by Barb Hendee
His fur shimmered like a million silk threads caught in blue-white light, and his whole form became encased in white vapors that rose like flames from his fur.
Vertigo rose inside her.
“Wynn?” Osha whispered.
She threw out her hands to support herself against the stone floor. When she opened her eyes, nausea lurched upward from her stomach.
Wynn stared at—through—the door.
Translucent white, just shy of blue, dimly permeated the old wood. The door’s physical presence still dominated her sight, but there was more, something beyond it. Pale and blue-white, the ghostly shapes of stairs continued downward.
Shade whined so close that the noise was too loud in Wynn’s ears. Without meaning to, Wynn glanced aside at the dog.
At first Shade was as black as a void, except for too-bright crystal-blue eyes staring back. A powerful glimmer of blue-white became clear, permeating Shade more than anything else in sight. Traces of Spirit ran in every strand of Shade’s charcoal fur and burned in the dog’s eyes.
Shade was aglow with her father’s Fay ancestry, and Wynn had to look away.
“Are you all right?” Osha asked, again in an’Cróan Elvish.
“Yes,” Wynn choked out as she stopped herself from looking at him.
Because Osha was one of the an’Cróan, an Elven people associated with the element of Spirit, it might be nearly as bright in him as in Shade. She couldn’t break her focus again, and instead concentrated on what was beyond the door.
At the stairs’ bottom, a straight passage ahead was no more than inverse shadows, as though she was looking into a space where all edges and corners were outlined with a blue-white glow stronger than that on the surfaces. Farther on was a large chamber, though deeper and farther than her sight reached. The layers of bluish white made any details difficult to pick out.
She spotted six tall outlines, three to each side, inside the chamber. In focusing on those, she found them a little brighter than stone as they sharpened into upright rectangles. They had to be doors, perhaps made of wood. And there were three blurs, almost as tall as the doors, of an even brighter blue-white positioned about the chamber.
One shifted slowly, moving a short way to join the other two. Those had to be living beings—Suman guards, most likely. And that one stopped near the other two before the second door on the right.
“Do you see anything?” Osha whispered almost too faintly to hear.
“Six doors.” Wynn struggled to answer. “Second door . . . on the right. Three guards.”
Nausea began to cripple her.
She quickly fought to see anything more, but she couldn’t reach past any of those doors. When she tried, there were too many layers of Spirit outlines, and her stomach clenched as if she might heave up her breakfast.
The one thing she hadn’t seen—wouldn’t see during the day—was the black shadow of an undead’s presence.
Everything in Wynn’s sight blurred and twisted, and vertigo overwhelmed her as her will failed. She shut her eyes and crumpled.
Two hands caught her shoulders as she fell.
“Wynn!” Osha breathed in her ear.
At Shade’s soft, short whine, Wynn felt herself pulled back against Osha’s chest. She barely opened her eyes and then regretted doing so.
There was Shade, a glistening black form haloed in blue white, and the dog’s irises burned with so much light that everything else in Wynn’s sight began to spin. A sudden memory rose in her head.
Not an image—a sensation like a warm wet tongue dragged repeatedly over her face, as if her eyes were closed, though she still stared at Shade’s burning blue irises. Her eyes had been closed—at another time—when she’d used mantic sight to track Chap in the forest of the an’Cróan.
Shade lunged in so quickly that Wynn grabbed the dog’s neck in panic—and Shade’s tongue lapped her face as she shut her eyes. Wet warmth dragged over her eyelids.
Nausea lessened as Wynn leaned against Osha while clutching Shade’s neck.
She had never learned how Shade knew Chap’s trick for smothering mantic sight. Perhaps Shade had learned of it from one of Wynn’s own memories, and it had become useful several times. As the last of the vertigo faded, disappointment welled in its place.
“Not enough,” she whispered. “I didn’t see enough.”
“Quiet now,” Osha whispered.
Before Wynn could move, she was picked up and carried off as any light from the cold-lamp crystal winked out when Osha’s hand closed over it.
Wynn doubted those three supposed guards, so far down in that main chamber, could hear them. But it was better that Osha was being cautious, and she waited to speak again until he settled her on the floor halfway down the back passage.
“Only three guards below?” Osha asked as he opened his hand and let the crystal’s light out. “Do you think the guarded door is where the duke goes?”
Wynn nodded. “Perhaps, but we should leave here. Whatever is down there, no matter what we think, is important enough to be guarded at all times. And we don’t know when or how often the guards are rotated.”
Trying to get up, Wynn braced a hand on the passage wall, and Shade ducked in to give her additional support as Osha grasped her other arm.
“There is nothing more we can do until Chane wakes up,” Wynn added.
Osha’s expression darkened. “Why?”
“Because he grew up in a keep and might know something of use . . . because he’s stronger than any of us . . . and he cannot be killed by normal means.”
Osha’s scowl only deepened, though Shade rumbled at him.
“This is all dangerous, more than you can imagine,” Wynn warned. “And it will get ugly. We need our numbers . . . everyone.”
Osha appeared no less sour, but he finally nodded.
• • •
Chane opened his eyes.
“Oh, finally!”
He squinted and then flinched in his bed upon seeing Wynn hanging over him with a lit cold-lamp crystal in her hand.
“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.
Chane sat up too quickly, swinging his legs off the bedside, and almost hit Wynn’s forehead with his own. He was still slightly disoriented as he glanced around the room. Beyond Wynn was Osha, watching him. Shade sat on the floor a little closer, and then there was Nikolas. . . .
Chane’s fingers closed tightly on the bed’s edge.
The young sage stood flattened against the room’s closed door, and his eyes stared back in fright.
“Nikolas,” Wynn said softly. “I told you, there’s nothing to fear from Chane.”
Chane turned to her. Even sitting on the low bed, he barely had to look up to see her face.
“It’s all right,” Wynn said. “He knows. It was necessary to tell him because of what might come . . . for there’s an orb in the keep . . . we think.”
Confused and stunned, Chane’s eyes never blinked as she rushed onward. By the time she finished telling him about Aupsha, Jausiff, the duchess and duke, and all else concerning a sect that had protected and lost an orb, he almost forgot she had revealed what he was to a young, somewhat unstable sage. Almost.
Chane was not pleased and glanced at Nikolas again.
After what the young sage had suffered from Sau’ilahk, the last thing Nikolas needed to hear was that he had unknowingly kept company with another undead and led it to his home. Then something else Wynn had said sank in regarding what she had done.
“You used mantic sight . . . without me or Premin Hawes,” he accused.
“Osha was there,” Wynn answered defensively. “And Shade brought me out with no trouble. If anything, it went better than ever before, so enough!”
Chane chilled inside. He knew he should focus on the important things she had told him, that
there was likely an orb here. That should have been more critical than anything else, but he could not let go of other issues.
So much had happened, far beyond his possible imaginings, and while he lay dormant and useless all day, Osha had been the one at Wynn’s side. And Wynn had revealed his nature without his knowledge or permission. Life, or any semblance of it for him among the living, kept becoming more complicated around her.
Something in his mouth tasted acrid.
“What did you see beyond the door?” he asked.
“Three guards, likely Suman, in the level below the keep.”
She went on, though there was little more to tell.
“You believe the duke has an orb?” he echoed. “And he is . . . using it to some purpose that is affecting him and the surrounding area? What is he doing?”
Wynn shook her head. “I don’t know, but I think what we suffered last night might have been from the orb being opened . . . or opened too much or too long. For what little we’ve overheard, no one here has experienced such effects before last night.”
So far no one else present had spoken. That was no surprise from Nikolas, for what Wynn had done. Shade seemed the least disturbed, but one could never be certain of her reactions until she demonstrated such. As to Osha, he simply watched, narrow eyed.
“We have to get the orb,” Wynn said. “So I’ve been waiting for you to . . . wake up.”
At least she had been sensible in that.
“How many Suman guards, total, throughout the keep?” she asked. “I’ve seen different faces, but never more than two or three at a time.”
“Sherie says eight . . . that she knows of,” Nikolas answered, and when everyone else turned his way, the young sage swallowed. “I asked her, after you told her what you’d learned.”
Chane ran a hand over his head and pushed hair back from his face. He hated the thought of accepting help from the elf, but there was little choice. Shade could harry guards—even highly skilled ones—and keep them in a panic, even if she could not put any of them down. But that would not be enough for the numbers they faced. They would need Osha as well.
“All right, first we must—”
At rushing footfalls in the passage outside, Chane lost his train of thought. Before he could react, Wynn went for the door as Nikolas backed out of her way. Wynn barely opened the door when it was shoved wide.
And there stood the young duke dressed all in black.
His pale face glistened as if from a cold sweat, but his ringed eyes fixed coldly on Wynn. He latched a hand on the doorframe as if to steady himself. There were others—three Suman guards and two keep guards with readied crossbows—standing close behind him.
Chane rose very slowly, waving Nikolas farther away from the door.
“My lord?” Wynn said.
Duke Beáumie ignored her as his glare roamed the small room: first to Osha, then to Chane, and lastly to Nikolas. Some of his anger wavered at the sight of the young sage, and he dropped his gaze for an instant before he returned it to Wynn, and his expression hardened again.
“I have been unwell,” he said, “and have just awoken to be informed of your invasion into a restricted area last night. You will relinquish all weapons and remain confined to this one room until further notice.”
It took a breath or two before Wynn answered. “The duchess lifted all limitations on us this morning and removed the guards. We would never do anything without—”
“My sister is not in charge here,” the duke interrupted, and he looked beyond her at Chane. “Turn over your weapons.”
Shade began to growl softly, and Osha slipped his right hand behind his back.
Chane’s dwarven-crafted longsword and his makeshift shortsword were sheathed and leaning against the wall beyond his bed’s foot. His first instinct was to lunge for them, but Wynn was too close to the door. As the duke shifted to one side in the doorway, one guard pointed his crossbow at Wynn.
“Don’t,” Nikolas whispered, stepping in behind her.
Chane did not know whether that was a warning for Wynn or someone else. He could not risk either of them being killed by his own attempt to charge the door. Raising both hands in plain sight, he carefully sidestepped to the bed’s end and reached for his swords.
“Give him your bow and quiver,” he told Osha.
Osha turned a scowl on him.
“The bow and the quiver,” Chane repeated with emphasis.
Osha’s expression turned briefly confused, and then it cleared as he nodded once. As long as none of the guards searched any of them, they would not find the dagger Osha kept hidden beneath the back of his tunic. That would leave one weapon in their possession. But after that brief hesitation, the guards with crossbows forced Wynn back and stepped inside. One aimed at Osha and the other at Chane himself. A third, a Suman, stepped in to collect all visible weapons.
“Am I to be confined as well?” Nikolas asked.
The young duke would not look at him. “Just for now . . . Nik. I’ll . . . I’ll come for you later.”
The guards retreated, and the duke himself closed the door. At the rattle of a heavy key ring outside, the door’s lock bolt clacked home in the stone frame.
Wynn spun around, fury and frustration on her oval olive face. As Chane was about to speak, Osha put a finger to his lips. The elf rushed to the wall shared with the next room, Wynn’s, and put his ear to the stone as he closed his eyes and listened.
Chane did not need to do the same as he let hunger rise to sharpen his senses. He heard the next door down the passage open, and then movement in Wynn’s room. There was a rough clatter of objects being dropped, and possibly the creak of the bed’s frame. Then the door was closed again, and footfalls faded down the passage to the stairs.
“They put our weapons,” Osha said, “in room for Wynn.”
Chane merely nodded.
“My sun-crystal staff is in there,” Wynn said quietly, as if no one else here was aware of that. “What are we going to do?”
At least she had looked to him and not that elf.
“We will think of something,” Chane answered.
• • •
Sau’ilahk rose from dormancy to manifest like a black shadow in the center of the small room that housed the orb. He was alone, and his normally forced patience was thin tonight.
He did not know whether Karl had recovered from having opened the orb fully for an instant. The last time he had seen the young duke, the man was being carried upstairs in a state of unconsciousness.
Sau’ilahk slid nearer the door and raised his conjured voice of twisted air to be heard outside of it.
“Hazh’thüm?”
No answer came, not even the sound of the door being unlocked. Three of his Suman servants were outside at all times. Perhaps those present were reluctant to answer after finding one of their own drained and dead following the duke’s impetuous mistake.
Sau’ilahk slipped straight through the wall into the outer chamber of six doors, three to each side. All three guards stiffened, one back-stepping, as all dropped their eyes in obeisance. Hazh’thüm was not among them.
“Where is your captain?”
“With the duke, my lord,” the closest answered. “There have been developments.”
“What has happened now?”
“We do not know.”
“Is the duke awake, recovered?”
“Yes, my lord.”
That brought some relief. Sau’ilahk would have despaired at needing another suitable candidate and having to begin all over again. He drifted back through the wall without a further word to his servants and waited in the orb’s room. His patience grew as thin as his incorporeal presence.
Finally the familiar sound of booted footsteps rose outside, and the door opened.
The young duke entered,
pale to the point of being ashen, with shadows like faint bruises beneath his eyes. The glove on his misshapen right hand showed signs of strain along its seams as he closed the door with his other hand.
“This visiting sage and her guards are more than they pretend to be,” he announced with labored effort.
The last thing Sau’ilahk wanted to hear of was Wynn Hygeorht’s meddling, and he no longer needed his air-conjured voice to ask,
What has happened?
“Last night her swordsman was caught in the passage outside the upper door to this lower level. The Lhoin’na with him evaded capture . . . and later returned to his quarters on his own.” The duke’s voice then edged with rage and panic. “How could they know where to go?”
Sau’ilahk’s anxiety sharpened. He had not expected Chane Andraso to get so close so quickly.
Where are they now?
“I’ve locked them all in a single room on the third floor. They have no weapons and are under guard.”
Sau’ilahk pondered for a moment and then drifted closer to the orb.
They no longer matter for the moment, my lord. We may proceed.
The duke stepped closer as doubt rose in his features. “They do not concern you?”
Not as they are.
At that, Karl Beáumie breathed heavily as if finishing a hard run. “Yes, you are right, and I will keep them locked away.” His voice took on a manic edge. “We are so close now that . . . that I can feel it. Death drifts farther from me each night.”
Yes, my lord. We are close to the end.
But Sau’ilahk’s thoughts belied those soothing words. Wynn Hygeorht would not sit idle. Chane Andraso had already come much too close. And the majay-hì, that anathema to any undead, could not be allowed to sense anything.
The duke had shown himself to be unstable and unpredictable, although last night’s rush had not destroyed his body.
Sau’ilahk knew that he must act quickly, or what he desired most could yet be stolen from him.
Come, my lord. Take up the key and let us begin.
