by Barb Hendee
Leesil ran out into the hallway behind Chane. Chap emerged an instant later, still shaky on his feet, but Leesil had lost sight of Magiere. With Chap limping at his heels, he hurried halfway to the closed front door and stalled to look into the empty sitting room. He looked everywhere, every way, in every shadowed spot and corner. Panic pushed him to something he thought he’d never do.
“Where is she?” he barked at Chane. “Where is the host? You should know—feel them—so where, now!”
Even in the dark, Chane’s eyes glinted like fractured crystals as he looked around. When he turned back, he shook his head. Perhaps he truly did not know.
Leesil wanted to hiss. Instead, he pushed past Chap and then Chane, looking again into every shadow as he headed toward the back of the house.
* * *
Ghassan’s feet touched the rooftop. He released Wynn and let her drop onto her knees. Running to the roof’s side edge, he looked down.
His first impulse upon shooting up through the air by his will had been to propel them both through the first window he saw in the top floor. He had feared dropping or injuring Wynn, though it was not like him to put safety before necessity.
“What are you doing?” Wynn asked as she gagged and stumbled nearer.
Ghassan ignored her. Down below, the majay-hì was still barking. He wished the scar-faced elder elf would quiet the dog. Then he leaned out carefully to peek down over the roof’s eave for the nearest window.
A near deafening crash from the house’s rear pulled him around.
Wynn sucked a breath as she turned with him, but Ghassan launched himself across the flat roof by his will. When he reached the rear edge and looked down, Magiere was falling in a shower of shattered glass and flapping gray fabric.
Wynn appeared at Ghassan’s side, though she turned and shouted toward the house’s front, “Shade, to the back!”
Ghassan gave her no more time than that.
He grabbed her around the waist as he summoned glimmering patterns and symbols across his sight. Thankfully, she kept quiet this time. As she wrapped an arm around his neck, he stepped off the roof and threw his will against the lower ground as they fell.
The ground still came up too fast.
In that blink he could slow their descent only so much, and he still buckled upon impact. Wynn lost her hold on him and collapsed to the ground. At a glance, she appeared unhurt as she braced on her staff and pushed up to her knees. Shade rushed around the house’s rear corner, but Ghassan looked only for . . .
Magiere struggled up with a long silver-white dagger in hand, and Ghassan barely recognized her. Completely black orbs filled her eye sockets in a pale face twisted like a monster of pure rage. Cheeks, forehead, and any exposed skin were flecked with red from bleeding cuts. She looked insane, perhaps no longer knowing who or where she was. And her teeth . . .
Ghassan had never seen such in a mouth supposedly human.
The robed figure—Khalidah’s host—lay just beyond her and attempted to push himself up. One arm gave way as if injured, and with a grating shout Magiere charged at him.
“Not yet!” Ghassan shouted, for the sun had not crested.
Something in his voice must have broken through her madness, for she froze and hung over her opponent with the dagger held up.
Her target had not even flinched and pushed himself up to his hands and knees. As he turned, half of his hood was torn away.
Ghassan lost his voice at the sight of Counselor a’Yamin in the gray robe. Sharp eyes in a heavily lined face stared back at him through white hair in disarray.
The counselor rose as if something invisible pulled him gently up to his feet. He did not stoop with age anymore.
Ghassan went cold inside. He suspected Khalidah had taken someone highly placed, but he had never guessed how high. And how long had the specter been so close to the prince?
If not for the sect’s medallion that Ounyal’am wore, all it would have taken was a whisper from a’Yamin in the prince’s sleep. The secret of the tie between an imperial heir and the sect would have been lost . . . along with the prince.
The counselor’s eyes narrowed as he took in all those around him, and only then did Ghassan notice that Brot’an had come as well.
“Everyone hold,” Ghassan commanded.
He did not know if the specter was more desperate than aware, and he had already been beaten down once. There was also Magiere’s bloodthirsty state, and all of this had to end now.
Ghassan grabbed Wynn’s free wrist as he blinked for clarity. In that instant, he wrapped his thoughts—his very self—in walls of glowing glyphs. His quick incantation slipped out in a whisper under the strain. When his eyes snapped open, he reached for the specter’s presence . . .
A’Yamin’s old face smiled at him.
Something clawed over the shell around Ghassan’s mind.
He began to choke as that shell cut off the air he breathed. Incomprehensible words fought to breach the barrier and get to him like worms boring and wriggling inward. One glowing glyph after another withered and decayed, until the last began to rot before his sight.
A chorus of whispers broke through, and Ghassan could almost make out their words.
He quickly retreated deeper inside himself, building more walls as he fled into his own mind’s depths. He used the last of his will to focus and to squeeze hard on Wynn’s wrist . . . or he tried to will it so. He could no longer feel anything at all. And on the edge of Ghassan’s awareness, he heard Wynn cry out.
“Magiere, pull him down, now!”
* * *
Wynn’s arm wrenched downward. She had to brace on the staff as Ghassan dropped to his knees still gripping her wrist. The old man in the gray robe hooked his fingers and tried to charge at her . . . or maybe at the domin.
In one sudden step, Magiere caught the back of the shimmering gray robe, wrenched the old man around, and slashed. The Chein’âs dagger split the robe’s front and the vestment beneath it. Smoke rose from the wound.
The host’s eyes widened over a gaping mouth.
Normal blades caused little injury to the undead. The white metal weapon gifted to Magiere by the Burning Ones was more than steel.
The host screamed and Magiere slashed again and again.
Wynn’s relief turned into horror as Magiere tormented her prey. The dagger’s blade raised lines of smoke in every slash, under every scream, until the old man was beyond torment and obscured by smoke.
Wynn had no idea what to do as Khalidah’s host writhed. Pounding footsteps came behind her and she looked back to see Osha come around Brot’an. Osha stopped upon spotting Magiere and looked to Wynn as if expecting her to do something.
No one did anything. Wynn didn’t dare step into Magiere’s frenzy.
Leesil and Chap burst from the house’s rear door. Then Chane ran out behind them. Wynn couldn’t help looking their way, but in that brief distraction Magiere had straddled the host, pinned his legs to the ground, and grabbed his throat with her free hand.
She struck again, and this time sank the blade into his stomach.
His next shriek turned to choking convulsions.
Ghassan’s grip clenched tight so suddenly that Wynn almost collapsed. The sun had not quite crested.
“Magiere, stop!” she screamed out. “Leesil, Brot’an . . . stop her!”
But it was Chap who got there first.
He slammed headlong into Magiere’s back, and they both tumbled and flopped over the host’s head and across the ground. Leesil came an instant later, stopped short, and eyed Magiere warily as she spun on all fours to look for her victim.
The host’s body went still with eyes wide toward the night sky. Limbs twitched as a discoloration in the dark wavered above him. But this wasn’t smoke.
“Now, you little fool!”
Wynn regained sense at Ghassan’s sharp whisper. She pulled up the dark glasses hanging beneath her tunic and held them over her eyes. There was no time to warn anyone as she th
rust out the staff’s crystal and shouted aloud in Sumanese:
“Mên Rúhk el-När . . . mênajil il’Núr’u mên’Hkâ’ät!”
White light exploded from the staff’s end.
Even with her glasses held in place, Wynn couldn’t see anything but the light. The black lenses adjusted, but she saw only smoke rising from the body. Whatever else had been there was gone.
Magiere lay curled away on the ground with Leesil crouched atop her, his face covered in the crook of one arm to shield his eyes. Likewise, Chap hunkered beyond them with his crystal-blue eyes shut tight. Above them, the glow of dawn began to spread.
Wynn wiped the crystal’s presence from her thoughts. The bright light died, but how long did they stand, sit, or cower there in silence, unable to move?
Ghassan had released his grip on Wynn’s wrist and sat on the ground with his head bowed, and she stood staring at the host’s body. Its blackened wounds barely smoked anymore, though its eyes were still wide, its mouth gaping, and it didn’t move.
Had the specter been burned . . . destroyed? She believed so.
Brot’an held out a hand to pull up Ghassan, and Osha stepped in toward Wynn.
“You are all right?” he asked in Elvish.
Wynn didn’t know and looked to the three beyond the body.
Magiere now curled around Leesil with her face pressed into his stomach as he held her. Chap sat close watching, and though he looked up once, not a word from him popped into Wynn’s head. When Magiere fell into this state, only Leesil or Chap or both could ever bring her back to herself.
But this time had been so horrible.
“Where’s Chane?” Wynn asked weakly.
He’d come to this fight fully prepared and covered, but who knew what had happened since then. Chane never before had to face both the staff and dawn at the same time.
“He turned back before the sun came,” Osha answered.
Wynn sighed in relief. At least he’d made it inside before falling dormant.
“Was he still fully covered?” she asked. “Had he been burned?”
Osha shook his head as if to answer that he didn’t know.
Wynn turned and ran for the house, and Shade caught up to her.
* * *
Osha stared after Wynn. He had stood on a rooftop and fired arrows into the bodies of men to protect her. He had come after her to make certain she was safe. And even when he stood beside her, it was not him she thought of.
It was Chane.
It would always be Chane.
* * *
Magiere didn’t really hear Leesil’s whispers, and Chap had finally given up trying to chatter into her head. Even the soothing memories he called up from the depths in her mind didn’t touch her. The last clear thing she remembered was searing pain before she’d crashed through the window and fallen. Other things . . . what she’d done . . . were not so clear, and that made the scant bits she did remember so much worse.
Pulling back, she elbowed up enough to lift her head from Leesil’s lap. The early-dawn light hurt her eyes, and when she looked for the others, there was the body.
That sight left her numb. It had no connection to her. It was the specter she had hated, not this shell.
“Is it dead?” she asked with an edge in her voice.
Beyond the corpse stood Ghassan, pale and unsteady. The domin managed a nod to her, but his gaze quickly returned to the body with something like puzzlement.
Magiere wished she could remember—could have seen what had hid in that flesh—when it finally died.
“We must leave. Now,” Brot’an said. “We have lingered too long, and the city is awakening.”
Ghassan flinched as if startled and looked up at the elder assassin. “Yes . . . yes.” And then he frowned and glanced around. “Does Chane live?”
“He’s in one piece,” Leesil answered from behind Magiere. “Wynn already went to . . . to check on him in the house.”
Ghassan nodded slowly with a long breath. “All of you return to the sanctuary. Wayfarer will let you in.”
“And you?” Brot’an asked.
“Chane will be dormant until dusk,” Ghassan answered. “This house is safe now, and I will assist Wynn in moving him to the hidden room in the cellar. We will join the rest of you after nightfall.”
“You’d sit in a cellar all day . . . for him?” Leesil asked.
“Enough,” Magiere whispered.
At his sudden silence, she didn’t look back. If Chane hadn’t been there for what happened in the passage below the house . . .
“Do you really think you can get Wynn, Shade, and Chane out of there after dark?” Leesil asked. “There are bodies everywhere. This place will be overrun with imperial and city guards soon enough.”
That did make Magiere look up.
“No, it will not,” Ghassan answered calmly and fixed on Magiere. “Go now. All of you.”
Magiere stared at the corpse again, wishing she could have watched Khalidah die and remember it clearly. Leesil grabbed her arm and pulled her up, but some things Khalidah had said began coming back.
How long will you last denying what you are . . . why you are?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Two mornings later, Wynn sat on the floor with Shade in the back corner of the sanctuary’s main room watching Chane as he lay dormant. She hadn’t bothered covering him yet. The sun had risen, but Magiere, Leesil, Chap, and Wayfarer were still asleep in the bedchamber. The sheet tacked up over the bedchamber entrance was still in place.
For Wynn, time seemed difficult to measure since destroying the specter. Some moments had stretched endlessly while others had passed in a wink. After most of her companions had left the battle site two nights before, she—along with Shade, Ghassan, and dormant Chane—had spent the day in that hidden cellar room where they’d intended to trap the specter’s host.
She’d found herself unable to openly thank Ghassan, though she was grateful for his help where Chane was concerned. The domin’s assistance in getting Chane down the stairs and into hiding, and then sitting vigil with her and Shade all day, had somewhat restored Wynn’s trust in him after all of his deceptions.
Unlike the others, Ghassan seemed to accept Chane as a useful member of the group and did not view him as a necessary “evil.” But when Chane rose at dusk that night, Wynn had been unsettled by the ease with which they all left that other house.
The bodies in the street were gone, as was that of the specter’s host. No imperial guards were present. Other than the broken shards of glass on the ground, the street and market looked as if nothing had happened.
Wynn’s wariness toward the last “sorcerer,” a fallen domin of the guild, rose again. But in the face of all that still lay ahead, she’d thought better of asking Ghassan anything as they returned to the tenement sanctuary.
Everyone had been quiet since then, though Wynn still wondered about the bodies. Had Ghassan simply blotted those from anyone’s awareness, just as his sect had hidden this place she was in? Or had they been cleared away somehow . . . by someone?
She looked down at Chane, thankful that he hadn’t been burned by her staff.
Brot’an again sat cross-legged in the main room’s front corner. Wynn couldn’t see him clearly beyond the table and chairs in her way, but he was likely sleeping sitting up again. Or maybe he was just pretending. Ghassan had made a bed from floor cushions in the sitting area and appeared to be sound asleep. Only Osha was awake.
He sat in one chair and stared blankly at a glass cup framed between his palms on the table. Since Wynn’s return, Osha hadn’t said a word to her. She wasn’t certain why, but that hurt her.
No one had discussed what was to come next. They were all numb from what it had taken to destroy a thousand-year-old sorcerer. In truth, Wynn couldn’t stop dwelling on this. Now it felt too easy though it hadn’t been.
Shade whined softly, and Wynn absently stroked the dog’s back as she looked down again at Chane’s handso
me face. She’d gotten over the sight of him like this, considering he always looked . . . dead. His red-brown hair hung in jagged layers against the pillow, and now he looked peaceful. But again troublesome thoughts wouldn’t leave her in peace.
None of them had uncovered the specter’s true agenda.
According to Ghassan, it had infiltrated the highest level of the Suman court. Why? What did it want there? Perhaps to influence the empire, but to what end?
This didn’t fit its obsession with Magiere to the point of torturing her about why she had come here. But he had been a servant of the Ancient Enemy.
Khalidah was gone, and the truth might never be learned.
The lack of answers weighed upon Wynn as she peered toward the sheet-curtained bedchamber. In there, an orb still lay in its chest. All of the Enemy’s minions who’d crossed her path had been seeking one of those. That was why she and Magiere had come here.
Had Khalidah come to the empire for that reason as well?
The thought made her even more anxious.
Patting Shade’s head, she whispered, “Stay here.” She got up and quietly crept around Ghassan toward the bedchamber.
Much as she didn’t want to disturb anyone in there, she felt the need to check.
She pinched aside the sheet curtain to peek in and saw Chap lying asleep before Wayfarer on the far bed’s edge. The girl’s arm was wrapped over his shoulders. Leesil and Magiere were still tucked away in the nearer bed. Wynn crept in slowly.
She knelt before the chest on the floor between the two beds, pulled the pin in its latch a little at a time, and lifted the lid. Weatherworn hinges squeaked, and she froze, holding her breath. Once certain no one had awakened, she pushed the lid up and drew aside a fold of canvas over the chest’s contents.
There it lay: the orb of Spirit.
Slightly larger than a great helm, its central globe was as dark as char, though not made of any stone she’d ever seen. Its surface was faintly rough to the touch, like smoothly chiseled basalt. Atop it was the large tapered head of a spike that pierced down through the globe’s center, and the spike’s head was larger than the breadth of a man’s fist. Its roughly pointed tip protruded through the orb’s bottom somewhere below in the chest.
