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angrily, turning their lovemaking into something violent, punching him and clawing at him, showing him the wooden finger prod at just the right moment to deny him his pleasure while she experienced her own.
    Then she pulled away from him and ordered him gone, and warned him that her patience neared its end and that he should not return to her, should not come into her sight, until he had more to reveal about the Hosttower and the potential for catastrophe in the west.
    The vampire slunk away like a beaten dog, leaving Dahlia alone with her memories.

    They murdered the men. They murdered the youngest and the oldest of the females, who were not of child-bearing age, and for the two poor villagers with child, the barbarians were most cruel of all, cutting the children from their wombs and leaving both to die in the dirt.
    And for the rest, the Netherese shared their seed, violently, repeatedly. In their demented fascination with mortality, they sought the elves’ wombs as if partaking of an elixir of eternal youth.

    Her dress was much like the one Dahlia had been wearing that same day, high collar, open neck and low cut, and none could deny that Sylora Salm wore it in an enticing manner. Like her rival, her head was cleanly shaven, with not a hair on her pretty head. She was older than Dahlia by several years, and though Sylora was human, her beauty had surely not dimmed.
    She stood on the edge of a dead forest, where the diseased remnants of once proud trees reached to the very edge of the newest Dread Ring, a widening blackcircle of utter devastation. Nothing lived within that dark perversion, where ashes could be naught but ashes and dust could be naught but dust. Though she was dressed as if to attend a royal ball, Sylora did not seem out of place there, for there was a coldness about her that complemented death quite well.
    “The vampire inquired,” explained her lone companion, Themerelis, a hulking young man barely into his twenties. He wore only a short kilt, mid-calf boots, and an open leather vest, showing off his extraordinary musculature, his wide shoulders exaggerated by the greatsword he wore strapped diagonally across his back.
    “What is the witch’s fascination with the Hosttower of the Arcane?” Sylora asked, talking more to herself as she turned away from Themerelis. “It has been nearly a century since that monstrosity tumbled, and the remnants of the Arcane Brotherhood have shown no indication that they intend to rebuild it.”
    “Nor could they,” Themerelis said. “The dweomers of its bindings were far beyond them even before the Spellplague. Alas for magic lost to the world.”
    Sylora looked at him with open mockery. “Something you heard in the library while spying on Dahlia?” She held up her hand as her consort started to reply. The man was too dim to understand the insult. “Why else would you be in a library?” she asked, and she rolled her eyes in disgust when he looked at her with obvious puzzlement.
    “Do not mock me, Lady,” the warrior warned.
    Sylora turned on him sharply. “Pray tell me why?” she asked. “Will you take out your greatsword and cleave me in two?”
    Themerelis glared at her, but that only evoked a burst of laughter from the Thayan sorceress.
    “I prefer other weapons,” Sylora said, teasing him, and she let her hand come up to stroke Themerelis’s powerful arm. The man started toward her, but she moved her palm before him to halt his advance.
    “If you earn the fight,” she explained.
    “They are leaving this day,” Themerelis replied.
    “Then be quick to your work.” She gave him a little push backward then waved at him to be gone.
    Themerelis offered a frustrated snort and spun away, stomping back through the trees and up the distant hill toward the castle gate.
    Sylora watched him go. She knew how he was so easily getting near to the wary and dangerous Dahlia, and she wanted to hate him for that, to murder him even, but she found she couldn’t