by Barb Hendee
Sgäile suspected a polite ruse in those final words, but he had already made his own choice. And perhaps the Greimasg’äh merely wished to give him the excuse to do so.
“I will travel with Léshil,” Sgäile said. “I will continue my guardianship.”
"Good, then I will stay to see you off ”—and before Sgäile raised concern, Brot’ân’duivé shook his head. “Do not worry. Most Aged Father will understand my delay when I speak with him.”
With a parting nod and a half-smile, Brot’ân’duivé turned away and melted into the forest’s dusky shadows.
Sgäile disliked being caught between Most Aged Father and Brot’ân’duivé—again. But with his decision made, he breathed deeply in relief and turned eastward toward the Hâjh River. Taking the longer way to the shore would give him a few more moments alone in peace.
Soon, he came upon the docks beyond the river’s mouth where barges with no seaward cargo tied off. Such a barge was just arriving, though unusual for after dark. About to pass on and turn into the city’s near side, Sgäile spotted the green-gray of an anmaglâhk cloak as someone stepped ashore.
Had another of his caste been sent? He veered back through sparse aspens along the river, but even before he cleared the trees, the figure turned and called out.
“Sgäilsheilleache!”
Sgäile halted in surprise as Osha jogged toward him with a youthful grin on his long face. He was taller than Sgäile, and his lanky arms were too long for his torso.
“Why are you here?” Sgäile asked. “Did Most Aged Father send you?”
This hardly seemed possible. Osha had accompanied Sgäile in guardianship of Léshil on their journey through the forest. He was young, still in the early stages of training, and had an open and honest manner that leaned toward naïve.
“No,” Osha answered, still grinning, his large teeth exposed. “Gleannéohkân’thva, your grandfather, sent me the day after you left. He said you planned to return home, and that I was invited—so you could continue my training! I came so that we might travel together.”
Sgäile’s brief peace shattered. For one thing, he was no longer going home, and for the rest . . . Truly, he intended to help Osha, but he had never thought of formally accepting the young man as a student. That was impossible.
As an anmaglâhk, Osha had shown himself to be . . . adequate.
Competent with a bow and sufficient in hand-to-hand, his stealth was poor. His ability with foreign languages was questionable, and he was far too open and trusting.
“I cannot go home,” Sgäile said quietly. “I continue guardianship of Léshil and his companions, and leave tomorrow to travel with them by sea.”
Osha’s grin vanished.
Clearly he had thought that an invitation to winter with Sgäile’s family was a prelude to something more. It pained Sgäile to add to Osha’s many disappointments, but he had more important matters at hand.
Osha reached up his sleeves and jerked both of his stilettos free.
Sgäile slid back out of reach, apprehension rising.
Osha spun the blades, gripping them with blades pointed earthward. Before Sgäile could protest, Osha fell to his knees and slammed both blades into the forest floor. Sgäile’s heart dropped in his chest.
The young anmaglâhk placed both hands flat on the sandy earth and bowed his head.
“Sgäilsheilleache, I beg the honor . . . ,” Osha began softly, but his voice shook with desperation. “I beg acceptance into your tutelage. Be my guide to achieve my place among our caste.”
Sgäile had no wish to further harm Osha, who acted properly but presumed too much. It was far too soon for Osha to make such a request. But Sgäile faltered before he could utter his denial.
Had that time already passed? Had he somehow given the impression that he would consider such a relationship? Was this his fault? And if he now refused, what would become of Osha?
Sgäile took a step, and each following one grew heavier under the weight Osha had thrown upon him. He reached down, gripped the hilts of Osha’s blades, and pulled them from the earth.
Without a seasoned anmaglâhk as teacher to complete Osha’s training— and one with exceptional patience—the young man had no future. Initiates fresh from rudimentary training and of lesser years had sought and gained a formal teacher, but Osha had not.
Osha remained still, waiting with head bowed.
Sgäile suppressed a sigh. “Will you follow my teaching, until your need is fulfilled?”
“I swear,” Osha answered.
“Will you heed my word and my way, until our bond is fulfilled?”
“I swear.”
“And upon that night, when you step into silence and shadow among our caste, what purpose will my effort in you have attained?”
“I will serve the defense of our people and the honor of the Anmaglâhk.”
Sgäile flipped both blades, catching their tips. As he held out the stilettos, Osha lifted his head.
Osha’s large wide eyes filled with relief, but his hands shook as they closed on the offered hilts.
“It is a great privilege,” he whispered, and stood up, unsteady on his feet.
At Sgäile’s silence, Osha bowed once, turning toward the city. Sgäile fell in beside his one and only student.
Something struck Chane’s leg hard, jerking him awake. He lay by the hearth in the monastery’s entryway, and Welstiel stood over him.
“Time to feed them . . . ,” Welstiel said. “Just a morsel to fight over.”
Chane did not like the sound of this.
“Search the front passage,” Welstiel ordered, heading for the stairs. “We need something to bind any resistant candidates.”
Still groggy from dormancy, Chane watched Welstiel disappear above. He snatched a burning stick from the hearth for light and walked down the front passage.
Small storage rooms lined the hallway, each containing varied items from barrels of dried goods to stacks of blankets and clothing. He saw little of interest until he passed through a doorless opening at the far end, which led into a larger room.
Long, low tables were bordered by benches instead of chairs—a communal meal hall. Tall, unlit lanterns decorated each table. He picked one up, lifting its glass to light the wick with his smoldering stick.
He spotted another door in the far back corner and approached to crack it open. Beyond it, he found a kitchen and scullery, neither likely to have any rope, so he turned away, intent upon scavenging further among the outer storerooms. Before he got two steps, he paused.
A sheaf of papers bound between plain wood planks lay on a rear table.
Part of Chane did not want to learn any more of this place, but curiosity held him there. He jerked the sheaf’s leather lace, slid aside the top wood panel, and stared at more strange writing.
Old Stravinan—but mixed with other languages, each passage apparently written by a different author, and with a date above each entry. He flipped through several sheets, finding headings in Belaskian and contemporary Stravinan.
The entries he could read appeared to be notes regarding treatment of the ill and injured. One set of scribbles explained efforts against a lung ailment spreading through several villages in a Warland province. In places, the notes went beyond accounting, with detailed observations of what had been tried and failed, or had succeeded in caring for the ailing. In some cases, the authors had stated or suggested conclusions concerning future remedies.
Chane was reading the field notes of healers.
He shoved sheets aside, scattering them as he paged toward the stack’s bottom. Entry dates below names and places only went back seven years. Yet this place was far older than that. So where had this sheaf come from, and were there more?
He had already been gone too long. Welstiel would grow agitated by the delay. He had no more time to search.
Chane hurried to the storerooms. Finding a stack of blankets, he tore one into strips and sprinted for the stairwell to the
second floor.
Welstiel stood scowling with impatience before the first door on the right—the doors of the living. With a sharp jerk, he pulled the wood shard from the handle and opened it. Three monks cowered inside.
“Why are you doing this?” an elderly man asked in Stravinan. “What do you want with us?”
White-peppered stubble shadowed his jaw, though he did not look so old. Welstiel ignored him, turning his eyes on the other two in the cell. Both were male and younger than their vocal companion. Welstiel stepped in and snatched one by the neck of his robe.
The young man tried to pull Welstiel’s fingers apart, but his attempt to dislodge the grip was futile.
“Where are you taking him?” demanded the elder, rising up.
Welstiel slammed his free palm into the man’s face.
The elderly monk toppled, one leg swinging from under him as he fell against a narrow, disheveled bed. The other young one scrambled away into the room’s far corner.
Chane took half a step toward Welstiel’s back, then choked down the sudden anger he couldn’t understand. He held his ground as Welstiel wheeled and flung the one he was choking into the passage.
The young monk tumbled across the floor, slamming against the stone wall between the first two iron-barred doors. A flurry of screeching and battering rose up beyond both those portals.
“Bind him!” Welstiel snapped, and slammed the door shut on the remaining two monks, returning the wood shard to its handle. “I want no excess difficulty when we take him away from those we feed.”
Chane did not understand what this meant, but he fell on the groveling young monk, pinning him facedown and pulling the man’s arms back to tie his wrists.
“No, please!” the man shouted. “Whatever you want, I will give you! Violence is not our way!”
Chane hardened himself against the young man’s pleas and declaration— as anyone who refused to fight for his own life disgusted him.
“Gag him as well,” Welstiel ordered. “I do not want him speaking to his lost companions awaiting him.”
Chane wrapped a blanket strip three times around the young man’s head and pulled it tight. An iron bar scraped free of a door handle. Chane whirled about in panic as he heard Welstiel shout.
“Get back! Both of you!”
Welstiel stood before the open door, his face twisted in a grimace as he hissed. Chane stepped along the middle of the passage, peering around Welstiel.
The door’s inner surface was stained and splintered, as if gouging claws had left dark smeared trails. A pool of viscous black fluid had congealed on the cell’s floor. One monk lay in the mess, or what was left of her.
Her throat was a shredded mass, and her robe and undergarments had been ripped into tatters, exposing pale skin slashed and torn down to sinew. Worse still, she tried to move. Her head lolled toward the door, and her colorless crystalline eyes opened wide at Welstiel, not in fright or pain but in hunger.
Her expression filled with bloodlust that echoed in Chane as he stared at her. Her mouth opened, her own black fluids dribbling out its corner.
Two others crouched beyond her, one upon the spattered bed and the other behind a tiny side table, clinging to one of its stout wooden legs. Both shuddered continuously, muscles spasming, as if they wanted to rise but could not.
Chane knew that state well. He had felt the same struggle against the commands of his own maker, Toret.
Their glittering eyes, set deep in pale and spatter-marked faces, were locked on Welstiel. And their black-stained lips quivered with soft animal mewling.
“Take a long look, Chane,” Welstiel whispered. “Look upon yourself! This is what you are, deep inside—a beast hiding beneath a masquerade of intellect. Remember this . . . with your one foot always poised upon the Feral Path. It is your choice whether or not to succumb and follow them. Now bring me the food.”
Those words cut through Chane’s rapt fixation on the cell’s inhabitants. He reached down with one hand and jerked up the bound monk.
The young man made one attempt to struggle, but his whole body locked up at what he saw in the cell.
Welstiel ripped the monk from Chane’s grip and shoved the man inside. The monk toppled, hitting the floor, and immediately tried to wriggle back toward the door. Welstiel lifted a foot and shoved him back.
“Feed,” he commanded.
The two monks still functional leaped upon their living comrade.
Both made for his throat. The larger male slashed the smaller one’s face, driving him off, then wrapped straining fingers across the living monk’s face and pulled his jaw upward. A high-pitched scream filled the stone cell, muffled by the victim’s gag. The sound broke into chokes as the large male’s teeth sank into the squirming monk’s throat.
The smaller undead let out a pained yowl and hissed in frustration. Bobbing behind his larger companion, he tried to find an opening to get at the victim’s throat. He finally scurried in to sink his teeth through the robe into the young monk’s thigh. And beyond them, the female’s nails scraped on the stone floor as she tried to pull herself to the feast—and failed.
The smell of blood grew.
The two males had barely settled in, their “food” thrashing beneath them, when Welstiel’s shout rang through the cell.
“Enough . . . back away!”
Both males flinched as if struck. The smaller squirmed across the floor, clutching at the bed’s dangling covers. Blood was smeared all around his mouth.
The larger male pulled his mouth from the monk’s throat, swiveling his cowled head and turning maddened eyes upon Welstiel. His jaws widened threateningly, blood spilling out between fangs and elongated teeth.
Welstiel kicked him in the face. “Get back!”
The male’s head snapped sideways, and he backed over the mangled female to crouch against the wall. Chane felt an empathetic spasm as the male fought his own body’s demand to obey.
Welstiel reached down and seized the ankle of the “food.” The young monk’s head lolled with eyes rolling up, unaware, as Welstiel jerked him to the door.
Chane’s gaze lowered to the young woman still clawing at the floor. Her colorless eyes filled with panic as she watched the monk, once her comrade, slide farther beyond her reach.
“What of her?” Chane rasped.
“She is too far gone,” Welstiel answered. “Recovering her is a wasted effort.”
Chane fought to remain passive. Something in his mind told him not to speak, but it strained against his instincts.
“You said six risen among ten was fortunate,” he argued. “If you need them . . . enough to go through all of this . . . why forgo even one who requires extra effort?”
Welstiel returned him a suspicious side glance.
“Very well,” he answered and dropped the monk’s leg. “See to it yourself.”
Chane looked down at the half-conscious young monk. The memory of a book of poetry and a sheaf of notes nagged at him. He finally pulled his dagger, crouched and flipped the monk facedown, and gripped the man by the back of his bloodstained robe.
As he dragged the monk toward the maimed female, she reached up with clutching fingers, trying to grab hold. The large male beyond her took a step toward Chane.
