by Barb Hendee
A'harhk'nis circled out with both oversized curved blades in hand.
He was not tall for an'Croan, but this feminine apparition would barely reach his collarbone. She crouched so deep and quickly that A'harhk'nis stalled in his first attack.
Desperate to help, Hkuan'duv struggled to all fours. His left arm gave way and he crumpled.
The white woman shot up from the snow directly before A'harhk'nis.
A'harhk'nis had barely reversed his blade's swing when her free hand shot straight for his throat. His feet left the snow at that impact, and the white woman rose with him, falling upon him as he toppled.
Hkuan'duv saw her tiny mouth widen around fangs and jagged teeth. He tried to rise again as she drove her face into A'harhk'nis's throat.
Fresh powder splashed around them. Hkuan'duv took only one step before the wind cleared the air. A head of whipping black hair snapped up amid settling snowy mist-and a wet tearing sound filled the gully.
Blood spattered from her mouth as she threw back her head.
With a crack of bone, her narrow arm whipped out, tossing a bulk too large for the red mass she had held. Cold sank through Hkuan'duv as he watched the object hit the gully wall.
It bounced with a mute thud. A shredded hood came loose from it, exposing locks of blond hair. Hkuan'duv watched A'harhk'nis's head fall.
Runnels of blood flowed from the ragged neck stump to mar the snow.
The white woman still straddled A'harhk'nis's torso. Blood ran from her jaws down across her small breasts. She ignored Hkuan'duv, simply staring at the red mass in her other hand. Thin steam rose from it in the cold air.
Somewhere in the dark space of the chute lay Kurhkage's body. Hkuan'duv steeled himself as the small woman stood and cast aside Kurhkage's heart.
What was this creature who felt no cold and slaughtered two of his own with so little effort? He tensed when she turned icy eyes on him-and a snarl sounded on the wind.
But not from her. She whirled the other way.
The majay-hi burst from the chute's opening.
Hkuan'duv caught movement above, and a shadow dropped through the blizzard.
He threw himself over a mound of snow, and his injured shoulder grazed a boulder beneath the white covering. The shadow raven passed through the mound a hand's length behind him, and he heard the majay-hi's snarling snaps.
He did not wish to abandon the dog, but two of his companions had been slaughtered before either could strike once. He could not throw his life away. He had to live to fulfill his purpose and serve his people.
He had to run.
Wynn's sight had barely cleared when Chap bounded down the chute. She braced against the cold wall and struggled up. By the time she hobbled down the loose stones, Chap had leaped out into the gully, but Wynn stalled at the chute's bottom.
Something lay slumped against the wall.
She heard Chap's snarls, but she hung there in the dark, staring at the body.
The tall elf's one eye was locked open in perpetual shock, and his mouth gaped. There was only a mass of old scars where the other eye should have been. The front of his cloak was so stained, at first it was hard to see the hole surrounded with severed shards of his ribs amid his tunic's shredded remains. He was covered in his own blood.
Wynn could not even cry out.
Run! I will find you.
Chap's words echoed in her head. She lifted her gaze from the corpse and saw his forepaws strike a white figure from behind.
Chap's adversary seemed like a white-cloaked companion of the corpse lying near Wynn. But then she saw that this person was much smaller.
The pale figure barely flinched as Chap collided with its back and pushed off, landing aside. The black-haired figure whirled, and a choked squeak escaped Wynn's throat.
Naked and frail, the woman was no taller than Wynn, but her pallid face and torso were covered in blood. Chap darted at the woman, and her tiny mouth mirrored his snarl.
The woman had teeth as canine as Magiere's whenever she sank too far into her dhampir nature. But this woman's strange narrow-slitted eyes were colorless.
How could an undead exist here in these desolate peaks with no life to sustain it?
Wynn spotted another body at the woman's feet. She barely made out the gray-green breeches and tunic, obscured in snow and more blood. And its head was gone.
Chap danced around the white woman, as if simply trying to keep her attention. She lunged at him again and again. Her narrow fingers were so quick that twice Wynn thought the woman had caught him.
Wynn could not leave Chap like this, but she could think of no way to help him.
The woman flashed forward, clawing at the dog. When he spun away behind her swing, she lashed in reverse and caught him with the back of her hand.
Chap's silver-gray body shot across the gully with a yelp that ended when he slammed against the gully wall.
He slid down, his body pressing a hollow in the snow. He lay there coated in white powder and did not move.
Wynn opened her mouth to call to him.
Something flashed in front of her-and she stared directly into crystalline irises.
The white woman was so close that Wynn's quick breaths shot vapor across her red-stained features. A narrow, blood-smeared hand latched around Wynn's throat, slamming her shoulders against the chute's wall.
Wynn sucked a breath and screamed, "No, do not!"
The tight grip vanished.
Wynn slumped down the wall, her feet slipping on loose stones as she cowered.
The white woman stood backed against the chute's far wall, seeming to cower like Wynn, but not in fear.
Instead, she stared back at Wynn in pain and fury, with bloodied hands clamped over the sides of her head.
Chap drifted back to consciousness. His first breath made him whimper at the sharp twinge in his ribs.
This undead was like none he had hunted; she left him cold and terrorized inside. Her deceptively fragile form moved so quickly and with such power. Yet she had not fed on her prey-only slaughtered them, as if incensed that they dared cross her path.
Chap struggled to rise, and the pain sharpened in his chest. Then he heard Wynn scream.
"No, do not!"
He lunged for the chute's opening and movement brought agony. When he rounded into the darker space, he pulled up short.
Wynn cowered alone at the chute's left wall. And to the right stood the white woman, clutching her head.
No-covering her ears.
Chap's instinct urged him to attack before this thing came back to its wits. But even uninjured, he had barely kept out of her reach and then failed. She had killed two anmaglahk, and yet now she was backing away from Wynn.
Why?
The woman slowly dragged one hand down her cheek, fingertips smearing bloody lines below one oddly shaped eye. Her narrow fingertips came to rest on her small stained mouth.
Wynn tried to shift closer to Chap.
The white undead stepped forward so quickly she seemed to blur. He snarled at her as he shouted into Wynn's thoughts.
Do not move!
Wynn froze, but she began shaking uncontrollably. The white woman held her place as her fingertips traced her own lips.
She did not even look at Chap but watched only Wynn's face. Chap's eyes flicked between the two of them.
Not Wynn's face-but her mouth.
Had Wynn's cry somehow hurt this thing? Or was there something else… the words Wynn spoke?
The white woman kept fingering her mouth as she stared at Wynn's. The sound of the sage speaking had somehow stopped this undead.
Speak, he told Wynn, but she glanced toward him in confusion. Talk… it distracts her.
Wynn's voice shook as she spoke. "We… are lost. We only want to find our way back."
The woman flinched at every phrase. Her features wrinkled once, and then her expression shifted to startled fascination.
Chap lifted one paw to step closer to
Wynn.
The white woman lunged before his paw settled. She slammed Wynn against the chute wall with a bloodied hand.
Chap went rigid. If he attacked now, Wynn would die. Then he heard another moaning caw from overhead.
Two shadow birds drifted high in the air above the chute-above this undead-hovering on their translucent wings. The woman's thin black brows furrowed as she cocked her head like a crow. She studied him with sharpening suspicion in her delicate features-or was it recognition?
Chap tried to think amid the fear. He needed some way to hold the woman's attention long enough to get Wynn free.
The woman whirled, gripped Wynn's coat, and leaped up the chute as if the sage weighed nothing.
Chap lunged upward over the shifting stones.
Wynn!
When he reached the chute's top, a harsh wind struck his face. Both Wynn and the white woman were gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Welstiel scried for Magiere two or three times a night. Keeping his group close to hers yet remaining undetected proved a tedious balance. He glanced east, away from the peaks. Dawn was still a way off, but throughout the night, the snowfall had increased to a blizzard. Welstiel tired of fighting the weather.
"We stop," he called out.
Chane said nothing as he searched for a place to set up their shelter. Since entering these mountains, he had almost ceased speaking at all. Welstiel did not care-conversation was wasted effort. He waited for Chane to finish setting the tent around a hollow dug in the snow, then stepped in and pulled out the heavy steel circlet.
With a brief trace of his fingertips and a thrumming chant, Welstiel evoked the circlet's power to conjure fire, but only at the lowest level. Its marks glowed and slowly filled the tent with warmth. The monks huddled close, their mad faces dull with relief. Chane crawled in last and reached his hands toward the circlet as Welstiel turned to leave.
"I will scout," he said, his voice nearly as raspy as Chane's. "And see how far ahead she is."
Without waiting for a reply, Welstiel slipped out and trudged upslope through the wind.
When the time came, he hoped his ferals would be as useful as expected, but a part of him missed the simplicity of traveling with only one companion. As long as Chane stayed close enough to touch, Welstiel's ring of nothing could hide them both-a much more convenient arrangement. But lately Chane's seething glances raised other concerns for Welstiel.
Hopefully all this would soon be finished, including the growing problem of Chane.
Welstiel tried to gauge how much night remained. His last effort to scry had given him a clear direction for Magiere's location, but he caught no whiff of life until he heard voices in the night. Slowing with his senses opened wide, he spotted a dim glow at the bottom of a sheer rock face. He crouched behind an outcrop.
Light filtered dimly through a snow-crusted canvas strung over the rock's surface. Why were Magiere and her companions still awake? Or had they risen for an early start?
Magiere stepped out around the canvas's edge, and Leesil followed, grabbing her arm before she headed off.
"Not yet," he said, voice strained. "The moment we have light."
A tall male elf in a brown cloak stepped out as well. "Back inside," he said. "We leave soon, so do not waste body heat by standing in the cold."
Another younger elf peered around the canvas behind the first.
Welstiel focused his senses and all his awareness. It was difficult, with so many close together, but he sensed no other life within the shelter. Nor did he catch the scent of a canine. Where were Wynn and Chap?
Leesil did not acknowledge the first elf, and Magiere crouched, staring across the snow, as if searching for something. Welstiel realized why they were up before dawn and yet had not broken camp. Two of their group had gone missing.
The sky began to lighten, and Welstiel scowled, unable to remain and learn more. The last thing he wanted was for Magiere to be diverted by another distraction. He turned away, slow and quiet until he was beyond earshot, and then hurried for his own camp.
Chap ran as fast as the snow and his injuries allowed. He tried to follow the tracks before the blizzard buried them. But as the sky lightened and the snowfall died, he spotted the white woman and Wynn far ahead.
He did nothing to hide his approach, but the undead never looked back. She slowed at a rocky split between two peaks rising into the clouded sky.
The incline was so steep that she used her free hand to climb-her other remained clamped around Wynn's wrist. The sage stumbled in exhaustion, and when she fell, the undead dragged her without breaking pace. They crested the narrow space between the peaks and vanished over the far side.
Chap scrambled upward and emerged at the top. He looked out over a pristine white plateau resting between high mountains all around in the distance. The snow appeared untouched by any footfall in centuries, except for one vague trail leading into the distance-to a six-towered castle, as in Magiere's dreams.
Down the broken slope, the undead had already reached the plateau. She ran effortlessly across the snow, carrying Wynn over one shoulder.
Chap stumbled down and out onto the plain. Fresh snow and older undercrust shattered beneath his paws. He sank and floundered with each step as the white woman and Wynn grew smaller in the distance.
He kept going, and the closer he came, the larger the castle loomed, until it was greater in size than any fortification he had ever seen. Its towers dwarfed those of Darmouth's war keep, or even the spires of Bela's royal castle. Curtains of ice hung from each conical cap. But as Chap neared the outer wall and the peaked iron gates, he saw that it was not the perfection it appeared to be within Magiere's dream.
The gates' curling scrollwork was deeply rusted. One side hung a-kilter, its bottom hinge decayed beyond use. At the top where their curved points joined into a peaked arch, the two ravens gazed down at him, now whole and no longer translucent. The trail of the undead's light footfalls passed between the gates, straight to the high steps leading to the iron doors.
There she stood upon the top landing.
She threw her lithe body against one massive door. It seemed impossible that she could open it alone, especially while still gripping the crumpled sage.
The hinges of the great door squealed.
Chap slipped through the space between the gates and plowed across the inner courtyard's snow. He had to reach the doors before she could shut him out, and he caught only glimpses of the castle in his rush.
Half the stones of the arch framing the great doors were cracked. Here and there, corners of the blocks had broken off and fallen away. The wide staircase was just as deeply aged and worn, and its first step sagged midway along the seam between two of its stones. Glass panes in the high tower windows, which had been clearer in Magiere's dream, were opaque with age and frost.
The iron door's hinges screeched again.
Chap's forepaws hit the sunken bottom step. He tried to howl, but his voice failed in his dry throat.
The door's noise ceased.
He slowed, panting hard, to find the woman watching him with intense fascination from around the door's edge.
Long black tresses fell back over her perfect white shoulders, and for the first time, Chap saw the burnished metal hoop hanging around her naked throat. He looked more closely at its open ends resting below her collarbone. Each had a knob-exactly like those of the thorhk that Magiere carried.
Chap slunk to the top landing and paused before the white undead.
Wynn… are you all right?
"Chap?" she called out. Her frightened voice echoed out of the narrow space between the iron doors.
The woman flinched at the sage's words.
"I am… all right… I think. Only bruised and cold."
The white undead cocked her head.
"Who is she?" Wynn called. "Why did she kill those elves… and not me?"
Chap had no certain answer, and no time to ponder this creature's
reaction to the sage's spoken words-nor what anmaglahk were doing out here in the middle of nowhere.
This undead was hardly predictable or stable. There was no telling what might cause her to turn lethal again, and little Chap might do to stop her.
She just stared at him and then pressed her porcelain face against the door's edge.
Chap saw only one crystalline eye as the visible half of her expression wrinkled in a snarl.
She shoved the door, and it lurched with a moan of rusted metal.
Chap stopped breathing, but the door moved only an inch.
Her one eye watched him, daring him to enter, and only waited so long to see if he would.
Even if this undead allowed Wynn to live, let alone leave, the small sage would never survive the trip back. Neither might he.
Chap slunk forward. When his nose breached the narrow entrance, he darted in.
Wynn felt only a flicker of relief as Chap rushed in. Then the naked woman slammed the door shut, and they were all enveloped by darkness. Wynn fumbled quickly for her crystal.
When its light erupted between her rubbing hands, the white woman still stood before the iron doors. Wynn cowered under her cold gaze and scooted in retreat until her back collided with stone.
She turned to see two rows of massive columns along a wide corridor leading into the castle's dark interior. The darkness behind the pillars began to move.
Pieces curled out into the edges of her crystal's light and undulated like black smoke. Instead of rising into the heights, the wisps turned and twisted, almost willfully. One trailed out behind the pillar Wynn leaned upon, then snaked down to splash upon the stone floor.
Some of the smoke coalesced to form a wide paw of shadow. From around the pillar, the lanky silhouette of a wolf stepped out into the crystal's light.
Chap snarled and bit into the bottom of Wynn's coat. He dragged her to the wide corridor's center, still growling, as more shadows shifted beyond the pillars.
More forms appeared in the dark. Another black translucent wolf stepped out across the corridor, and its rumble rolled around the stone walls. It lunged and snapped before Chap could dart into its way.
