by Barb Hendee
Rodian stood alone, but for the guardsman holding the lantern. The closest body lay at a crooked angle with his robe’s collar torn open, exposing his throat.
What had Wynn Hygeorht been looking for?
A figure crouched low upon a candle-shop roof.
He watched a cart with two bodies in gray roll from the alley, pulled by city guards in red tabards. Another guard with a close-cropped beard led the way, obviously their superior. All of them paused upon reaching the constables waiting at the intersection. The officer appeared to give orders. With nods, the constables went their way, escorting a young girl, and the guards headed off with the cart. But the officer remained.
Looking one way and then the other along the street, he froze, perhaps watching something farther off. And the cloaked figure upon the roof lifted his hooded head, peering in the same direction.
The bundle he held pinned to the roof suddenly began to slide, and he quickly pressed his hand down on it.
The bearded officer below looked up, and the figure flattened low and still.
He waited in silence, listening. He could hear the officer’s breath pause, the click of chain and creak of leather as the man turned around twice. Finally boots clapped slow and steady upon the wet cobblestone, until the sound all but faded. Only then did the figure rise, searching along the street below.
Down the far way, three figures were nearly out of sight: one small woman in gray, a dwarf in a like robe, and a taller man in midnight blue.
And the figure leaned forward, overhanging the eaves, as his gaze fixed on the woman.
That distant glimpse was not enough, but fear of being seen smothered his urge to drop down and follow her. He looked to the bundle he held pinned against the roof’s shakes.
And he lifted the leather folio in his gloved hand.
He had barely gotten it out of the alley before the scribe master and the girl arrived. Pulling the strap from its buckle, he whipped the folio’s flap open and peered inside. He froze for an instant, then dug furiously about inside of it.
The folio was empty.
Sagging in stunned confusion, the figure reached behind and pulled forward one of two canvas packs. Opening its flap to shove the folio inside, he paused, glancing over his belongings.
Tucked within the pack were old books, some coming apart with age. Two boxes as well, one bound in leather and the other wrapped in cloth. Several short rods of various metal lay askew, leaning against a large hoop of smooth steel with hair-thin etchings. And for an instant he remained fixed upon an age-marred, tin scroll case.
The figure lifted his hooded head, listening a moment for anyone nearby. Then he quickly shifted his belongings, with clinks and clatters, and wedged the empty folio into the pack. Rising up, he hefted both his packs over one shoulder and gazed down the street.
Those three robed sages—man, woman, and dwarf—slipped from sight around the road’s gradual curve. And the cloaked figure pulled back his hood, letting raggedly cut red-brown hair swing freely around his narrow, pale face.
Chane Andraso stood high in the dark, staring after Wynn.
But she was beyond his widened sight as much as beyond his reach.
Ghassan il’Sänke lingered outside the main archway of the guild’s common hall, watching the commotion play out. Half this branch’s population was now crowded into that large space. A small sea of initiates in tan robes pressed in toward the mammoth hearth at the hall’s far end. Among them were the teal, cerulean, gray, midnight blue, and sienna of apprentices and perhaps a few journeyers of the five orders. Domins and masters of the guild were present as well. And the thrum of agitated voices echoed out over Ghassan.
He had no wish to answer questions, either those of the premins or the curious and fearful gathered about. High-Tower could face that task. The dwarf’s sharp brevity, though unsatisfying to some, might quell morbid fascination and fear among the guild’s populace. And more likely, High Premin Sykion would not let things go too far. Discussion of unpleasant details would be held until privacy was achieved.
But still, Ghassan wanted to know what was said—and thought.
And how much anyone suspected regarding the deaths of two young sages and the missing folio of passages from the ancient texts. How would the sages of this guild branch react?
Frustration cracked his self-control in a sharp exhale.
If only he had found a way to remove the texts and taken them to his branch far south. These Numans were ill-suited for protecting the ancient writings, regardless that this was the guild’s founding branch. Compared to his own branch, this castle was still a tiny place in the world.
High-Tower was hard to spot amid the crowd, but he was somewhere near the hearth. Wynn would be close by as well. Then one of the dwarves’ broad hands rose above the thickened forest of cowled heads as he bellowed for silence.
Ghassan pitied him—almost.
The stout domin was the perfect example of a solid, pragmatic dwarf, who preferred each day’s schedule to follow an ordered and efficient regimen. The potential for chaos in the hall would be torture for him—as much as for those behind him.
All five of the Premin Council, leaders of the five orders, stood scattered along the great hearth’s front ledge.
Premin Sykion looked uncomfortable, even a little shaken. She raised a narrow hand, echoing High-Tower’s gesture, and her reedy voice lowered the rumble in the hall.
“Please, we have told you all we know. We hope to learn more tomorrow. But for now there is nothing more.”
Some of the crowd drew back, taking up seats at benches and stools, while others drifted toward the exits with low and fervent murmurs.
At more than sixty years, Sykion was as slender as a solitary palm tree on a grassy shore, and perhaps slightly bent like one under the wind of a gathering storm. The gray robe of a cathologer suited her serene demeanor, as well as did her long and braided silver hair. Il’Sänke respected her position but otherwise had no opinion of her. As premin of cathology at Calm Seatt, and high premin of the branch’s council, she had been the one to request his extended stay.
Môdhrâfn Adlam, premin of naturology, stood closest to her. At a break in the crowd il’Sänke saw a handful of brown-robed apprentices gather near him, as if seeking his protection.
Ghassan snorted.
Môdhrâfn’s given name meant “proud raven.” Odd as it was for a Numan name to refer to an animal, he supposed it suited the head of naturology here, those who studied the natural world. Still, “prideful” would have been a better translation.
“How did they die?” young Nikolas asked, his voice trembling.
Ghassan hadn’t even noticed him before. In general, Nikolas Columsarn never warranted much note. He was usually hiding in some corner with hunched shoulders, like a mouse watching for a cat. As he had been now, before stepping into sight around the archway’s side.
High-Tower cleared his throat. “The captain of the guard has made no determination, but with no visible injuries . . . it appears they may have been poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” a clear voice called too loudly.
There was a hint of contempt behind its fear, and Ghassan shifted his gaze to Wynn.
She stood just beyond High-Tower at the hearth’s left end, her arms crossed as if she were cold.
Domin High-Tower glared at her. “No one needs to hear any more of your nonsense!”
He had tried to say this under his breath, but the words still carried. Wynn straightened and held High-Tower’s eyes with hers.
“They weren’t poisoned,” she said. “Even so . . . whoever killed them took a folio completed this day at Master a’Seatt’s shop. What did you send to have copied? What was in those pages?”
“Their deaths had nothing to do with their task!” High-Tower snapped. “Some thug killed them, and merely took anything found.”
“A common thug . . . using poison?” Wynn returned coldly. “Where’s the sense in that?”
<
br /> Premin Sykion stepped along the hearth toward Wynn.
“You are tired and overwrought, my dear, and it grows late.” She looked around at the remaining hesitant faces. “Everyone should rest. There is nothing more to discuss.”
Sykion’s hazel eyes grew sad in her gaunt, lined face.
“A great tragedy happened tonight, but as Domin High-Tower suggests, we may yet learn it was a random act that took our brothers from us.”
Muttering softly, the last of the initiates, apprentices, and masters began to break apart, heading out in small groups. Some passed Ghassan on their way to the front double doors and the courtyard, off to their quarters elsewhere.
Premin Sykion gently steered Wynn toward the main archway.
Ghassan had noted more than once how the premin handled Wynn’s outbursts—with sympathy and compassion, versus High-Tower’s fuming frustration. But the premin’s method had done more to discredit Wynn than the dwarf’s ever had. Perhaps Sykion did pity Wynn—as some poor, addle-minded girl, not up to the journey her domin had given her in a faraway land.
But Wynn did not inspire sympathy in Ghassan.
She made him anxious, almost wary, and fear was unusual for him.
He watched Wynn approach, her olive features defeated and disturbed. What did she know, and how much? She stopped when she saw him standing beyond the arched entrance.
“You didn’t even come in?”
“I was not needed.”
“They’re all fools,” she whispered. “And yet I’m the witless one? Tell me . . . if you’re the last sane person in a world of blind lunacy, what does that really make you?”
Ghassan saw no point in playing at intellectual conundrums.
“Is it not possible that Elias and Jeremy were poisoned?” he asked. “Can you not grant that much?”
Wynn’s small mouth tightened, and Ghassan thought she might accuse him of being a fool as well. For in a world of fools, the sane and rational were always labeled idiots and madmen.
“I suppose,” she said low in anger.
He nodded once. She passed him by, heading silently toward the entry chamber and the great doors.
Ghassan took two silent steps after her, just enough to take him beyond sight of anyone still in the common hall. And he blinked slowly.
In that sliver of darkness behind his eyelids, he raised the image of Wynn’s face in his mind. Over this he drew the shapes, lines, and marks of blazing symbols stroked from deep in his memory. A chant passed through his thoughts more quickly than it could have passed between his lips.
Poison indeed! Blindness . . . all of them blind to what I know!
Ghassan il’Sänke finished his blink as the cacophony of Wynn’s conscious thoughts erupted in his mind.
They were killed by an undead. . . .
He took care not to sink too deeply. Searching for anything more than surface thoughts could arouse a target’s awareness. Even if she wouldn’t know what startled her from within, he had no wish to fuel her paranoia—not yet.
I wish Magiere were here. Or Leesil . . . yes, he’d get a good laugh at such a notion . . . as poison for a mugging.
It was difficult to catch anything coherent in her overwrought mind.
How could this thing feed without leaving marks? And why steal the folio? Chap would figure this out. Where are you when I need you?!
Ghassan heard Wynn lift one of the iron ring handles on the double doors—but he did not hear the door open.
How did il’Sänke hear about the poison . . . if he wasn’t inside the common hall?
His right hand trembled, perhaps from the strain, and he reached across to stop it with his other. Wynn believed the deaths were related to the texts . . . those texts that never should have been brought here, never placed in the Calm Seatt branch for translation.
I thought il’Sänke would . . . at least he should’ve believed me . . . I thought . . . I am so alone.
Ghassan heard the heavy door creak open, and its thud upon closing echoed back down the passageway. Even in Wynn’s scattered thoughts, he sensed determination. How far would she go to uncover the truth—either what he already knew or had yet to learn?
How far must he go to stop her?
CHAPTER 3
Just before noon the following day, Rodian urged his exquisite white mare up Old Procession Road toward the bailey gate of the Guild of Sagecraft.
Slender aspen trees now grew inside the castle’s inner bailey wall, their high branches overhanging its top. At one time the royals had suggested that the entire wall be removed. The prospect of clear sight of the guild’s keep might enhance the impression of accessible knowledge in the city. But the sages had already converted the inner bailey into narrow groves and gardens and natural conservatories—except where additional buildings had been added to the keep’s exterior. They feared too many people traipsing through their precious accomplishments. Or so they said.
Rodian had his own perspective. These discomforting scholars coveted secrecy, and he wasn’t looking forward to this morning’s interviews.
He passed through the inner bailey’s gate and headed for the fortification’s hulking gatehouse. Before his mount entered the long tunnel to the inner courtyard, a stout young female in a gray robe scurried out.
“Premin Sykion and Domin High-Tower are expecting you, Captain,” she said. “I’ll see to your horse.”
He looked into the young sage’s face as he dismounted and handed over the reins. Her eyes struck him as dull and vacant, yet somehow she’d proven adequate enough to become an apprentice. Rodian shook his head as the girl led off his horse, and he headed into the gatehouse tunnel.
All three portcullises were open, not that this place needed such anymore. His footfalls on mortared stone echoed around him until he stepped into the wide and square inner courtyard. Today he wore a cloak over his uniform and kept his sword covered. Had it been possible, he would have sent Garrogh here instead.
Sages, so misguided in their ideals, but Rodian knew the truth of higher learning. Something they did not.
Knowledge belonged to the blessed.
Only those with the highest sentience were suited to the use of the highest knowledge—all for the betterment of those less endowed. Anything else was letting a mule drive the cart, while the carter donned halter and harness. And such knowledge had to be coupled with sound moral reasoning versus blind adherence to codes of ethics. Yes, there were laws and rules to be upheld, for such was his calling, but it wasn’t the same thing.
If only more sages, particularly their masters, domins, and premins, would join his own brethren, their service to humanity might one day achieve a greater glory. But there were no sages in his own temple congregation. As much as this was a sorrow to his faith in the Blessed Trinity of Sentience, it was a greater loss to them.
Rodian headed swiftly across the courtyard to the main doors of the large keep. And another young sage opened one door before he’d even touched it.
“Please follow me, sir.”
The warmth inside felt welcome, but Rodian steeled himself for a private audience with the premin of cathologers, head of the entire branch. Perhaps any masters or domins who knew the victims would be present as well.
The young sage led him through the entryway, and then turned left down a long passage. A low buzz of voices, footfalls, and other noises carried from ahead, leaving him puzzled. At a wide archway on the right, the boy turned in.
Rodian stepped into a vast common hall where a fire blazed in a great hearth at the rear. Numerous robed figures milled about rough tables, benches, and stools, with books and parchments spread about. Two boys were finishing an early lunch, and everyone looked up.
Rodian exhaled sharply. This wasn’t the proper place for questioning.
He ignored curious faces and glanced around until he spotted Domin High-Tower at one long table. The dwarf was muttering gruffly with the tall Suman named il’Sänke. A slight woman in a gray robe stoo
d at the table’s head.
Rodian had taken time to review the structure of the guild’s orders before setting foot in this place. A long silver braid hung down the woman’s back, dangling over the folds of her downed cowl. She was so slender that she might almost disappear from a sideways view. When her head turned, following High-Tower’s thick pointing finger, her calm hazel eyes fell on Rodian.
He approached with a respectful nod, expecting her to speak first, but she only held his eyes with her penetrating gaze.
