"Live, Abie! Heal!" Gods, Lanthe was pushing, trying to command her. But it was too late. Sabine's heart no longer beat. Her eyes were blank with death.

"Don't leave me!" Lanthe screamed, pushing harder, harder . . . The furniture began to shake, their parents' bed rattling... More shifting ... a thud as a head rolled to the floor. Then a second one.

The power was unimaginable. And some­how, Sabine felt her body restoring itself. She blinked open her eyes, alive and even stronger than before.

"They ran from that place, out into the world, and never looked back," she told her enthralled audience. "All that Sabine would have from that night was the scar around her neck, a tale to tell, and the blood ven­detta of a Vrekener boy who'd somehow survived his fall...."

Lost in thought, Sabine absently realized that the guard had awakened and was squirming under her boot heels. She reached down and snapped his neck before she got so caught up with the story that she forgot to doit.

One woman clapped her hands in glee. Another breathed, "God bless 'n keep you, miss."

Sabine might as well be an agent of fate for these people on this eve. Not an agent for good, nor for bad. Just serving fate-which could be either.

After all, the next guard hired might be worse to them.

"What about the second time she died?" a brazen female asked. Her head was shaved bald.

"She was fighting to defend Melanthe and herself from yet another Vrekener attack. They captured Sabine, then flew her to a height, dropping her to a cobblestone street. Yet her sister was there once more to heal her broken body, to snatch her from the arms of death."

As if it had happened yesterday, Sabine could still recall the sound of her skull cracking. That one had been so close. . . .

"The third time, they chased her into a raging river. The poor girl couldn't swim, and she drowned-"