by Barb Hendee
“Enough!” Ore-Locks shouted out in the passage. “You will draw the entire crew!”
Chane snatched up the brass bottle as he rose and snuffed the burner. He could do nothing about the smell of smoke in the cabin. He heard and then felt the sizzle of his own flesh from the scorching copper bottle and swung it behind his back as he stepped to the door. Just before he grabbed the bolt, the door bucked so hard, he heard its planks start to crack.
“Please desist!” Ore-Locks snapped, and then said more loudly, “Chane, it is over. Open the door!”
Chane pulled the bolt, and the door slammed into him. He barely righted himself in retreat. Chap lunged in, fur on end, ears flattened, jowls pulled back, and teeth exposed in a long rumbling hiss. And Chane set himself for a fight.
His gaze flicked once to his swords tucked under the right-side bunk.
Ore-Locks took only one step into the doorway, and Chap looked back once with a snarl. Ore-Locks barely raised open hands in yielding, and Chap turned on Chane again. Sniffing the air and everything on the floor, Chap inched forward but never took his eyes off Chane.
Chane felt the bottle’s searing heat spreading in his whole hand.
Chap’s head flashed around at Ore-Locks and quickly back. Ore-Locks stiffened in a flinch and blinked twice, and looked at Chane.
“He . . . demands to know what you were doing,” Ore-Locks said.
Chane looked back to Chap. Perhaps growing pain spreading to his forearm got the better of him.
“No,” he rasped.
Chap snarled and lunged, Chane dropped to a crouch ready to counter, and Ore-Locks rushed in behind Chap.
The dwarf tried to grab Chap’s tail and only half succeeded.
Ore-Locks barely closed his big hand when Chap turned and snapped. Chane almost lunged but stalled, uncertain whom to go after. Ore-Locks jerked his hand back.
He glared at Chap, stuttering, “You . . . you . . . yiannû-billê!”
Chane did not react. Hopefully Chap did not understand that racist comment, but when Chap’s growl sharpened, Chane knew better.
Ore-Locks quickly raised a booted foot and slammed it down.
Even as Chap quickly retreated, Chane felt the whole cabin shudder.
“And what do you think you can do about it?” Ore-Locks snarled at Chap.
The dog must have said something into the dwarf’s head. Chane could not guess what, and before he tried . . .
“I do not need to wait for port,” Ore-Locks ranted on. “All I need to do is take my orb and drop over the side to sink. Try to follow through stone at the ocean floor, if you can.”
That panicked Chane. He could not fail Wynn like this, even for perhaps his only other friend.
“I am tired of both of you,” Ore-Locks grumbled, and then eyed Chane. “And you need to stop baiting the majay-hì with your secrets!”
That as well frightened Chane as he looked between his cabin mates. When his gaze returned to the dwarf, Ore-Locks’s narrowed eyes were not looking directly back; he was looking much lower.
Ore-Locks thrust out his hand. “Give it to me.”
Chane hesitated.
“Now!” Ore-Locks added.
Chane did not like this. He had multiple reasons for not wanting anyone else—especially Chap—to know what he had been doing. Even Wynn might not have liked it, considering he had again been using Welstiel’s tools.
Ore-Locks thrust out his hand even farther.
With a soft exhale through his teeth, Chane relented and held out the copper bottle.
Ore-Locks took it, held it up, eyed it with a scowl, and then eyed Chap. He suddenly pulled the stopper and put the bottle to his mouth.
“No, do not!” Chane rasped.
It was too late, and Ore-Locks tipped the bottle slightly. He smacked his lips once, ran his tongue over them, and wrinkled his broad nose, as if he had smelled something unpleasant. He tilted his head as if some puzzled thought occurred to him, and then looked down at Chap.
“There,” he said, “I am fine . . . See?”
Chane was not so certain, though he had seen dwarves drink wood alcohol that would kill a human. The elixir had not clarified, which left him worried about unknown effects upon even one of them.
Ore-Locks slapped the stopper into the bottle and tossed it at Chane, who caught it in another rush of panic. It felt nearly full.
“You two settle this matter, once and for all,” Ore-Locks warned.
He turned out of the cabin, slamming the door.
Chane was alone with Chap. The majay-hì climbed up on the far bunk, lay down, and glowered in silence. Chane settled on the other bunk above where his swords were hidden.
“I am not the only one with secrets,” Chane said. “What were you doing when you ran off into the trees and left me to dig up two orbs?”
Chap did not move or even blink. He made no sound at all, nor did he do anything to indicate that Chane should pull out the talking hide for a response.
Chane finally dropped his gaze to the copper bottle in his hands, one of which still stung from being seared. From what he felt of the bottle’s weight, Ore-Locks had taken no more than a sip, but that still worried Chane. He bent over to pick up the glass bottle and the scrap of silk, and filtered a tiny amount of the concoction into the glass bottle.
For an instant, what he saw did not make sense, and when he had poured every bit of the mixture into the glass bottle, he could only stare.
The liquid was now entirely crystal clear.
• • •
Not long past sunset, Wynn watched as Magiere, Leesil, and Brot’an set off on another scouting trip. Dinner—or perhaps breakfast—tonight had come as a relief.
Ghassan had somehow caught and killed a sizable desert lizard. He had also been saving the best chunks of coal from previous fires, and soon had a low-flamed heat ready for cooking. And meanwhile, he dressed down the lizard. The creature provided nearly as much meat as a chicken.
Everyone was beyond tired of eating dried stores. Though none had ever eaten lizard before, it proved quite tasty—either because it was or because they were desperate for anything other than their normal rations. There was a time when Wynn ate only vegetables and fish. Now she ate whatever was available.
Once the trio passed beyond sight, she turned to Ghassan, who had remained behind with her to guard the orbs. There had been some tension between him and Magiere, as Ghassan wanted more proof of any supposed gathering of a horde before they turned to hunting their real quarry’s hiding place.
Wynn wished they knew more about this Ancient Enemy—il’Samar, Beloved, and any of too many other names. All they really understood was it was a being or person of great power who had waged a great war across the world, created the first of the undead, and then for unknown reasons withdrawn into hiding.
Even this much was speculation based on what she’d gleaned from ancient texts. Now, apparently, it was reawakening after a thousand years.
Magiere was driven to find it.
And things were moving out there toward . . . wherever . . . in the east.
Ghassan urged caution until all five orbs had been brought together. He felt that more information should be gained first. Were most of the gathering servants vampires? Or were some more powerful, like the wraith, Sau’ilahk?
Magiere saw little point to learning any of this, and for her, finding the location of the Enemy was all that mattered. After a heated debate, she and Ghassan had compromised. Scouting trips would continue, but if she came across any undead heading east, she and those with her would try to trail them to their final destination, and hopefully to Ancient Enemy.
Night after night, Magiere came across only a few bodies.
Wynn was nearly always left behind at camp. With her shorter legs, she only frustrated Magiere and even Brot’
an with their long strides. Lately, Ghassan had been the other one most often to remain in camp.
Wynn had grown more and more concerned about Leesil. He never joked or teased her anymore. He’d become even quieter than Brot’an, and that by itself was the most disconcerting change.
Now Ghassan sank down cross-legged before the tent he shared with Brot’an. Wynn knew he preferred being out under the night sky unless he was asleep. She looked up, for though it was full night, the desert was clear to see beneath a brilliant silvery moon.
“Ghassan,” she began slowly, “do you think we would need all five orbs, should Magiere find the Enemy?”
She expected resistance, but she thought she saw him stiffen where he sat.
“Why do you ask?”
Wynn hesitated, wondering how far to take this. “Magiere has only opened the orb of Water, and not fully. I wasn’t with her, but I know what happened. All moisture in the area rushed into the orb in a storm. The potential destruction . . .” She faltered, uncertain how much farther to go. “It barely started before the spike was slammed back into the orb, closing it. And I know something of how the orb of Earth was used to bring down Bäalâle Seatt.”
“And what are you suggesting?” Ghassan asked.
This was something she wouldn’t dare say to the others.
“We have the orbs of Air and Spirit in our possession,” she began again. “I don’t know what Spirit will do when it’s opened, but Air could create a similarly destructive storm to Water. If—if we trap the Enemy, and one of us gets close enough to open the orb of Air . . .”
She couldn’t say it aloud. Knowing Ghassan, she didn’t have to. Yes, that suicidal move might be enough to either kill or trap the Enemy again . . . along with whoever tried to use the orb of Air.
“I am surprised to hear such a notion from you,” Ghassan said.
His abrupt dismissal annoyed Wynn. She shifted where she sat near the dying coals of the fire to look right at him. She could not see him clearly, but she saw enough by the moon’s bright light. He was watching her intently but calmly.
“Why?” she asked.
His head tilted down, one of his hands moved slightly, and a whisper of some kind escaped his lips.
A faint glow caught Wynn’s eyes halfway between herself and him. A stone first appeared to have a glimmer around it, as if dust-mote fireflies began to swarm. The glow grew, softly at first and then brighter and brighter—from the stone itself.
Wynn inched back a little. How had he done this?
“Listen!” Ghassan commanded. “We do not go recklessly stumbling into the lair of the Enemy and attempt to open one orb. If one can cause cataclysmic destruction by itself, do not assume five would be fivefold worse. The Enemy created the five anchors for a reason. That is the answer we must uncover first, before any needless rush or wasted life—yours and others’.”
“And who will use all five, if we learn how? You?”
“Unless you would like to try.”
At the start of this journey, they had intended to gather the orbs as a last option, should the Enemy be proved to be reawakening. If that terrifying reality came, she had envisioned at least a few careful experiments to see how the devices might be used together. Now she wasn’t sure at all if anyone should know that secret . . . and live to tell it.
And she hadn’t known how set Ghassan was on the original, final option.
“What if Chane and Chap fail?” she asked. “Or they don’t return at all?”
Ghassan lifted his head and fixed on her in the half dark under the moon. “Chap and Chane have not failed.”
Wynn balked for a moment. Ghassan appeared to close his eyes and bowed his head, and he remained that way for too long. This gave Wynn further pause before she asked anything more.
“How could you—?”
“The same way that I knew you were in the alley behind the sanctuary . . . on the night I needed your help to persuade the others to hunt the specter.”
Wynn swallowed in confusion and almost challenged him again. Then she knew how he knew that Chane and Chap had succeeded. Relief flooded her in knowing they were safe.
“The pebble, the one you gave Chane.”
Ghassan raised his head again and nodded once.
“You could know this? From so far away?” she asked.
“Even now they are on a ship nearing Soráno. And they have the final orb and its stonewalker guardian as well.”
“Ore-Locks? He’s coming with them?”
Ghassan nodded again. “You understand my reason for checking on them?”
She did, yet he seemed different from the man she’d once known, and she looked again to that still-glowing rock between them.
Ghassan was a sorcerer, a practitioner of a reviled magic. His focus was upon that of the mind, its powers, and its manipulations, though he had employed guild thaumaturgical alchemists in Calm Seatt to make her sun-crystal staff. Causing a rock to produce light was psychokinetic at a physical level, or at least that was how she would describe it from studies in the sciences.
She had never seen him do so before. It left her wondering about the sun crystal. He had once used that to track her into Bäalâle Seatt?
Had sorcery been involved in what he had contributed to the sun crystal’s making?
“And now I need your help,” Ghassan said, almost tiredly.
Wynn was afraid to even ask. “What help?”
• • •
Ghassan lay in the dark of his own mind, his own flesh not his anymore. In one instant of pause during conversation with Wynn, the specter had turned inwardly upon him.
Though he had no flesh within that darkness, he now lay shuddering as if burned and beaten to his own last breath. And the specter—Khalidah—had found and taken what he needed.
. . . The same way that I knew you were in the alley behind the sanctuary . . .
The specter had not been there in that moment; that had been Ghassan himself. Khalidah had taken that memory from him to once again deceive Wynn and to regain her trust in using hope against her. Khalidah wanted those orbs more than she knew, and yet . . .
Ghassan’s false breath caught in realization as much as agony.
Khalidah was afraid to face the Enemy as yet.
He—the specter—did not yet know how to use the orbs.
How could that be possible? There were two nearby, and the specter could have even put Wynn into a natural slumber, so that he might delve those devices through sorcery. There was only one reason that had not happened.
Khalidah already knew his sorcery would not work on an orb.
Oh, yes, he might lift one by his art while in a chest, or perhaps even directly, but he could not examine and find the secrets of the orbs themselves through his art.
Were the orbs impervious to the other two magical arts as well?
If they were proof against thaumaturgy and conjuring, how had they even been made? Such defenses so ultimate could not have been applied to them during or after their making. As to during, for what they could already do, such work would have been almost impossible.
No one could truly know how they had been made, what they were—except perhaps the Enemy.
Ghassan’s mind blanked in trying to see how to use this. He stored it away as one other thing took hold of his awareness. The specter had to come at him to find something to convince Wynn that she still spoke to Ghassan himself. Khalidah had to come and tear that out of him forcibly.
The specter had not found that on his own, as he likely could have with past hosts.
Again, Ghassan did not see the use of this . . . not yet.
• • •
Upon disembarking in Soráno, Chap found his relief at having solid ground under his paws wiped away everything else for a moment. The sea voyage was over, and now they woul
d travel inland to a’Ghràihlôn’na to find Wayfarer, Osha, and Shade. At that thought, he found himself looking forward to company besides Ore-Locks’s and Chane’s.
The three of them walked the port city’s streets after obtaining a stout, strong mule on which to lash two of the chests. Ore-Locks carried the third, as three orbs might be too heavy, even for a mule.
Although Chap and Chane had stopped briefly here on the way north in dropping off the younger trio, Chap had remained on the docks that time, while Chane had gone in to make the caravan arrangements.
But now Chap walked through the evening streets of the port city, running necessary preparations for further travels through his mind. Reaching the Lhoin’na lands was not even half of the journey ahead. Being lost in such thoughts, he was halfway through the city when he slowed upon noticing a young woman in a long, saffron-colored wrap gown passing by. As he took in her olive-toned skin, light brown hair, and roundish face, he halted completely and looked about.
Nearly everyone here looked like Wynn!
Fine boned, though round cheeked, the people of the Romagrae Commonwealth weren’t as tall as the Numans of Malourné, Faunier, or Witeny, nor quite as dark-skinned as the Sumans. Nearly all walking past wore pantaloons and cotton vestments or long wrap dresses of white and soft colors. But they all had olive-toned skin with light brown hair and eyes.
Chap knew Wynn had been left as an infant at the gates of the guild’s Calm Seatt branch. He now wondered if her parents had come from here, and how she had ended up being abandoned so far north. Some answers were never found, but still he wondered.
Thinking of her filled him with sharp urgency to move onward.
Soráno’s streets were clean, most cobbled in sandy-tan stones, and small open-air markets were all along the way. There were many solo stalls, tents, and booths here and there. Almost any necessity—and some minor fancies—were available within a short walk from every side street. Everyone appeared to be some kind of merchant or farmer or crafter or artisan, and all appeared to have the freedom to set up “shop” wherever they pleased. The result was somewhat overwhelming.
Arrays of olives, dried dates, fish, and herb-laced cooking oils were abundant. Of course, though, it was past dusk, and many vendors were now closing up for the night.
