by Barb Hendee
“Well, did Master a’Seatt say anything?” Regina asked—as if it were any business of a naturology student’s.
“He just said the work wasn’t finished . . . and he wouldn’t hand over anything. He sent us off, and I didn’t argue. He scares me more than High-Tower.”
The three young sages stepped out, likely headed to the main hall for supper. Wynn waited until their chatter grew faint before she descended. But she paused at the door, mulling their words over and over.
If High-Tower risked sending out another folio, its contents must be important to whatever work was still ongoing. Maybe the passages even connected to those taken from Miriam, Dâgmund, and Nikolas. But it didn’t make sense that Master a’Seatt hadn’t sent the folio back. His shop had never failed to complete work on time.
And yet, a folio was still at the Upright Quill.
This might be her only chance to see just what, among all the texts, was now targeted by an undead.
Wynn rushed back to her room. She grabbed the crystal out of her cold lamp and then paused near the bed.
What would happen if she were discovered? She’d been ordered more than once to keep away from anything to do with the project.
Magiere wouldn’t have let anyone stop her, and neither would Leesil. Chap, as well, had always taken his own course.
Wynn couldn’t give up her only chance.
CHAPTER 10
Just past dusk, Chane crouched upon the roof of the Upright Quill scriptorium, listening to all that transpired below. One of the scribe masters had sent the guild’s messengers away empty-handed, which meant an unfinished folio was still inside the shop. It was a strange twist, but a fortunate one.
Although Chane wasn’t fluent in the Begaine syllabary, back in Bela, Wynn and Domin Tilswith had explained how it worked. Not an actual alphabet, it was for rendering word parts or syllables. Based on blending and simplifying the strokes of modern Numanese’s thirty-eight letters, and combined with additional special marks, it could be used to transcribe almost any known language. It saved space versus almost any other writing system, and for those who could read it, it was faster to take in what was written.
Chane had a passable grasp of spoken Numanese, but he was not fully proficient at reading or writing it. Even in his own notes, any Numanese terms he used were written with Belaskian letters.
The sages’ script would be a struggle, but he had to know what kind of texts Wynn had chosen from the vast library of the ice-trapped castle. Especially—specifically—whether any related to the mysterious blacked-out scroll. He had to see what was in the folio, and he waited long before the shop’s front door finally creaked open again.
“Out with you,” said someone with a reedy voice. “All of you.”
“Do you have the key?” a girl asked.
“No, I left it inside to annoy you . . . now scoot! Master a’Seatt is waiting.”
Chane shifted to the roof’s edge and peered over the eave.
A dark-haired man in a charcoal jerkin, carrying a wide-brimmed black hat, stood below on the street. An old, balding short man in spectacles shooed scribes from the shop. A young girl with kinky hair and dark skin followed in the old one’s hobbling footsteps as they stepped out.
Chane stiffened under a tingle that made him shudder.
Something about the dark-haired man unsettled him. But his extended awareness as an undead had grown dull from his wearing Welstiel’s ring for so long.
A key scraped in the lock. Soon all of the shop’s staff strode down the street. And Chane lost any hint of that strange sensation. He turned his attention back to the shop below.
Closing his eyes, he lay down and leaned his head all the way over the eave. In a deep inhale, he tried to drink in the scent from the night air—tried to smell for any living thing still inside.
There was nothing but a lingering after-scent. He listened carefully as well, but the scriptorium seemed empty for the night. He pushed back atop the roof, contemplating the best method of entry.
Breaking through the door or a window was not an option. Someone might see or hear him this early at night. There was only one other way. He roused the bestial part of himself that always hungered for a kill.
Hunger surfaced, hardening his fingernails and filling his cold flesh with strength.
Crawling to the shop’s rear, Chane dug his fingernails into the roof’s shakes.
He pried up and removed seven as quietly as he could and found the underplanking was solid and sound—troublesome but expected. Rising slightly, he scanned the street once for anyone in sight, and then punched through the planks. He kept at it, clearing a hole large enough to pass through.
As he dropped lightly into the shop’s rearmost room, he fully widened his sight. The scribe’s workroom was so sealed off from outside light that even he had difficulty. He barely made out worktables, chairs, and the lighter tone of piled parchment and paper.
He felt his way about, recognizing objects clearly only when he was close enough. At the back shelves he found a lantern and an old tin cup full of crude wooden matches. He lit the lantern, turning its knob until only dim illumination filled the space. Leaving the lantern in place, he turned to scan the room.
Where would a master scribe or proprietor secure the folio?
And there it was. A leather folio lay on a short side table beside the largest desk just two steps away.
Chane took those two steps and then hesitated.
Why was it out in plain sight? This seemed too unprofessional. Perhaps the scribes had worked late, being too far behind in their efforts, and the folio had not been properly stored away. But even that did not seem plausible.
Chane picked up the folio.
By its thickness and heft, all the guild notes and excerpts were still inside. He glanced across the near desk and quickly at the others in the room. All were cleared and orderly. No transcription work appeared to be left lying about, so perhaps that had been stored away.
He pulled the folio’s leather lace and opened its flap.
At the sight of the sheets, all scribbled upon in ink and charcoal strokes, his shoulders sagged in relief. But he could not linger here, nor turn up the lamp and risk its light being spotted through even the crack of a shutter. He turned down the lamp until its flame snuffed out and quietly hurried out to the shop’s front room.
Carefully cracking open a window, enough to do the same with its outer shutter, Chane held the stack of pages close. He angled them until weak light from a street lantern fell upon the top sheet.
This time he sagged in frustration.
Aside from his limited understanding of the Begaine syllabary, some of these sages had terrible handwriting. To make matters worse, the notes were written with sharpened charcoal sticks. Cheaper and more convenient than quill and ink, they often left characters blurred. Even though some notes were not written in Begaine symbols, he could not sound out all of them. Many appeared to be copied in their original languages, which Chane could not even identify.
He turned a few more sheets and finally gave up, realizing he needed more time to decipher the folio’s contents—and for that he could not remain in this shop.
A tingle crawled over his skin.
The beast chained within him growled in warning.
Chane pulled the window closed, latched it, and stepped back, watching the street outside through the narrow space of the ajar shutter. A soft shift of shadow flickered to his left.
Beyond the shop’s door, the front wall’s far side wavered. Wood appeared to bulge inward like an ocean swell, and then settled flat around a tall shape emerging.
A black figure stepped straight through the wall into the shop’s front. But it looked as solid as anything else in the room.
Garbed in a flowing robe and cloak, the latter’s folds shifting and swaying, the figure paused in stillness. A voluminous hood covered its head and face, and even Chane’s undead eyes couldn’t penetrate the dark within that ope
ning.
He stared as his senses fully awakened.
He had not felt it coming. Not even a tingle, until it had pushed through the wall like water or vapor. Before he could utter a demand or warning threat, the figure raised a hand toward him.
Its sleeve slipped down, exposing forearm, hand, and fingers—all wrapped in strips of black cloth. A soft hissing rose around it, as it slid forward across the floor.
Chane shoved the pages into the folio and backed against the side wall beyond the window. And still it came at him. He vaulted the front counter on his free hand and retreated toward the open doorway to the back room.
The only way out was through the hole in the workroom’s roof, or to shatter his way through the rear door. Either path meant turning his back on this thing that had just walked straight through a wall.
Chane jerked out his longsword.
“Do not be closed . . . do not be closed,” Wynn muttered over and over as she ran through the streets toward the Upright Quill.
If Master Teagan were still there, she might bluff her way in to retrieve the folio. Perhaps a threat that Premin Sykion insisted on its return might do the trick, regardless that the work was incomplete. Wynn could simply promise to have it back first thing in the morning—and hope that later she wouldn’t be cast out of the guild for interference.
One way or another, she was going to get into serious trouble. But a look at the folio was all that mattered.
“Please be open,” she whispered again, and then halted, her mouth dangling open.
The Upright Quill was as quiet and dark as any other shop on the street.
“Valhachkasej’â!” she hissed—and then bit her tongue.
Swearing in Old Elvish was a bad habit she’d picked up from Leesil. A few profane expressions were about all the half elf could pronounce correctly in his mother’s language. Wynn took a long breath, shuffling toward the shop’s door. Now what?
One window shutter was slightly cracked open, and she hurried over.
Swinging the shutter wide, she flinched when it creaked too loudly. She craned up on tiptoe to peer through the panes.
Light from the nearest street lantern wasn’t enough to fill the shop’s front room, but perhaps someone was still working in the back. She would have to knock at the door after all. Then two closely spaced footfalls pounded inside the shop. It sounded like someone stomping.
Wynn grabbed the sill with both hands, pulling herself up with her face close to the panes. But she saw nothing.
An indistinct form shifted in the dark, near the door to the back workroom.
Wynn’s nose squashed against the pane.
A tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark cloak stood beyond the front counter. His hood was down, and he held a leather folio in his hand.
Wynn’s stomach hardened.
Someone had beaten her here and gotten in, and she tried to make out his face. Besides Master a’Seatt, she’d never seen anyone of such stature here. In the dark, his skin was so light she began to make out a narrow face, straight nose, and red-brown hair, and maybe . . .
Sparkling eyes looked about the shop’s front room.
Wynn stopped breathing . . . and stared at Chane.
The last time she’d seen him was south of the Farlands in the company of Welstiel, Magiere’s undead half brother. Half a world away atop the Pock Peaks, in the library of Li’kän’s castle, he’d promised never to follow her.
He’d promised—yet here he was, holding a folio.
Confusion scrambled Wynn’s thoughts.
It wasn’t possible, not for the way all the victims had died. Except that Chane had kept company with Welstiel for a long while. And Welstiel had been trained by his father’s retainer—Ubâd, that decrepit necromancer and the architect of Magiere’s unnatural birth.
Welstiel was a conjuror. As a Noble Dead he’d had many years to refine his skills. And what might Chane, a conjuror himself, have learned under that madman’s tutelage?
Everything kept racing along twisted paths in Wynn’s mind, and they all led to Chane.
She remembered spirits, walking corpses, and dismembered body parts floating in milky fluids within Ubâd’s hideaway. Chane had been there as well, trying to save her, but looking back . . .
Wynn’s chill faded, and bile burned in the back of her throat.
It was him. Chane was murdering sages . . . her own kind.
He suddenly shoved the folio under one arm, and a long line of silver appeared before him in the dark shop.
Wynn quickly realized it was his sword—but why was he drawing a weapon? He wasn’t looking her way but off toward the shopfront’s far side. She tried to shift left along the window and glimpse the room’s far right side.
A black form floated across the floor into sight.
Wynn’s eyes widened as she followed it—and then she flinched back.
Chane was looking right at her. His eyes widened as well, but he quickly returned his attention to the black mass.
She thought she saw the shape of a black hood and cloak upon a tall form—just before a shout filled the night street.
“Move in!”
A strong arm latched around Wynn from behind and heaved her off the ground.
Chane heard a male voice shouting outside, and then Wynn cried out.
He glanced toward the window, but the shutter’s narrow space was empty. And the wafting black figure rushed him—straight through the counter.
Chane didn’t even think to swing his sword. He twisted sideways into the door frame, blade out, but he still couldn’t make out a face within the hood.
The figure hesitated. Was it looking at the sword? Then it surged forward, and Chane slashed.
The blade’s tip passed through the figure’s midsection.
The steel didn’t even drag, as if cutting only air. Lack of resistance took him by surprise, and he lost the sword’s balance. It jarred against the door frame, and the figure’s cloth-wrapped fingers shot out at him. On instinct Chane jerked the sword’s hilt upward, blade tilted to block.
The black hand glided straight through the steel and sank into his chest.
Agonizing cold spread through him before he could shut out the pain. The frigid cold in his chest was so harsh it felt as if he burned. Something seemed to gnaw at him from within.
Chane’s knees buckled in weakness. Then a hollow moan filled the shop. It rose to a shriek, piercing his ears with equal pain.
The black figure jerked its hand from Chane’s chest. It held up shivering fingers, as if it had suddenly succumbed to the same searing cold.
Chane wobbled, and his shoulder struck the door frame before he could catch himself.
A hiss grew inside the shop.
The sound seemed to rise all around as the figure’s pit of a hood turned to its own raised hand wrapped in shreds of black cloth. Its fingers twitched in convulsions as it retreated through the counter. And the hood’s opening turned once more toward Chane.
He felt the cold fade within him and his strength returned.
He had no notion of what had just happened, but it had not been what his attacker expected. Once its hand jerked from his body, the sudden weakness simply faded. As if it tried to drain his strength and failed.
And Chane had felt something else in that painful contact—empty of life.
He righted himself in panic. This thing that walked through solid walls was undead, but unlike any he had ever seen or heard of. Chane quickly glanced to the rear door and then up to the hole in the roof.
He had to escape, and Wynn was still out front. But he would never gain the roof quickly enough, nor have time to get past the rear door’s inner bar. Not before . . .
He glanced back again. The rear door’s brackets were empty, and the bar leaned against the wall beside it. The door might still contain a basic lock, but why had it not been barred when the staff left the shop?
The robed form curled its fingers into hooks and slid through the
counter again.
Chane dodged out the doorway and behind the counter. The back room was too tight and cluttered for fighting. At best, he would have to break through a front window and run. Then the folio was jerked from under his arm.
“No!” he rasped.
He snatched hold of the leather case with his free hand and spun about, swinging his sword back in reflex.
Chane watched his blade pass through a black-wrapped forearm and hit the countertop. The figure’s fingers still clutched the folio’s other end. Chane barely blinked as something struck the side of his head.
