In Shade and Shadow

by Barb Hendee

  Whoever had been standing outside that one shop was gone. Hopefully the constable had simply moved on. But the sooner he and Jeremy were away from here, the less likely they’d have to deal with another on patrol. At the side street’s end, he turned southeast into the alley. And Jeremy followed, muttering the whole way.

  “Stay clear of the center gutter,” Elias advised, “and keep your robe up. You won’t have time to change if it gets soiled.”

  “Yes, yes,” Jeremy grumbled.

  They made their way past the back doors of shops, around crates and ash cans and less identifiable shapes in the dark space. Three side alleys passed by before Elias heard a sharp snap of cloth. Jeremy had stumbled again, and he paused.

  Jeremy came up short to keep from running into him. Elias could barely make out his friend’s face.

  “What?” Jeremy asked.

  “Nothing,” Elias uttered. “I thought you slipped.”

  “I’m fine!”

  Ready to press on, Elias started to turn, but Jeremy back-stepped, his eyes popping wide.

  “What was that?” he whispered.

  Elias froze, staring at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ahead,” Jeremy whispered, “between us and the light of the far street . . . something crossed.”

  Elias looked down the alley. At the far exit into Galloway Street, a lantern around the corner spilled light across the opening. But he saw nothing more.

  “A stray dog scavenging garbage,” Elias assured him. “Come on.”

  A shadow filled the alley, blotting out the far light.

  Elias backed up one step, bumping into Jeremy.

  “Who’s there?” he called.

  The shadow shifted slightly, hesitant movements beneath a voluminous cloak. The far avenue’s light rendered only its silhouette filling the narrow space. It was so black he could barely make it out. And the wide hood’s opening was only a pocket of night.

  “We’ve no coin,” Elias called, trying to sound forceful as he clutched the folio to his chest. “You’ll gain nothing by robbing sages. . . . Be off!”

  But the figure didn’t move.

  “Come on!” Jeremy whispered, tugging the shoulder of Elias’s robe.

  Elias retreated three steps. As he turned, Jeremy bolted. They were halfway to the side street’s entrance near the scribe shop when Elias glanced over his shoulder.

  The alley was empty. The dim glow upon Galloway Street was plain to see in the distance.

  Jeremy squealed sharply.

  Elias barreled blindly into his friend’s back, and they both stumbled. Still trying to right himself, he looked ahead.

  A shadowed silhouette stood at the alley’s head, where it spilled into the side street. Light from the street barely reached it, but its full form showed clearly.

  It was so tall that Elias would’ve had to reach up to grab the neck of its hood. And still he saw nothing within it. Its cloak wafted softly, though the night air was still and breezeless. Beneath those flexing wings of the black cloth, there was nothing but night’s darkness.

  “Come on!” he hissed.

  Jeremy only whimpered.

  Elias snatched the back of his friend’s robe as he fled down the alley. He’d almost made it past the final side alley when the distant light of Galloway Street suddenly winked out.

  Elias shuddered, sliding to a halt.

  Jeremy snatched his arm and pulled him into the side alley. He didn’t even have the wits to pull back nor to realize their mistake, not until they swerved two corners, straight into a dead end.

  Someone else tried to grab him from behind.

  Elias whirled away and heard his robe sleeve tear as he stumbled deeper into the alley’s end.

  “We have a few coins!” Jeremy shouted. “Take it . . . take it all!”

  A tinkle of scattering coins filled the blind alley. But Elias kept his eyes on something else as his back met a brick wall. He couldn’t see it clearly at first, that black fist gripping a piece of his gray robe. Then it opened, and the scrap of gray fell.

  Elias thought he saw long fingers wrapped in shredded strips of black sackcloth.

  The shadow figure drew closer, seeming to grow in height.

  It didn’t lean down for the cast coins, and he heard no footfalls in its approach.

  “Help!” Jeremy screamed. “Someone . . . guards! Help us!”

  But Elias couldn’t take his eyes off the figure towering over him.

  Its cloak folds spread, seeming to climb the alley walls. He heard Jeremy pound on wood, maybe the back door of some shop. But he was shuddering even before the air turned frigid.

  The smell of dust choked Elias, just as an overpowering scent of strange spices thickened in his head.

  CHAPTER 1

  Wynn Hygeorht knelt on the narrow bed of her small stone chamber and stared out her window. She watched the square inner courtyard of the first castle of Calm Seatt, home of the Guild of Sagecraft.

  A few sages came and went in yellow pools of light cast by hanging lanterns and the torches on the gatehouse’s inner wall. The last sages reached the great double doors at the courtyard’s rear and slipped from sight into what had once been the feasting hall in bygone days.

  Wynn crawled across her bed to the floor, and settled cross-legged upon a braided cloth rug.

  She was not exactly hiding. Rather, she called her recent tendencies a “preferred privacy.”

  But in the two seasons—summer and autumn—since her return, she’d shied away from her brethren more and more. At times she even wished she were still on the arduous long journey that had brought her home to the king’s city in Malourné. And though the Farlands lay half a world away, her memories of the eastern continent were still so clear.

  A plate of green grapes and a fluted tin mug of water sat on her bedside table. She sighed, deciding to do something more constructive than wallow in the past.

  Wynn closed her eyes, clinging to the image of water within the mug.

  Nearly two years had passed since she’d first attempted a small thaumaturgical ritual. She’d tried to give herself mantic sight in order to see the element of Spirit in all things—an arrogant choice, considering she was no mage. Her companions at the time, Magiere and Leesil—and Chap—had been desperate to track an unfamiliar undead. And Wynn had succeeded in her small ritual, helping her friends save a village, but the repercussions still plagued her.

  As a journeyor sage, but one with no new assignment and few duties, she had too much free time. She spent some evenings secretly working to expand the ever-present taint of the mantic sight still trapped within her. To date, she’d had very limited success—and one quite painful mishap.

  Wynn held to the image of water as she evoked a memory of Chap . . . that wise old Fay-born dog now gone from her side. Focusing upon his image had assisted her more than once in summoning mantic sight. She thought of his brilliant crystal blue eyes, his shimmering silver-gray fur, and even the derisive way he licked his nose at her. As a Fay, an eternal entity of the elements, Chap had chosen to be born into living flesh.

  In the form of a majay-hì, the rare breed of guardian wolf-dogs found in the Elven Territories of the Farlands, he had watched over Leesil and Magiere—and Wynn. And then he left her. She missed him in more ways than one.

  The only times she had sure control over her lingering mantic sight was in his presence. But tonight she wasn’t seeking the element of Spirit.

  With the image of Chap and that of Water lodged in her mind, Wynn opened her eyes . . . to nothing.

  Just her room, her little table-desk piled with scattered books, paper, and quills . . . and the plate of grapes and mug of water on the bedside stand. All of it was lit by the glow of her cold lamp’s crystal.

  Wynn slouched, and her back thumped against the bed’s side.

  Whenever she awakened her mantic sight to Spirit, that element showed as a blue-white mist permeating all things, strongest where life exis
ted but thinner where it waned—or where it never was—for the five elements were part of all things, living or inert.

  And a few times she’d seen black spaces amid that mist.

  Places where there was no Spirit at all, or perhaps its unknown opposite. Permeating mist would shift ever so slightly, flowing into those voids—to be swallowed by the presence of a Noble Dead.

  Wynn wasn’t certain how Water would’ve appeared compared to Spirit, but obviously she wouldn’t learn tonight. Then a thought occurred: What if she evoked sight of Spirit, as she’d done a few times, and then tried to shift it to something else?

  Wynn closed her eyes once more.

  In a small inn within the Warlands of Leesil’s birth, she’d sat alone with Chap in their room. It was in the early days, when her malady was still a mystery. With that memory of Chap’s face, Wynn recalled the feel of his fur, her fingers curled in his thick coat, and she opened her eyes again.

  Nausea welled in her stomach.

  The room turned shadowy beneath the overlaid off-white mist just shy of blue.

  Everything, even the stone walls, became doubled, as if variegated blue-white shapes of things overlaid and overwhelmed their real forms. She’d grown accustomed to the queasiness and the vertigo, but they were no less unpleasant for being familiar. Luckily she hadn’t eaten yet, and she glanced at the bedside table.

  Strongest in the grapes’ small nodules, the mist waned within the table’s wood and the bed’s wool blanket. Only a thin trace showed within the stone walls and the tin of the fluted mug. When she glanced down at her own hands, Spirit glowed strongest within her living flesh.

  To see the element of Spirit was part of her curse, if and when she could make it come at all. But if she had to accept this condition as more than just a malady, she needed more from it.

  Wynn lifted her eyes to the fluted mug, whispering, “Give me . . . Water.”

  Nothing happened—then a flicker passed. Or had it?

  Was that color shift real? Did the blue-white in the grapes melt for an instant . . . to blue-green . . . to a deep teal?

  The mist’s color surged into cascading shifts as vertigo swelled in Wynn’s head.

  Blue-white swirled to a yellow-white. She hadn’t seen such a color before. Then it turned rapidly to dark amber-red.

  Wynn sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, no . . . not again!”

  The mug’s shape overlaid with deep black, for the water it held chilled the tin vessel. A dim umber-red blotch covered the bed’s blanket, showing the remnants of her body heat from kneeling upon it.

  Once before Wynn had briefly glimpsed the element of Fire.

  She panicked, flinching away, and turned too quickly. Before she could shut her eyes, her gaze lit upon the desk—and the glow of her cold lamp’s crystal.

  Searing pain welled through nausea and vertigo, spiking through her eyes into her skull.

  Light was a manifestation of Fire.

  Wynn grabbed her aching head. Tears leaked through her clenched eyes, as if she’d stared into the sun, and swirling blotches of color played across the backs of her eyelids. Vertigo sharpened, and she knew mantic sight was still with her. She dared not open her eyes.

  The last time she’d seen Fire, half the night passed before her altered sight faded on its own.

  A knock sounded at her door.

  Wynn whimpered under her breath. “Ah, damned dead deities . . . not now!”

  She nearly fell over as she shifted. Her head ached so badly she found it hard even to think. A baritone voice called softly from beyond the door.

  “Wynn, are you up?”

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  The one person in this place who even knew of her malady stood outside. And he was the last person who should see her in this state. He would know exactly what she had been up to.

  “Wynn, I can hear you,” the voice called, strangely accented and already less than patient. “Enough solitude. Open up!”

  Covering her eyes with one hand, she crawled across the cold floor. Her knee suddenly pinned her robe’s gray skirt. When she tried to jerk it free, she toppled to her elbows.

  In the Farlands she’d worn everything from breeches and hand-me-down shirts to elven pants and tunics. The bulky robe was one more thing to which she hadn’t readjusted. She finally reached out blindly for the door, but the latch clacked and the iron hinges grated softly. Something heavy struck her shoulder—the door, of course—and she toppled sideways with a grunt.

  Shuffling footsteps followed, then a pause, and then an angry exhale. Someone grabbed her robe’s collar and half dragged her across the room. Before she cried out, she was dropped into a sitting position upon the bed’s edge.

  “You obstinate little fool,” his deep voice barked. “I have told you never to do this without my supervision.”

  Wynn was very tired of being called obstinate, among other things. Before she could spit back a retort, slender fingers peeled her hand from her clenched eyes and settled over her face. With them came the smell of parchment dust and the lingering odor of olive oil and spices she couldn’t quite name. A low and breathy chant filled her ears and ended with an exhausted sigh.

  “Open your eyes.”

  Wynn’s head still ached and her eyes still burned, but she carefully parted her left eyelid and peeked out.

  Colored blotches swam over everything. Then she made out the front of a midnight blue robe and dusky tan hands. She opened both eyes and stared up into the hard glower of Domin Ghassan il’Sänke.

  He was tall for a Suman, and, standing so close, he towered over her. His short, glossy hair, the color of pure chocolate, waved slightly upon his forehead where it peeked from beneath the lip of his cowl. The barest flecks of silver showed in those locks. A straight but beaked nose separated his thick eyebrows above bright eyes with irises darker than his skin.

  He had become a master among sages long before Wynn was born, and yet his true age was a mystery to her. Only hints of lines showed at the corners of his lively eyes. His cheeks were rough, as if exposed to blowing sands of the great desert separating the northern Numan Lands from the great Suman Empire to the far south. And he didn’t wear the light gray of Wynn’s Order of Cathologers, those who studied in the Realm of Knowledge.

  Domin Ghassan il’Sänke was garbed in midnight blue, for he belonged to the Order of Metaology.

  As the smallest of the orders, and perhaps the most enigmatic, they focused upon the Realm of Existence. They gathered and recorded information concerning metaphysics and cosmology, cultural religions and myths, and even magic.

  Il’Sänke made most young sages uncomfortable, even those attending his seminars given as a visiting domin of note. But not Wynn—or at least not often. No one knew him well, for his guild branch lay half a continent south in Samau’a Gaulb, the capital of the Suman Empire and that of il’Dha’ab Najuum, one of its nations. Il’Sänke was a mage of thaumaturgy—by spellcraft, ritual, or articifing—and was well acknowledged for his skill.

  His mouth tightened, and he didn’t look pleased.

  Despite her state of suffering, Wynn couldn’t help a wave of anxious anticipation. It sharpened when her gaze fell upon a narrow bundle of plain muslin cloth lying on the bed beside her.

  “It’s finished . . . finally?” she asked without even greeting him.

  She reached for the bundle, but il’Sänke grabbed it first.

  “Premin Sykion will have harsh words,” he said in his smooth accent, “when she sees the final accounting of resources and funds—at least those I listed. Then, of course, there’s Premin Hawes.”

  Wynn didn’t care what her order’s leader or the head of metaology had to say on the matter. She fidgeted impatiently until il’Sänke unrolled the bundle, and she drew another quick breath.

  Resting in the opened cloth was a six-sided crystal, pure and clear as polished glass. Two fingers in thickness, it was longer than her outstretched hand.

  Wynn was
still holding her breath as she grabbed the crystal from his hand. She instantly began rubbing it furiously, as she would to initiate a cold lamp crystal.

  But nothing happened.

  “Contain yourself!” il’Sänke chided. “Even when it is finished, friction’s heat will not be enough to awaken the ‘sun crystal.’ ”

  Wynn’s mouth turned dry at those final two words.

  It didn’t matter if il’Sänke thought her foolish, or that most sages here viewed him as a mysterious outsider. He had listened to her wild tales of the Farlands without judgment—the same tales that Domin High-Tower and others dismissed as nonsense. Many of her peers now viewed her as an outsider as well. Ironic, considering she’d grown up in this branch of the guild.