by Barb Hendee
“Chap and I came this way,” he said, pointing. “But I don’t know how long or far Wynn followed before getting lost.”
“Then head toward where you found me,” Magiere suggested. “We’ll call out from there. If Chap is anywhere nearby, he’ll hear us.”
Sgäile moved to the rear as Leesil pressed on. But when Magiere stepped forward, the first clear impression of what she’d felt the night before surfaced in her mind.
Running . . . the need to go higher . . . to climb straight up through the cragged mountainside.
She pushed that returning urge aside. Only the search for Wynn mattered.
When they reached the boxed gully where she’d been found, they turned aside onto other paths. Sunlight broke through the clouds now and then, making the white snow too bright. They searched until the sun crested the sky and began its downward path west, toward the peaks upslope.
Osha walked back along the base of an overhanging ridge.
“Wynn!” he called.
They kept in sight of each other as they spread out and began calling, but no one answered. Magiere returned to their central starting point as Leesil came jogging back, hopping across exposed rocks to avoid wading in the drifts.
“This is no good,” he said. “We need to backtrack and look for a different path up. I don’t think she made it this far.”
Once the sun passed beyond the peaks above them, the slopes would be swallowed in false twilight by midafternoon. And they were no closer to finding Wynn and Chap.
Sgäile returned as well, but when Leesil repeated his suggestion, Osha spit an angry string of Elvish. Instead of a sharp rebuke, this time Sgäile only frowned and shook his head at the young elf. They all headed downward, still searching for side paths. Osha often ranged too far, forcing them to wait on him before they could move on.
A strange sensation flowed through Magiere, and she stopped.
“Here?” she said to herself, turning around.
Osha came running back to them from that same direction, his face flushed as he pointed back the way he’d come.
“Look!” he panted, waving them to follow.
They all trudged along through the broken snow of his path.
“Fork here,” he said. “This way go your path”—and he tipped his chin at Leesil. “Wynn may follow other!”
Sgäile looked both ways separating around the point of a high-rising cliff. Even Leesil seemed doubtful and uncertain. Magiere studied the separate paths, but the one Osha chose made her feel warm inside.
Was it just the pull within her, playing on her again . . . or was it hunger?
No—there couldn’t be an undead out here in broad daylight. And then the heat in Magiere turned sharply cold. Her stomach knotted as the chill spread.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Magiere only realized she’d spoken aloud when Leesil stepped before her, watching her in wary concern. Osha’s intense eyes were locked on her as well, and when she nodded slowly toward the path he’d chosen, he took off down the fork. Magiere lunged after him.
Leesil and Sgäile followed in silence. Magiere looked back once at Leesil’s chest, but the amulet hanging over his coat wasn’t glowing.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
She didn’t answer—didn’t know how—and tugged him forward by the sleeve as she hurried to catch up with Osha. She was right on top of the young anmaglâhk when they crested a snow-choked saddle and clambered down into yet another dead end.
“Magiere!” Leesil shouted, panting as he came up behind her. “Slow down!”
She hadn’t slept or eaten since the night before. None of them had. Perhaps she just wasn’t thinking right, and the spreading chill was nothing more than fatigue.
The world brightened sharply in her eyes.
Tears slid instantly down her cheeks. Her mouth began to ache as she spotted a tall, wide crack farther along the gully wall.
Leesil came around her side, and his eyes widened. She knew her irises had expanded and blackened.
“What is it?” he whispered, following her gaze along the gully wall.
Osha had already jogged ahead, but he came to a sudden halt. He stood there just short of the chute’s opening, staring into it, and Sgäile appeared at Magiere’s other side.
Nothing marred the snow, but Magiere knew the blizzard had covered what had happened in this place. Osha turned, looking back at them in anguish.
“It’s blood,” Magiere whispered to Leesil. “Just barely . . . I can smell it.” Hkuan’duv sat in the tent as dawn broke.
“Greimasg’äh?” Dänvârfij said hesitantly.
She crouched before the tent’s opening, but he did not look up. He kept trying to understand what had happened in the night and the sudden deaths of Kurhkâge and A’harhk’nis. This was no time to grieve or face his shame for leaving their bodies.
“Hkuan’duv!” Dänvârfij insisted. “Sgäilsheilleache’s group is on the move, but they did not break camp. They may still search for the small human, but we must know for certain.”
He breathed deeply, and she backed away as he crawled from the tent.
After his return and the tale of what had happened, she had acted as both night watch and scout while he rested. But like Hkuan’duv, she was keeping grief locked away until their purpose was fulfilled.
In truth, he had needed time alone, though it brought him no revelations. The white woman had taken two of his caste and disabled him—all before she could be struck even once. Her frail form was a deception, hiding startling speed and strength.
Hkuan’duv stood up, facing the white, rocky world around him. Wind and snowfall had ceased by dawn. He ran a hand through his short, spiky hair, secured his face wrap, and pulled up his hood. Without a word, he and Dänvârfij slipped along the white landscape and crouched to peer at Sgäilsheilleache’s abandoned camp.
“When did they leave?” he finally asked.
“At first light.”
He could not decide whether to wait or to follow their clear trail. “They must be searching for the small human and the majay-hì.”
“Both were alive when you escaped?” she asked.
“Yes, but the majay-hì charged the . . . white woman. He could not have survived long, and the human would have died quickly after. We have only to wait until Sgäilsheilleache discovers their bodies and returns to camp.”
“And the bodies of our fallen,” Dänvârfij added. “Sgäilsheilleache will know his caste is following him.”
She was not blaming him for leaving their companions behind, but shame slipped past Hkuan’duv’s guard just the same. It sickened him that he had left Kurhkâge and A’harhk’nis where they lay, without even a hurried ceremonial call to the ancestors to come for their spirits.
“They were lost,” Dänvârfij said, “and you were not. I would have done the same.”
“Your sympathy does not serve our purpose,” he replied.
Greater concerns plagued him. Two more members of his caste now searched the land where this savage white woman ranged. Sgäilsheilleache and Osha had no idea what was waiting up there. His first instinct was to warn them, but he could not do so without exposing his presence.
“Fulfilling our purpose will be more difficult,” Dänvârfij said. “A’harhk’nis was wilderness-wise, but so are you. Perhaps we should monitor the search?”
“Not yet,” he said. “We wait. Whether they find the bodies or not, they have to return. There is no point in risking ourselves.”
Dänvârfij shifted closer beside Hkuan’duv to share warmth.
Wynn stirred, memories of the past night flooding back—the slaughtered anmaglâhk, Chap falling as if dead, and the white woman with black hair. She sat up in panic, opening her eyes.
A dull orange glimmer dimly lit marred stone walls, but Wynn could not remember where she was.
I am here.
She spotted Chap across the room, staring out the entrance. Only remnants of hinges s
howed that there had once been a door.
The orange light came from a wide and shallow tripod brazier sitting on the stone floor to one side. It had not been there when she collapsed to the floor, but the brazier did not hold fire.
Instead, a pile of fist-sized crystals glowed like coals in its black iron depression. These filled the small room with more heat than light, raising the temperature above freezing.
“How long have I been asleep?” she asked.
Chap kept his gaze fixed outside of the opening. Day has come . . . I have seen traces of sunlight down the corridor outside.
Wynn’s stomach rolled slightly at his words. Her right leg throbbed painfully, but she could feel her toes again. She crawled over to where Chap sat vigil, remembering translucent wolves, ravens, and swirling dark forms.
“Are they still out there?” she asked.
They appear and vanish . . . but they are there, always.
“What are they?” she whispered.
Chap remained silent for a long moment. Undead . . . though I have never heard of animals as such . . . let alone ones like shadow and yet not.
She rose up on her knees to peer over Chap. Nothing distinct met her gaze—but something like shifting soot moved in the dark spaces across the corridor outside.
“We are prisoners,” she whispered. “But why does she keep us alive?”
Chap did not answer, and Wynn wondered where the white undead might be. She dug out the cold lamp crystal and rubbed it quickly.
The room was perhaps twelve by fourteen paces with no other openings. Its old stone walls seemed deeply marred in places by wild swirls of tangled scratches. A decayed desk near the back wall had collapsed on one side, and its slanted top had long ago spilled its contents on the floor. Iron brackets supporting shelves were mounted on the right wall, but the lowest wooden board lay in pieces on the floor amid scattered papers and books grown brittle and tattered with age.
“Where are we?”
Chap growled at the doorless opening but did not answer.
“Last night . . . ,” she said, “you kept looking, until you found me.”
He turned his head and quickly licked her hand.
Wynn was thirsty, but she saw no sign of food or water. Then she spotted two small bottles among items near the broken desk. She crawled over and picked one up. Remnants of dried black stains flaked off its open mouth, and she realized it once had held ink. Quills lying in the mess were nothing but stems, the feathers rotted completely away.
“We’re in an abandoned study,” she said, and went to inspect the shelves.
A few books were so old that their covers were damaged with mold. They looked so weak and brittle she was afraid to pick one up.
Another shelf held rolls of rough wood-pulp paper and animal skins stripped clean of fur. She knew enough about old archives not to touch them just yet, lest they crumble and break in her hands. Down another shelf she found stacks of old bark with markings on their inner sides.
Other works were bound in sheaves between hardened slats of leather or roughly finished wood panels. One was sandwiched between what looked like scavenged squares of iron the size of a draught board.
“Chap . . . come and look at these.”
Look to the walls first.
Wynn glanced at him, but he had not turned around. What would she want with decaying walls? She stepped closer, holding the crystal high.
The marks on the walls were not the etchings of age.
The crystal’s light spilled over a mass of faded black writing. Patches of words, sentences, and strange symbols covered the stones. They ran in wild courses, sometimes overlapping and tangling in each other. Wynn tried to trace one long phrase.
It might have been a sentence, if she could have read it—but it seemed to go on without end. And the words were not all in the same language. Even the symbol sets differed, and some had faded, becoming illegible.
One word was composed of Heiltak letters, a forerunner of Wynn’s native Numanese, but the letters were used to spell out words in a different tongue, one that she did not recognize. A piece of old Sumanese was followed by an unknown ideogram, and then a set of odd strokes tangled with short marks. She found one possible Dwarvish rune, but it was so worn she could not be certain.
The passages were in scattered patches, as if the author had run out of paper or hide, or anything else to write upon. Over time, driven by some desperation, this disjointed and manic record had been made on any surface available. But what had the author used for ink that would adhere to stone for so long?
Wynn shifted back, until all the lines and marks became tangled chaos.
Like reading madness itself recorded on forgotten walls.
Now . . . look next to the archway.
Chap’s words startled her. Obviously he had been nosing about before she awoke. Stepping toward the doorless opening, she found a column of single . . . words? It seemed so, though again the languages and symbol sets varied.
The highest lines were too faded, as if the words had been rewritten in a downward progression over many years or decades. Midway to the floor, Wynn recognized what seemed to be ancient Elvish by its accent marks, written in the rare Êdän script. Further on was more roughly scripted old Sumanese. Near the bottom, almost to the floor was . . . was it some form of Belaskian?
And each line was only one word.
The symbols differed, yet they always recorded two syllables or sounds.
“Li . . . kun . . . ,” she sounded out, and glanced at Chap. “Do you know this term?”
More than a word, I think. . . .
Wynn studied the repeating column of the word. “A name?”
Chap slowly turned his head. He scanned the column once before looking back out into the dim corridor.
I think it is her.
Wynn gazed out the archway, suddenly fearful that the white woman might appear as if called.
“If those shadow animals have not entered by now, perhaps they will not.”
No, they only keep us in. Chap stood up and padded across the room, studying the walls. Can you read any of it?
“Not truly. I know some of the languages, and some of the symbol sets are familiar. But many do not match the language they are used for.”
She rubbed the crystal harder, and held it close to the patch beside the shelves.
“Old pre-Numanese tongues . . . and Êdän, an older Elvish system,” she whispered.
Can you read it? Chap repeated, his tone impatient in her head.
“I told you no!” Wynn answered, but her brief anger was born of fright. “All I can make out is gibberish . . . between words that have already faded.”
Try another wall.
