by Barb Hendee
Sau’ilahk knew—saw—that desperation on Karl Beáumie’s face.
No!
The duke jerked the spike from the orb, and scintillating light filled the chamber as he screamed.
• • •
Wynn lay under the covers in the far bed of her guest room and no longer tried to sleep. Her mind was too filled with worries, self-recriminations, and mysteries. Huddled close for warmth, Shade lay beside her, and though she tried to sort out her tangled thoughts, Wynn’s eyelids finally drooped. Without warning a flash of dizziness and nausea welled inside of her.
It felt as if she’d mistakenly invoked her mantic sight. A yelp echoed in the room as something thrashed and pushed off the bed.
The straw mattress bucked, and Wynn lurched upright.
The sudden movement threatened to make her vomit potatoes and carrots all over the bedclothes. She clamped a hand over her mouth and reached out for Shade. The dog was gone, but a mewling growl rose in the pitch-black room. Wynn fumbled for the cold-lamp crystal left on the near table, and she rubbed it for friction.
Soft light from the crystal filled the room.
Shade stood in the room’s center, between the beds, with her hackles raised and her ears flattened as she faced away toward the door. But she quickly turned—and kept turning—and looking all ways.
“What?” Wynn barely got out before her dinner threatened to rise again.
Shade twisted her head to look directly at Wynn. —Fay!—
Wynn came fully awake, scooting back up the bed into the room’s corner. She groped for her staff nearby, not that it would do anything for her, but it was all that she had.
Sniffing and snarling, Shade raced around the room, and Wynn looked everywhere, not even knowing what to search for. From what she remembered of the two times she’d faced a Fay manifestation, and from what little Chap had told her of his communion with his kin, a Fay—the Fay—had to inhabit something physical in order to come at her.
And the dizziness and sickness would not stop.
—Wynn . . . stay . . . hide . . . here—
Shade rushed the door, rose with her forepaws braced against it, and clamped her jaws on its handle. She tried to twist it by rotating her whole head.
“Wait!” Wynn choked out, and stumbled across the room to help.
Shade whirled off the door and charged. Both the dog’s forepaws hit Wynn’s chest and knocked her over the nearer bed’s foot, and Shade lunged in on her with a snarl.
—Stay—
The door suddenly opened.
“What’s all this—?”
Shade spun with a snap of jaws as Wynn spotted a guard peeking in through the open door; one hand was pressed against his stomach. His eyes widened at the sight of Shade, and his other hand released the door’s outer handle to reach for his sword.
Before Wynn could grab for Shade, the dog rammed the guard’s legs. The man toppled over Shade as she bolted through the door. Wynn struggled over the bed’s foot.
“Shade!” she cried as she stumbled for the door and then slowed as the world swam before her eyes. She stepped through the opening, and the whole passage seemed to suddenly burst with sight and sound in her head.
The second guard came weaving from the passage’s back end; his sword was drawn, but he hit the side wall with his shoulder. Chane and Osha burst out of their room, and then Osha gripped the door’s frame as if he needed to grab something to stay on his feet.
“What is happening?” Chane rasped, spotting Wynn.
She wasn’t certain, but all of the color had drained from Chane’s irises. Shade raced by, perhaps trying to reach the passage’s back end. Chane saw the approaching guard try to step in the dog’s way with his sword raised.
“Get away from her!”
Chane’s broken voice grated in Wynn’s ears as he lashed out, fingers curled like claws. The guard’s body lurched backward as his feet left the floor. Osha sank down against the next door’s frame as Shade darted up the passage.
Only Chane appeared unaffected . . . except for his eyes.
Dizziness overwhelmed Wynn. She collapsed as the passage vanished from her sight.
Unbidden thoughts rose in her mind: memories of childhood, growing up at the guild . . . sailing with Domin Tilswith to a new continent . . . the first time she saw Chane . . . the long trek homeward with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap . . . Shade’s appearance in the night streets of Calm Seatt . . .
Images kept coming, one dying under the next. This was nothing like Chap or Shade calling up memories. It felt as though pieces of her were being torn away. Terror made her try to scream out. . . .
“Chane!”
Wynn never even heard her own voice as her mind went dark and silent.
• • •
Sau’ilahk slammed his solidified hand down on the duke’s grip and the raised key. The force drove the spike back into the orb. All of the scintillating and blinding light escaping the orb vanished from the chamber.
Karl Beáumie collapsed and lay still upon the floor, though his eyes had not fully closed.
Sau’ilahk felt emptied . . . hungry . . . starving . . . and as if dark dormancy might swallow him whole in the night instead of at dawn. When he looked at his own hand, wrapped in shreds of black cloth, it flickered, with the stone below showing through from one moment to the next.
It took all that remained of him to crouch over the duke and not feed upon him right then. He did sense a spark of life still within Karl Beáumie’s limp form. Relief flooded through Sau’ilahk, followed by anger and sharpening hunger. What a fool, to risk everything out of impatience born of fear!
Sau’ilahk examined his prone subject more carefully. The duke’s right hand was further twisted, the talons longer, and misbegotten scales and wisps of fur and tiny feathers had spread farther up his forearm. Would the glove even fit anymore to hide such effects?
Sau’ilahk turned for the door and drew close so that his conjured voice might vibrate in the air beyond it.
“Hazh’thüm, assist me.”
No one entered.
Sau’ilahk tried to solidify his hand to grab the door’s handle. His effort failed. He had been drained when the orb had been fully opened, perhaps in the wrong way. And so he slipped straight through the door.
In the outer chamber of six doors, he found Hazh’thüm and another of his Suman guards trying to push themselves up off the floor. Hazh’thüm was gasping, and his eyelids fluttered.
Sau’ilahk wondered how far the orb’s effects had been felt.
“Get up!”
“Master,” Hazh’thüm choked. “Forgive me.”
“The duke requires care. Take him to his room and avoid being seen, if possible.”
Hazh’thüm shuffled to the door, fumbled as he unlocked it, and then entered. But Sau’ilahk remained, watching the second guard. That one still braced against a far door as he gained his feet, and then lowered his eyes before his master.
What was his name again? It did not matter.
Sau’ilahk struggled under intense hunger and tried not to fade from the world into dormancy. He needed life’s energies if he was to remain for the night. . . . He needed to feed.
• • •
Osha had seldom been truly frightened in his life. But waves of fear washed through him beneath dizziness, sickness, and unwanted memories of his entire life flooding his head. He had lost control of his body as everything darkened before his eyes and left only those flashes of his past rising into his awareness to then dissipate like smoke in the dark.
For anyone with his training as an anmaglâhk, to be this helpless was worse than anything imaginable.
As suddenly as it started, the horrifying sensation ceased.
Osha found himself lying on the passage’s cold stone floor as his head began to clear.
“Wynn!” someone rasped.
After that the passage was quiet.
Osha did not even hear the majay-hì snarling as he pushed himself up. There stood Chane with his back turned as he lifted Wynn’s limp form from the floor as if she weighed nothing.
“Wynn?” the undead rasped.
Osha wanted to shout at that thing to put Wynn down. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. Then he heard struggling behind him. He spotted the young sage, Nikolas, trying to pull himself up in the opened doorway of the third guest room. Both guards who had been in the passage were down but conscious and visibly shaken.
Besides the undead holding Wynn, only the majay-hì was mobile. Turning circles as if searching, Shade paced the passage and then rounded in a trot straight toward Wynn and Chane.
“I’m all right. . . . Put me down.”
At Wynn’s whisper, Osha struggled up and hurried toward her.
Chane slowly set her on her feet, though she wobbled in trying to step around him, and the undead turned as well.
Osha saw that Chane’s eyes had no color at all. He grabbed Wynn by the wrist and jerked her away behind himself as he pulled a dagger from his tunic.
“Back!” he snapped, pointing the blade at Chane.
He knew enough of such monsters—from his time with Magiere, Léshil, and Chap—to know what those colorless eyes meant. No matter what it cost him, he was not letting that thing anywhere near Wynn in such a state.
The majay-hì suddenly lunged between him and the undead.
Shade turned on Chane with a low rumble as she bared her teeth, and then Osha felt Wynn grab for his outstretched arm.
“Stop it!” she said. “Chane would never . . .”
When she did not finish, Osha took one fleeting glance. She was staring at the undead, so at least now she saw what had happened.
Chane lowered his eyes and backed away, and the majay-hì’s rumble lessened.
Wynn jerked upon Osha’s arm. “Go help Nikolas . . . now!”
Both guards appeared to be recovering like everyone else. Only the majay- hì had been unaffected by whatever had happened . . . and Chane had succumbed in a different way. But as long as Shade was aware of the additional danger . . .
Osha finally relented, retreating rather than turning his back, until he could take hold of Nikolas and pull the young sage to his feet.
Chane, his face still averted, whispered in Belaskian, “What happened?”
Osha glanced once at both guards rising. Likely the undead spoke in his own tongue so the guards and Nikolas would not understand. Any moment, those guards would have questions of their own, before or after driving everyone back into their rooms. Osha spun his dagger and flattened the blade against the inside of his wrist to hide it at the ready.
“Shade sensed a Fay,” Wynn answered quietly—also in Belaskian. “That’s all I know . . . so far.”
To Osha this did not seem so bad. “Fay?” he repeated to her in Elvish. “Not an undead? I felt . . . I felt as if my life was being pulled from me.”
Her eyes bleak and shadow ringed, she pivoted to look up at him. The last thing he wanted was to cause her more worry or pain.
“She said it was a Fay,” Wynn confirmed as she knelt beside the majay-hì.
How strange it was that a sacred one would be so familiar with a human.
Shade refused to be stroked or comforted, and padded away, still looking up and down the passage. Then she darted halfway past one dazed guard to peer into Wynn’s room.
“A Fay . . . here?” Chane asked sharply, and his colorless eyes turned on Wynn. “Why? There are too many people present.”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
One guard jerked his sword from its sheath and pointed it at Chane. The second guard stumbled closer as he commanded his partner, “Take that wolf out of here now! And all of you . . . back in your rooms.”
Before Osha could grab Wynn, she stepped between Chane and that outstretched sword.
“Shade is not dangerous to anyone here,” she argued, “but she sensed something wrong, perhaps a predator in the keep. That’s all. No one is taking her anywhere.”
It was a weak explanation, and neither guard appeared to accept it.
Osha pulled Nikolas behind himself in preparation.
“Or would you like to wake the duke or duchess and explain your actions?” Wynn went on.
Neither guard said a word. Perhaps losing control over “guests” during whatever had happened was not something for which they cared to answer in the middle of the night.
“Get that animal out of sight, and get back to your rooms,” the first guard barked, and then looked to Osha. “You two, as well.”
Osha had expected this and longed to speak with Wynn. Whatever had happened here was nothing he had ever experienced before. Apparently neither had she, and what it had to do with “Fay,” as humans referred to the sacred nature of the world, left him baffled.
“We should do as they say,” Nikolas said weakly.
The young sage did not look any better than Wynn did . . . any better than Osha felt. He nodded politely to the young man, and Nikolas wearily turned in to his room.
“I am staying with you,” Chane stated.
Osha turned back and found the undead looking down at Wynn with those colorless eyes.
“No!” Osha snapped, unable to keep quiet this time. “I stay . . . with Wynn.”
Chane’s expression twisted into sheer hatred.
Osha stepped in behind Wynn. That thing would not stand over her—watching her—while she slept.
“Get to your rooms!” the guard ordered.
“I’ll be fine with Shade,” Wynn said over her shoulder. “If I need you, trust me: you will hear me.”
Then she grasped the front of Chane’s shirt with one hand and whispered something Osha could not hear.
The undead turned his face away from her. An instant passed before he nodded, stepped around her, and headed for the second door.
Wynn looked to Osha. “There’s nothing to fear from him.”
Osha did not believe her and clenched his teeth as he, too, turned away. The guards watched him as he headed for the second chamber along the passage. There was nothing more for him to do except spend the remainder of the night locked away with Chane.
Unless there was something more to be done, he considered, as his thoughts turned over what had just happened to all of them.
• • •
Back inside her room Wynn felt far less certain about anything than she’d claimed to the others. Shade refused to settle and kept pacing. Still feeling sick, Wynn knelt and stopped Shade. When she placed her hand on the dog’s back, Shade was trembling.
“Are you sure you sensed a Fay?”
Shade stood there for an instant before one memory-word popped into Wynn’s head.
—Fay—
The dog began pacing again, leaving Wynn kneeling on the floor in fear and uncertainty. As frightened as she was, she could not understand why a Fay would manifest near or inside this keep and then suddenly vanish. For that matter, she still remembered the time the Fay had attacked her through trees, back in Osha’s homeland. Chap had come to her aid with a pack of wild majay-hì, including his future mate, Lily.
She hadn’t succumbed to any sickness or blacked out then, though she’d nearly died. If a Fay—the Fay—had manifested here, perhaps Shade’s presence had warned it—them—away. She, like her father, was not a normal majay-hì.
Still, that didn’t explain everything that had happened.
• • •
Chane knelt in the room’s far corner and dug quickly into his pack. He heard Osha enter and close the door, but all that mattered to him was that he found what he needed to quell the gnawing hunger inside him.
It was as if all the life that he had gained in feeding upon the deer had been torn out of him. The beast within him strained against its chains, and its starved howls and screeches tore at him inside.
And the smell of Osha’s life thickened in Chane’s fully expanded senses.
He did not need full light to find the bottle in the pack’s bottom, though; desperate for the remaining black-red fluid he had gathered using the brass cup, he fumbled with it in his panic.
Chane almost downed all of the bottle’s contents.
He stopped, for doing so would affect him too much. He had no privacy, and with Osha present—watching—he did not dare become that incapacitated for even a few moments. He took only a sip, and even that was punishing, as he quickly replaced the stopper in the bottle and shoved it into his pack.
“What you do?” Osha growled.
The acrid tang of ground metal and heavy salt coated Chane’s mouth as he swallowed. He did not collapse in convulsions this time, but still a burning like acid filled his gut as concentrated life trapped by the brass cup spread through him. He clenched his jaws and waited for it to pass, though he heard leather squeak before he realized his grip on the pack had tightened too much. And he began to shake.
“Answer!”
Chane ignored the elf and waited for the shallow convulsions to pass. He could still feel the hunger, but he would not drink more and leave himself vulnerable while that forest whelp was present. Finally the beast within him settled to a low, growling complaint.
When he rose and turned, Osha still stood before the door.
Chane had no intention of discussing anything and decided to simply wait for Osha to fall asleep.
Instead of pressing matters, all the elf did was settle on the bed nearest the door and light another of his little candles upon the side table. He leaned back, fully clothed with his boots on, and reclined against the wall behind the bed’s far side. Osha closed his eyes as if resting.
Chane turned away, settling on his own bed in annoyance, which quickly shifted to worry. He had no idea what was happening inside this keep—what had happened moments ago—and the blind ignorance quickly wore on him.
