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"Korreds are an irreverent kind," said Kellin. "Not all religions regard their sacred places in the way the Uthgardt do."

"Better yet" Lanaal added, "it may be that this place isn't sacred to Tapann at all. Rumor has it that his followers keep their own sacred fountains secret, and encourage all others, even their allies, to believe that these are the sacred ones."

"I wonder what they are then." Kellin found a pebble at her feet and cast it into the nearest pool. The stone sank, but not a ripple disturbed the pristine surface. "More clear than any mirror."

"I've never looked into a mirror," Vell said. He remembered a time that a foreign merchant in Grunwald presented a mirror to Gundar as a token of his generosity. Gundar accepted it in gratitude but refused to look into it, and later turned it over to Keirkrad to be destroyed as an affront to Uthgar.

"Vanity is one of civilization's primary flaws," Kellin admitted.

"Mirrors don't always reflect the whole truth," Lanaal cautioned Vell. "They can mislead. I spent my early life looking into mirrors and seeing an elf staring back."

"I will look into the pool alone," said Vell. Acknowledging each of the ladies with a nod, he walked into the cave, to the pools within.

When he was out of earshot, the two women stood alone together for the first time, silently assessing each other.

"In some ways, you are more a mystery than Vell," Lanaal said. "I can't understand what compels you to keep the company of barbarians who disdain your very existence."

"The Thunderbeast chose me," Kellin answered.

"It called you, perhaps, but you chose to answer. Uthgar is not your god-what is his summons to you? When you set out from the halls of learning, did you truly feel a personal interest in this particular barbarian tribe?"

"Yes… no…" Kellin rubbed her eyes. "My father…"

"Memory," Lanaal said, as if the word contained all the answers, and she spread her arms wide to indicate their setting. "It can be clear or faulty. It can tell the truth or deceive."

Taking a deep breath, Kellin walked to the nearest pool and gazed down into the water. And what she saw made her flush with embarrassment, and feel rage in her bones.

* * * * *

The caves had a light of their own, shimmering out from those strange pools. It cast eerie rippling shadows over the low cave ceiling, though Vell could not see any movement in the water itself. This was the kind of mystical place that alternately repelled and attracted the average Uthgardt-repelled him because of unknown magic, yet attracted him for the warm intimacy of the mystery, and the feeling of being wrapped in history. Vell bent over the nearest pool and found himself staring into his reflection.

So that's what I look like, he thought. He was not so different from any other Thunderbeast, and even his brown eyes did not distinguish him. All faded, and only his eyes remained as the water shimmered and he was looking into another time. It was another face, but somehow he knew it was his, or rather, that of an ancestor who remained tied to him from the spirit world. The sun was shining brightly behind him onto a spectacular white city, and he was garbed in robes of gold marked with ornate symbols.

A wizard. He was descended from a wizard.

The vision told him something else. This scene was surely not one of Ruathym, the rocky isle that was the home of Uthgar's mortal line. More likely, it was an image of his ancestry from his other line, stretching back to the Empire of Magic. Often he wondered if his brown eyes marked a stronger concentration of that blood. Most Uthgardt tribes denied that history, the Thunderbeasts included; it was a matter of shame to believe that they were spawned by those decadent magicians.

Vell leaned closer. The wizard melted away, and his eyes were set instead into the sunken sockets of a great lizard, one of the Thunderbeasts or behemoths that the tribe used in their art, or occasionally to tattoo upon themselves. It was the creature Vell had become. There was no human intelligence in those eyes-this was an animal, nothing