by Barb Hendee
That guard should not be left alive.
One living horse tangled in the wagon’s harness kicked and whinnied.
Wynn turned, looking at it lying half across its dead companion. It kicked again uselessly into the air with one forehoof. There was no time to worry about such a thing while trying to safeguard an artifact—a potential weapon—sought by the Ancient Enemy’s minions.
And yet . . . too many innocents always ended up suffering in her wake.
“Osha, give me your dagger.”
As he held it out, she hesitated and looked down at Jausiff’s device, which she still gripped along with her staff. She had the orb, but she was reluctant to let go of the slightly curved central piece of another orb key. It would go dormant when she did so, and she did not know how to reactivate it. It could be of so much use in finding the final orb, but she certainly couldn’t hold on to it endlessly until then.
Tucking the device inside her robe, Wynn let go of it after another brief hesitation. She took the dagger from Osha, but then stalled in eyeing that one Suman now warily watching her.
“Bârtva’na!” Osha whispered in an’Cróan—Do not.
Wynn didn’t look at him and went off to cut the horse free.
• • •
Chane ran through the trees with his senses fully widened. He paused every thirty strides to listen, but he did not hear any movement ahead. Then he heard something coming behind him, and ducked behind a bramble.
When he heard earth tearing under claws, he rose and stepped into the open even before Shade raced out around a moss-laden oak. At least she had not howled in her hunt, though perhaps she did not sense what she had on the road. However, he was not pleased that only Osha remained to guard Wynn.
This provided all the more reason to find the duke as quickly as possible.
Shade did not slow and raced straight by Chane.
He stared after her before he realized she might track their quarry better than he could. He took off after her and exerted himself to keep up—to keep Shade’s tail in sight. Not that he needed to do so, for he would have heard her from a distance by the way she tore through the brush. Perhaps so would the duke.
Shade suddenly swerved.
When Chane caught up to where he had last seen her, she was gone. The whole forest was silent as he peered around the fringe of a clearing. His gaze finally locked on a dim form in the darkness who was watching him from the clearing’s far side.
The duke must have realized that running was pointless.
The arrow was gone from his right hand. Perhaps he had snapped and pulled it out midflight, but that gloved hand looked wrong more than wounded. Its black leather bulged, as if the hand had swollen too much, and the ends of the glove’s fingers were split open.
Chane did not see bloodied fingertips. Dark talons protruded in their place.
The duke suddenly raised his other hand outward as his mouth began to work.
Chane was too far away to hear clearly. He charged into the clearing to close the distance before the duke could unleash another line of racing fire. For an instant he almost remembered seeing that effect once before.
Violent wind slammed in all around Chane and almost twisted him off his feet.
Leaves and debris from the ground swirled up around him and blinded him as he stumbled. Almost instantly, painful droplets of water whirled in to pelt him harder and harder until he felt their sting too much. Everywhere he tried to look, he ended up shielding his eyes and face as those droplets began turning into wind-driven hail.
He no longer saw, smelled, or heard anything in the wind’s roar except the crackle of branches around the clearing’s edge. He whipped his longsword all around and tried to draw the older short one as he fought to regain a sense of direction. Even when he tried to run blindly, the pelting and hammering maelstrom still engulfed him.
Either the duke was trying to gain time to flee or to hobble him in order to . . .
Chane kept slashing with his sword as he turned every way to keep from being assaulted from behind. Amid panic, something else came to him.
This spell or . . . whatever . . . was too much for a mere dabbler such as himself. He had even heard of a thaumaturge who could manipulate the atmosphere in this way. Without many years of training, the duke could not have the knowledge and skill for this arcane effect—and less so for a spell rather than a ritual or using an object made through artificing.
Chane picked one direction and tried to run in a straight line. He had to reach the cover of the trees. He stretched out both swords ahead of himself in the hope that one might hit something to warn him before he did so.
The wind turned to a roar in his ears.
His face and hands began to burn as pelting hail turned to bits of ice. Hunger rose to eat the pain, and the beast within him began wailing in fear as well as in fury . . . until Chane thought he heard that sound with his own ears.
The wind suddenly died. Though his ears still rang with its roar, he heard branches and leaves rattle under a sudden rain of hail and ice chips falling to the ground. Then came a familiar wail—no, a howl—all around him.
And then a scream . . . and then a snarl . . . and the tearing of cloth.
Chane spun toward those sounds as wild hunger made the night too bright in his eyes.
A huge black dog—wolf—tumbled toward the clearing’s center. It righted onto all fours and charged back toward a man dressed in black who was scrambling up to his feet.
Chane barely recognized Shade. Amid hunger fueled by panic and rage, he knew only that she went at his target, his enemy . . . his prey in the moment. His lips curled back from extended fangs, and he charged.
• • •
Sau’ilahk called upon his reserves, bolstering his flesh. The sensation was like nothing he had felt before, as if his sinews heated within and his bones grew dense. He willed the lives he had consumed to spread through the duke’s body . . . his new body.
The dog had taken him by surprise. Gouges atop his right shoulder from her teeth still burned, and Shade came again, leaping for his face as her jaws widened.
Sau’ilahk lashed out with his deformed hand.
His talons struck along her neck as her jaws snapped closed on his forearm. The pain was nothing to him as he slashed, tossing her aside as if she weighed a fraction of what truly she did. She hit the clearing’s earth to his right and yelped as she rolled. On instinct he grabbed the hilt of the sheathed sword on his hip.
There was no pain anymore in his arrow-wounded hand.
Sau’ilahk had been the highest of Beloved’s priests, not a warrior. But he did not need to be so to sever the head of a beaten dog. He drew the blade and took one step, and then he saw Chane Andraso coming. He barely raised his sword up at the first strike of Chane’s longsword.
At the impact of the steel, he wrenched his own sword aside and let his bolstered strength add extra force.
To his shock, Chane whipped a shorter sword across and down on both of their longer, entangled blades.
Sau’ilahk’s sword was torn from his hand.
In the same instant teeth clamped hard around his right calf.
He struck down as he closed his empty sword hand, and his fist connected with an audible crack against the dog’s head. He kicked her away, and she made no sound as she tumbled off.
Sau’ilahk saw Chane’s gaze flick toward the dog as his broken voice rasped something. He used the instant of distraction and grabbed both of Chane’s wrists. Squeezing his grips tight, he summoned the last reserves he had left.
Chane’s eyes widened as his face wrinkled in pain. Even his lips spread wide around a mouth full of fangs and teeth . . . like the dog’s. Both swords dropped from his hands, and Sau’ilahk twisted, trying to snap Chane’s wrists.
Chane’s hands closed on Sau’ilahk’s
own forearms and locked their holds together.
Sau’ilahk was sick of dealing with Wynn Hygeorht’s minions. He would make one of them falter.
“I will take back all that is mine,” he whispered at Chane, “and then take your little sage from you—finally!”
• • •
Some small part of Chane quieted inside. He stalled for an instant as his mind cleared.
Those words meant something . . . that brought memories and fear.
Fire had raced in a controlled line into the forest toward Osha. Chane had seen that before in the underworld of the Stonewalkers, when he, Wynn, and Shade had sought out clues to any remaining orbs’ locations.
An orb had been found in a lost dwarven seatt of ancient times. And again he and Wynn, along with Shade and Ore-Locks, had been seeking it out. But the key to that orb was missing when he and Ore-Locks had gone for it.
Both times Sau’ilahk had been there.
Chane’s gaze locked on the thôrhk—the handle, the orb key—around the duke’s neck. . . . And take your little sage from you . . .
Karl Beáumie knew Chane only as a hired guard, but those words implied something else. Shade had sensed an undead, as Chane had, but like no other that either of them had faced.
The only one he faced here and now was the duke.
Chane looked into Karl Beáumie’s manic eyes, and what he thought then was impossible.
The duke suddenly wrenched and pulled down on his right linked grip as he shoved hard on the left one.
Chane spun around the duke and lost his footing.
The force was too immense for a living man, and Chane did not regain his stance quickly enough. The duke drove him backward toward the trees at the clearing’s edge.
• • •
Wynn laid her staff aside to cut free the one living horse harnessed to the wagon. As it thrashed up, she grabbed her staff and quickly backed away. All four of its legs appeared sound, though its left shoulder had a deep slash, among other cuts and mud smears, and blood from its dead companion was spattered across its body. It would have to fend for itself and, she hoped, find its way back to the keep.
Wynn turned back. Wind pulled at the hood of her robe as she faced into it.
There was Osha, with his bow in hand and an arrow held fitted to its string, standing halfway between her and the orb’s trunk. For one moment she had thought to kill the last Suman guard for secrecy’s sake. Osha had somehow known and stopped her.
He had changed much because of what had been done to him. In the time Wynn had spent in his world, he had seemed kinder and more moral—even for an anmaglâhk—than anyone she had ever known. That hadn’t changed, not completely, and, knowing that the wounded Suman was still watching, she glanced toward the orb’s chest.
She wondered if Osha’s choice had been wise. Perhaps it would cause a problem in what might come, though she didn’t question it now.
Osha suddenly spun the other way and drew the arrow back as he aimed toward . . .
Air swirled with dust, or maybe grains like sand, and the wounded Suman choked and covered his face with an arm as it passed.
Wynn dropped Osha’s dagger and gripped her staff with both hands as a figure formed out of dust in the night.
“Do not move!” Osha ordered.
Aupsha stood there, cloaked and masked, and glanced once toward the freed horse. She then looked at only Wynn and ignored Osha entirely.
“The artifact belongs with my people,” she said.
Wynn hesitated—not at those words but rather at what she had just seen. Aupsha appeared to come and go at will, and yet she hadn’t gone straight after the orb. Was she here to explain herself, to try to take it through reason?
“No,” Wynn answered. “I know as much about the . . . artifacts . . . as you and yours, perhaps more. I, and those with me, have successfully found and hidden three of them. Your people cannot safeguard even one anymore. It would be found—again.”
Perhaps she said too much, though the woman had already heard about the orb of Earth, another “artifact.” Wynn simply needed to make an impression and avoid more bloodshed. Aupsha might be an opponent in the moment, but she and hers were not enemies as yet.
“You think you know more?” Aupsha asked with spite. “Then you know the artifact must not—cannot—be destroyed. And it must not be used again.”
Wynn faltered at this hint of new information. She had contemplated whether any of the orbs could be destroyed, but why “must not,” and what did that mean?
“My people guarded it for an age,” Aupsha continued, “from the time of our honored—and sacred—forebearer, who stole it at the cost of his life. We will guard it again and forever.”
A reply caught in Wynn’s throat. The mention of anything—or anyone—known from the war or the time of the Forgotten History tempted the sage in Wynn with many questions. But any delay would only give Aupsha a chance to act.
What mattered most—first—was taking control of that orb, and yet . . .
“What are your people called?” Wynn blurted out.
Even through that mask, Wynn heard Aupsha’s choked scoff before the answer.
“We do not call ourselves anything . . . to be known or sought!”
At a sudden thrashing of brush from the road’s far side, Wynn backed up, glancing around the upturned wagon’s front. A keep guard with a sword in hand stumbled out of the forest onto the road’s southern side. His head was bleeding, and Wynn quickly glanced back at Aupsha.
Had the woman in the mask gone back and attacked the remaining guards? That would explain their absence until now.
Aupsha retreated slowly, and Osha tracked her with his bow as she looked around the wagon’s rear. Wynn glanced back to the road.
The newly arrived guard halted at the sight of Captain Martelle and one of his comrades lying in the road. His gaze lifted to Wynn, and then his head turned sharply toward the wagon’s far end; he had likely spotted Aupsha.
The guard’s features twisted in anger.
Out of the corner of Wynn’s eye, she saw Aupsha move.
“Osha!” she shouted.
Then all she saw was Osha’s arrow fly, striking nothing but air, for Aupsha was too fast. Osha took off for the wagon’s rear, as Wynn sped around the other end and startled the injured horse.
“No!” she shouted, thrusting out the staff’s crystal, but it was too late to ignite it.
Aupsha reached the guard as his sword came around. She blocked the strike with a curved dagger, its blade flattened along her forearm. In the same instant, she struck into his chest with her other hand and her momentum. He went down.
“Aupsha, don’t!” Wynn shouted as Osha came out on the road beyond the wagon’s far end. “They’ve been tricked, only following false orders.”
Wynn saw Osha draw back his next arrow.
Aupsha turned, running west up the road and into the wind, and Osha did not fire as she passed him in her escape. Her form suddenly came apart like dust and sand, and she vanished, blown away by the breeze.
Osha turned back and bolted around his end of the wagon, and Wynn quickly did the same. She barely reached the roadside to peer behind the upturned wagon.
Aupsha was there, gripping one end of the orb’s trunk as Osha reappeared beyond her. Wynn didn’t have a chance to even raise her staff.
As she had on the road, Aupsha vanished like dust, along with the trunk . . . and the orb.
Wynn cried out in anguish and turned every way until reason took hold. Aupsha had to have come from inland along the road at first. And this time she wasn’t just moving unseen among the trees. She was moving on the wind, and that would limit where she could go.
Hearing a groan, Wynn looked back to see Captain Martelle attempting to push himself up with one arm. Osha raced toward her behind t
he wagon, and Wynn faced him.
“She’s moving on—”
“Wind, yes,” he finished.
He scrambled up the wagon’s wheels before Wynn said more, and he stood on the upper wagon wall as he looked inland along the road.
Pulling the arrow out of his bow without looking, he slipped its steel head back into the quiver over his shoulder. When his hand came back down, Wynn thought he’d pulled out the same again. But the one he now held had a thicker white metal tip.
“She would have an easier time on the road in the dark,” she said, this time in Elvish.
“I need more light!” he shouted.
Wynn ran up the roadside to behind the wagon so as not to blind him. She grabbed the glasses dangling around her neck and held them over her eyes as she raised the staff’s crystal high.
“Mên Rúhk el-När . . . mênajil il’Núr’u mên’Hkâ’ät!”
• • •
A blinding glare ignited behind Osha and lit up everything. Though he had his back to it, the intensity made him squint. His eyes quickly adjusted, and he spotted the whipping dark cloak down the road.
Aupsha had gained too much distance for him to catch up at a run, though she was not running while carrying the heavy trunk. That was good. Perhaps in riding the wind she could not go far with such a burden, and it now slowed her even more.
Osha needed every advantage possible, as he dared not miss, and he drew back a black-feathered arrow with its diamond-shaped Chein’âs point.
His gaze dropped from Aupsha’s swinging cloak to the clearer target of her right thigh. He did not aim along the arrow’s shaft, as only a beginner would do. He kept his eyes on his chosen target point, let his body adjust the bow’s angle by his intention, and then released the string.
Aupsha’s cry carried up the road as she fell, and the trunk tumbled from her grasp.
• • •
Sau’ilahk drove Chane toward the closest fir tree. Lower branches snapped and shattered as he rammed the maddening undead against the tree’s trunk. Chane’s eyes rolled up as bark cracked and shattered under his impact. But Sau’ilahk lost sight of his victim as branches snapped back in around him and needles cascaded down from the shuddering tree.
