«Her mate holds her to the Light, but she is passing through the Veil.» The shei'dalin's voice tolled in Melliandra's head, powerful, resonant. She was speaking Feyan, but Melliandra had spent enough time around Master Maur's Feyan captives to understand her. «She has descended too for into the Well for me to follow. I cannot save her.»

"But you must!" Melliandra protested. "If she dies, he dies. And I need him. He's my only hope."

Desperate, unthinking, she grabbed the shei'dalin's hands and held them against the gaping wound on the dead woman's bloody chest.

"Save her!" she commanded. "You must save her! You will!"

Without warning, the world shifted beneath Melliandra's feet. Energy shot up from her belly and roared through her veins, throwing her so off balance she nearly toppled face-first onto the hard, cold stone floor of the cell. Almost instantly, a familiar sentience turned her way.

"He knows we're here!" Melliandra snatched her hands back from Lord Death's mate, grabbed the other healer by the shoulders, and flung her towards the shadowy corner of the cell. "Don't move! Don't speak!" She threw herself in the opposite direction, turning quickly so that her eyes were focused on the rough, carved surface of the black, sel'dor-veined walls. She raced to stuff the memories of her plans and activities behind the invisible barriers in her mind. She barely managed to shove the last thought into hiding before she became aware of the oily darkness, the oppressive pressure of another will bearing down upon her own.

She stared at the black wall and filled her mind with dull, lifeless thoughts of drudgery and subservience.

"What are you up to, umagi?»

The question surprised her. Usually, when the High Mage's mind scoured hers, his will felt like a thousand prying fingers, poking, prodding, ransacking her mind. This time, however, he felt much weaker. Perhaps Lord Death had been more successful than she'd thought.

As quickly as the thought bloomed, she buried it. «I was sent to collect a corpse, my lord.»

«Something happened, umagi. Show me.» The press of that icy black mind grew heavier, more insistent. Weaker or not, the Mage was still a powerful force, and she could not resist his will.

She turned slowly, keeping her eyes lowered, and let her gaze drift up the red-hair's body until it came to rest on the faint rise and fall of the woman's bloody chest, where the gaping wound from the executioner's blade was already beginning to close.

«I was sent to collect this woman's body,» Melliandra repeated, «but she isn't dead. Master Maur.»

Eld - Boura Fell

"Enough." Vadim Maur gave the healer kneeling at his feet a shove and pushed himself to his feet. Tremors shuddered through his frame. Lord Death's scorching had nearly killed him, and the magic he'd expended to save his own skin had almost finished the job.

A large, loyal brute of an umagi stood like an obedient dog beside the chair the High Mage had just vacated. "Lord Death's mate is alive. Take this healer to her now." The words came out garbled. His lips had burned away in Lord Death's fire.

The brute bowed and grabbed the healer's arm in one meaty paw.

When they were gone, he turned to the other four umagi in the room, slaves of his since birth, nurtured carefully. Devoid of magic, of course, but utterly, irrevocably his. Standing docilely beside them was a powerfully gifted twenty-year-old novice Mage, one of several Vadim had bred and groomed to be his vessel in the event his plans to incarnate into a Tairen Soul did not come to fruition.

Vadim held out his hands. Hunks of rotting flesh had fallen or burned away, revealing glimpses of the ivory bone beneath. The umagi gathered around him and began wrapping perfumed linen around his putrefying flesh. He observed their efforts with detachment.

He could no longer put off the inevitable. Not even his great will could keep life pumping in this ruined body much longer. The end of this incarnation was upon him.

Word would have already raced through the corridors of the Mage halls. Primages with their eyes on the dark throne of Eld would be plotting to steal his chosen vessel and force him to incarnate into some worthless umagi devoid of magic so they could plumb his mind for all his vast stores of knowledge and leave him to die in a decaying mortal shell. But Vadim didn't intend such an ignominious end to his glorious life.

"It is time," he said. He reached for the fresh purple velvet robe his umagi had brought to him. "You, ready the incarnation room. You two, take the vessel to be cleansed and prepared. And you"—he turned to the last umagi—"you know what to do."

The four umagi and the vessel departed. Three of them headed down to the well-guarded, heavily warded incarnation room Vadim Maur had prepared in the bowels of Boura Fell. The fourth umagi set out for the laundry with the High Mage's soiled robe. When they were out of earshot of Vadim Maur's chambers, all four umagi were stopped, their hoods yanked back to verify their identities. Ten chimes later, the purple-shrouded figure of the High Mage exited the chamber as well, turning down a different tunnel. As Vadim had anticipated, dark figures darted out, clinging to the shadows as they followed.

They waited until their quarry had entered the incarnation chamber to spring. But when they yanked back the purple hood shrouding the High Mage's face, it was not the rotting visage of Vadim Maur they found, but the face of his umagi servant.

Deep in the bowels of the earth beneath the forests of Eld, Vadim Maur stepped from the Well of Souls into the doorless chamber he had carved out of solid sel'dor ore several weeks ago, when it had become clear to him that his incarnation could no longer be avoided. He tossed the unused chemar he'd carried with him on the floor and, with a grunt of disgust, shed the scratchy woolen folds of the umagi robe he'd donned after his first transport through the Well from his chambers to the laundry. There, he'd exchanged places with the umagi carrying his soiled robe, and used a second chemar to bring himself here, to his true incarnation chamber.