Hellebore by Chris Cook

Summary: A headstrong sorceress and a young Amazon join forces to locate and destroy an ancient source of demonic power.

Tara awoke to Willow kissing her, the tip of her tongue gently brushing her lips. Her first thought was to respond in kind, and she did, opening her mouth and accepting Willow's kiss with a playful swirl of her own tongue. Even when she remembered with a twinge of disappointment where they were, she had to admit it was one of the best ways to wake up she could think of. Certainly the only viable one to use in the middle of potentially hostile territory.

"Morning, love," she mumbled, stretching briefly then wriggling out of her bedroll. Willow gave her another kiss, just a quick one, then together they set about rolling up the sleeping bag and blankets so they would fit back into Tara's pack. She noticed Willow seemed ill at ease, speaking little, her face slipping into the beginnings of a frown now and then, when she seemed not to be concentrating. Whenever she saw Tara glance at her, she favored her with a warm smile, and Tara put it down to anxiety over their uncertain path back to safety. She wondered briefly whether to try to talk to Willow about it, pondering a few ways of bringing the subject up, and trying to ease her concerns, but ultimately decided that it could wait at least until they had got a start on the day's journey. Already the sun, which had been a mere glow on the horizon when Tara had awoken, was high enough to cast real daylight across the land.

As it turned out, finding a way to approach the topic proved unnecessary. As soon as Tara had taken their bearings and decided on a path to follow, Willow, walking by her side and carrying the three quivers of arrows slung over her shoulder so as to spread the load of their possessions, began to lay out her concerns.

"I was thinking, during the night," she explained, "you know, about the demons, and everything that happened. I'm not sure... I mean, I could be imagining things, well, I really hope I am, actually, but I don't think so, and anyway, you should know, because it affects you too, you being out here with me and all-"

"Willow?" Tara prompted gently, smiling despite herself at Willow's nervous babble.

"Right," Willow grinned sheepishly, "concise, got it. Okay, the thing is... I think maybe they were after us. Well, me. Specifically me." Tara stopped in her tracks and turned to Willow, who shrugged with a helpless half-grin and took her hand, nodding ahead to indicate they should keep moving.

"W-why do you think that?" Tara asked, as they continued on their way. Even as she asked, she admitted to herself that it might be possible – Willow knew these kinds of things better than she did, unquestionably, and the sudden appearance of the monstrous creatures had brought to mind Hydris's attempted attack in the court room. One moment all had seemed peaceful, the next hell was reaching out for them. But Tara didn't want to believe it, and it took some effort of will to acknowledge the possibility, rather than dismissing out of hand that foul, evil creatures were consciously working to take her Willow from her.

"It fits the facts," Willow explained with a frown, "unfortunately. Did you see any of the goat-men attack anyone else?" Tara frowned herself, then shook her head. "Me neither," Willow went on, "I couldn't see much of the caravan, but it sounded like there was a pitched battle going on between the Carvers and the guards. But the goat-men all ignored that, and went for us."

"Maybe they saw us as the greater threat?" Tara asked. "I mean, we kind of, well, annihilated the Carvers that went for us."

"I'm not sure," Willow said, "so far as I know, goat-men have worse vision than a human, I don't think they could have seen us through the dust, before we saw them. And by the time we'd seen them, the Carvers were panicking, and neither of us were attacking them. We would've just looked like a couple of young women at the side of the road. Okay, young women with a bunch of demonic corpses at our feet, but from what I've read about goat-men they're not big thinkers. They're basically in it for the violence, and I think they would have gone for the battle. Maybe a couple would take a swing at us, but not all of them."

"I see what you mean," Tara agreed reluctantly, "and they certainly wouldn't have all followed us when we ran."

"Well, again, maybe a couple would," Willow allowed, "they're kind of bloody-minded, but yeah, not all of them. And between you and me, I'm the only one who's pissed off a major demon."

"Undoubtedly," Willow nodded, "demons aren't exactly the forgiving type. And for them, being summoned is like all their dreams coming true. If they dream, I'm not sure on that. A demon like Shadai would get maybe one chance in a thousand years, if that, to find a mage who's powerful enough to summon her, and insane enough to want to. So, put yourself in her spiky cloven hooves: you've been imprisoned in hell since the Sin Wars, when you finally get a chance to return to the mortal realm, full of humans to be unpleasant to, and with very few mages strong enough to threaten you. And the moment you get there, this little girl of a sorceress pops a banishing spell on you which, dumb idea though it was," she admitted with a rueful grin, "keeps you busy just long enough for a bunch of really powerful sorceresses to show up and blast you back to hell. Plus you're a demon, and therefore full of every negative impulse and personality trait in existence, with none of the positives. How do you feel?"

"That's one way of putting it," Willow agreed. "And I'm starting to think, maybe instead of just moping around hell, she's sort of fixated on getting back at me. Maybe the others, too – Ember, Cyan, Symphony, Prospera, they were all there, they were the ones who destroyed Shadai's form, weakened her enough that my banishing spell worked. We have to warn them, I have to send a message back to the Order as soon as we get out of this."

"We will," Tara said reassuringly. "I'm sure they're okay, the way you describe them they're all powerful sorceresses."

"Well, if the best Shadai can do to us is chase us with goat-men, they're probably not going to get into any danger they can't get out of. We'll send a letter as soon as we reach Kotram, give it to a rider going back to Kingsport, or to Duncraig, whichever is quicker."

"Right," Willow agreed, "okay. Okay, that'll work. You're right, they'll be okay, a-and if anything happens they'll probably be able to figure it out themselves anyway..."

"I don't know," Willow admitted, "somehow she's influencing them, it's the only explanation that makes sense... but she can't be, even a demon as powerful as she is can't project her will out of hell without someone actively helping on this end, doing a ritual to contact her."

"Too dumb. They can barely tell humans from other demons – you saw what they did to those Carvers. They probably didn't even realize they were on the same side. Well, as much as demons ever cooperate."

"Some," Willow said thoughtfully. "I've read accounts in the Order libraries from sorceresses who've seen liches and ghoul lords practice demonic magic to communicate with their masters in hell. And, yeah, some of them were supposed to have goat-men as their slaves, sort of their personal fighters, 'cause ghoul lords are physically pretty fragile..."

"That must be it," Tara concluded, "if they were trying to get to you, then there must be one of these ghoul lords, or some other kind of demon like them, controlling them."

"I can't think of any other explanation," Willow said. "Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't one, just that I can't think of it. But yeah, that's probably it."

"It doesn't change our plan, though?" Tara asked. "We get to Kotram, then rejoin the caravan as soon as a rider shows up."

"What?" Tara asked, as Willow shook her head and took a breath to try to steady herself. Willow stopped abruptly and looked around, as if she couldn't meet Tara's gaze.

"It means I'm putting you in danger," she said angrily. "You weren't at the hospice, but now there's demons chasing after you, a-and mages trying to kill you, and, and gods know what else! Just because you're with me. I mean..." she stopped, gulped down a breath of air, and lifted her hand to lightly touch the bandage on Tara's arm.

"This is my fault," she said quietly. Tara immediately gathered Willow in her arms, and held her as her tears started to flow.

"Shh," she soothed Willow, as her body shook with sobs, "it's not your fault, Willow, it's not. These are evil creatures, Willow, and you're, you're not one of them, you're good, you're the most wonderful thing in the world, and you can't blame yourself for what they do."

"They tried to hurt you," Tara said, "I will never let that happen, Willow, not if there's anything I can do to stop it. I'm okay, and you're not hurt, and we'll get through this together, okay?" Willow clung to her, her sobs becoming quieter, but not entirely gone. Tara took her head in her hands, lifting her so she could see her face, and wipe the tears from Willow's cheeks with her thumbs.

"I can't leave you," she said, "I can't, and I won't. I will stay by your side Willow, always, there's simply no other choice for me to make, and no other choice I would make even if I could. Okay?" Willow nodded, tears still shining in her eyes. Tara leaned forward and kissed her, very gently.

"Okay," Willow said. They let go of each other, keeping their hands held, and continued on their way along the outskirts of the wood, towards the rise ahead.

"I know you feel this is something that's your problem, not mine," Tara said gently, "but it's not. If these creatures, and Shadai, threaten you, then they're threatening me too. You're mine, Willow, just like I'm yours. That's... you're the most perfect, beautiful part of my life, and I won't let anything take you away from me. What would you do, if demons were hunting me?" Willow nodded her understanding.

"Freeze them so hard they'll take centuries to melt in the hellfire," she said firmly.

"Thank you," Willow said sincerely, "thank you for... gods, for being you, for being amazing."

"All yours," Tara said, "and more. You're welcome. Come on," she added, quickening her pace, "are you okay for a bit more speed?"

"If you're right about the demons, they'll definitely be looking for us. Do goat-men sleep?"

"Um, I think so. Yes, definitely, I read once about them sleeping underground whenever they can. I'm not sure for how long, though."

"Well, we've probably still got a decent lead on them," Tara went on, "and like I said yesterday, they'll have to go carefully or risk going past us without noticing, so that gives us the edge. With luck, we'll reach Kotram tomorrow, before they get anywhere near us again."

The walk up the rise was tiring, if not particularly difficult to persevere with, and more than once Willow envied Tara, who didn't seem to be feeling the exertion at all. She spent some time in admiration of Tara's legs, noting her strong, elegant muscles and the light sheen of sweat that built as they neared the top, but eventually her curiosity got the better of her.

"At times," Tara said lightly, "in training, of course, but sometimes I just go walking in the forest. Amazons have to be able to keep up on long marches, of course, we don't have lots of horses so if for some reason, for example, we had to send a group of prides from Tran Athulua to the coast, to repel invaders or board a fleet for one of the other islands, it'd be on foot. One of the final training stages includes a march from the city all the way to the eastern shore, along the old forest tracks. Each girl starts one day ahead of the next, and we have twenty-five days to make the journey, surviving just on what we can carry, and what the forest provides."

"Wow," Willow murmured, the path up the rise suddenly put in perspective for her. "And you did that on your own?"

"Yep," Tara said, "twenty-three days, plus an hour or so on the next day. I could've jogged the last part in the evening of the last day, but there wasn't any need to hurry."

"Physically? It's not that hard," Tara allowed, "but it's not the same. There I was at home, I knew the forest, there were no dangers I didn't know about, and in the unlikely event of something happening, there were instructors tracking us all the way. Here... the land is unfamiliar, I'm still getting used to the feel of it, and getting an idea for how to live off it, if need be."

"Just observing," Tara explained, "seeing where the edible plants are, how frequently they grow along our path, how many we can expect up ahead if we need them. What kinds of animals are around, what sort of camp site we need to find to be secure... whether we'll have good weather or bad, how much warning there'll be if a storm comes." She offered Willow a smile, and squeezed her hand warmly. "At least I still have my home with me."

"Aw, and now I just have to kiss you," Willow said, stopping briefly to press a kiss against Tara's lips. They continued up the rise arm-in-arm, smiling.

"There's more useful plants than I thought at first," Tara mused, "probably as the ground gets less rocky towards the river we'll find more. Could be a reprieve for the rabbits, even if we do have to supplement our rations."

"I'm starting to get a feel for the woods, as well," Tara went on, "the trees, the plants beneath them, the animals sheltering there, it's different to those on the islands, but in a way it's similar as well. Like sisters, each their own, but like each other."

"No kidding," Willow said, fascinated with how Tara saw an environment that, up until now, she herself had considered scenery between cities.

"It's something I've thought about before," Tara explained, "it was actually when I was doing my training march that I got the idea. Something... well, odd, happened, and it got me thinking."

"Well," Tara recounted, "it was on the eighteenth day, I was in the deepest part of the forest, the eastern basin between the city plateau and the hills by the coast. It's probably the oldest part of the forest on Philios, and the only area apart from some wild lands in the north that's actually dangerous – not for a trained warrior," she hastened to reassure Willow, "but for someone who couldn't track and defend themselves, there are some animals that defend their territory aggressively, and it could be easy to stray near their nests or dens and make them think they were threatened. That didn't happen, though, I saw signs of a couple of nests but stayed clear of them.

"Anyway, I was walking along, just sort of letting my senses guide me – I knew I was making good time, and didn't have to hurry – and I suddenly felt like I was being watched. And when an Amazon feels like that, it means she is being watched, after enough training you can sort of feel a... a parallel, I suppose, in the tiny reactions of whatever's watching you. In tiny little ways – breathing, small motions, tension – when you watch someone, you react to them. Well, I felt something nearby reacting to me, to my motions. But it didn't feel threatening, just... curious? It's a sense I can't really explain, maybe it's just a development of tracking skills, but I could feel a faint echo, or something like that. It wasn't afraid of me, or hostile in any way, it was just watching me to see what I was. And after a while, it was sort of... satisfied, I guess, and it blended in with the forest until it wasn't there any more."

"Not for sure," Tara replied, "I never felt it again, and I never saw anything. I think, though, maybe it was a bramble hulk."

"Really?" Willow was surprised. "I thought you said they were only on Lycander."

"They are," Tara said with a shrug, "so far as anyone knows. At least, there's a part of Lycander, the deep forest there, that we leave pretty much alone, apart from veteran warriors who're welcome there, and conduct all the trade between us and them. But from the way that hulks are described, what I sensed felt like one of them. It was like the forest, but slightly more... focused, more alert. Like the difference between a normal person and a warrior, which I guess they are. Guardians of the forest, that's what they're supposed to be."

"Actually," Tara said, "a while later I found something that made me think back on that, and that maybe explains it. There's some legends – really old ones – that say when a bramble hulk is in danger, it can become part of the forest, just merge completely with the big, old trees. Its bark becomes the tree's bark, its blood becomes their sap, and its spirit... I guess its spirit is always part of the forest anyway. And they can re-emerge in different places, because the forest is all one thing."

"That's what the legends say," Tara said, "and in a way it makes sense. Like I said, a forest is one thing, more than just a collection of individual trees. The whole forest, all the trees and plants and even the animals to an extent, all grow and feed and wither and die together, not individually. If one tree is hurt, it affects the whole forest, and if part of the forest is strong, it can spread and make the whole forest strong. So there's all these links between the individual living things, as if in spirit they're all one living thing. I suppose hulks can move through the whole forest because of that. And I was wondering, what if it's not just true of one forest?"

"But Lycander's an island," Willow pointed out, "there's, what, how many miles of ocean between it and Philios?"

"But the living forest isn't completely isolated," Tara observed, "the streams that flow through it flow into the ocean, and the plants on the shores, mangroves and so on, drink those waters, and there are tides that move between all three islands. And the smaller plants, flowers and those sorts of things, some of them spread their seeds on the wind, and they could be carried from one island to another. Not the big trees, of course, it's pretty difficult to fly an acorn across fifty miles of ocean... unless it falls in the water, and floats... maybe even that's possible, once in a while, perhaps. And of course it's all very slow, and mostly they're isolated from each other, but..."

"I get it," Willow completed her thought, "forests are slow things naturally, like... if you measured a person by heartbeats, the equivalent for forests would be years, the seasons coming and going."

"Exactly," Tara went on, "and in something that slow, and... and massive, all those little points of contact between one forest and another could build a sort of bond between them. And maybe the hulks can move through those as well."

"So the bramble hulks think you're satisfactory?" Willow concluded. "Well, I can agree with that sentiment... even if I'd use stronger terms." Tara smiled.

"Thanks," she murmured, "and yeah, when I wondered if that's what it was, it was kind of... pleasing. I like the forest, I like the living world, so it's nice to know that, I guess, it likes me as well." She started to say something else, but stumbled.

"Hey, whoa," Willow exclaimed, clutching Tara's arm to steady her, "are you okay? What's wrong?"

"I don't know," Tara said, frowning, "I just felt kind of faint for a moment... like I'd just stood up too fast, you know?" She shook her head. "It's passing now, it was just..." Her frown deepened, and as one she and Willow looked at the bandage on her arm.

"No," Tara said, stopping for a moment to prod the bandage, "actually it's a bit numb... I changed it last night, I didn't feel anything wrong, but it was dark..." She finished removing the bandage, and Willow let out a little gasp. The cuts in her arm seemed to be clean, with no sign of infection in the wounds, but the skin around them was tinged with gray.

"That's not good," Tara said distantly. Willow tentatively touched a fingertip to the discolored skin, looking for any sign from Tara that it hurt.

"Feels cold," she said with a frown. She guided Tara to a rock to sit on, and unfastened the pouch on her hip.

"I remember Ember saying something about cold skin once," she explained, producing the journal, "she was talking about cold magic mainly, about making your skin cold – you know, like I did with my tongue that time – but she said something about it being like you'd had a run-in with a zombie. At the time I didn't think to ask..." She lapsed into silence for a moment, turning the pages and scanning through them with impressive speed, her lips silently framing unfamiliar words as she did so.

"Here," she said at last, "here it is, 'undead have been known to cause a sickness, the grave's touch, especially those who died recently' – well, that fits, that poor man hadn't been dead sixty seconds. Let me see, open wounds, skeletons, herbs, ah! Oh no... 'if untreated, the grave's touch will proceed through the body over the course of approximately two weeks, aided by cold and hindered by warmth, until it reaches the brain, where," her voice dropped to a choked whisper, "it will end in death." She held her breath, reading furiously, her other hand tight around Tara's.

"Come on, come on, please please please," she muttered to herself, "yes! Yes, here, treatable by healing potions of Kurast manufacture," she looked up at Tara, with desperate excitement in her eyes, "I've got those! I've got two, this says you only need one!" She fumbled at the tiny leather cylinders on her belt, opening one and producing a slim vial filled with ruby red liquid, which she handed to Tara.

"It only takes a few seconds to work," she said quickly, "they're designed to be used in battle if need be, so they can't afford to take too long to work, only," a frown crossed her face, and she hugged Tara around the waist, "only, when it works, it's going to hurt."

"How much?" Tara asked with a deep, steadying breath. Willow looked almost as distressed as she had been a moment ago.

"A lot," she said, "it's... the way it works is partly by nullifying toxins and poisons, but also by magically accelerating the body's own healing. So it can repair cuts and so on, even broken bones if they're set first-" She halted herself before she could start to babble aimlessly. "All the healing that would normally take, oh, weeks or so, happens in a few seconds, but all the soreness, a-and the little twinges of pain and aches and stuff you'd get while you were healing, all that is compressed as well. The alchemists are always talking about figuring out how to do one without the other, but no-one's got it yet..." she trailed off miserably.

"Oh well," Tara said, with a resigned shrug, "a-at least it kind of fits in with the whole balance concept." She gave Willow a weak smile, which Willow returned. "Do one thing for me?" she asked, in a quieter, more serious voice.

"Oh gods, always," Willow said at once. Tara nodded, kissed Willow tenderly on the forehead, then pulled out the tiny stopper in the vial.

"Wait," Willow said, fumbling with her belt. She undid it and slid off the empty potion cylinder.

"Um, maybe," she said, offering it to Tara, "if it hurts too much... maybe bite down on this?" She cringed as she said it.

"Thank you," Tara said gently. She held the cylinder in one hand, the vial in the other. Carefully she leant into Willow's embrace, her arms around Willow's back. In a swift motion she tipped the contents of the vial into her mouth and swallowed, then steeled herself against the expected pain, ready to bite down on the leather if need be, and hoping she could weather the worst of it without crying out or clutching too hard, or anything that would upset Willow more.

The liquid tasted faintly of apples, and though it wasn't cold at all, it sent a chill through Tara as she swallowed, like ice water. She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing, slow in, slow out... and then, a twinge of pain shot through her arm, and another, and suddenly it was burning hot as if she'd plunged it into the molten steel of a forge. There was no dizziness or nausea, which she was just aware enough to be thankful for, but the pain itself was the most intense she had ever felt. For a moment it felt as if the heat had got into her blood, that white-hot metal was flowing through her veins, through her whole body – she bit down hard, then opened her mouth to scream, the cylinder falling to the ground, but she stopped herself by force of will, allowing nothing but a tiny whimper to escape.

Then it was over, and she was panting, sweating, clinging to Willow like the last survivor of a shipwreck, tossed on the ocean and clutching at driftwood for her life's sake. The sudden cessation of the pain left her confused, and it took a moment for her to realize Willow was whispering fiercely into her ear.

"-gonna be alright baby, I promise, you're gonna be fine, I'm so sorry, gods I'm sorry, I'll protect you, I'll make it okay, I'm so sorry..."

"Willow," Tara said, surprising herself with the sound of her own voice – she had expected a weak whisper, but her voice was strong and level. Willow paused, and Tara searched for something to say to reassure her, to stop her blaming herself. And then she realized:

"You did," Tara said, "I'd never have known what to do on my own, and I wouldn't have had any potions. You saved my life."

"I..." Willow hesitated, pausing as if to test the unfamiliar idea. "Well, okay," she said dismissively after a moment, "but it's not like it was me, technically... I mean, I just had the potion on me, and I had to look it up to know what was wrong... anyone could've done that."

"But you did," Tara smiled. She leaned forward again and kissed Willow firmly, and the vigor with which she opened Willow's lips and explored inside her mouth seemed to be heartening for both of them.

"Um..." Willow said with a bemused smile once Tara released her lips, "so... you're feeling okay?" Tara stretched, keeping an arm around Willow, now for comfort rather than support.

"Actually, I feel great," she said. "I feel... refreshed, relaxed... like I just woke up."

"Oh," Willow nodded, "oh, well, good. Good. You're okay," she added to herself, and lunged forward to return Tara's kiss, this time seeking, and gaining, admittance to Tara's mouth and taking her time enjoying it.

"You're okay," she repeated, leaning back. "It's all good. Yay!" Tara smiled, and quickly touched the tip of her nose to Willow's.

"And adorable," Tara pointed out. She stretched her arm and looked at it. "Hey," she said, surprised, "all better." Willow nodded and ran her fingers down Tara's arm, which was perfectly healed, without a trace of the cuts that had been there moments earlier, or the discolored skin around them.

"Shall we go?" Willow took her hand, stood up, and looped her arm around Tara's.

"Certainly," she replied with a smile. "Oh, wait, let me get that..." She quickly gathered up the fallen potion pouch and replaced it on her belt, then went to put the journal back, but reconsidered and kept it in her hand.

"Can't hurt," Willow said, using her thumb to flip the pages of the small book over as she held it one-handed. "Actually I want to see if there's anything about Carvers controlling human undead, I got the impression from what I remember that they only resurrect their own... maybe we can get a better idea of whatever's controlling the goat-men." Tara smiled, spreading her senses around her once again, but otherwise just enjoying being with Willow, and listening to her absent-minded narration as she read.

"Lemme see... undead... come on, it's got to be around here somewhere... one of these days I'm going to go through this book and write up an index or something. Could be a ghoul lord... I mean, undead are their thing, hence the name, lords of ghouls... that's a kind of zombie, they're a bit more energetic than the everyday sort, takes more concentrated necromantic magic to raise them, I think... never really paid that much attention to necromancy, I mean, undead aren't like demons, it's usually easier to just ice them than try to counter the magic animating them... icky stuff anyway..." Tara stole occasional glances at Willow, biting her lip at the cuteness of the intense expression of concentration on her face, and together they walked on.

It was almost midday when they reached the crest of the rise and looked out across the Kingsway valley. In the far distance, visible only as a glitter of reflected sunlight, the river peeked through the small hills surrounding it. Nearer, beyond another large ridge perhaps two dozen miles away, a brown-brown blob surrounded by patches of uniform color suggested a town and its fields.

"It's in the right place," Tara said, "and as large as the map showed it. Stone buildings on the central hill, with smaller wooden buildings lower down. A keep and surrounding villages, I guess."

"You can see that?" Willow asked. "I can only just make out that it's there at all."

"Ah, so those gorgeous blue eyes of yours aren't just decorative," Willow said, nodding to herself. Tara's hand, around her waist, snuck lower to swat her on the bottom.

"Come on, my cheeky sorceress," she said, taking Willow's hand again, "we've still got a lot of ground to cover. I think maybe... wait a moment."

"What?" Willow asked, as Tara changed direction slightly, kneeling down to examine the ground after a few paces.

"Something's walked here," she said as Willow knelt beside her, "lots of people." Willow looked either way along the top of the rise.

"No, not people," Tara frowned, "clawed feet, there's indentations in the dirt... if that rain we had passed over here at all, maybe... ten days, two weeks ago."

"They're the right size," Tara sighed, "it could've been a band of them. Moving at night, they wouldn't have worried about being seen, so they kept to the ridge..." She peered off into the distance, northward where the rise curled around to the west. "I wonder if it was the band that attacked the caravan?"

"They can't have known we were coming," Willow said, "ten days ago we hadn't even set out from the castle."

"I suppose something comes along the road sooner or later," Tara mused. "I don't see any other tracks, nothing more recent certainly... well, no matter then." She stood up and inspected the terrain ahead of them, absently fishing a pair of wrapped rations from the satchel slung over her shoulder.

"We should try to reach the foot of that next rise by evening," she said, handing one to Willow, "it looks like there might be a stream, maybe even a building. Something wooden, I don't think it's trees..." Willow peered where Tara was looking, which was obscured by distance and haze.

"I'll have to take your word for it," she said with a grin, "that's pretty impressive."

"It's just a vague shape," Tara shrugged, "maybe a hunting cabin or something like that. But if it looks safe, I wouldn't say no to having a roof over our heads for our last night out in the wilderness. You?"

"Me too," Willow nodded. "Do you think we'll make it?" Tara again inspected the ground between them and their impromptu destination.

"It's not too far, but the ground is a bit broken, some more hills down there... I think we'll reach it before the sun sets."

"Well," Willow said, holding out her free hand to Tara, "let's cover some ground then."

The ground was broken and rocky on the downward slopes of the rise, but smoother and greener the further Willow and Tara walked. With an hour and a half, Tara guessed, of sunlight before evening, they reached a small wood growing in the bottom of the valley, beneath the final ridge, and skirting around to the north of it they found the cabin Tara had seen from afar.

"No," Tara said, "I don't think so." She had her spear held protectively in front of her, but Willow felt a sense of calm about her that suggested her instincts weren't warning her of any close danger. Nevertheless, she slung her bow over her shoulder, keeping her right hand free to cast, and a firm grip on her staff with the other.

The cabin was a simple, rugged building, barely large enough to be considered a house more than a shed. On the far side, peeking over the top of the roof, was a stone chimney, while the walls were rough-cut wood. The two windows they could see were closed with shutters, but the door was half-open, its bottom corner resting against a stone in the patch of hard-packed dirt that served as a path in front of it. Rough tracks led off north, north-east and south, the last heading into the trees.

"Deserted," Tara murmured. Willow nodded absently – her nerves were still a little shaky from the day's events, but she wasn't getting any sense of foreboding from the crude little cabin. It didn't look as if it harbored dangerous people or skulking demons, merely that it was unused and neglected. Reaching the door, Tara tapped it with her spear-point, listening for any movement from within. Hearing none, she peered into the gloom inside, with Willow close behind her.

The cabin proved to be empty, and a cursory search suggested it had been for some time. There were two rooms, the first, which the front door opened into, little more than a wide hallway with a sturdy, simple table at one end, and hooks on the side wall for coats or weapons. There was a patch of dirt just inside the door, on the floor and on the doorframe, where boots had been scraped free of mud, but it had long since dried out. A few leaves had blown in through the open door, but on the table and all over the far end of the hall, sheltered from the wind, was a thick layer of dust.

The other room, through a side door at the end of the hall, was larger and suggested that it had once been more comfortably furnished. The stone fireplace opened there, with a few half-burned logs on an iron grate, and the floor in front of it was covered by an old rug, worn through to the floorboards in places, its colors long since faded to dusty browns and grays. There was a single chair, a shelf on the wall beside it, and a bed with a bundle of worn, dusty blankets draped carelessly over one end of it. Of who had once lived here, or what they had done, there was little trace.

"Maybe it's a hunter's cabin," Tara suggested, breaking the silence as they stood in the room, "someone from Kotram might come out here during the summer, and leave it empty the rest of the year. It's definitely more than a season since anyone was in here." She pushed open the shutters, which moved with a protesting creak, and checked the views from the three windows.

"Do you think it might be safe?" Willow asked. Tara stared thoughtfully out of the window she stood in front of, which faced back to the west, into the sun creeping towards the rise they had stood on hours earlier. For a moment she was lost in thought, then she glanced at Willow and gave her a smile.

"I think so," she said. "I haven't seen any sign of demons since the trail up on the hill, and I haven't sensed anything dangerous. I suppose, if we're careful, we'd be as safe here as out in the open. At least this way we're out of the wind, and we'll be dry if it rains." She caught Willow's hand and gave it a squeeze.

"Yay," Willow said with satisfaction. "No fire, though? Thought not," she added when Tara gave a rueful half-grin.

"From the outside, there'd be nothing to indicate this was anything but an abandoned cabin," she said, turning her attention back to their surroundings, "and it's been left alone so far. We'll stay here. But there's plenty of sunlight left, I'd like to find that stream I thought I saw. Coming?"

"You even have to ask?" said Willow wryly, giving Tara a quick hug and kissing her on the cheek.

After a couple of minutes following the trail into the woods Tara heard the sound of running water, a few paces before Willow noticed it as well. Ahead the trail passed by a large boulder, sitting incongruously in the middle of the trees, and when they rounded it they saw the sparkle of water in the sunlight ahead. The trail veered close to the stream, then back into the woods, while Willow and Tara brushed through the handful of bushes in their way and stood on the grassy bank, grinning at each other. The scene was unexpectedly lovely: the stream, winding through the woods, trickled into a shallow depression, forming a tiny lake before bubbling on its way. At the south end another boulder lay half-submerged, a great, flat rock tilted over so that it slanted gently beneath the water. The far bank was covered in wild flowers, blooming in red and white, and the sunlight came through the foliage in erratic rays, shifting lazily as the taller branches swayed in the gentle breeze above.

"You know, I think whoever built that cabin was on to a good thing," Willow observed with a smile.

"Oh, that's tough," Willow frowned, "fresh sheets on the bed, hot food, no prowling monsters... civilization has its good points. But then again, this..." She gestured vaguely around.

"You remember the house I told you about?" Tara said, hugging Willow from behind, "the one we'll make our home? The lake comes right up to the back of the house... a little ridge goes out from the shore on the left side, and curves around, almost enclosing it, like our own little private lake, with trees growing along the sides... we could plant flowers by the banks, just like this." Willow sighed happily, then turned and kissed Tara, very slowly and gently.

"I know," Tara replied, "I love you." She returned Willow's kiss, just as gentle and peaceful, her tongue leisurely tracing Willow's lips, in lieu of any more frenzied activity. Willow moaned quietly into her mouth, and put on an adorable pout when Tara finally stepped back.

"Okay, correction," Tara conceded with a grin, "we can't kiss all day today. Anyway, if we did, there wouldn't be any time for a bath." Willow's eyes lit up, and she glanced at the tiny lake.

"Really?" she asked. "You think it's safe? I mean... I don't want to end up fighting demons with no clothes on. Me with the no clothes, not the demons, they typically don't bother anyway." Tara laughed to herself and kissed the tip of Willow's nose.

"I don't feel any danger around," she said, "I think we can afford to be out of armor for a little while. Quickly though, we should get back to the cabin before the sun goes down."

"Gotcha," Willow said, "what do you think, an hour?" Tara glanced at the angle of the sunlight coming through the trees.

"Pretty close," she said, "no less than that. You get started, I'll just check the view from that rock." Willow nodded and sat down on the grass, pulling her boots off. She took a speculative whiff of one of them, and then gingerly put both boots down at arm's length.

"Okay," she said to herself, undoing her skirt, "cross-country walking equals intense need for regular bathing." She unslung the waterskin from her shoulder and put it and her belt aside, with Tara's pack.

"Hey Tara... Tara?" She looked down towards the big rock, but Tara was nowhere in sight. "Tara!" She breathed a sigh of relief as Tara straightened up from behind the rock.

"Sorry," Willow said sheepishly, as Tara walked back to her, "guess I'm a bit jumpy." Tara sat down next to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"It's alright," she said gently, "I can understand why. I was just looking at that rock, I only crouched down for a second."

"I know, I just glanced over at the wrong time," Willow said, embarrassed at herself, "I just... for a moment everything was starting to feel kind of normal again, and then you weren't there, I guess... my overreaction, sorry."

"No, don't be sorry," Tara said soothingly, helping Willow take off her armor, "it's nothing to be embarrassed about. We had a scare today, and I think maybe it was worse for you than it was for me."

"How?" Willow asked, feeling strangely vulnerable. "You were the one who... who was..."

"Strong how?" Willow asked, almost pleading. "I was... what could I have done? If I hadn't had the potion, if I hadn't had the journal, or if it had needed some other cure I didn't have with me, I... there would've been nothing I could do, I-" She choked back a sob. "I feel like I came so close to losing you, a-and I... I was so scared," she finally admitted. In an instant Tara was holding her, and she was crying on Tara's shoulder.

"Shh, it's alright," Tara murmured, "it's alright Willow, I'm here, I'm with you, just like I always will be."

"It's alright," Tara repeated, "it's alright... you had a scare, that's all. You just need to heal." She kissed Willow on the top of her head, then leant down to whisper in her ear: "and I know exactly the potion to cure you." Willow paused at the seductive tone in Tara's voice, confused.

"Make love to me," Tara whispered, "run your hands all over me, feel how alive I am... how alive you make me..."

"I-is it safe enough here?" Willow asked hesitantly, her body responding to Tara even as her mind was still caught between conflicting impulses.

"Oh gods I want to," Willow gasped, "I just... don't want to be careless, not after almost... losing-"

"I promise," Tara said again, "I would never risk myself, or you. You know that."

"I know," Willow echoed. Her tentative grin turned sultry, then almost predatory as she hugged Tara against her, and then quickly went to work on the buckles holding her armor on. Between her hands and Tara's the leathers were lying on the ground in no time, and Tara was left in her boots and underwear. With the sudden inflaming of passions so unexpected after their enforced abstention of the past two days, Willow was left breathless for a moment, gazing down the length of Tara's body, across her full breasts, the curves of her hips, her long, elegant legs, down to the points of her boots and back up again to meet her gaze. Tara leaned back on the grass and kicked off her boots, dipping her eyes momentarily. Willow followed her gaze down, then reached for the leather underwear around Tara's hips and dragged them down her legs, making herself wait until she had tossed them aside to join the rest of their clothes before looking back, granting herself the sight of her lover's naked form.

"Oh my gods," she breathed, all thoughts of making love to Tara momentarily displaced by the joy of simply seeing her, devouring the sight of her. Tara smiled, stretched, then slowly got to her feet and reached a hand down for Willow. Willow took it, was drawn to her feet in a daze, and followed Tara hand-in-hand over to the big boulder slanting out of the water. She blinked as she felt her feet cool, and realized belatedly that they had walked a little way into the small lake. Tara turned to her, leaned forward, lifted Willow's hand and pressed it to her chest, then to her lips for a gentle kiss. Then, all languid elegance, she lay down on the smooth surface of the boulder, glowing in the afternoon sun. Willow took a step forward and knelt next to her, breathing in little gasps. She gulped and licked her lips as Tara looked up at her, and nodded.

Without a word Willow leaned over Tara, almost kissing her. She could feel Tara's breath against her lips, tempting her, but still she hovered just beyond contact, staring into Tara's eyes, where she saw desire, anticipation, need, but above all peace. Leaning on one arm, she gingerly touched her free hand to Tara's stomach, eliciting a soft whimper from Tara, who writhed gently under her touch. Willow leant a fraction further, brushing her lips lightly on Tara's, not enough for a kiss, merely hints of contact, tantalizing tastes of the softness of her lips. Her hand crept steadily upwards, her fingertips teasing the underside of Tara's breasts, straying into the cleavage between the two soft, flawless mounds resting like pillows against her chest. Tara gasped, tilted her head backward, reaching for Willow's lips, but still Willow held herself back, touching her, teasing her, her tongue darting out to taste Tara's lips, but never quite sealing the kiss. When Willow finally stretched her hand across Tara's right breast, squeezing gently, Tara let out a long, deep sigh, and her attempts to reach Willow dwindled away, replaced by a blissful calm where she stared into Willow's eyes and simply accepted whatever touch or caress she offered.

Willow slid her left leg over Tara's hips and straddled her, pressing her silk-covered sex against Tara's stomach while her other hand joined the first, completing her embrace of Tara's breasts. Tara smiled wider, if that was possible, and arched her back, pressing her waist up between Willow's wide-spread thighs, stretching her arms out above her head and using her body to please Willow. Willow bit her lip, resting more of her weight on Tara and more aggressively massaging her breasts, feeling her fingertips press into the yielding flesh, and Tara's nipples hard in the centers of her palms. Small, musical sounds emanated from Tara's through, escaping her lips as she gasped and clenched her teeth, writhing beneath Willow as if her climax was already near. For a long time Willow lost herself in the experience of pleasing Tara, feeling the delight of holding her breasts, their softness and weight, pressing against them and cupping them, and in Tara's answering gyrations, the firm pressure against her sex, knowing the pleasure she was giving her.

Finally she could wait no longer. In a smooth motion she slid to one side, her sex still pressed against Tara's hip rather than lifting away from her, and her hands moved. One cradled Tara's head, her fingers slipping easily through the silky blonde hair, the other moved down her stomach and through the soft curls of hair at the apex of her thighs. Tara nodded, wordlessly pleading. Willow's fingers found her wetness, already soaking her sex and glistening on her inner thighs, and for a moment she smiled down at Tara, noting every tiny moan and whimper as her fingers played in her sex, stroking close to her clit, brushing against her lips and then at last seeking the crevice between them. She readied the tip of a finger at the entrance to Tara's passage, then almost kissed her, nipping her bottom lip and holding it for a moment. As she leant back, a second finger joined the first, poised to explore Tara's depths.

"Please," Tara whispered, and no voice bearing edicts from rulers, angels or gods could ever have achieved such total command of Willow's heart as that simple, heartfelt plea. Feeling as if somehow it was Tara making love to her, Willow slid her fingers into the tight, welcoming confines of her sex, and as Tara's lips parted again in a gasp Willow kissed her.

In the first gasp of pleasure at Willow entering her Tara had let her mouth open wide, and she made no effort to pull away when Willow's kiss claimed her, their lips sealed together, Willow's tongue venturing deep into the warmth of Tara's mouth. Tara sighed, moaned, whimpered, arched her back, bucked her hips, all without any thought of restraint, the sounds from her throat muffled by Willow lips, the motions of her body serving only to enfold Willow's fingers deeper into her sex. Willow's steadily thrusting fingertips searched out Tara's sweet spot and caressed it, first with soft, tender care, and slowly, building as Tara neared climax, more firmly stroking over the especially sensitive place within her. When Tara was an inch from climax Willow pressed the heel of her hand firmly against her clit, and buried her fingers in her, probing and stimulating the wet interior of her sex, again and again crossing over her sweet spot, pressing just a little firmer each time.

Tara brought her hands up to cup Willow's face as their kiss reached its climax, and her body heaved and let loose its bounty of arousal. As she came her lips moved against Willow's, closing on her tongue of lips and again opening wide, inviting her in. With every renewal of the kiss Willow flexed her fingers, sending another bout of sweet tremors through Tara. Tara let all the strength out of her body, completely relaxed in Willow's hold, and when at last the kiss ended she smiled up at her.

Willow returned her smile, feeling no urgent need to have her own body's wants attended to, but simply a great sense of satisfaction and peace. She realized that all afternoon she had felt uneasy, a remnant of the quick panic that had gripped her as she had frantically searched through the pages of Ember's journal for a treatment for Tara's wound. Even when she had found it, and Tara was well again, a part of her hadn't let go of the icy fear she had felt then. But now, it was gone.

"Better?" she asked. Willow nodded, smiling and wondering. "Something I learned, in weapons training in fact," Tara went on, "some things you can understand perfectly with your mind, but your body has to learn as well. Like wielding a spear – you can see it done a hundred times, memorize every motion, but until you hold it in your hands, feel your own body going through those motions, you never quite grasp it."

"When you were worried about me today," Tara said, running her finger up to rest against Willow's temple, "when it was over, your mind understood I was safe, that you weren't going to lose me. But your body," her hand traveled down Willow's neck to brush against her cleavage, "was still afraid."

"And now I'm not," Willow finished, marveling at how Tara could know what she needed, when she herself hadn't really known.

"Now you're not," Tara echoed. "Now you've felt me in your arms again, felt me move under your hands... felt the pleasure you've given me... now you know in here," she tapped Willow's temple again, "and here," her fingers returned to her chest, "that you're not going to lose me."

"Something like that," Tara nodded, sitting up slowly, "I'm sure it would've sunk in in a day or two that I'm not going anywhere, but," she leaned close, as if imparting a secret, "I kind of liked this way better."

"That, and many, many other things," Willow purred, lifting her soaked fingers to her mouth, wetting her lips and then sucking them clean.

"Careful," Tara warned, "you might tempt me too much, and then we'll be too exhausted in the morning to walk anywhere."

"Oh, don't worry," Willow grinned, "I'll wait until we're safe and snug in an inn or something, then I'll lick you 'til you can't move a muscle."

"Hmm, that's a claim I'll have to investigate further when the time comes," Tara murmured, idly dragging Willow's silken underwear over her hips and down her legs.

"It's not a claim, it's a promise," Willow corrected, lifting her feet free of her last article of clothing.

"Come here you," Tara said fondly, reaching one arm beneath Willow's knees and the other around her back, picking her up with just a slight exhalation of effort.

"You're not that heavy," Tara pointed out, walking slowly out into the water. Willow looped her arms casually around Tara's neck.

"So now that my lovely Amazon warrior has come and swept me off my feet, now what?"

"Wha- AH!" Willow squealed as the cold water splashed around her. Her legs flailed uselessly as Tara rose up, grinning a mischievous grin through strands of wet hair plastered over her face.

"That was thoroughly evil!" Willow protested, not quite able to keep herself from grinning in return.

"I'd say fortuitous," Tara pointed out, "who knows how long we'd have been out here if we hadn't cooled off?"

"Oh yeah?" Willow shot back, sweeping an arm across the water's surface, splashing Tara. Tara let go of her and dived backwards, splashing out of Willow's reach before regaining her footing and sending an answering wave towards Willow, completing the task of thoroughly soaking her. The two splashed and laughed for a few moments, finally coming to rest not far from the shore, hugging each other and giggling uncontrollably in waist-deep water.

"So long as we're agreed it's a draw," Tara replied, catching her breath and smiling, "an Amazon never accepts defeat."

"Okay," Willow nodded, "but I'm not promising not to get you back at an undetermined future date." Tara grinned, kissed Willow on the forehead, and took her hand. Together they made their way back to the shore where their belongings were piled.

"Oh, I know it," Willow replied. Tara handed her one of the blankets from her pack.

"It'll do as a towel," she said, "we won't need it while we're in shelter." Willow dried herself off and dressed, lastly wandering over to the boulder where her underwear was lying. She picked the silk up and examined it critically.

"Got an idea," Willow said. Kneeling by the water she dipped the underwear in and scrubbed it for a moment, cleaning the fabric as best she could under the circumstances.

"What if the hosts of hell descend on us before they dry?" Tara asked lightly. "You're going to fight evil panty-less?"

"There's something I've occasionally wanted to try," Willow said, laying her underwear back on the rock, "it's tricky, but I might as well give it a shot..." She concentrated, and a misty haze formed around the soaked article of clothing. Tara finished pulling her boots on and came over to watch, as Willow closed her eyes, her brow furrowing as the mist swirled around, little streams of vapor moving in tight spirals within it. Finally, with a relieved exhale, Willow opened her eyes and dispersed the chilly vapor.

"What did you do?" Tara asked. Willow picked up the briefs and handed them to Tara, who jumped when she touched them.

"Motion by temperature variance," Willow said with a grin, "same way I make ice bolts fly. Only, that's pretty simplistic, whereas drawing the moisture out of a pair of panties without accidentally shredding said panties... tricky. Interesting, though, much more delicate and subtle to the exercises I'm used to."

"You're a woman of many talents," Tara observed, handing Willow her underwear back.

"Want me to do yours?" Willow asked. Tara smiled her thanks, and wriggled out of her leather briefs.

"Never say no to clean underwear," Tara mused, scrubbing the leather in the stream's water. She watched, fascinated, as Willow bit her lip in concentration and drew the moisture out, leaving the leather as dry as if it had spent a day resting in the sun.

"There you go," Willow said, handing them back to Tara, "now we're sparkling and pristine again." They picked up the rest of their things and started on their way back to the cabin.

"Thanks," Willow smiled, "yeah, who'd have thought Zann Esu training would make me the perfect traveling laundry service?"

"Oh, I never assume you can't do anything," Tara replied. "Just as well, though. I was thinking we should clean at least our underwear tomorrow, but I didn't really want to travel cross-country with nothing under my skirt while they were drying out."

"Yeah, imagine if you had to high-kick a Carver," Willow pointed out. Tara shuddered theatrically.

"No thank you," she said, "I'm a one-woman Amazon. You're the only one who gets to see the, um, intimate side of me."

They reached the cabin just as the sun was starting to set, and in the little remaining light Tara did her best to clean up the old blankets they had found there, taking them outside and whacking them against a nearby tree to try to beat the dust out of them, with marginal success.

"They're still kind of dirty," she said apologetically when she returned, to find Willow laying out the sleeping bag on the empty bed frame.

"Doesn't matter," Willow said, "you're right, I don't think we'll need more than one blanket tonight. That padding on the back of your pack is kind of soft, it'll make an okay pillow. Do you think they'd be okay if we washed them? We could tomorrow, before we set out, and then wring them dry, I don't know if I can dry out something that big all at once, but we could get them dry enough to carry them, and they'd dry out properly during the day, so if we need them..."

"We'll be in Kotram by tomorrow afternoon," Tara reminded her. Willow grinned a sheepish grin.

"Oh, yeah," she said, "I forgot. Well, not really, I guess I was just kind of getting into the whole survivalist thing, us against the wilderness, with just our wits and whatever we can scrounge up to help us. Plus I'm a natural scavenger." Tara retrieved a serve of rations from her pack, which broken in half and combined with a share of berries she had found on the way back from the stream was enough to keep their stomachs from complaining.

"You know, back in Kehjistan I used to accumulate all sorts of junk," Willow said idly as they ate. "I always figured, 'hey, it might be useful somehow', and kept everything I ever bought or found. My room back in the Order city's full of little trinkets and things that looked useful at some point, and bits and pieces from everywhere I'd been. One time we, Ember and me, we took a boat across to Lut Gholein, and I came back with a statue."

"Yep. Life-sized bust of a cat priestess – like, cat-person, not cat - with this big ornate headdress, all painted with shiny black fur and green eyes and everything. They had some trouble, back in the Reckoning, in Lut Gholein with cat people, the chaos energy from the Prime Evils turned them savage, and some caravans crossing the Aranoch desert got attacked by bands of them. There used to be lots of them living in the city as well, but when that happened either they were affected by the chaos, or they got chased out anyway, and their houses got torn down. That's what Ember told me, anyway, I think she was around there during part of it. I found this old statue in the back of this dusty little antique shop, mostly just selling junk no-one in their right mind would want, and when I mentioned I was thinking of buying it, Ember just shrugged and arranged to have it loaded on our boat for when we went back to Kurast."

"That's sad," Tara said. "About the cats, I mean, not the statue-buying, that's just adorably quirky. Are there any left?"

"In Lut Gholein, no," Willow said, "maybe somewhere in the desert, no-one knows, but there's rumors that after the Reckoning ended, the tribes out there that had survived went back to normal, but stayed out there because they were ashamed of what they'd done. There's lots in Kehjistan, all over the place – it's where they come from originally – but they keep their distance from people most of the time. Ember said they all vanished about a year before the Reckoning, as if they felt it was coming and wanted to avoid it, so they weren't driven savage like the ones in Aranoch. But they still prefer to keep to themselves, apparently, and from what Ember's told me they never came back to the big cities like Kurast in the kind of numbers they'd had once. I've actually never seen a cat person up close – there's one, a male called Night Claw, who comes to the Order every few months to exchange information, but I only ever saw him from a distance. I wish I'd met that one in Kingsport."

"Marela," Tara remembered, "well, we can see if she's still around if we ever go back there. I think she'll like you."

"Aw," Willow said, leaning in to kiss her. They finished their meal quickly, and Tara closed the shutters after one last look out at the dark landscape. She returned to the bed, where Willow had wriggled into the bedroll, and gave her a goodnight kiss on the forehead as she settled down and prodded the pack beneath her head, making it comfortable.

The moon, already some distance on its path across the night sky, shed just enough light through the cracks in the shutters for Tara to watch Willow as she settled down and soon fell asleep. She leaned back on her chair beside the bed, listening to the night-time sounds from outside. She found that, without a fire going in the hearth to warm the cabin, she actually preferred to be outside, where the sounds were a little less muffled, the breeze blew gently on her face, and all in all the world seemed a little more alive. Then again, she mused, hearing the treetops sway in the wind, it was a little more than a gentle breeze out there, and shelter from the wind and the chance of rain was not something to be scoffed at either. She wondered idly if a balcony could be added to the house by the lake back home, so they could sleep out there on calm summer nights. That led her to imagining the house populated with Willow's collection of 'trinkets and bits and pieces', which she imagined as a assortment of magical, mysterious relics of far-off lands and traditions lost in the mists of time.

Unwilling to leave Willow's side to check the sky, Tara found herself marking time by the shaft of moonlight coming through a particularly wide crack in the shutters above the bed, and hazarded a guess at where it would fall on midnight. When it reached there – the right-side edge of the fireplace – Tara waited a while longer, then reluctantly woke Willow with a kiss and swapped places with her. She was surprised and pleased when, after lying down, she felt Willow's lips against hers in a long, passionate kiss that brought to mind their brief, carefree moment by the little lake in the forest. Willow pressed another kiss, light and tender, against Tara's forehead, then gently stroked her hair as she fell asleep.

Willow unknowingly found herself constructing a similar system as Tara's to tell the time, though in her case she compared the set-up of shutter, wall and moonlight to various intricate sundials the Order kept in its libraries, which Willow had studied during the occasional periods she had gone through in which mechanisms of all sorts were the focus of her fascination. Once satisfied that she had thought through all the measurements accurately, she passed the time by going over in her mind how to best explain her drying-by-cold-variation spell, as if she were writing one of the papers that sorceresses wrote and kept in the Order libraries whenever they hit upon a particularly novel use of their elemental powers. Willow smiled to herself, imagining sorceresses the world over studying Willow's Laundry Dryer and practicing on bits of damp cloth.

She was drawn slowly out of her reverie by a vague sense of unease, and she frowned, listening intently for a sound from outside that might have disturbed her. She couldn't hear anything, no matter how hard she pushed herself to detect every tiny sound, filtering out the creaking of branches and the whistling of the wind, yet the uneasiness remained. She was on the verge of discounting it and relaxing when, at last, her ears pricked up to something from outside. Somewhere nearby, on one of the trails to the north, she had heard a footstep.

Holding her breath she turned to Tara, only to see the tiniest reflections of the moonlight on the opposite wall in her eyes. Straining her eyes, Willow saw Tara blinking in the darkness – she must have just awoken, she guessed, her honed senses alerting her even in sleep that all was not well. Willow placed a hand gently on her shoulder, and felt Tara start a little, then relax under her touch. Slowly, not making a sound, Tara slid out of the sleeping bag and crouched beside Willow's chair. Willow carefully lifted herself off the chair, thankful she had managed it without the wood creaking, and waited beside Tara, listening.

For several moments Willow could hear nothing more – had the sound been something else that she had mistaken? Or had it just come during a lull in the wind, and was now being obscured. Her hand closed around her staff, and she glanced at Tara. Tara held up a hand, just visible in the gloom, touched a finger just below her left eye, then to her left ear, then pointed across the room, towards the fireplace, northwards. Willow nodded, understanding well enough – Tara had sensed something as well.

The sound came back, just as it had been before, the dull thud of a foot on the hard-packed earth on the trail. A pause, then another thud, as if something were walking very slowly, halting each time it put one foot in front of the other. Willow's mind worked incessantly, sifting through ideas and possibilities - what could she tell from the sound? A claw? A boot? A hoof? What would each sound like, how could she tell them apart. With a frown she realized she didn't have the experience to do so – that was the kind of thing Tara had proven herself far more adept at. Yet there was no way Tara could risk making a sound. Willow glanced at her again, and drew strength from the way Tara crouched silently, alert as a hawk, but even with all her senses focused on the distant sound, aware enough of Willow to offer her a quick glance and, Willow felt, though she could not see it in the dark, a smile. She could feel the tension in Tara's body, but it wasn't the tension of a small animal fearful of a predator - Tara was tense like an athlete watching the starter's flag, waiting for it to fall, ready to explode into motion without a moment's hesitation.

The sound came closer: thud, pause, thud, pause. Willow began to hear something in the pauses, a kind of scratching, scraping sound. Thud, scrape. Something being dragged, step by step? Willow had a sudden image of a man with a twisted, lame leg, lurching forward and dragging the limb behind him – her imagination supplied rotting flesh, horns, glowing eyes, claws and all manner of demonic attributes until she clamped down on it. 'Who needs monsters when you can freak yourself out just as well?' she thought with a self-deprecating smile.

The sound was definitely coming closer – along the north path, she guessed, not that it really made a difference, but she found more use in setting her mind to drawing conclusions than imagining nightmare monsters. Thud, scrape, thud, scrape. Willow glanced at Tara nervously, and was absurdly thankful when Tara's hand found hers on the darkened floor and held on. The sound approached the cabin, coming around it to the west. The thuds grew softer, and Willow realized that it had left the path and was walking through the unkempt long grass. There was a rustle of a small plant being brushed past, then silence. Willow gulped and willed herself to remain totally silent, to be so still that even Tara's Amazon senses wouldn't detect even the faintest trace of an air current from her. She suddenly felt as though her breathing was far too loud, her chest was rising and falling too much, that the motion would give them away.

Only her determination to remain still and silent kept her from jumping when a shadow fell across one of the shafts of moonlight shining on the opposite wall. Tara's hand in hers squeezed warmly, lovingly, reassuring her and calming her at the same time. Whatever it was, it was right outside the cabin, standing by the south wall, blocking the light. One by one the shafts blacked out, then the first one reappeared as the thing moved on. Willow held her breath – it must be almost at the path leading to the door, any moment now-

Thud. It was a boot, she was sure from the sound of it against the hardened ground. Not a demon? A person? Willow wondered fitfully what to do – remain silent? Call out? Even if it wasn't a demon, that didn't mean it would be a friend. What would anyone be doing trudging slowly through the wilderness at this hour? Thud, then the dragging sound again. One more thud, one more scrape. Willow sensed rather than heard Tara raise her spear, covering the door to the hallway.

There was a faint sound from the other door, a tiny rap, as if someone were knocking but trying not to be heard. Willow wished now they had closed the front door – they had left it open, to give the impression that the cabin was just as abandoned as when they had found it, but now Willow wondered whether the thing outside was stealthily slipping through the half-open door, creeping along the hall – no, of course not, they would hear its feet on the wooden floorboards far louder than on the dirt trails outside. Again a tiny knock on the wood of the door, then a fitful scratching, scrabbling sound, as if fingers were running over the rough wood, the nails catching on knots and splinters.

Then thud, scrape... the moonlight blacked out from right to left, then appeared again. Something – an arm? – knocked against the corner of the cabin as the thing rounded it, then after a moment more of silence, again the slow, dreary footsteps sounded on the northern trail. Willow listened, trying to defy the trembling that threatened to overcome her, as the sound faded away into the distance, and finally there was nothing but the whistle of the wind, and the creaking of branches from the south.

Tara stood slowly, and Willow stood with her, still doing her best not to show her fright. She felt Tara's hand squeeze hers once, then Tara sat back down on the bed, gently tugging on Willow's arm, asking her to join her. Willow sat down at once, letting out a long, shuddering breath, and when she felt Tara against her, their arms touching as they sat side-by-side, she was surprised to feel Tara trembling just as she was. Willow reached for her, her own fear forgotten, just for a moment, and Tara reached for Willow. They stayed that way, embracing, waiting for the dawn, the rest of the night.

Author's Note: Note: Elaboration on some of the events of this and the previous chapter can be found in the accompanying short story Into The Woods. It's a Halloween story, so be warned.

Willow gave a quiet sigh as, at last, she saw sunlight filtering through the cracks in the cabin's shutters. After the night's events she hadn't felt safe so long as the dark endured – particularly when the moon set, leaving no light to see by or mark the time by its progress across the wall. Tara hadn't let her go, though Willow was relieved that she had managed a couple of hours of fitful sleep, still leaning against her shoulder, her arm curled around Willow's waist. Willow gently kissed her on the top of her head, and nudged her.

"Mmmwha?" she murmured. Willow felt her stirring, then she started, her arm tightened, and when she spoke her voice was anxious. "Willow?"

"It's alright," Willow whispered soothingly, "it's fine... just the dawn." Tara sighed and relaxed, reaching her other arm around Willow for a proper hug.

"What do you say when we get a room at the inn tonight, we leave a candle burning?" Willow suggested. Tara squeezed her gently, then disentangled herself.

"We should get going," Willow suggested automatically. "If you think it's best, I mean... I was just thinking... well, honestly, I'd kind of like to get out of here as soon as possible." Tara turned and brushed a hand gently over her cheek.

"Me too," she admitted. "And anyway, the sooner we leave, the sooner we'll get to Kotram. I'll carry our bags, you take the blankets." She glanced at the shuttered window. "I don't think there's anything around here that wants them."

Willow felt a lot more like herself once she was outside in the sunlight, trying to shake a bit more dust out of the old blankets while Tara searched her pack for something to eat to start the day. She handed Willow a packet of dried food and crouched down, inspecting the ground just outside the door.

"I'm not sure," Tara shrugged. "The ground's so packed down and dry, there's only tiny traces. Not just last night, though... I think perhaps whatever it was has been here before." She stood up with a frown. "I should've checked more thoroughly yesterday," she muttered. Willow stood beside her and touched her gently on the arm.

"Be honest," she said, "if you hadn't known for sure something had been here, would you have been able to tell just from the ground?" Tara sighed, then the tension left her shoulders.

"No," she shook her head, "no, I doubt it. Maybe with twenty years' more training."

"Then it's not your fault we didn't know," Willow said firmly, "and seeing as no harm came from it, it's not worth worrying about. Come here." Tara gratefully turned into Willow's hug, burying her face in her hair.

"I was scared," Tara admitted in a whisper, "I know it... whatever it was, it probably wasn't anything worse than what we've already faced, but... I wish we'd just come across it out in the open, in broad daylight. Seen what it was, fought it if we had to... I wish it hadn't been like that, so... slow. And hidden." Willow held her, and ran her fingers through Tara's hair soothingly.

"Me too," she said. "I wanted to just crawl into a corner and hide, but you know why I didn't?" Tara shook her head. "You," Willow said simply. "You were so alert and, and ready, I... no matter how frightening it gets, part of me always feels safe with you."

"Thank you," Tara smiled, pulling back just enough to see Willow, while remaining in her arms.

"Hey, I'm thanking you," Willow protested. She was relieved to see a genuinely amused smile on Tara's lips at that, and returned the grin when Tara leaned forward and the tips of their noses touched.

"Let's," Tara agreed. Munching their bland rations they set off, Tara carrying her satchel and pack, Willow carrying the spare blankets. She wondered if they would return to the lake to wash them – today the shadows beneath the trees didn't look so inviting – but Tara evidently felt likewise, as they skirted around the north edge of the wood, finding the stream that fed the lake a mile or so from the cabin.

"Um, I was wondering," Willow began as they soaked and wrung out the blankets, cleaning them thoroughly, "do you have any idea what that thing might have been? Not to dwell on a scary subject, you know, but the curious part of me is kind of... well, curious."

"Not that curiosity is all-important," Willow admitted, "I mean, if you don't know, my curiosity can go jump in the lake, 'cause I'm not going back just to find out..." Tara chuckled.

"I think maybe an undead," she said as they started walking again. "I could feel something very faint, almost like an echo of a living thing. It definitely wasn't a demon, I'd have known in an instant if it were. It felt like something that was part of the natural world, but not quite right." She frowned. "Undead aren't demons, are they? I mean, it's not a demon sort of inhabiting the body, or anything like that?"

"No, that's possessed," Willow said, quite casual now that her mind was working in its accustomed analytical fashion. "Undead are caused by demons, but they're not demons themselves. Usually caused by demons, that is. Humans can do it too, but that's necromancy. Normally it's the presence of demonic energy, for example," she cast an arm around, "if the area happens to contain a bunch of wretched little demon hybrids prowling around making trouble. The life force in them isn't natural – part of it is, the part that used to be a normal creature, but part of it is demonic, which is probably what you sense when you sense them."

"Got it in one," Willow agreed. "Demons being here upsets the... well, the world, I guess, the balance of nature, whatever you want to call it. Like the world is a big clockwork engine, with all the parts working together, with each other – demons are like pebbles dropped into it. They get in the gears and jam things up."

"Essentially," Willow said. "They upset all the balances in nature. And one of those balances is between life and death. Sometimes, when the balance is upset, the energy can run the wrong way – a dead body can actually gain energy, come back to life, sort of. Only there's no soul to guide it, to make it properly living, so they're just," she shrugged, "hungry. Most primitive instincts, I guess, survive and feed. That's why they attack people. But they're really not aware like people, the accounts I've read say they're prone to random behavior, suddenly turning aggressive or passive for no reason, losing control of their limbs, going berserk. Sometimes the energy in them just fails for no reason, and they fall over dead. Deader. Or re-dead. Something like that," she shrugged. "True demons can use necromantic magic deliberately, and control the undead they create, but they make lousy soldiers anyway. That's why they created hybrid demons, according to the accounts of the Sin Wars."

Tara took Willow's hand to help her up over a jagged boulder blocking their path, and kept hold as they proceeded up the slope.

"Are there really human necromancers?" she asked. "You've mentioned them once or twice, I think, but I wasn't sure if you were joking or not."

"Oh, right. They exist, somewhere. You're sure you want to know? I don't want to give you nightmares or anything..." Tara grinned and brought Willow's hand up to her lips, kissing her palm.

"Yeah, I noticed," Willow replied, licking her lips and deliberately looking elsewhere than Tara's face. Tara gave a lopsided smile and swatted Willow on the bottom. "Oh!" she exclaimed.

"Is that supposed to discourage me, though?" Willow enquired, prompting Tara to roll her eyes. "Okay, okay... let's see, necromancers. Well, for a start, I really doubt that a necromancer is what's causing all this, the one thing that's consistent about all the stories and myths about necromancers is that they hate demons, and demons hate them."

"Probably the same reason demons hate each other," Willow supposed, "they're rivals. Nothing about necromancers is really solid, all there is are legends and stories that might be true, or maybe they were true once and then got embellished over the years. The Order has some books about them, solid facts supposedly, but they're kept in a special library that only the Council is allowed into. Once or twice Ember let me look at a book from the Council library - she's not a Councilor herself, but the Council basically let her do whatever she wants, seeing as she's one of the best sorceresses there is. Those were just really advanced texts on cold magic, though, I never saw any of the necromantic volumes. But there's plenty of stories flying around, I guess there's grains of truth in most of them."

"There's a couple of Amazon myths about men who could command the dead," Tara said, "but they're really old, they're pretty much just figures of darkness, like goblins and bogeymen."

"You know, a monster in a children's story," Tara said airily. "Hide under the bed, behind the wardrobe door, that sort of thing."

"A bit," Tara said, "but in the stories they're always defeated in the end. They're usually big and scary, but afraid of people who stand up to them."

"I guess," Tara said, with a slight blush. "Mind you, some of the stories we told each other when we were kids had me hiding under the blankets now and then."

"My mother used to say an evil cow would come get me if I didn't eat my vegetables," Willow said reflectively. She noticed Tara's incredulous look. "What?"

"Yeah," Willow said defensively, "like, a cow standing on its hind legs, with a big axe, and it'd creep around the farms at night and hide outside the bedroom window, and the last thing I'd hear would be this 'moo' and then it'd be too late..." she trailed off. "Well, hey, I was five years old."

"Well it," Willow began, then frowned in thought, "I guess... hooves, huh? Actually, I don't know, I never really thought about it. Um, I guess it sort of, balanced it on its arms, I mean its fore-legs, like," she held her wrists together, miming holding something between them, "and then sort of swung it around... only it'd probably end up hitting itself..." Tara laughed and pulled Willow close for a kiss.

"But you're so adorable when you do it," Tara pointed out. Willow looked at her sidelong for a moment, then grinned.

"I love you too," Tara said fondly, "my cutest sorceress in the whole world." Willow smiled widely. "Moo," Tara added, in a quiet voice just as Willow turned away.

"Argh!" Willow groaned in mock-exasperation. "I'm never going to live this down, am I?" She watched Tara laugh, waited until she glanced away, then gave her a light whack on her leather-clad backside.

"Anyway, necromancers," Willow went on, as if nothing had happened, "there used to be mmph!" She was cut off as Tara leaned over and kissed her firmly on the lips.

"I love being with you," Tara said softly, no longer teasing at all, but with gentle humor shining in her eyes.

"What was I saying? Oh, yeah... okay, according to the legends – the ones that might be a bit reliable on some level, anyway – there used to be a whole cult of mages who practiced necromantic magic. They lived somewhere out in Kehjistan, really deep in the jungles where it's dangerous to go, far away from Kurast or the other cities. Of course the other mage clans wouldn't have anything to do with them, I mean, no surprise there... but there was kind of a hierarchy, the most powerful necromancers ruling the others, I guess because they could control the biggest armies of undead."

"Only in stories," Willow said with a vague wave of her hand, "you know the kind of thing, the noble prince has his princess stolen away by necromancers who want to sacrifice her for... I don't know, something or other... and he has to track them down and rescue her. All pretty fanciful, just stuff made up by people who didn't know the first thing about necromancy... well, that's not a surprise, I guess. But for real, no-one knows. According to the histories the Zakarum church declared a holy war on them a couple of centuries ago and send an army of paladins out to track them down and destroy them."

"They didn't find anything," she said. "Not really good story material... actually I read one book that said the same army went out again, determined not to fail a second time, and they were never heard from again. But that's definitely made up, because several of the more reliable histories actually name some of the paladins who were in the army, and they were involved in other campaigns at the same time as they were supposed to be out in the jungle being overwhelmed by armies of darkness."

"But the story of the army that trudged through the jungle for a few weeks and then came home without finding anything doesn't really work for a bard," Tara grinned.

"Officially, the Order maintains that there are still necromancers somewhere. Probably there's just a few, maybe a dozen or so. Even an army couldn't find a dozen people hiding in the Kehjistan jungle, it's just too big. There was a story that said the necromancers had a huge city, deep in the jungle, called Rathma, this great big empire of the undead that they ruled. Even in the jungle the paladins would have found that, if it really existed."

"Probably," Willow agreed, "I mean, what good is a big scary sorcerer if he doesn't have a creepy lair with giant spiders and spooky architecture and stuff? I tell ya, I wouldn't like to be a bard plying my trade if the best I had to work with was 'Prince Charming ventured forth into the spooky camp site in a jungle clearing to rescue has maiden.' But yeah, what it boils down to is, necromantic magic is real, necromancers are real, but if you're seeing undead it's a whole lot more likely that it's demons causing it."

With the sun still rising in the east Willow and Tara reached the crest of the rise, and looked out over the landscape beyond. Willow glanced back, over the valley behind them to the ridge they had stood on the day before.

"I don't mean to sound condescending," she began hesitantly, "but you're really keeping up well. I mean, I've had plenty of proof you're energetic," she added with a sly grin, "but this kind of thing isn't easy if you're not used to it."

"I've had a bit of training," Willow said as they started down towards the grassy plain, "mostly just general keep-fit stuff with the Order. Healthy body, healthy mind, and all that. Though just between you and me, I like our way of being energetic a lot more than fitness training."

"Me too," Tara smiled, "I'd recommend it to Solari, but I'm keeping you to myself."

"Darn right you are," Willow grinned. "I used to have to walk a fair bit anyway. Some of the trips Ember would take me on were to places that weren't really easily accessible. Take a boat as far up river as it went, then walk the rest of the way to some tribal village where they've never seen stone buildings or steel weapons. Spending half a day tramping through a steaming jungle makes temperate grasslands look pretty inviting by comparison."

"Oh, like you wouldn't believe," Willow said. "It's not so bad downriver near Kurast, or around the Order's city, but when you get into the deep jungle it's stinking hot, so humid you feel like you can't breathe..." she made a face. "There were times when I'd flare off magic just to cool myself down."

"If you ever meet her, don't tell her I said this," Willow warned, "but I think she kind of likes being the go-anywhere do-anything sorceress who never gets bothered by anything. I asked her if the heat was getting to her once when we were up-river, and she said she'd been in hotter places. The Aranoch desert, I guess. I've never been into the desert itself, just to Lut Gholein which is on the coast, but it was hot enough there. After we'd been there I stopped complaining about going up-river."

"Magic," Willow said, "always magic. Sometimes I think Ember personally knows every single mage in all of Sanctuary. Everywhere we went she'd bring me to see people, from all the mage clans, and all sorts of other mages. The Order doesn't strictly approve of training with outside mages, unless they've gone through some exhaustive approval process with the Council, but Ember just does what she likes and no-one ever objects."

"Not that different to what you're doing now. What you're *supposed* to be doing now," Tara corrected herself.

"Yeah," Willow agreed thoughtfully, "yeah, it is... I wonder if she meant it that way?"

"I was just thinking," Willow said, "if I hadn't, you know, got into that mess in Entsteig, I wonder if Ember was going to take me on a trip like this anyway... then I'd have met you anyway," she added with a grin.

"Yeah, it is," Willow agreed, "maybe there's something in this destiny stuff after all. Heh, I wonder how Ember got the Council to decide to order me to do something she was going to have me do anyway. That'd be just like her, always half a dozen steps ahead. Next time I see her I'm teaching her your Command game, I bet she'll pick it up right away."

"I'd like to meet her," Tara said softly. Willow looked sidelong at her, smiling.

"I'll make sure you do," she promised. She kept her gaze on Tara for a moment as they continued down the slope. "You're not tired, are you?" she asked. "You didn't get much sleep. Do you want to stop for a bit?"

"You look like maybe you could use it," Willow added, as they continued a little way further down to a suitable scatter of rocks half-buried in the slope. Tara sat down, and held out an arm for Willow to sit with her, nestled up against her.

"Yeah, well," Tara said vaguely, "creepy stalking undead-things don't make for a restful sleep. Tonight will be better."

"Yup," Willow agreed, "nice hot bath, and then a loooong rest for both of us. I've missed sleeping with you cuddled up against me."

"And then when we wake up," Willow went on, with a thoughtful grin, "we can take advantage of the other benefits of sharing a bed... and then have another nice long nap after we're all tired out... or maybe another bath together... back to bed..."

"Someone's imagination is running full speed," Tara said, nuzzling into the side of Willow's neck. "What if there's a rider from the caravan waiting for us, and we have to set off right away?"

"Oh now that just wouldn't be fair," Willow proclaimed. She paused, and peered out into the distance. "You don't see any riders, do you?"

"Too far," Tara said, "I can see the villages and the keep, nothing smaller. No towers though, it's not a castle..."

"One advantage to studying with a go-anywhere do-anything sorceress like Ember," Willow said, flipping pages idly, "she's gone everywhere and done everything." Tara stared out into the distance again, as Willow skimmed through the pages.

"I wonder if it's a church, or a temple of some sort," she said to herself. "At home some of our outlying towns are built around a temple, it's always the biggest, strongest building."

"I don't see anything," Willow said after a moment's searching, "maybe it just wasn't notable enough for Ember to write down. I'm sure she's traveled through Westmarch at some point. Or maybe she came a different way, along the river or something." Tara nodded, but something had caught her eye. Willow noticed her attention waver, and looked up.

"Something," Tara said, "I can't quite tell..." She gazed up into the cloudless sky. Willow followed her gaze, but couldn't see anything.

"A few," Willow said, her hand closing around her staff, "small ones, like birds."

"It's coming closer," Tara said, "hold this..." Willow took her spear, and watched as Tara stood and drew her bow from her back. She gave a quick glance to the sky, where Tara was staring, but couldn't see anything.

"I can feel it more strongly," Tara said, nocking an arrow to her string, "it's not a natural animal..." She aimed, and Willow again stared into the sky. She imagined she could just see a tiny speck, moving in the blue, then Tara fired, and her arrow shot away, quickly becoming just a speck itself.

"I'll take your word for it," Willow said, impressed. "You could see that? I just saw a dot, and I'm not even sure I saw that."

"I saw its wings," Tara said, "and I felt it. It was like a bird of prey, but... hateful. Birds don't hate, they just hunt because it's how they live."

"How could you sense that?" Willow asked, getting to her feet and handing Tara her spear back. Tara shrugged.

"Instinct," she said, "the way it moved. I'm not really sure." Willow leant against her back and hugged her.

"We should probably see what it was," Willow said with a frown, "not that I think a skewered demon bird sounds inviting, but we might learn a thing or two if I can figure out what kind of creature it was."

"Well, I'm ready," Tara said, "let's go then." Willow nodded and they set off again, Tara slotting her bow back into place on her back, Willow returning the journal to its pouch. On glancing at Tara, she noticed her looking somewhat disturbed.

"Oh, just thinking," she said, "you know, I was sent here – on the diplomatic mission, I mean – because Solari didn't think I had the 'killer instinct' to be a soldier. I guess she was wrong." She sounded less than pleased, and Willow immediately put a hand on her shoulder, hoping to comfort her.

"You're bothered that you shot a demon?" she asked, hoping for a grin. Tara just shrugged.

"Not really," she said unconvincingly. She glanced at Willow and saw in her eyes that she hadn't reassured her. "It's just how it happened," she said, "I sensed it, and the moment it was close enough - boom," she mimed firing an arrow. Willow trailed her fingers down Tara's arm and took her hand.

"Why does that bother you?" she asked. "It's not as though it might have been a peaceful demon. There's no such thing. Trust me, I know."

"I know," Tara said, managing a small smile for Willow, "I know... I just never really imagined I could be that... efficient."

"It's not the first time," Willow pointed out gently, "the Carvers that attacked us..."

"That was different," Tara said with a shake of her head, "they were attacking us."

"This one would've," Willow said with certainty. "Believe me, you didn't kill a harmless animal, or something that might've just flown by and left us, or anyone else, alone. Look at me," she insisted, gently halting Tara and turning her so they stood face to face. "It was a demon. I've studied them, I've read the journals of hundreds of sorceresses who've fought them for centuries, and I've seen one of the biggest, nastiest ones right up close. They don't belong here. They don't create, they don't nurture, they don't respect anything that does. They're absolutely not worth feeling the least bit guilty over, especially not when you're out in the wilderness being chased by them, and especially not for the most compassionate, gentle, noble person I have ever known." Tara looked surprised at Willow's vehemence, then an odd, sad smile came over her face.

"You're welcome," Willow replied, brushing the corner of her lips with her thumb. "Better?"

"Better," Tara said gratefully. "I guess... I just needed to hear that. Reassure myself I'm not turning into something I'd rather not be."

"You're not," Willow said as they continued down the hill, "you're so not. You may be coming to terms with the dangers out here, and adapting to them, but you will never, ever become careless with life. I just can't believe you have it in you. And I certainly haven't seen any evidence of it. Trust me, if I did, I wouldn't hide it from you."

The creature had fallen in a disorderly heap, pierced through the body and quite dead. Willow knelt down to examine it, while Tara maintained a distance that kept her from smelling the black fluid leaking out of it.

"It's a blood hawk," Willow said, "a bit of a big one, according to the texts I've read. Wingspan's almost a meter." She poked it with the tip of her staff, and shrugged as the patch of wing she touched disintegrated into a small puddle of goo. "Yuck. Do you want the arrow back?"

"Um, i-if it's possible without either of us having to touch that thing," Tara said hesitantly.

"I think I can manage that," Willow said, flexing her hand. She directed a stream of condensation down onto the dead creature, freezing it solid. A tiny shard of ice leapt from her palm and struck the icy mass, shattering it into a small pile of cracked pieces, from which Willow withdrew the arrow. She inspected it, aimed a quick burst of cold over the shaft and head to clean off any remaining black blood, then handed it back to Tara, who took it gingerly.

"They're scavengers," Willow explained as they set off, now near the base of the hill and the beginning of the plain, "the small ones feed on dead animals, but once they get bigger they go after larger prey, and living creatures. They're pretty common, not much of a threat on their own. Farmers sometimes organize armed parties to find their nests, where there's usually a bunch of them hanging around. They're not difficult to kill, just pesky. Fast little things, and vicious."

"Nah," Willow replied, "sketches of them, in the bestiaries the Order keeps in its libraries. One of them had really detailed drawings someone had done of a dead one being dissected, that wasn't exactly the most fun thing I've ever read. Put me off my lunch. They say their claws can be used as charms, but only if you can get them off while they're still alive. Not very powerful anyway."

"You'll know if you see one," Willow promised, "big, slimy, pulsating masses of yuck."

"Sorry," Willow said with an apologetic smile. "With luck we won't see one, they don't usually nest on plains anyway. They're supposed to prefer more secluded places, where they won't be easy to find. It's not difficult for half a dozen men to get a few swords and smash up a nest, so they don't build them where they're likely to be found. They're not intelligent at all, but they've got enough animal instinct for that."

"Well, I guess that's one less for some farmer to deal with," Tara said with a glance over her shoulder. In a few paces they reached level ground, and Tara took a deep breath.

"Uh-huh," Tara said, "only an hour's walk or so. Do you want to stop for an early lunch, or finish it off now?"

"Let's go for the town," Willow said with a grin, "I wouldn't mind lunch to include a table and hot food, how about you?"

"Lunch including me?" Tara smiled slyly. "I like the sound of that." Willow laughed.

"Well then, let's go," Willow said, looping her arm through Tara's elbow, "the sooner we're there the sooner we can have lunch. And then dessert," she added with a sidelong grin.

The road to the west-most of the villages surrounding Kotram ran away to the south, so Willow and Tara had to skirt around the high wood and earth wall to reach the gate.

"Looks like they're used to keeping trouble at bay," Tara commented, glancing at the protective wall. Hard-packed earth rose up two meters, sharply slanted and reinforced with wooden spikes driven through it. From the top of that, a wall of three meter long trunks rose up, their tips sharpened to points. There were more than a couple of scratches and marks in the wood, but they were big, sturdy trunks, and nowhere in the wall was there any sign of serious damage.

"Suits me fine," Willow said, "I could do with a big wall between me and open ground for a while."

"Me too," Tara agreed, "sleeping under the stars is a lot nicer back home where you can do it without being interrupted by things that go bump in the night."

"Or be interrupted when we're going bump in the night," Willow added, prompting a laugh from Tara.

"Yes, or that- ...oh," Tara said, training off as she rounded the reinforced wooden pillar at the side of the gate and looked through, into the village. Willow noticed her expression, incomprehension mixed with shock, and quickly came to her side to see for herself.

"Oh hell," she said flatly. As far as they could see, across the village square, in the tavern, the store-houses, the barns and stables, and the houses and workshops, there was not a soul in sight. The village was completely empty.

Willow and Tara walked slowly forward, each peering into every alley and doorway inside the gates, searching for any sign of life. A thought occurred to Tara, and she turned around to inspect the gates themselves.

"The gates," Tara explained, "there's no damage. No broken timbers, the beam is intact."

"Or it was so sudden they didn't have time to bar the gates," Tara frowned. "Can you see any signs of fighting?"

Willow joined Tara in surveying as much of the village as they could see. She pointed out a door here and there that hung open, and venturing closer to the nearest building, a small general store, they saw the latch had been broken, as if the door was kicked in. Inside the shelves were bare, and on the floor lay scattered piles of produce and dry goods. A chair was turned over, several glasses had fallen to the floor and shattered, but among the debris there were no signs of actual fighting - no nicks in the counter to indicate a sword had struck, no furniture or tabletops shattered as if an axe had struck them, no blood stains on the wooden floor.

"What happened?" Willow wondered aloud. Tara shrugged, her worried gaze taking in every detail she could see.

"Maybe the townspeople thought it was getting too dangerous out here?" Willow said, picking up a wooden plate and turning it over thoughtfully. "They packed up and went somewhere else? Maybe they're in the keep on the hill?"

"They didn't pack up," Tara said, "they'd have taken the food, not left it here to rot." She poked a moldy loaf of bread with the toe of her boot. "This doesn't make sense, if they were attacked they'd have barred the gates and tried to hold out until help could come."

"Maybe they saw their attackers coming out on the plains," Willow suggested, "they had enough time to get everyone out?" Tara shook her head thoughtfully.

"It takes longer than you'd think to evacuate a village this size," she said, "back home, if we're threatened, all the adults know what to do, who looks after the children and gets them to safety, who packs up all the supplied that can be moved, who helps the elderly... it all has to be planned. For a village like this," she shrugged, "maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't look like the kind of place where they'd be that prepared to move. It would have taken too long, and unless the enemy was very slow they'd have arrived... there'd at least have been signs of fighting outside, where the rearguard protected the last of the villagers as they escaped."

She checked a handful of the fallen items beneath the shelves, finding the food too spoiled to take, and stood up with a forlorn expression. Willow took her hand and followed her back outside, where they made for a smith's forge a few doors away.

"Maybe they did just decide to leave," Tara went on, though she didn't sound convinced, "maybe they knew about the demons out there, and figured they'd be safer in the keep, and they should leave the village before they were directly under threat."

"Do you think that's likely?" Willow asked. Tara shook her head morosely. "Me neither," Willow went on, "besides, the Kingsway Highlands had their share of trouble during the Reckoning. They weren't involved in the worst of it, with the Prime Evils, but there were more demons than they could comfortably deal with, according to the records the Order kept. They wouldn't have forgotten how to take care of themselves this quickly."

"It's as if they just," Tara mimed a bubble bursting, "poof! Vanished into thin air." She looked inside the smithy, and her frown deepened. Willow followed her gaze, and her shoulders slumped.

"There's no way anyone would have left this behind," Tara said, leaning over to pick up a sword, half out of its scabbard, from where it had fallen on the ground. She leant the sword against the forge itself, and lay her hand against its stones.

"Cold," she said, "I didn't think anyone had been here for at least a few days, but that confirms it." Willow looked around, counting on her fingers.

"...demons wouldn't bother," Willow finished, "you're right. Carvers have been here, or something like them."

"I doubt it," she said, pointing, "look over there, polearms." Tara followed Willow's gaze and saw a stack of simple halberds stacked in a corner. "Goat-men would have taken those, they're supposed to prefer two-handed weapons. Less speed, more power. Probably one of those Carver bands we saw the tracks of up on the ridge." She and Tara returned to the open, and Willow followed Tara across the square to the small village church.

"We shouldn't stay here," Tara said quickly, "but I want to try to find out what happened, why the village is like this."

"Agreed," Willow said, "even if it was Carvers that came through here, that doesn't explain how the village was overrun, or why the gates weren't closed. Besides, there'd have to be a hundred of them before they'd dare attack a place this size. What are we looking for?" Tara pushed open the door of the church and looked around inside, noting the building was largely untouched, though the pews were in places scratched and broken, and one of the tapestries adorning the walls had been torn.

"Back home each of the smaller villages keeps its own records," Tara said, "sort of like a journal of the village's life. They record when visitors pass through, when the harvests are taken in, any notable events, that sort of thing. I want to see if these people kept anything like that."

"Some of the towns we passed through in Entsteig did the same sort of thing," Willow said, joining Tara in searching the long church hall's shelves on either side of the pews, which mostly contained old maps and scrolls. "A few of them had us all sign our names when we stayed the night."

"Here," Tara said after a moment, "this looks likely." She took the last one of a series of identical tomes from a far shelf and opened it on the table at the end of the hall, beneath a wooden Zakarum cross. Willow looked over her shoulder, scanning through the neatly recorded dates and notes, all written in the same heavy hand.

"Two weeks," Willow agreed, "'Arrival of Tomas, brother of our smith Piter, from Harthim. Excess grain from harvest sent to monastery for safe-keeping.' That must be the monastery up on the hill. That's it?" She turned the next couple of pages, finding them blank. "The blacksmith's brother shows up and they send some food up to the monastery? What about 'Evacuating village now, sorry we missed you'?"

"No pages have been torn out," Tara mused, "and you're right, I'm sure they wouldn't have left without someone at least leaving a record of where they were going." Willow frowned, and absently toyed with a corner of the frayed carpet with her boot.

"What do we do now?" Tara paused, leaned against the table, and thought for a moment.

"We'll check the monastery," she said, "if a rider from the caravan came here and found the place like this, that's where he'd have gone. If not..." she trailed off.

"I don't know," Tara admitted, "something's not right. If this happened two weeks ago, but they didn't know about it in Harthim - and I'm sure they'd have mentioned it if they did - that means no-one from here reached there. If they went to the monastery to hide, surely they'd have sent a rider to the nearest safe town."

"The monastery?" Willow asked. "It's stone, and those places are built like fortresses, the demons can't have got in there... could they?" Tara shook her head again.

"I don't know," she repeated. "If the monastery isn't safe, I think we should head for the river, and try to get on a boat going to Duncraig."

"It's four days to Harthim from here," Tara said, "that's if we take the road, which leaves us visible. If we go across country, maybe five days. The river is only two days away, and you saw how many boats are traveling along it. I think that's what we should do."

"Okay," Willow agreed, "then that's what we'll do." Tara nodded, took Willow's hand, and together they left the church.

"Wait a moment," Tara said as they reached the street, "we should check the stores, just in case there's dried food we can take. We might run low on rations if we have to make for the river." Willow nodded, and they moved towards a pair of storehouses on either side of the road, just beyond the square. Willow poked her head through the door, which hung ajar, and found the shelves had been swept clean, their former contents scattered on the ground, barrels broken open, sacks of grain slashed. A cursory examination yielded nothing worth taking, so she sighed and came back to the door.

She saw Tara leaning on the wall of the building she had gone into, breathing deeply and staring off into the sky. Tara's eyes fixed on Willow, and she quickly came to meet her halfway across the street, taking her shoulders.

"We h-have to l-leave," she said, as Willow glanced at the door of the storehouse behind her.

"What?" Willow exclaimed, keeping her voice down. She ducked around Tara, making for the door, but Tara's hand closed around her arm and held her in a grip that, gentle as it was, was unbreakable.

"They're dead," Tara said quietly. Willow studied her expression, and a chill crept over her.

"Let's just go," she said. Willow nodded, and they jogged towards the village gates. Tara stopped in her tracks as they were almost at the gate, holding out an arm to stop Willow, who almost ran into her.

"Something's out there," she said at Willow's confused look, "I'm not sure what... I think it might be Carvers."

"How many?" Willow whispered. Tara closed her eyes, and Willow held herself still, not wanting to interfere with Tara's concentration.

"Lots," Tara said darkly, "to the south, coming this way." She cautiously edged to the gate and peered around it.

"Damn," she said quietly, pulling back. Willow looked, keeping herself as much out of sight as she could. On the horizon, spread out on either side of the road leading away from the village, dark shapes were moving closer. She saw a pair of crude banners raised on standards, flapping in the breeze, and on either side, a hundred meters or so distant from the main group, small handfuls of the creatures kept pace with them.

"Will they see us?" Willow wondered. "They move faster than goat-men, I don't think we'll outrun them."

"If we go out, we'll have to fight," Tara said as Willow ducked back. "They're too far spread out to miss us, and it's open ground anyway, they're sure to see us."

"Can we take that many?" Willow asked. "I think there's two old ones, probably magic users. It might take a minute or two for me to get rid of them."

"I'm not sure I can hold off the others for that long," Tara said quickly. "Do these villages have a back gate? They can't just have the one gate, can they?"

"I don't know," Willow said, "come on, let's find out while we've got time. If we have to fight, we'd be better off in here, where they won't be able to come at us all at once." She and Tara took off at a run, dodging between the church and the village tavern, through an alley, into the street running behind them, and between a pair of houses. Beyond those were crude sheds, intended only to keep stores dry and out of the wind, and they backed onto the village's wall.

"Where's the back gate?" Willow complained, looking frantically from side to side. "You've got to have a back gate, otherwise you get trapped in when someone shows up and lays siege to the place and damn it!"

"I don't see anything we could use to climb over," Tara said quickly. Willow turned around, her back to the earth wall, and thought furiously.

"Okay," she said, her brow furrowed, "Carvers have already been here, right? And there's a bunch of them coming. What're the odds it's two separate groups?"

"No way to tell," Tara said, "there might be more than one band of them, or it might just be the same one coming back. Why would they come back?"

"They sometimes take over abandoned towns," Willow explained briefly, "for protection during the day, and to store food. If it's the same band as looted the place originally, that means they won't stay, they'll leave again once it's dark, and we'll be able to get out safely once they're gone!"

"You mean hide?" Tara asked, skeptical. "Would it be safe? What if they find us?" Willow took her hand and led her back between the storehouses, towards the village square.

"I think I saw a trapdoor in the church," she said, "it hadn't been disturbed. They think the place is deserted, they won't search it again. We haven't left any trace of us being here, have we?"

"Not much," Tara said, her mind working fast, "maybe a footprint, a couple of things moved... we took that book off its shelf."

"They won't notice," Willow said, "I'm sure they won't, Carvers aren't smart enough to notice things like that, I'm sure." They reached the square and darted inside the church, running along between the pews to the end of the hall. Willow reached for the carpet, hesitated, grabbed the book and shoved it back on its shelf, then bent down and drew the carpet back. Beneath there was a trapdoor, made from heavy wood bracketed with iron, unscarred and dusty around the heavy iron ring that would open it. Together they managed to heave the door open, and Tara held it while Willow stepped onto the sturdy ladder within and looked down.

"Nothing's damaged down here," she said, turning back to Tara and helping hold the door. "What do you think?" Tara thought for a moment.

"It's our best option," she said, "I don't think we can get out without being seen, and the odds aren't in our favor in a running battle. Can you hold the door for a moment?" Willow braced herself and kept the door open, while Tara dragged the carpet up over it. Handing Willow her spear, she climbed with her onto the ladder, and slowly they lowered the trapdoor down as they descended.

"I can hear them," Tara said softly, "at the gate. I think they're coming in." She reached over and tugged on the edges of the rug, hanging over the sides of the door, straightening it so it would lie flat, as it had been before, once the door was shut.

"Their eyesight's decent, but they can't smell or hear too well," Willow whispered, "so long as they don't see us we'll be alright."

"Memorize the cellar," Tara said, "there won't be much light, not enough for you to see by."

"You?" Willow asked, glancing down, noting the positions of barrels, crates and the walls relative to the bottom of the ladder.

"Mind your fingers," Willow warned, as Tara reached through the narrowing gap between the floor and the lowering trapdoor, ensuring there would be no evidence the carpet had been moved. Tara gave a thumbs-up, and together they gently lowered the door closed, plunging the cellar into darkness.

Moving carefully, testing each step they descended the ladder and finally reached the floor. Tara heard the slight sound as Willow lowered the blankets and satchel she was carrying, and a moment later felt her spear against her hand. She took it and switched it to her other hand, wanting to keep hold of Willow until her eyes adjusted. She blinked in the gloom, finding the light even more elusive than she had thought. On the one hand that was good - the less light was being let in, the fewer cracks there were for a stray sound to escape - but Tara had always found it disconcerting to have to navigate by tracker senses, imagining the shape of her surroundings more by the way the air circulated when she moved. Here and there a tiny shaft of light ventured through the floorboards, but they were few and far between.

She felt Willow turn her hand over, and then a fingertip was tracing against her palm: 's-e-e', then a question mark. Tara blinked again, doing her best to focus her senses, and found she could tell at least where the walls were, as well as get a rough idea what was open space and what was blocked by crates. She traced a 'y' on Willow's palm, and felt a reassuring squeeze of her hand in return.

Tara led Willow across the floor and gently pulled her down, helping her spread out the blankets to provide some comfort as they sat. She carefully laid her spear on the ground, and her bow, memorizing exactly where they were so that she could snatch them up again at a moment's notice.

For a little while all was silent in the hall above them, and only Tara's superior hearing allowed her to detect the faintest hint of movement from the street outside. She felt Willow lean against her, and gratefully put an arm around her shoulders, the close contact between them reassuring her. Then both women tensed as there came the dull sound of claws tapping on wooden floorboards. Tara's hand went to her spear, and she felt a vague sensation of gathering power from Willow beside her. More and more footsteps came, some of them from directly above, but the trapdoor remained undisturbed, and the little cracks of daylight in the floorboards remained cut off abruptly around the door, indicating the carpet hadn't been moved. In spite of the continued presence above them, Tara relaxed a little, and felt Willow do likewise.

Up above there seemed to be some commotion. Snarling and chittering echoed down, a sort of guttural language composed of sharp, harsh sounds, accompanied by what seemed to be a background chorus of hissing from other voices. Occasionally there was a growling shout, and the other voices would join in. Now and then a sharp sound echoed through the cellar, as if something heavy were being rapped on the floor. For a nervous moment Tara wondered if the creatures were testing the floor, looking for cellars such as the one they were in, but when nothing came of it she decided it had to be something else - a gesture of authority? She imagined the old Carvers slamming the hafts of their standards on the ground as they snarled and barked at their tribes.

Being so close to Willow, Tara sensed at once when she moved her arm, and so was not startled when she felt her fingertip on her palm again, tracing letters. She concentrated, having missed the first letter but catching the others: 'l-d,' she traced, then a tap, then 'o-n-e-s,' tap, 'a-r-g-u-i-n-g.' Figuring out Willow's system - the taps were spaces - she re-imagined the scene above, now with two old Carvers growling at each other, as the tribe divided up behind them, snarling support or derision. She realized suddenly that, unless Willow were guessing - and she wouldn't have gone to the trouble of laboriously conveying it to Tara, if it were just a random guess - she must have been able to understand the creatures' language. Tara's respect for the Zann Esu's teaching, already high on the evidence of Willow's broad and often encyclopedic knowledge, increased again.

Up above, the argument seemed to suddenly escalate, with a crash as something - probably one of the pews, Tara guessed - tipped over, to a general accompaniment of growls and shouts. A rhythmic chanting began, raw and primal, accented by the stamping of many clawed feet. A couple of the tiny cracks of light wavered as something passed above them, then a moment later there was a great cheer, and a screech of pain.

Tara pushed her senses as far as they would go, preparing for the possibility that, somehow, the fight above might somehow give away her and Willow's hiding place - a scrabbling claw catching the edge of the carpet, perhaps, or even a falling body breaking a floorboard, though she allowed that was unlikely, given the size of the Carvers, and the sturdy construction of the church hall. She frowned, trying to place something that didn't quite seem right - 'Then again,' she mused to herself, 'what is it supposed to feel like when you're hiding under the floor with demons fighting up above?' Willow seemed to be taking the situation with more calm, remaining alert but not unduly tense at Tara's side.

The combatants seemed to have come to grips properly, to judge by the raucous cheering and shrieking. There was the thud of a body falling, far off to one side of the trapdoor thankfully, a hasty scrambling noise, a brief pause, then a clang of blades. The swords clashed twice more, then there was another pained shriek, and a cheer.

'The same one as got hurt before?' Tara wondered. 'Or are they even now?' She mentally shook herself, reminding herself that it hardly mattered how the duel was going, so long as she and Willow remained undiscovered.

For a few seconds there were only footsteps, and Tara imagined the combatants circling each other, then the noise of the other creatures died down, there was a breathless pause, and a body hit the floor. Tara let out a breath as the silence ended with another cheer, slowly turning into more chanting. She felt Willow lean back against the wall beside her, and acknowledged that the end of the fight above did seem to ease the tension down below. If anything, perhaps now the creatures would be too enthused with cheering the victor to devote any of their marginal brainpower to searching the building any further than they had already done. She relaxed too, and reached around Willow with both arms, holding her close.

"Love you," she whispered in a tiny voice, quite sure the raucous yelling in the hall above would prevent her being overheard. Willow's arm snaked around her waist, her other hand on Tara's arm as it crossed her chest, and she hugged Tara tightly in response.

For the next few minutes they remained still and silent, listening as the sounds above dwindled into chittering exchanges, and the footsteps became fewer. There was a muffled dragging sound and a thud at one point, from roughly where the loser of the combat had fallen, and Tara wondered idly, with black humor, if Carvers buried their dead or ate them. From what she had seen in the storehouse - and she did her best not to dwell on that - they had no compunctions about eating anything else.

Something still nagged her senses, and to keep herself from thinking too much about the Carvers and the fate of the people who had lived in the village above, Tara let her thoughts dwell on the space around her and Willow, wondering what it was she felt. The air was almost still now that neither of them were moving, and she had only the vaguest sense of where the walls and crates were, mostly from the tiny amount light shining through the floorboards above. With a jolt she realized what it was - the air was moving, a tiny, almost imperceptible motion where there should have been none.

Willow's grip tightened as she felt Tara's surprise, and Tara took a moment to reassure her silently, stroking her side and back. She felt Willow's head, tucked in against her shoulder, nod once, and returned her attention to the tremor in the air. For a moment she wondered if, unlikely though it was, there was something else in the cellar with them, but she immediately discarded that thought - the motion was too regular. It was almost like - Tara frowned in thought - like a breeze, the kind of thing that, had she been outside, she would have ignored without even thinking about it, filtering it out so that she could more readily sense other things. 'But in here,' she thought, 'there shouldn't be any breeze at all. You don't get breezes in sealed cellars, only in... tunnels,' she finished with a widening of her eyes. She gently took Willow's hand.

'W-a-i-t,' she traced on it, feeling Willow nod again that she understood. Making no sound at all Tara extracted herself from Willow's arms and got to her feet, picking up her spear just in case. She took a step forward, then another, and suddenly she could actually feel the air moving against her face. She turned towards the movement, and gingerly walked towards the wall of the cellar, slowly feeling her way with each step just in case there was some obstruction on the ground she hadn't already detected.

She came to the wall and, holding the spear in the crook of one arm, laid both her palms on it and felt around experimentally. She worked her way along the stone surface, following the tiny breeze, until she reached a stack of crates. She slipped her hand between them and the wall, and with a start felt her fingers touch wood, not stone, behind them. She felt around for a moment, tracing the edge of the wood, where it met the stone - it was sturdy, thick... she felt cold metal under her fingers, and examining it in the dark, realized it was a hinge. A door.

Quickly she returned to Willow, gently taking her hand as she saw, by a thin ray of light, Willow sensing her approach and reaching out for her. She sat down and curled Willow's fingers over, except for one which she pointed at the crates, then she opened her hand and traced 'd-o-o-r.'

Willow kept herself calm, but Tara could nevertheless feel her sudden excitement. Willow guided her hand first to her own chest, then Tara's, then pointed both their hands where Tara had indicated. Tara drew their joined hands to her cheek and, when they were touching, nodded so Willow could feel it. Together they stood and moved over to the stack of crates concealing the doorway.

Tara guided Willow's hands to the concealed doorway, and waited as she examined it. Willow turned back to her, taking her hand, and touched it to the crates. Tara nodded, forgetting that Willow likely couldn't see her at all, and moved to the other side of the stack. Careful not to make any noise, she lifted the first of the three crates off the other two, feeling Willow lifting the other side of it. Slowly, tentatively guided by each other's movements, they moved a few paces away from the wall and gingerly lowered their burden to the ground.

It was the work of a few moments to move the other two crates, and then Tara and Willow both traced the outline of the revealed door with their fingers. There was no latch, but when Tara experimentally put her weight against the door and pushed, it shifted slightly. Willow felt the heavy door move, and joined Tara in pushing against it. Together they managed to open it inwards about a third of its travel, before Tara froze as the hinges let out a warning creak. Willow's hands flew off the door as if it were hot, and Tara knew they couldn't risk moving it any further. With one hand on the edge of the door and one on the stone wall of the tunnel, she guessed there was just enough space to slip through the gap.

She took Willow's hand and together they went back to where they had left their blankets and bags, gathering them up quickly and quietly. Tara went through the door first, spear held protectively in front of her, and let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding as she managed to wriggle through without causing more than a tiny scratching sound between the back of her armor and the wall. She reached through the door and took the bags that Willow handed to her, setting them down around her feet as she learned what she could of the tunnel she had stepped into.

The breeze flowing through the tunnel was steady and, now that she was through the door, quite strong. Tara had a sensation of a long space ahead of her, and the air had a chilly bite to it that made her think of subterranean caverns. She bent down and felt the floor, finding it smooth and, more surprisingly, paved. Feeling around, Tara felt a strange indentation in one of the pavers, far too regularly-formed to have been caused by wear or damage, but otherwise there were no irregularities in the surface. She stood again as she felt Willow slip through the doorway behind her.

"What is it?" Willow asked in a whisper, after taking Tara's arm and guiding her behind the door, to contain the sound as much as possible.

"I wouldn't have thought so in a village this size," Willow said. "Do you see any tombs? In the walls maybe?"

"I can't see much," Tara murmured, "just feel the air moving." For a moment she was silent, then Willow grabbed her arm excitedly.

"Back gate," she whispered, "if there's air moving, this has to come out somewhere, right?"

"This must be the back gate," Willow went on, "it's a tunnel to outside the village, so they can't be trapped in!"

"Help me close the door," Tara said, "we'll move the crates back then close the door behind them. Even if those things find the cellar, they might not search it too carefully, and that'll buy us time."

"Okay," Willow said, in lieu of a nod. Together they carefully moved the crates back as close as they could, risking a scraping sound now and then as they pulled all three close to the wall once they had both scrambled back through the doorway. The hinges let out a tiny creak as they started to move, but then the door swung back into place silently. Pushing against the back of it, Tara felt an odd feature, a wooden beam attached vertically to the door.

"Wait a moment," she said as Willow turned away. She heard Willow stop, but she didn't seem alarmed - probably because Tara had sounded more curious than concerned. Tara ran her hands over the door, feeling the shape of the strange attachment. She found hinges at the bottom and a latch at the top, and with a dawning understanding of its purpose she undid the latch and lowered the beam, feeling its base nudge up against the surface of the door just as the end slid into the indentation carved in the floor.

"It braces the door shut," she explained, guiding Willow's hands to the beam, "do you think it'll hold a Carver?"

"Definitely," Willow whispered, "there's no way they could break through, not without a battering ram. Maybe the old one could blast it in with fire, but I wouldn't be surprised if it brought the whole cellar and the entrance to the tunnel down as well. Fire's tricky to control, and they don't make good mages."

"We should move on," Tara said, "put some distance between us and them. With luck, even if they do find the cellar and get through the door, we'll have enough of a head start." They picked up their belongings and, Tara leading the way, walked into the darkness.

"How far have we gone?" Willow asked quietly. She felt they were far enough from the church cellar to relax a little, but without landmarks to guide her she had thoroughly lost track of the distance they had covered in the dry, cool tunnel.

"Roughly," Tara guessed, "the tunnel's turned a little here and there, but I don't think it's turning far away from where it was heading at the start."

"Do you think we're heading for the monastery?" Willow asked. Tara shrugged, despite the fact that Willow had no way of seeing her.

"We're going in the right direction," she said hesitantly, "this tunnel looks fairly new, though. Not that I'm an expert in tunnels. Or stonework," she added as an afterthought. Willow heard the slight tremble in her voice.

"Just a bit out of my element," Tara admitted, "I haven't spent much time underground... actually, none. It's very different to what I'm used to. No open spaces... I guess I feel a little, I don't know, enclosed? Normally I'd have a vague sense of the world around me, t-the trees, the animals, everything moving and... living. All I can sense here is the earth, and it's... it's all packed in close around us. Like it's closing in, slowly... it isn't," she hastened to reassure Willow, "the tunnels the same size it was back in the church... it's just me. Comes from living in the trees, I guess. I'll be fine, it's nothing worth bothering about."

"Hey," Willow said gently, "if it upsets you, it's worth bothering about. It is for me, anyway. Come here." Tara hesitated a moment, then gratefully turned into Willow's arms, resting her head on Willow's shoulder.

"It's alright," Willow soothed her, "trust me, I know. The first seven years of my life I lived in a village that had exactly one cellar, and there wasn't even a trapdoor covering it. Then I went to the Order, and the Church city has catacombs like you wouldn't believe. I wasn't exactly a picture of calm composure the first time I was taken down to the vault libraries, even with half a dozen other girls chattering away beside me."

"You're not bothered by this," Tara said quietly, not sensing in Willow the tension she felt in herself.

"Not now," Willow admitted, "but it took time to get used to it." She gently stroked Tara's back through her armor. "I love you," she whispered, "I promise, you're gonna be okay. I won't let anything happen to you."

"No, don't be sorry," Willow said, "I don't need you to, to pretend you're some invincible, fearless superwoman. I just need you."

"I know," Willow murmured, smiling as she rested her cheek on Tara's head, feeling the softness of her hair. "I know." Tara gave her a tender squeeze around the waist, then reluctantly stood back, taking Willow's hand again.

"I think there's something up ahead," she said, her voice firmer than before, "it's not blocking the tunnel, but the air's disturbed. We should keep moving."

"S-so, you got used to the underground?" Tara asked lightly. Willow could tell she was distracting herself from whatever remnant of unease she still felt, and was more than happy to help.

"Oh, yeah, after a while. I mean, I didn't have much choice, all the good stuff is kept in the vault libraries. It's the ground, you see, the city is built on a magical node - Kehjistan's full of them, that's why all the mage orders are based there. The one the Zann Esu found is a convergence of elemental energy, and the Church is in the middle of the city, right on top of the middle of the node's central spiral. Mostly it makes it much easier to draw and control elemental power, though there are a few places in the node that actually disrupt it. We use those for training, if you can cast and hold a spell in the middle of a disruption point, you'll never have any trouble doing it anywhere else. Anyway, the vault libraries are where the Order keeps the most valuable books and artifacts, which are usually the magically active ones, so there's all sorts of protective spells built into the vaults to keep everything safe. Otherwise, you know, all sorts of things might happen. Heh, I once heard a rumor that one of the books on demonology in the vault sanctum - that's where we keep the *really* dangerous stuff - can read its own spells in the right conditions. Eclipses, planetary alignments, that sort of thing. Mind you, that was just a rumor that went around the trainees, it's not like it was one of the tutors telling us that, so maybe someone just made it up. There's powerful stuff down there, though."

"The vaults are built at the center of the node," Willow explained, "not just on top of it, but actually in the center, horizontally and vertically. Except the very center, there's one chamber that no-one but the Council Seers are allowed into, right in the middle of the vaults. But around that, in the vault libraries, the node's power sustains the protective spells. See, for a protective spell to work, it has to expend energy - if you've got, say, a little magical gizmo like a, a rune wheel, that is set up to cast a spell when it's turned, then a protective spell to stop that working has to have as much power as the wheel does. They cancel each other out. A really good protective spell can cancel exactly the magic that's within it, so it doesn't need any more power - a crude one just dampens down everything indiscriminately, that needs a lot more power - but even so, you always need at least as much power as you're trying to stop. So normally, you cast a protective spell and put as much power as you can into it, and it keeps going until it runs out. Assuming whatever's within it doesn't run out of power first. Some of the stuff in the vault sanctum dates back to the Sin Wars, and it's still active, so it's not looking like we can relax the spells around them anytime soon." She heard Tara chuckle.

"Anyway, the node feeds elemental power directly into the spells cast within it. It's really tricky to do, though, whoever first cast some of those spells was a genius, but basically they'll keep going until the node itself is exhausted."

"Best guess, the end of time," Willow replied. "Nodes aren't just deposits of magic, like iron that you mine out of a mountain. They're places where magic collects. Whenever a spell is cast, the energy behind it doesn't just get used up, it transmutes into a different form. Like, if you cast a fireball, you take elemental fire energy - primal energy - and turn it into actual heat. So, over the whole of the world, the total amount of actual heat increases. But the world doesn't let itself get unbalanced, so an infinitesimal amount of heat, over the whole world, transmutes back into elemental heat to balance the scales."

"Yep," Willow said, "in the case of elemental energy it collects in the node beneath the Order's city, and flows slowly back out into the rest of the world from there. There's nodes for all kinds of energy - elemental, prime, druidic, alchemical transmutation energy, astrological, even necromantic, which must be a fun place," she added with a wry grin.

"You do a lot better than just keep up," Willow said sincerely. "No, there aren't nodes for demonic energy. There are places where it's strengthened, but they're artificial, created by demonologists, or by the demons themselves during the Sin Wars. See, demonic energy isn't a part of Sanctuary. It comes from the burning hells, and when demons use energy, particularly when they cast powerful spells, but even just by existing, they unbalance the world."

"But there's quite a few demons living here," Tara pointed out, "we seem to have a knack for running into them..."

"Yes and no," Willow said, "yes, they unbalance the world just by existing, but no, we're not on an inevitable slide to the whole place falling apart. Holy magic balances the scales. Everything has its opposite, so when a demon casts a spell, the damage that does to the world is undone by a mage using holy magic. Like you, for example," she added, squeezing Tara's hand.

"I... well, yes," Tara corrected herself, "I just never really thought of myself as a mage, that's all."

"There's a lot more magic around that most people realize," Willow said. "I mean, most warriors who train really hard could be considered mages. When they concentrate, and become faster or stronger than you'd think possible, they're using a tiny amount of prime magic. I'm sure you do, even though you don't realize it. Craftsmen who can do work so delicate it's almost impossible to see, athletes who push themselves beyond what a body should be capable of. Blacksmiths often have a little fire magic to them. Mostly it's prime magic that gets used without people realizing it, seeing as it's really just the energy of being alive, and it's kind of instinctive to tap into it, if you really try. But no-one's really cut off from any of the energies in the world. There's people who are more attuned to it, like me with cold, and I think you're probably a lot more attuned to prime energy than most people. Maybe even druidic energy, with all that ability to sense the natural world you have."

"I'm a druid now?" Tara asked, with a slight note of incredulity creeping into her voice. Willow could imagine her lop-sided smile.

"You're many things," she said, "and incidentally, I'm in love with all of them." She felt Tara lift her hand, and her lips press against her palm.

"All of the things that I am are in love with you, too," Tara said warmly. Willow felt a tremendous urge to hug her and kiss her endlessly, but acknowledged - reluctantly - that this was neither the time nor the place.

"So, does that mean I should dance naked under the stars during a full moon?" Willow blushed, glad of the darkness to hide it.

"I'm not sure if you *have* to," she said, "but, you know, if you want to, I'm up for some moonlight dancing."

"I'll keep that in mind," Tara promised. Willow shivered involuntarily, trying to put the image Tara's low purr conjured out of her mind. A few steps later Tara halted.

"I've found what's disturbing the air flow," Tara said with a grim voice, "there's an iron gate. Here." She guided Willow's hands forward, and Willow felt the shape of a barred gate blocking the tunnel. She set to work examining it, running her hands across all its surfaces, and as far as she could reach on the other side.

"Nothing," Willow grumbled, "that doesn't make sense, if this tunnel was for people to escape through, surely it wouldn't be made so they'd have to wait to be let in. What if they were followed?"

"But the doorway in the cellar wasn't sealed," Willow frowned, "if people came through here, they'd seal both gates..."

"I could try to blast it open," Tara said, audibly unhappy with the option, "I could hit it from pretty far down the tunnel. If it did weaken it and cause a cave-in, it probably wouldn't reach us, this looks fairly solid..."

"Maybe," Willow mused, leaning against the gate and trying to come up with something better, "or I could try to ice it up and shatter it... iron's pretty good at holding magic, though, it could be a bit risky to judge the amount of power... properly..."

"I wonder," Willow said to herself, "what if there is an opening mechanism, but we just can't see it?"

"A lever or something?" Tara wondered. "We might have missed it in the dark, could you get a match from my pack?"

"No, an enemy could have torches, they'd see a lever," Willow went on, "but if it were magic... iron holds magic, you could do a simple locking spell with a trigger, and it'd last years before you'd need to re-cast it."

"Do you think a village that size would have a mage?" Tara asked. "Wait, the monastery might..."

"Or they could have paid a traveling mage to do it for them," Willow said quickly, flown with enthusiasm, "it's the kind of thing some mages make a living from, just doing simple things for small towns and so on... hold this?" Tara felt Willow's staff against her hand, and held it while Willow opened a pouch on her belt.

"I've got a scroll with an imbued spell," Willow explained, "it'll let me see any active magic around here. Normally I'd be able to sense it anyway - I wasn't worried about traps, I'd feel anything destructive from a mile off - but a locking spell, a good one, could be subtle enough that it'd need almost no power while it was idle... here it is." Tara heard the faith sound of Willow unrolling one of her tiny scrolls.

"No need," Willow said, "these are all set to cast, I just have to say the coda word while I'm touching the scroll. I memorized them all ages ago... ahem... 'allamaraine'."

For a moment Tara saw Willow's face lit by a glow coming from the scroll. The letters on it blazed briefly with their own tiny lights, then seemed to consume themselves, leaving the scroll blank in their wake. After a moment the last trace of writing was gone, and the tunnel was plunged into darkness once more.

"Yeah," Willow said, "I can feel it... now, let's see if... here!" Tara felt her reach out, and there was a tiny scraping sound, as she traced her fingertip over the stone of the tunnel's wall. Tara jumped slightly as the gate behind her swung open with a groan.

"Yup, we make quite the team, huh?" Willow replied as they stepped through the open gate. "Not that it was anything much, just a simple spell... hey!"

"What?" Tara asked, suddenly alert, though Willow's voice had sounded more surprised than alarmed.

"No, I mean... any magical power, I see it as light. I can see you, I can see your spear and your bow, my staff-"

"Looks like," Willow said, "not as much as the spear... gods, that's one fine piece of work... your pack as well." Tara felt Willow lean closer behind her. "What've you got in the left one of these two little pockets, underneath the main strap?" she asked.

"Left pocket..." Tara hesitated, "I don't know, unless I've picked something up... oh, no, I remember, it's the amulet, isn't it? Marela's amulet?" She felt Willow undo the pocket and reach into it.

"I don't know," Willow admitted, "I can't see anything harmful in it... I don't think she'd have given you anything dangerous anyway."

"Well, I could set up a test series, try to narrow it down, but that'd be tricky in the dark. All things being equal, it's probably best to just put it on and see what it does." Tara felt a light surge of protectiveness in her, but she calmed herself at once, remembering the kindness she had sensed in Marela during the afternoon she had spent with the cat woman.

"I'll do it," Willow said easily, "I'm sure it's harmless, but just in case, I've had lots of training at nullifying magic. Okay, let's see what you do... wow."

"What?" Tara asked. She held Willow's hand tightly, and was reassured to feel a calm squeeze in return.

"I can see," Willow said, "it's a bit strange, but I can see... there's no light down here, is there?"

"I can see red," Willow said, "and gray... not other colors though. You look kind of bright pink... heh, so do I," she laughed, and the sound of her amusement did a lot to help Tara relax.

"Pretty far," Willow said, "I guess, as far as I could if it was daylight down here... the tunnel turns a bit up ahead. You're not missing much, it's pretty plain. Hang on." Tara felt Willow reach out towards the wall again, and heard the gate close behind them.

"Yup. Unless they know where to touch the wall, and what rune to trace, they're not getting that gate to open again. Wow, this is pretty neat. Oh, do you want it? The amulet, I mean."

"You keep it," Tara said, "I can sense the space well enough to walk around. It's better if you can see and I can sense, rather than me seeing and you having to rely on me."

"I don't mind relying on you one bit," Willow said fondly as they walked on, "but I see your point. Once we get back above ground I'm going to have a serious look at this amulet, this is a really good piece of enchanting. Marela must've really liked you. Of course," she added, "I can see her point." Willow glanced at Tara, and noticed a pronounced flush in her cheeks - her temporary night-vision, limited though it was in terms of color, seemed to pick up every detail.

"Well," Tara said hesitantly, "I suppose if she's still in Kingsport next time we visit, I owe her that rub behind the ears she wanted."

"So long as it's *just* a rub behind the ears," Willow smiled. She winked, then remembered Tara couldn't see her, and squeezed her hand instead to let her know she was joking.

"Don't worry," Tara smiled back, once she had felt Willow's gesture, "I'm saving all the good stuff for you."

"Darn right," Willow nodded, leaning over to give Tara a kiss on the cheek. "Heh, you're cute when you blush in cat-vision. Course, you're cute anyway, I guess it's not that much of a revelation... huh? Oh."

"No, no, the magic sense spell," Willow explained, "the one I read from the scroll. They only last a little while, you can't get that much power into a scroll that size. Oh well, I've got another couple if we need them. At least it's less distracting now," she finished, more or less to herself.

"Oh," Willow said, grinning at herself, "well... I could see the magic in everything, not just the gate spell. It was a little overwhelming. My staff was this sort of jet black... hole in space, sort of thing. Probably something to do with how it undoes hostile spells, I've never really looked at it using that sight spell before. Your bow was this tingly red all along its length, like there were rubies glittering inside it. As for your spear, hoo boy," Willow laughed, "like looking into the sun, almost, except blue-white rather than yellow. I think whoever made that would be on a level with the Zann Esu for lightning mastery."

"I-I didn't realize how precious it was," Tara said softly, "Solari just... you know, gave it to me, told me to look after it. I mean, I knew it was ancient and important, but she never mentioned anything like this..."

"I can think of someone a lot more precious," Willow said gently, "I bet she thought so too." She watched Tara blush again, and smile widely.

"Y-you said you could see me?" Tara asked after a moment. "With the spell, I mean... is there really power in me?"

"Everyone has power of some sort," Willow said, "even if it's just prime magic that's making them a living thing. You're... there were all these flows of energy, prime magic, a-and what I think was holy magic, and others as well. All flowing through you, a-and harmonizing like..." She hesitated, then leant close to Tara, lowering her voice despite the fact they were completely alone in the tunnel.

"It was the second most beautiful thing I've ever seen," she whispered in Tara's ear.

"You, silly," Willow grinned. "Just... you. No spell-vision or anything, just you."

"Oh..." Willow saw Tara's mouth open to speak, but that tiny sigh was all that emerged. She remained still as Tara turned to face her and slowly closed the distance between her lips and Willow's. The kiss was gentle, tender and silent, yet it stirred such a rush of desire in Willow that she had serious doubts about her ability to stand upright were it not for Tara's arms around her. Both their mouths opened just a fraction, enough to taste each other, but there was no frenzied motion, no tongues surging between their lips, simply the kiss itself. Willow felt her pulse racing, her skin warming, and her center moistening as love and need bloomed out of her heart.

"Ah," she sighed when Tara finally finished the kiss with a final, tiny suckle on her lip, and leaned back. "Ah... oh... oh, wow..."

"I know," Willow said emphatically, "oh gods, Tara, I know... I feel it right down to the bottom of my soul, I love you so much... Oh... ooh!" She shivered and shook her head. "Gods, you are a fantastic kisser, you know that?"

"Um... well then..." Willow faltered, "I guess... yep. Okay, uh, we should keep going? Um, keep moving, I mean, walking along the tunnel, not keep going in other things which wouldn't really be the most useful of things we could be doing at the moment, even though I'd really love to kiss you for the next, oh, three days or so non-stop... not really the best place to be doing it... so?"

"I know," Willow replied, "I could stop myself, but you look so adorable watching me... I guess I've kind of taken to doing it on purpose." Tara took her hand and gripped it warmly.

"Lead the way, cat's-eyes," she said. Willow blinked in surprise, then remembered that Tara couldn't see like she could at the moment. She had become somewhat accustomed to Tara having the superior senses, and it was an odd feeling to have the situation reversed. Though, she mused as they walked along side-by-side, for a woman walking in pitch blackness, Tara still appeared to have a considerable degree of perception. Willow noticed her stepping deftly over the gaps left by occasional missing flagstones, and wondered how she was doing it - or if she even realized she was.

"I was wondering," Tara said after a moment, startling Willow out of her own thoughts, "did you actually understand what those creatures were saying, or was it just types of sounds, things like that?"

"Oh, no, they have a language," Willow said, "most demons do, even the really animalistic ones can usually understand one or other of the demon languages, even if they can't speak themselves. Makes them easier to command, I guess. There's seven basic languages used in hell, one for each of the Evils, and hybrids usually inherit the language of their creator. It's all hierarchical. Carvers, so far as anyone knows, were created by servants of the Lord of Terror, so they speak his language. Well, a really crude version of it."

"I can't speak it," Willow said, "humans don't have the vocal range... if I had to communicate with a Carver I could probably approximate it well enough to be understood. Not that there's any circumstances where I'd want to say much besides 'have an ice bolt', but you know. The Order teaches us to understand the demon languages though, in case we ever need to. Traditionally, most demons - the smart ones - tend to assume that their languages are impossible for humans to understand, so they aren't very guarded in using them."

"Yeah. The one for the Lord of Lies is pretty tricky to get the hang of, seeing as the whole idea behind it is saying one thing and meaning another, but yeah, I got it eventually. Language training is one of the first things a girl learns with the Zann Esu, as soon as she's deemed fit to be taught about demons in general. We start out with Khejan, if you don't know it already, and pretty much everyone knows Westlin even if it's not their native language. After that we go on to a sort of generalized structural training, which is all about how to recognize parts of language, concepts and relations and stuff. Knowing that makes it much easier to pick up a specific language."

"Pretty much," Willow grinned. "Once you've got the hang of demon languages, nothing humans come up with seems that difficult." She squeezed Tara's hand tenderly. "It's one of the most beautiful I've learned, though." She was even more glad of her newly-acquired sight when she saw Tara's smile.

"Oh, pretty much what you'd expect. There were two old ones arguing over who should lead them. It's not often you get them in the same tribe, but it happens sometimes - possibly they learned about humans taking apprentices, and sometimes do it themselves, though it's anyone's guess as to why. Maybe it's just mindless mimicry. The challenger thought the leader was foolish - that's bad for a Carver, they don't care about courage at all, but being smart is all that keeps them from being wiped out mostly, so a leader who gets his followers killed isn't likely to last very long. They don't really have a concept of the greater good, except that they know they can't fight people on their own. I think they might have attacked Harthim, or maybe a smaller town south of here, but wherever it was they got driven back and ran away."

"The challenger said it was the leader's fault, that they shouldn't have tried to attack a strong town. The leader said it was the challenger's fault, and that he wasn't smart enough. That pretty much started the fight, after that it was just a bunch of swearing. Demons have a lot of really elaborate curses, by the way. Some of the stuff they yelled at each other when they were fighting was about as eloquent as a Carver can get. I guess it tells you a lot about them that what they do best is swear." Tara chuckled in agreement, then had a thought.

"Did they say anything about what happened to the village? This one, I mean, not Harthim."

"Nothing useful," Willow said ruefully, "I really don't think it was Carvers that did it though. I can't see them moving the bodies, or attacking in the first place for that matter. Probably it was finding the place empty and all the people dead that got them ambitious enough to try to attack Harthim in the first place."

"I don't know," Willow replied, "but I'm not letting my guard down anytime soon, I'll tell you that."

"Me neither," Tara agreed. "Are the walls more irregular ahead? The air's disturbed."

"Tombs," Willow said briefly, "we're coming up to proper catacombs. I'm guessing this will lead beneath the monastery. Some of those old places have pretty impressive earthworks buried beneath them."

"These look new," Willow said, glancing at the shelves cut into the rock on either side of them as they walked on. Each contained a body, most wrapped in layers of thick cloth, some with iron or stone masks covering their heads. A rare one now and then would be contained in an elaborate stone coffin, some with scenes of battle and angels worked into them, others with life-sized depictions of sleeping warriors, swords in hand, presumably to represent the deceased.

"Hold on a moment," Willow asked, crouching down as Tara stopped beside her to read the inscription on the side of a particularly elaborate coffin.

"'Macharius, brother-lieutenant of the Order of Guardians'," she read, translating from the old Imperial language, not spoken in centuries but still traditionally used in religious documents and memorials, "'died the eighth day of Montaht, year of the Archangel fifteen-thirty-six.' That's the Zakarum calendar, that's... twenty years ago, the Reckoning."

"He was a warrior," Tara guessed. Willow studied the engraving, which showed a grim-looking man, his face marred by a scar running down his left cheek.

"Looks like," she said, "the sculpture has him in full plate armor. Possibly the armor he wore, or maybe just traditional for burial statues of warriors of his Order, it's pretty elaborate for a lieutenant. Sword and shield..." She peered closer. "There are little figures of dead demons carved around the edge of the coffin lid. Carvers, goat-men, skeletons, liches..."

"You're probably right," Willow mused, "by the looks of things, he didn't make it easy for them either. Rest well," she added respectfully. Tara nodded, and they continued further into the catacombs.

"Probably the oldest graves are right beneath the monastery," Willow thought aloud, "and they expanded outwards over the centuries. Order of Guardians, huh? Makes sense, before the rise of the western kingdoms places like monasteries were havens for villagers from miles around. The religious orders were the only groups with enough influence and money to build such big stone buildings, so they made them like fortresses, and whenever there was trouble everyone would get inside the monastery, or the abbey or whatever they had."

"Yeah," Willow agreed, "the tunnel itself looks older than the graves, probably it was dug sometime long ago, before the Reckoning definitely. Orders like this often build huge catacombs to bury their dead. They say the Zakarum cathedral in Kurast city last expanded its catacombs five hundred years ago, and they still haven't filled them up. And they've been involved in just about every holy war there's been," she added, "they were kind of zealous until the reformations began a hundred years ago. Are you okay?"

"Just wondering," Willow said, "you know, with not liking being underground... I thought maybe the place turning into a giant graveyard might not be helping things."

"Oh," Tara smiled, "no, I'm fine... it's actually comforting in a way. This is a, a warrior place. They believed in good over evil, and stood up to defend the people who relied on them. I guess it feels a little more familiar, now we know the people who built it had that in common with us."

"Okay," Willow said, happy to see Tara more at ease. Personally she could have done without the profusion of graves, but it wasn't anything she hadn't seen before - the tunnels leading to the Zann Esu vault libraries were home to their share of tombs of sorceresses from ages past.

A short while later she gently drew Tara to a halt, noticing a small archway carved in the rock on one side. Crouching and peering inside, she found it to be a room containing several graves, each in its own shelf in the walls, all of them more elaborate than those in the tunnel.

"Must be some more notable people," she said to Tara, "what time is it, do you think?"

"Do you think we should get some rest?" Willow asked. "It doesn't look like anyone's been along this tunnel recently, but if it did we'd be as safe in here as anywhere. We can't be far from the monastery now, and just between you and me, I'd rather it be daylight when we get there."

"Yeah," Tara agreed, "okay." Willow helped Tara inside the small room, and guided her as she felt the limits of the walls. As it turned out, it was just wide enough for Tara to lie down without her head or feet bumping the walls. Willow helped her unpack the blankets, and insisted she rest first.

"You barely got any sleep last night," she said, "and you've been on your feet since then. Don't worry, I'll wake you and get some sleep myself."

"I'm going to put a sentry spell out in the tunnel," Willow said, selecting the necessary runes from her pouches, "I'll just be a moment, okay?"

"Okay," Tara smiled. Willow could see Tara was a little anxious at letting her out of her sight - or rather, her senses.

"Tell you what," she suggested, "if you think you can risk hearing my singing, I'll sing a song for you so you can hear me until I'm done."

"Okay, but just remember, you're the one with the singing voice. Don't say I didn't warn you."

Despite her warnings, Tara found Willow's voice soothingly gentle as lilted along the simple notes of her song. She lay down and listened as Willow sang softly, just loud enough for her voice to carry back to Tara.

"A lonely minstrel girl was she,
Of face and voice most heavenly,
And when she sang my heart did sway,
Until the day she went away.

"To save my heart from being torn,
I left the town where I was born,
Through places strange and far away,
I followed on my minstrel's way.

"Though my days were hard and long,
Each night I heard my minstrel's song,
'Cross mountains high and valleys low,
It showed to me the way to go."

Tara heard and sensed Willow approach her, and smiled as she felt her hair being stroked.

"Just don't ask me to sing anything difficult," Willow chuckled. Tara smiled and settled down to sleep. "It's supposed to be 'A lonely minstrel boy was he'," Willow added, "but I like this version better."

"Mmm," Tara agreed sleepily. Willow sat by her, gently stroking her fingers through her hair, and the last thing Tara heard before she slipped into sleep was Willow singing:

"At last I found my minstrel girl,
Who held my heart and all my joy,
And seeing my heart's empty space,
She gave me hers to take its place."

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Hellebore

by Chris Cook

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