching tail with a
wide grin. Chap turned about, sticking his nose into her. Beneath her burlap
dress he felt the ridges of tiny ribs and the swell of a bloated belly.
Prolonged hunger had begun to deform her.
Chap glanced once down the main way, but Leesil had not returned. He pushed
at the little girl with his head, herding her toward the smithy's front door
and the busy preparations for a hot meal.
Chapter Four
As Magiere pulled Port and Imp to a stop outside of Venjetz, she wished
Leesil had warned them of the markers lining its outer wall.
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Heads in varied states of decay were spitted on regularly spaced iron spikes
high on the stone. One iron crow's cage hung from the rampart upon a chain,
the body within rotted and pecked down to exposed bone. The dangling cage was
more unsettling than the other warnings. A dead man's head on a spike was
still a dead man. Anyone locked in a crow's cage would still be alive.For a
while.
Leesil sat silently beside Magiere on the wagon's bench, as if the heads were
common things not worth noting. She looked away from the crow's cage but
foundherself staring at one skull, denuded of flesh, with hollow black holes
for eyes and jaw dangling low.
This is the world my Leesil was born into.
Wynn choked as she averted her face. Magiere wasn't one to coddle the sage,
but she reached back to pull Wynn's hood over her eyes.
"Don't look up," she said. "We'll be inside soon."
"Traitors," Leesil said, watching the crow's cage spin slightly in the low
wind. "Or those he accused as such. Cold weather keeps the stench down. In
summer you can smell it before the walls are in sight."
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