The yipping of foxes seeped into Lucc's dreams, and he awoke in a sweat -
fearing that Marla and Skete were in danger. He hadn't heard the foxes
sound the alert since the night Malikai had come for his mother. He
scrambled from beneath the furs and out from behind the rug that marked
off his room - to find his father standing in the middle of their dark
cabin - listening to the yipping. Lucc didn't need a light to know that
dark memories were before Lagis's eyes - memories that went back to the
days of the Republica's hold on Montfort. Back to the days of Lucc's
disappearance and execution.

He softly said, "Father, none of the old darkness threatens us, and none
would risk the Hunter's forest..."

"Someone has," Lagis answered - his voice distant, and carrying with it
the echo of old madness.

"Or at the boundaries," Lucc said, lighting a candle. He moved so that his
father could look at him - and see again that he was whole and alive,
though the face and body he now wore was not the one he had been born in.
"I'm going out to see what disturbs them."

Lagis's hand shot out and he gripped his son's arm, looking into blue
eyes that held secrets from behind the Veil. "And not walk back..."

Lucc gently rested his hand over his father's and said, "The spirits guard
me, and it is my duty to make sure nothing desecrates these woods." He
eased his father down into a chair, and went back to dress in his deerskin
tunic and trousers, and pick up his weapons.

The tall, dense trees hide the night sky, though Lucc could see an
occasional flicker of the stars as he walked along, and the air was filled
with the heavy scent of rotting vegetation and moist earth. Amongst the
yipping of the foxes he heard other night creatures, but outside of the
foxes nothing else seemed amiss. Nor did Yals or any of the other wood
spirits make an appearance.

The foxes directed him to the far edge of the forest he helped guard; it
was a place he was familiar with - both as spirit and as a reborn man. As
a ghost he had helped seek out the troubled spirits of the Limpia's
victims so they could seek retribution, and once back in a new body he had
helped to find the few remaining graves. Those who had remained unmapped,
and whose dead had not been raised by the Grand Inquisitor. Lucc moved
warily forward - listening and watching, but he found no threat - only the
uneasy tingle of magic that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.

And he found several foxes standing around freshly turned earth.

A brief conversation with them (his heart always filling with a gentle
ache when he remembered Kitrina teaching him the tongue - Kitrina who had
only known him as a ghost), and he learnt that a young woman was freshly
buried in that forgotten grave.

[To Be Continued]