by Barb Hendee
Free for the first time in his undead existence, he had no place to go. In that moment he had no future, no Wynn, and no fantasies of existing in her world. She did not deserve a monster driven by lust for the hunt and the euphoria of a kill. The need to survive, to feed, was the only thing that kept him moving. Wandering to escape the lifeless Pock Peaks, he drifted slowly west.
Bela was the place where his existence as a Noble Dead had begun—and where he had met Wynn and her sages for the first time.
Part of him believed she would leave Magiere and return there, to the newly established branch of her guild. She belonged there, and eventually she would realize this. Even as Chane crossed the Belaskian border, still far from the king’s city, he knew he should not try to touch even that small part of her world. But with each step across the homeland of his living days, Chane’s mind slipped backward, desperate to erase his past and live only as a sage. . . .
Among books and parchments, a cold lamp’s crystal lighting the dark, with one companion of choice . . .
Impossible—for he was undead, and the beast inside him would never sleep.
When he finally reached Bela, he stayed clear of the old barracks given to the sages. Instead he took a room in a dingy little inn beyond the city’s outermost wall. He still had all of Welstiel’s possessions and his own, as well as the books he had saved from the monastery, where Welstiel had killed and raised healer-monks as feral undead. Chane also had the scroll case, the only thing he had taken from the ice-bound castle.
And every time he held it, a part of him wished it had been Wynn he had taken from that place.
He tucked the scroll case from sight, distracting himself with other things.
Welstiel’s belongings and books baffled him, for that arrogant undead had been more than Noble Dead. He had been a skilled conjurer, better than Chane in many ways, though the man preferred artificing over Chane’s use of ritual and scant spells. Welstiel’s journals were written mostly in Numanese—Wynn’s native tongue—and took much time to read. Chane was functional in speaking the language, due to Welstiel’s tutoring, but not in reading it.
Welstiel’s arcane objects, from the steel hoop that conjured heat within its metal, to the metal rods, the life-conjuring cup, and a strange box of vials, were as unfathomable as the man’s two arcane texts. Aside from scattered notes, those latter handwritten volumes were filled with esoteric symbols and characters that likely Welstiel had developed himself.
That was the way of all mages, whatever they practiced. Breaching the personal symbol systems of another mage, born from his fathoming of magic, could take long, if it were possible at all. And even with pieces that Chane worked hard to understand, after only a few moons he found himself holding the ancient scroll case once again.
It represented his one remaining connection to Wynn. And one he could not push aside.
The first time he pulled off its pitted pewter cap, carefully sliding its contents out, the scroll was hard and brittle. Made from a sheet of thin hide, it was too pale even in age for any livestock animal. And he could not unroll it without risk of breaking and crumbling.
Chane had much to do before he could glimpse what it held.
He spent evenings skulking around Bela after dusk before all shops had closed. He needed to know how to restore age-hardened leather to a flexible state without destroying whatever was marked upon it. Consulting leather-workers on the pretense of refurbishing an old vest, he learned to make a cold-filtered mixture of linseed oil and white vinegar. Then he sought scribes and others familiar with inks who could tell him if the solution would affect anything written. One night, back in his room, he took a camel hair brush and delicately applied the mixture for the first time.
The scroll’s tightly curved outer surface darkened suddenly.
Chane froze, fearing he’d ruined the ancient relic. But as the solution dried, the thin leather returned to its pale aged color. Caution took hold nonetheless.
He applied the restoration solution only once per day, just before dawn but keeping it in a dark, cool corner. He gently tested the scroll’s flexibility at each dusk when he rose from dormancy. Twenty-seven nights passed before the scroll lay perfectly flat, but it was on the seventeenth night that Chane had caught his first glimpse of its content—or lack of it.
The top end of the scroll’s inner surface was nearly black, as if wholly covered in ink that had set centuries ago.
Chane slumped in astonishment, and he almost took the scroll and tossed it in the inn’s front hearth. Instead he opened the small room’s one window, sick of the solution’s stench, and stalked out for the night.
When he returned before dawn, senses enlivened by a fresh kill, he didn’t bother testing the scroll’s flexibility. He shut the window, covered the panes with a moth-eaten blanket against the coming sun, and stretched out upon the straw mattress.
A faint odor tickled his nose. Not vinegar and linseed oil, but something else just beneath that.
Chane sat up.
With fresh life filling him, his skin prickled lightly at dawn’s approach. He heard someone out in the inn’s front room dump a log on the hearth. Chane drew air deeply through his nose.
He got up and went to the stool he used for a worktable, carefully lifting the scroll.
He’d never before noticed the scent beneath the solution’s pungent odor. Or perhaps the solution, permeating and softening the hide sheet, had revitalized something else. With the room’s air cleared and his senses opened fully, he lifted the scroll, sniffing its black coating repeatedly.
At first he could not place the thin trace, but it sparked a memory.
In that lost mountain monastery of the healer-monks, called the Servants of Compassion, he had fought with Welstiel and bitten into his undead companion’s leg. As Welstiel’s black fluids seeped through his breeches, Chane’s mouth filled with a taste like rancid linseed oil, and he smelled it as well. . . .
That same odor rose faintly from the scroll’s blackened surface.
There had been worn and jumbled writings on the ice-crusted castle’s walls, made with the fluids of an undead. The same scent had lingered thinly around the writing.
Urgency made Chane’s hands shudder, until the scroll quivered slightly beneath his fingertips. He recognized the scent, not from the ink coating itself, but from something hidden beneath that blackness.
Chane smelled a hint of rancid linseed oil.
A Noble Dead had written on the leather scroll in its own fluids or another’s—and then blotted it out with painted ink. But then why had the scroll been kept for so long?
And how would he ever find out, with no way to read beneath the coating?
Chane couldn’t reason a way to remove the ink without fear of damaging what lay beneath. So he simply continued with his painstaking restoration until the twenty-seventh night, when the scroll lay completely flat, restored to full pliancy.
He had never been alone before—or perhaps not lonely. The scroll’s content, blocked from him, much as he was blocked from Wynn’s world, began to conjure renewed thoughts of her.
For a quarter moon he lurked outside the old barracks. All he wanted was one glimpse of Wynn, though he still did not know if he should—could—face her again. But she never appeared. Chane saw Domin Tilswith several times, but he could not reveal his presence to Wynn’s old master. Tilswith also knew what he was. Finally, one evening he could stand the ignorance no longer.
A girl in a gray robe like Wynn’s ventured out of the barracks’ worn door with empty milk bottles bundled clumsily in her arms. And Chane stepped from the shadows.
He did not often speak, hating the sound of his own voice. During his pursuit of Magiere she had once beheaded him in the forests of Apudâlsat. Welstiel managed to bring him back through some arcane method, but Chane’s voice had never healed.
In his brushed cloak and polished boots, he looked again like a young affluent gentleman. But still, the girl almost drop
ped her bottles in surprise.
“I am looking for news of an old friend,” he rasped. “Do you know where I might find Wynn Hygeorht?”
The girl’s brow wrinkled at Chane’s maimed voice, but then smoothed as her eyes widened in understanding. Though he took no pride in it, he was aware of how his tall form and handsome face affected some women. She spoke Belaskian with a Numanese accent.
“Journeyor Hygeorht? I’m sorry, but she is no longer with us. When she returned with old texts recovered from an abandoned fortification, Domin Tilswith gave her the duty of carrying them back to the home branch in Malourné. She is gone.”
Chane stepped back.
The apprentice looked at him with more interest, perhaps even compassion.
“You could write to her,” the girl offered, “though a letter would take a long while to reach Calm Seatt. We do send regular correspondence on the eve of the new moons. I could include yours, if you like.”
He nodded, still backing away, as if the ground began slipping from under his feet.
“Yes . . . thank you. I will consider that.”
Wynn was gone, left for home across the ocean to another continent—another world.
Chane ambled listlessly through Bela’s night streets, paying no heed to where he walked. He found himself at the waterfront, standing before the great warehouses and docks. And he stared out over the bay’s night water sparked by a star-speckled sky. The only other light came from sparse lanterns hanging along the double-deck piers or on ships out in the wide harbor.
This was where Wynn had boarded and left for the Numan lands, long gone from any chance to catch one last glimpse of her. . . .
“Sir, will you be wanting tea tonight?”
At the voice, Chane was jerked from his reverie in his room in Calm Seatt. He stepped over and cracked the door.
The corpulent innkeeper, who he assumed was Nattie, stood outside. In the Crown Range north of the Farlands, Chane had picked up the habit of drinking tea. And only recently had he begun going out at dusk to track the folios. The innkeeper sometimes still checked in on him. He always paid his bill in advance, and the grease-stained owner treated him with decent manners, following a request not to knock during the day.
“No, thank you, not tonight,” Chane said, and closed the door.
Time was slipping away, and he had already wasted too much reliving events he could not change. He grabbed his cloak, sword, and packs, then locked the door and left the inn.
No one addressed him as he walked quickly through the darkening streets. Wearing a long wool cloak, he was nondescript. A few drunkards eyed him as they stumbled from a tavern, but they stayed well out of his way. He headed toward the better-lit and -maintained eastern merchant district.
He knew the location of the Gild and Ink, but cursed himself for not leaving the inn sooner. It was a long way off, even if he wasted energy bolting along back alleys. Any messenger sages may have already come and gone with tonight’s folio. Yet he had to be certain, and walked quickly until approaching the correct street.
Rounding a corner, he slipped in beneath the eaves’ shadows as he approached the scriptorium. The entire street was empty—no lights in the shops he passed, and he heard no voices—and he silently cursed himself again. Then he stopped one shop away, looking at the front of the Gild and Ink.
Chane slowly stepped forward to the scribe shop’s corner.
All its windows were dark, like the other shops along the street, but the front door . . .
Shattered wood shards lay across the cobblestones before the Gild and Ink. In place of the door was only a dark opening into the shop. No scribes, no sages, the shop closed for the night, and someone had broken in . . .
Chane glanced at the door’s remains. No, not in—someone had broken out.
He crept closer to see inside, but then voices reached him from down the street. Had someone seen this and called for constables? He could not be seen here, especially not now.
Frustrated, wildly wishing to enter the shop and see what had happened, Chane slipped into the shadows, moving quickly away.
CHAPTER 5
Rodian woke the next morning to knocking on his chamber door, adjacent to his office.
His needs were few—a bed, a basin to wash in, a mirror for grooming, and a chest for extra clothes. After spending long hours at each day’s end filling out reports and updating log entries, he felt it best to have his personal space close at hand. He’d chosen an office with an empty adjoining room to convert for personal space.
Rodian sat up quickly, instantly alert. No one knocked this early but Garrogh, and not without a good reason.
“Come,” he half grunted.
Garrogh poked his head through the cracked door, his long, unwashed hair hanging in a tangled mess. Obviously he’d been roused early as well.
“Sir?”
“What is it?” Rodian asked, wiping sleep from his eyes.
“A break-in at the scribe shop of a Master Shilwise. I thought you’d want to know immediately.”
Rodian blinked and looked at his second.
Garrogh was a good man, personal hygiene aside—competent, reliable, appreciative of his position, but most important, not overly ambitious.
“A scriptorium?” Rodian repeated.
“Yes, sir,” Garrogh said with a frown of shared understanding. “Master Shilwise arrived at his shop before dawn. The local constabulary just sent word.”
“Is his shop handling work for the sages’ guild?”
“I don’t know . . . but I’d guess, considering.”
“What time is it?”
“Just past dawn . . . barely the first eighth of day, by the bells.”
Rodian hurried for his uniform. “Have our horses saddled.”
With a splash of water on his face and the basin left full, Rodian joined his lieutenant in the second castle’s courtyard. They rode toward the eastern and outermost merchant district.
A chilling prewinter wind pulled at Rodian’s cloak as the city’s streets began coming to life. Garrogh’s big bay gelding continually snorted steam and stomped in protest at the early outing. Once it even tried to thrash and turn back for the barracks. Rodian’s white mare, Snowbird, was far better behaved, as if sharing his devotion to duty.
Street vendors were setting up carts of meat pies, spiced tea, and mulled wine, along with baked goods. One hauled a handcart filled with late-blooming wildflowers and ferns, headed toward the city center, where people actually spent coin on such things. The street lamps were already snuffed, and the cleaners had long finished clearing the cobblestones of horse droppings from the previous day. Shopkeepers had just begun unlocking their doors, though most patrons wouldn’t be out and about for a while.
Why had Master Shilwise arrived so early at his own shop?
Normally Rodian would’ve made a note of the break-in, studied his schedule, and placed this visit in order of importance. But given the murders so near Master a’Seatt’s scriptorium, and the missing folio, this break-in came too soon to be a coincidence. He and Garrogh turned off the wide main road into a narrower street of eateries and inns.
Master Shilwise’s scriptorium wasn’t as well situated as Pawl a’Seatt’s, but still in a respectable neighborhood. Rodian had never investigated a burglary in this district. The only event that came to mind had happened four streets south—a murder. Two years ago he’d arrested a robust woman who’d smothered her husband in his sleep with a pillow. She confessed and then stopped talking altogether. Rodian never learned her motive. The neighbors claimed she and her husband had gotten on well. But domestic crimes occurred in every neighborhood, at every social level, from paupers to gentry.
“Good gods!” Garrogh breathed.
The shop wasn’t difficult to spot. A small crowd of gawkers had already gathered in the street front. Gaudy and worn, its painted sign hung askew—THE GILD AND INK.
Whitewashed outer walls were cracked and faded by coastal
weather. Two fake-gilded columns on the front porch, carved like the stone ones found before noble townhouses, looked no better than the walls. Broken pieces of the door lay scattered all the way into the street.
Rodian frowned and climbed off Snowbird. “Stay,” he told her.
A stocky man with a round bald spot closed on him instantly.
“Look at this, Captain!” he demanded angrily. “Just look at this! Is this what my taxes pay for? Is this your idea of keeping the law?”
Rodian took a slow breath. “Master Shilwise?”
Dressed in a purple velvet tunic over a white linen shirt, the man hardly appeared to suffer from overtaxation. Perhaps he should spend more coin on his shop’s upkeep than his wardrobe. From the look of the place, Rodian couldn’t see how the sages would employ such an establishment. He’d also heard enough accusations like Shilwise’s, assuming that the city guard could anticipate crimes and intercede beforehand.
