by Barb Hendee
And the identity of the specter’s host would be revealed.
The domin insisted that Khalidah possessed the ability to easily see and breach the sect’s ensorcellment that hid the final cellar door from all senses, and he would enter. Il’Sänke also claimed that he himself would sense when this occurred.
The ease of entering the sanctuary unimpeded would leave Khalidah believing that he was in control as il’Sänke, Wynn, and Shade rushed the house. Brot’an and Osha would scatter any guards trying to stop them.
Acting as bait, Magiere would draw Khalidah farther inside the sanctuary as il’Sänke, Wynn, and Shade closed in from behind. After that, il’Sänke claimed he would be able to hold the specter in place, inside the host’s body, and trap him there in the ensorcelled cellar chamber until dawn broke.
Chane would know the moment came only when he had to fight to keep from falling dormant. And what then? He would succumb not knowing whether the others had succeeded. At that point Magiere’s task would be to drive Khalidah from the host by making him believe she was about to kill that body. The specter could not remain inside someone in the moment of death, or he might share it, and so would flee the host.
The only safeguard was the crystal atop Wynn’s staff.
Khalidah would have two choices: to be burned out of existence by the crystal or to flee from the house and burn in the dawn.
During a late-night talk in which Chane had been present, Wynn had asked, “What if the specter leaves the host but tries to take one of us?”
“I will stop him,” il’Sänke had answered flatly.
Chane hoped that was not a boast. He and Magiere, and likely both majay-hì, were immune to possession by an undead; the others were not. Wynn might be the safest with her staff in hand, so long as she ignited it, but that would also make her the specter’s first target to eliminate or possess. No one had mentioned that, though all of them could easily reason it.
However, nothing better had been offered, and now they were here. From the beginning, Chane had suspected they would end up with a “lure and trap” strategy.
He neared the hallway’s end, with a door on his left and an open stairwell on the right, just as il’Sänke had described. Peering ahead through a small foyer, Chane saw the outline of the back door to the house.
“This way,” he rasped, turning left.
After opening the door, he led the way through. Upon descending the stairs to the lower level, he found himself in a passage. As instructed, he ignored all other doors along the way and went straight to the passage’s end wall. Then he reached into the small pocket inside his cloak to retrieve the pebble. His gloves were so thick that it was hard to feel the tiny stone.
“Hurry!” Leesil whispered.
Chane clenched his teeth against a retort. Magiere hung close at his right shoulder and studied the stones of the end wall. He finally felt the pebble with his forefinger, pinched it, and began to withdraw his hand.
A loud creak carried in the quiet.
Chane hesitated, thinking it was more of Leesil’s fidgeting. When Magiere whirled and Chap snarled, Chane twisted around to look up the passage.
A tall hooded figure in a shimmering gray robe, backed by five guards, stood halfway down the cellar stairs . . . having arrived too soon.
* * *
Osha let fly another arrow when he gained a clear shot. Imperial guards scattered and ducked along the street below, scurrying between market stalls up the way or into side streets and cutways, trying to run along the buildings’ sides below him.
He had not expected so many and began to worry in counting off the shots—the arrows—he fired. He did not know how many arrows Brot’ân’duivé had scavenged from his previous victims.
Osha had wounded and put down two men. Another three lay dead with shorter shafts upright in their face or chest, and those had not been his targets. The longer this continued, the more likely he could not avoid a kill. And worse, the robed figure and five guards had breached the house too early. Chane could not possibly get Magiere and the others into the secret room before they were caught.
Osha had no chance to wonder what came next as Wynn, Shade, and the domin rushed from hiding and charged toward the house. He quickly swung his aim in their direction. Two guards ran from cover to follow them. One closed on Wynn from behind, and Osha released his bow’s string.
The arrow struck true in the guard’s shoulder as Osha drew and nocked another. As he aimed for the guard rushing the domin from the other side . . .
An arrow appeared to sprout from the guard’s face, and he fell.
Osha did not look for Brot’ân’duivé or at another of the greimasg’äh’s victims.
The men below only followed orders, just as Osha had, first under Most Aged Father and then under Brot’ân’duivé. He had once been ignorant of how tainted—how stained in spirit—both had become . . . and how close he had come to that black stain upon himself.
Osha focused only on protecting Wynn.
He would kill again—stain his spirit even more—if he had to. But only for her, and not for the mad “father” of his lost caste, or for that tainted greimasg’äh.
* * *
Brot’ân’duivé’s spite fractured his calm as he put down the guard rushing the domin.
Osha’s reluctance to kill had slowed the process of clearing the street. Every guard left alive, even wounded, was still a threat. Did the young fool not realize this?
It was no mistake that Osha had been stripped of his place among the Anmaglâhk, dissident or loyalist. That the Chein’âs had done this, and not a superior of the caste, was the only mystery. Osha lacked what was necessary to protect his people.
Another imperial guard broke from cover and charged for Wynn. The black majay-hì snarled but did not break stride as yet. Even Shade understood that purpose overrode all else—but not Osha.
Brot’ân’duivé fired again.
His arrow struck the guard in the throat at the same instant a black-feathered one sprouted from the man’s shoulder. This time, Brot’ân’duivé hissed a curse at the young one’s wasted shot.
He already knew how many arrows he had left. At least one had to be kept in reserve until all threats had been neutralized. He had instructed Osha to do the same before they scaled to the rooftops. Soon enough, whoever commanded the forces below would send one or more up to take out the archers that harried them.
Brot’ân’duivé reloaded to cover the domin’s final charge for the door. Five guards had already succeeded in following the gray-robed figure into the house. Eight had been killed or disabled in the street; at an estimate, seven more hid out of sight in the market area.
An order was shouted below. Brot’ân’duivé had learned enough Sumanese to understand.
“Do not let them reach the house!”
Men in gold sashes rushed out around market stalls and from dark places along the street. As il’Sänke approached the front landing, Wynn and Shade were close behind.
Brot’ân’duivé pivoted on his knee, aimed at the nearest guard, and fired again.
* * *
Leesil stared at the tall figure, now at the bottom of the stairs; he couldn’t mistake that robe even for not seeing any face in the hood’s deeper dark. The gray robe that shimmered with shadowy, glinting, strange symbols was the same as the one worn by the one who’d visited their cell and spoken inside his head.
Leesil heard Magiere’s breaths stop, but he didn’t dare turn his eyes from that robe. Chap began rumbling and snarling beside him. Everyone stood poised and waiting for . . . something.
The robed one suddenly shifted left.
Two imperial guards rushed down the stairs with curved swords drawn.
Leesil jerked the ties on both winged blades. Magiere and Chane—dhampir and undead—were the ones safest to engage the specter, and Chap was a natural hunter of the undead. That meant Leesil had to deal with the guards.
—Force them back . . . and d
o not let . . . that thing . . . touch you—
At Chap’s warning, Leesil drew both winged punching blades. He felt Chap brush by his left knee as the dog charged. He hoped Chap was right about the choice of opponents they each had to face—and that the specter couldn’t get into the head of a majay-hì.
Leesil slammed into the first guard before the man made it off the stairs, and he heard Chap rushing at the gray robe.
* * *
Chane panicked, for everything had gone wrong too quickly. If il’Sänke had seen the robed man approach the house, then the domin was already on the move with Wynn and Shade. Or had Khalidah finished with them?
Leesil hit the lead guard head-on as Chap charged for the gray-robed figure on the left side of the bottom step.
“Leesil!” Magiere called and started after him.
Chane grabbed her cloak and jerked, but before he said a word . . . the robed one vanished before his eyes.
He was too stunned to move when Chap ended his lunge and nearly tripped off the empty step. Magiere slapped Chane’s grip away, but he focused on the second guard shifting position to get around the lead guard—likely to find an opening to attack Leesil as well.
That guard suddenly recoiled and nearly toppled, as if he had rammed into something solid.
“Behind me, now!” Chane rasped at Magiere.
He shifted the pebble to his off hand holding the crystal, and then pulled his shorter blade. In the corner of his sight, Magiere locked eyes on him. He could not look away from the whole passage, but had her irises suddenly flooded black?
“It is invisible to our eyes!” he snarled at her.
Chane lunged two more steps down the passage and set himself, putting Magiere at his back. He could not believe what had happened—not to him. Sorcery, the lost art of mental magic, should not affect him. Or so he had thought by the “ring of nothing.”
As the ring masked his undead presence, it also hampered some of his inner abilities. Tampering with his mind—and thereby his senses—should not have been possible while he wore it.
Chane grew warier of how powerful the specter might be. The sound of Magiere’s falchion ripping from its sheath brought him back to awareness. He was trapped in a narrow passage with his most hated enemies as his only allies. And the specter had blocked its presence from his—from everyone’s awareness.
Chane quickly surveyed the whole space before him.
Leesil drove the lead guard back up one more step, slashing with both punching blades. That blocked the other guards above from descending, but this would not last. Then the air before Chap darkened for an instant.
Chane stiffened in a half step, and then Chap looked normal again as he spun to lunge in behind Leesil to help against the guards.
But Chane fixed on what he had seen . . . or almost not seen.
It was as if a shadow had passed between him and the dog, and he tossed il’Sänke’s pebble back toward Magiere’s feet.
“Find and open the door! The specter is still here.”
Sweeping the passage with his eyes, he now knew something to look for, or so he hoped. Something had half blocked his crystal’s light for an instant. Could the ring have held off part of whatever the specter had done to him—to all of them?
Leesil slashed forward with one blade while simultaneously shifting to allow Chap in beside him, and both appeared to darken in Chane’s sight. Something had passed quickly and close behind them.
Chane tossed the crystal halfway to the stairs and lunged another step while slashing his shorter sword again. He could not draw and use his longer one in this narrow space, and he watched carefully for anything that blocked the crystal’s light, even for an instant.
* * *
Wynn almost reached the steps to the front landing when a deep voice shouted in Sumanese.
“Do not let them reach the house!”
She nearly broke stride but glanced back. Imperial guards emerged into the street at a run, and a tall one with hawkish features came at her. She was caught between running onward or stopping to face the man with Shade at her side.
The guard suddenly began convulsing and went down with a short anmaglâhk arrow through his left eye. He didn’t make a sound as his back hit the street. Shade wheeled beside Wynn, growling, though she hesitated at running on.
“Do not stop!” Ghassan ordered from ahead.
Too much happened all at once.
At another cry from Wynn’s right, she couldn’t help but look. An oncoming man toppled, one short arrow in the side of his throat. Another guard tried to grab for her before she even saw him, and a longer arrow with black feathers appeared to sprout in his chest. She’d known this would happen. Seeing it so close was something else. Ghassan had less violent methods, but there was no time here and now. Their defense had to be left to Brot’an’s methods—and Osha’s.
Wynn took a step to rush on and something jerked her off her feet from behind. She barely kept her grip on the staff. Frantic and choking as her cloak cinched across her throat, she reached over and back with her other hand. She was so shocked that she didn’t see Shade coming until the dog leaped right at her.
Somewhere above Shade’s snarls, Wynn thought she heard whispering, and then the dog’s forepaws hit her in the chest. She felt and heard her cloak tear as she went down on her back. Shade leaped off and beyond her. Then came snarls, snaps, and shouts too guttural to understand.
Wynn thrashed over, still clinging to the staff, and looked back to see three guards beyond the one Shade put down. They were somehow frozen along the street looking everywhere but at her. Hearing the whispers again, she twisted around toward that sound.
Ghassan stood upon the landing’s steps, his eyes fixed above and beyond her, perhaps at those guards. The whispers came out through his clenched teeth.
Wynn could only guess what he was doing. As she was about to grab Shade’s tail before the dog disturbed the domin’s concentration, she heard . . .
One arrow strike . . . a second and a hacking choke . . . and a third with a shriek.
Wynn pushed up to her knees as the first guard hit the street, dead; he fell forward and shattered the short arrow in his heart. The second one choked and dropped with another through his throat. The third stumbled, clutching a longer, black-feathered shaft impaled through his thigh, front to back.
A shorter arrow sprouted from his neck behind his jaw; he dropped and didn’t move.
Wynn felt suddenly so cold. Most of the guards she could see were dead or at least down. Two still tried to crawl away, wounded and bleeding. They were the enemy, but they were ignorant of what this all meant.
Some part of her wanted to scream out for all this to stop.
“Up and run!” Ghassan barked.
Shade grabbed Wynn’s sleeve in her teeth and wrenched her toward the domin.
* * *
Magiere eyed Chane’s back where he stood between her and Leesil as well as Chap. It would be so easy to finish him. But whatever fire of hate he ignited in her had turned toward something else. It wrapped around that figure in gray who had winked out before her eyes.
Her rage came back . . . and swallowed all reason.
The robe, its symbols, the darkness in the hood that hid his face, and the spindly form beneath all of that had stood still and calm as when he had visited her cell. There was flesh inside the robe that she could tear, bones that she could break.
There was suffering to crush out of him for everything he had done to her.
Chane slowly turned his head, peering about. The crystal’s light began to burn Magiere’s widened sight, but she didn’t see the robe—the prey—she wanted. No one was getting to it before she did, and the burning in her stomach lurched up into her throat.
It was still here—she could feel it.
Leesil and Chap still fought the guards on the stairs, but Magiere didn’t go to help them. In trying to find that thing some way other than by sight, she almost closed her eyes . .
.
Chane lunged to the right, and Magiere’s eyes snapped wide.
His hand shot out. His fingers appeared to wrap around nothing, but his grip didn’t fully close. She saw his arm straighten as if what he held tried to jerk free.
Magiere fixed on the emptiness in Chane’s grip, dropped her sword, and charged. Her fingers closed on nothing, unlike Chane’s.
She shrieked and slammed him aside to claw at . . . nothing.
Magiere lashed out wildly beyond Chane’s grip, but her fingers—her hardened nails—only gouged the wood of the passage’s wall.
* * *
Leesil knocked a guard’s sword aside with his right blade, and both weapons bit the side railing. He heard Chap snap and snarl but didn’t dare look at the dog. Somehow, he had to break through and get everyone out of here.
Reaching the hidden room wouldn’t work anymore. The specter in its host was gone, and even that didn’t matter. What did matter was never going back to that cell . . . never letting Magiere be taken again.
He heard her guttural shriek like a feral animal somewhere behind him. A shudder passed through him, beyond panic, and he grew still inside.
Leesil rammed his forehead into the guard’s face.
The man’s head recoiled and struck the next guard up the stairs. Leesil thrust with his legs to topple forward as he shouted, “Chap—over!” As he fell, he rammed the wedged point of his left blade into the gut of the stunned guard beneath him.
The weight of Chap’s paws landed on his back as he looked into the gaping eyes of the man beneath him.
The instant Chap leaped off and up the stairs, Leesil pulled his legs under himself.
He saw Chap go at the next guard, snarling, clawing, and snapping for the man’s throat, and he thrust upward, pulling his legs up.
He caught the right railing with the sole of his right boot, and that instant of grounding was enough. A third guard’s sword came overhead and down at Chap amid the second guard’s screams and the dog’s snarls.
