by Barb Hendee
Gesturing toward the rear doors, he directed the commander out of the chamber. He followed, as Nazhif did so with two others of his private guard, but only after placing the fourth on watch over A’ish’ah. Once out in the rear passage, Ounyal’am faced the new commander of the imperial guard.
“What has happened?” he demanded, trying to sound sharp rather than anxious.
The imperial guards were renowned for their almost complete lack of visible emotion, but though Jib’rail spoke low, his voice broke when he answered.
“The emperor’s breath has stopped.” He paused and his voice grew more uneven. “I was on guard at his door when an attendant came to tell me the emperor could not be awakened. I checked his condition myself and then came directly to you.”
On some level, Ounyal’am knew what the commander had been about to say, but he still felt unprepared.
“Take me to my father, now,” he ordered.
Jib’rail bowed and turned quickly. The following walk through the palace felt endless, even with Nazhif’s welcome presence close behind him.
Three imperial guards stood before the emperor’s chamber, where three attendants whispered and fidgeted. All six dropped to one knee at Ounyal’am’s approach. That sight made his chest tighten and his stomach roil. He passed them without another glance and went straight for the doors.
“Nazhif, with me. No one else.”
He pushed through the doors into the overdecorated sitting room and on to the bedchamber. All was silent but for the sound of Nazhif’s light footsteps behind him, which halted when he did.
He peered through the gauze curtains at the enormous bed’s foot. Nothing appeared any different from what he had seen on the night he had come to use the imperial seal. The windows were closed, and the room now stank even more of decay. He stepped around to the bed’s side to clear his view.
What was left of his once powerful father was a shrunken, wizened form. Thankfully, the eyes were closed, but stillness did not confirm what had been said.
Ounyal’am stood so long, unable to move, until Nazhif finally stepped around him to the bedside and reached out with two fingers for the emperor’s throat. The very act was presumptuous, but someone had to verify death.
Nazhif straightened as his fingers came away. “He must have passed in his sleep.”
Ounyal’am stared down at the face of his dead father. A wave of unwanted regret passed through him, but how could he mourn?
Emperor Kanal’am had loved no one—perhaps not even himself, let alone his son. He had turned the court into a pit of vipers to match his own corruption. And yet, as a son, Ounyal’am had sometimes harbored a secret hope of someday changing their relationship, if only a little, to something better—perhaps mutual respect if not love.
This was his single stab of regret, as now . . . that could never happen.
Nazhif dropped to one knee. “My emperor,” he said. “What is your command?”
Ounyal’am could only stand there and breathe. Though he tried to hold off the repercussions, they crept in upon him. He allowed them in slowly, one at a time.
“My emperor?” Nazhif repeated. “Should this be announced at the banquet?”
Ounyal’am’s thoughts tangled in what would happen if he made this public tonight with so many royals and nobles present in close quarters.
“No,” he answered. “Swear the attendants and guards to silence. I will return to the banquet and continue the celebration. The mourning horns are not to be sounded until dawn, when all guests are in their own quarters.”
Still on one knee, Nazhif nodded. “Yes. That is wise . . . my emperor.”
Ounyal’am stiffened at the change of address. Nazhif, the closest thing he had to a friend, was far too good a man to offer empty condolences.
“I will need you most in the coming days,” Ounyal’am said. “More than ever before.”
Nazhif rose up, though he kept his head bowed. “I am ever at your side, my emperor.”
They left the room together. Nazhif stopped to speak briefly to Commander Jib’rail, and then the two of them continued on to the great domed chamber. Ounyal’am did not know how he could go back into the banquet, smile and eat, and pretend nothing had happened.
Tomorrow, everything would change.
Upon returning to the banquet, he managed to make some excuse for his brief absence. Later, he did not remember what it was. He remembered only sinking down onto his cushion beside A’ish’ah and how she’d studied his face in concern. Her eyes missed little.
“My prince?” she whispered.
He could not help cringing for an instant. After tonight, no one would ever again call him “my prince.”
A’ish’ah’s eyes suddenly widened as she took one glance back toward Nazhif.
She knew, and as he stared back into her eyes, a number of truths hit him.
He was emperor.
He could do almost anything he wished, though for some little things, only if he acted quickly.
The imperial guard was at his absolute command, and in time he could effectively clear the palace of the worst vipers. He could name anyone . . . anyone as his first counselor. He could appoint Ghassan if he wished.
His eyes moved up and down over A’ish’ah’s face.
He could marry anyone he wished, and he now had the power to protect her.
“A’ish’ah . . .” he began, nearly stuttering for the first time in his life. “After the banquet, I wish to speak with you. Will you walk in the gardens with me?” His tone held a note of urgency, but he did not want to order her, not ever. “Will you?”
As with a moment before, her expression took on a look of understanding. She knew what he was asking.
“Yes, my prince,” she answered firmly without looking away from him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Just past dusk, Wynn stood in the cluttered main room of Ghassan’s hideaway with him and Magiere. In her open hand, she held the tracking device made from part of an orb key, and she couldn’t quite gauge their reactions at first.
“A sect?” Magiere repeated. “Another one, and it cut up an orb key?”
At that notion, Magiere looked outraged or stunned or something else—Wynn couldn’t decide which. Ghassan was another matter, eyeing the device like a treasure he didn’t know was possible. And he fixed on the device so long in silence that Wynn grew more uncomfortable.
Everyone else was present, as Wynn didn’t wish to explain more than once, and most likely they would all be involved in recovering the orb of Air. Of course, Chane, Osha, and Shade already knew about the device.
Leesil stood one step behind Magiere, glanced away, and didn’t look back again.
Chap eyed Wynn rather than the device, as did Brot’an.
Wayfarer remained near the sheet-curtained bedchamber.
Osha kept his distance as well, leaning against a cabinet at the room’s front, listening but not looking.
Chane hovered behind Wynn, as if she needed protection, and so did Shade on her left. With eight people and two large dogs, the place felt a tad small.
Considering all the varied reactions around her, Wynn remembered Shade’s earlier warning about waiting to tell everyone until Chane was up and awake. Perhaps that had been sound advice after all.
“How does it work?” Brot’an asked.
Of course he would be the one to get straight to the point.
“It is activated by a spoken phrase,” Wynn answered, “though in a long-dead language, something Shade heard the last time it was used. She passed the words precisely to me, but I’ve tried them with no success.”
On impulse, she thought it best to show them, so she closed her grip on the device and spoke the words aloud as best she could.
“Nä-yavít, a’bak li-bâhk wihkadyâ, vakhan li’suul.”
Nothing happened, of course. She even swung her arm in an arc away from the bedchamber, where everyone knew one orb was stored. She hoped the device might wrenc
h itself back that way, but it didn’t.
“See, nothing. It’s not the words but their intent, like when I ignite the sun crystal.” Her gaze shifted to Ghassan. “I don’t know their intent, but I hoped you might.”
He shook his head slightly, which made her panic in thinking he was as lost as her.
“You never cease to astonish me,” Ghassan said with a sigh. “The things you have asked me to make . . . the objects that find their way into your possession . . . and the places in which you end up. Do you realize how rare a thing you now hold?”
“Of course I do!” Wynn answered. “But it’s worthless if we can’t reactivate it. That’s half the reason I came all this way . . . and you are just as much trouble as what you claim about me!”
Magiere still appeared disturbed that anyone would cut up an orb key. “We don’t need it. The keys—thôrhks, handles—can track orbs.”
“Not like this,” Wynn countered, holding up the device. “Wait until you see.”
But if she couldn’t make it work again, none of them would see.
Ghassan held out his hand. “May I?”
Wynn hesitated, though this was what she’d come for. With no other option, she placed the device in his palm.
He took a deep breath and released it slowly, as if he’d just gained something by chance that he’d not known existed, or if, how to find it.
“The phrase you uttered,” he said, still gazing upon the device, “translates roughly to ‘By your bond, as anchor to the anchors of creation, show me the way.’ So the intent must focus upon the device’s connection to the orbs in recognition of what they are, their purpose, and the nature of the one sought and its individuality. The words spoken must be based on this. Whether such knowledge must be firsthand or general, we shall see.”
Wynn’s heart sank at first but beat faster with hope. She hadn’t been certain even Ghassan would understand a dialect that might be a thousand or more years old. But he’d easily translated it, and that was more than Wynn had hoped to gain.
She reached out. “Let me try again.”
Instead, he stepped back, closed his eyes, raised the device out level, and spoke with force.
“Nä-yavít, a’bak li-bâhk wihkadyâ, vakhan li’suul.”
His arm instantly straightened and leveled with his shoulder. Seemingly of its own accord, his fist—holding the device—lurched toward the bedchamber’s opening.
Wayfarer almost jumped out of the way. Osha quickly crossed to stand before her and eyed Ghassan and the device in a less than friendly manner. The room went silent as everyone stared, for the device had directed Ghassan toward the orb.
After Wynn’s own failures with that object, the solution had come so easily that she wasn’t sure how she felt. Of course she was elated, but she hadn’t expected him to take matters—or the device itself—out of her hands. Glancing up and back at Chane, she found him watching Ghassan.
“How do you turn it off?” Magiere asked, breaking the silence.
“Loss of contact,” Wynn answered. “Just let go and it goes dormant.” And as she finished, she stepped to Ghassan and held out her hand.
Was that a hesitation—a slight frown—before he dropped it into her palm?
Wynn slipped the device into her short-robe’s pocket, though it was heavy enough to make her robe sag. Ghassan eyed her carefully as Chane watched him.
“Yes, that’s . . . impressive,” Leesil said, though he didn’t sound impressed. “But I don’t see what good it is if it always goes for the nearest orb.”
Wynn took a slow, calming breath. He sounded more like the old Leesil, always free with a sarcastic, unhelpful comment, and she wasn’t in the mood.
You do not fully trust this domin.
Chap’s words took Wynn by surprise, and she looked into his crystal-blue eyes.
And neither do I, but your urging back in Calm Seatt is what brought us here. Tell the domin about the new clue from the poem, as there is nothing else for us to try. We—I—shall see what he makes of it, perhaps even what he does not say in words.
Wynn doubted Chap could catch a single rising memory in someone like Ghassan. Several years before, Chane had taken a scroll from the library of a six-towered castle guarded by a minion of the Ancient Enemy. It was the same place in which Magiere, Leesil, and Chap—and Wynn—had found the first orb.
Inside the scroll was a poem in a dead Sumanese dialect. The words had been scribed with the black fluids of a long-gone Noble Dead, likely a vampire, and then blackened over with a full coating of ink. Only through Wynn’s curse of mantic sight, in seeing the words devoid of elemental Spirit, had the poem been uncovered. Metaphors and similes in the verses hinted at the last resting places of the orbs.
Wynn’s mantic sight had certain drawbacks. It made her ill, so she could maintain it for only short time periods. As a result, full translation of the poem had been slow and sporadic. Ghassan already knew about the poem, as he had helped to translate the first section.
The Children in twenty and six steps seek to hide in five corners
The anchors amid Existence, which had once lived amid the Void.
One to wither the Tree from its roots to its leaves
Laid down where a cursed sun cracks the soil.
That which snuffs a Flame into cold and dark
Sits alone upon the water that never flows.
The middling one, taking the Wind like a last breath,
Sank to sulk in the shallows that still can drown.
And swallowing Wave in perpetual thirst, the fourth
Took seclusion in exalted and weeping stone.
But the last, that consumes its own, wandered astray
In the depths of the Mountain beneath the seat of a lord’s song.
The “Children” referred to the first thirteen vampires to walk the world, likely the true origin of Noble Dead and perhaps created by the Ancient Enemy to guard the orbs, some of which had been moved from their original locations. The poem had not been helpful in those cases, but Wynn remained hopeful that the orb of Air hadn’t moved from where it had been hidden a thousand years ago. Her mind turned over one verse in particular.
The middling one, taking the Wind like a last breath,
Sank to sulk in the shallows that still can drown.
Back in Calm Seatt, she’d uncovered another clue with the help of Premin Hawes, head of Metaology in the guild’s Numan branch.
Wynn looked to Ghassan. “Premin Hawes helped translate another line that might assist our search.”
One way or another, they’d all come seeking the domin, and there was nothing left to try.
Ghassan raised one eyebrow. “And?”
Wynn closed her eyes, reciting what Premin Hawes had uncovered.
“The Wind was banished to the waters within the sands where we were born.” Opening her eyes, she launched into suppositions that she, Chane, and the premin had drawn. “The ‘we’ most likely refers to the Children, since one of them wrote the poem. We know they were created somewhere in what are now called the Suman territories, though the empire didn’t exist then. There were separate nations and not the ones of today.”
She paused for a breath.
“So that line must hint at someplace near where the Children were first created as servants of the Enemy. But there is nothing but desert between here and the Sky-Cutter Range, and it stretches from coast to coast across this continent. The only ‘waters’ are at the coasts, but that goes against ‘within the sands.’ Premin Hawes said that much more than nations and people could have changed in a thousand years. Perhaps there was once a body of water in what is now desert?”
Ghassan said nothing for longer than she liked and then glanced away. “Ah, Wynn. What a sage you would have made. I am banished from my guild branch, hunted in my own homeland, and after this I fear you will end up the same.”
True enough, yet she didn’t have time to worry about it now. “Ghassan! Have you—or anyone—ever re
ad of a recorded body of water in this region?”
Magiere stepped closer and looked less friendly in waiting for the answer.
Slowly, Ghassan nodded. “There was once . . . a shallow salt lake, perhaps large enough to count as a small sea.” Then he hesitated. “But that does not help us now.”
“Why not?” Magiere demanded.
“Because the ‘sand’ in the reference covering the lake’s bottom was saturated with salt. As the lake dried out, crystals hardened and formed a vast reflective surface. With more heat over time, and wind, it fractured, broke down, and blew for leagues in all directions. Then there is also the distance to reach the dead lake bed.”
Wynn frowned. “I don’t see the problem.”
“Not only is it too far to travel in a single night,” he continued, “in the worst heat of the whole nation, but salt crystals in the sand catch and reflect the sun. Anything there in the daylight will die—be cooked—by the sheer heat. Some have tried, and their bones might still be found in the crater . . . if anyone could go there and live to leave again.”
Ghassan turned to Magiere. “No one can survive the crossing.”
“I could,” Magiere said and looked to Wynn’s robe pocket. “And that thing can lead me.”
“No!” Leesil snapped.
* * *
Wayfarer slipped away into the bedchamber. She could not bear to listen any longer. Both beds were still unmade, and she thought to at least straighten the blankets for something to do. Instead, she stood staring down at the chest containing the orb.
“Are you unwell?”
Turning, she found Osha peeking in around one side of the sheet curtain.
His long white-blond hair hung loose, and where it fell down the sides of his head, it divided around his ears, exposing their elongated tips. He was so tall he had to hunch or his head would have banged the opening’s top as he stepped inside.
Of any male among Wayfarer’s people that she had met, only Brot’ân’duivé was slightly taller than Osha.
