Chapter Seventeen

“How long will this take?” the duchess asked, leading the way. Apparently she knew exactly where Osha and Chane had gone last night.

“I don’t know,” Wynn answered. “Or if I’ll learn anything of use.”

Osha and Shade followed behind Wynn.

The duchess had suggested leaving Jausiff, Nikolas, and Aupsha out of this excursion. Aupsha had argued vehemently to be included, but Jausiff had denied her.

But in this way, should their small group be caught by any of the duke’s Suman guards, Sherie could simply say she’d been giving her guests a tour of the keep and taken a wrong turn. No one would believe her, but Karl’s guards wouldn’t challenge her, either. She would take responsibility for “the mistake,” and the only repercussion would most likely be an immediate escort away from any restricted areas.

It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the safest thing the duchess could come up with—and Wynn had not argued.

Sherie turned a final corner and paused to lift the lantern she held a little higher. Aside from a small barred window in the door at the far end, this passage at the keep’s back had no other lighting.

Wynn thought she heard the ocean’s surf echoing faintly through the thick wall, and the air felt cold and dank.

“I have spent little time back here in recent years,” Sherie said quietly, still facing forward. “Karl and I . . . and Nikolas . . . sometimes snuck outside this same way.”

Wynn heard a slow, shaky breath in the silence that followed, and the duchess stepped onward. Suddenly Osha slipped past, and Shade came up beside Wynn. Osha was the first to reach the passage’s end, though he didn’t stop at that door leading outside. Instead he ducked to the right and vanished into a side way. Wynn did stop briefly at the door—for she could hear the waves below the keep’s back side more clearly through the door’s small window bars.

On an impulse, she tried the door and found it locked, as Sherie, followed by Shade, stepped past through the right arch. Wynn joined them and found Osha standing before another heavy door two steps down a short stairway that led the other way, parallel to the passage.

Osha crouched before the door and eyed its iron lock plate.

“I don’t suppose you can open it?” she whispered.

He shook his head without looking back as he answered in Numanese, “I not learn . . . not time.”

At this, the duchess frowned, looking between them.

Wynn was not about to explain Osha’s past, what he had been, or that he had never left his people’s land until she had gone there. But she understood that he’d never had a chance to learn skills such as picking locks.

However, Osha gripped the door’s handle and twisted it slightly until it stopped—probably just to be sure it was locked.

Wynn flinched at the soft click, for the last thing they needed was anyone below hearing someone at the door. She waved everyone back up to the passage, where they could talk more easily.

Aupsha’s device had led her and Jausiff here, and soon after, guards had come this way, caught Chane, and forced Osha to hide.

“Whatever you are going to do, do it quickly,” Sherie whispered.

“You should leave, as this will take a little time,” Wynn countered. “It is one thing to be caught walking about the keep with the lady of the house . . . but something else entirely to be found lingering near that door by your brother or his men. Anyone caught here might need someone in authority still free . . . who wasn’t involved.”

“Exactly what are you going to do with a locked door in your way?”

Wynn faltered, for she certainly wasn’t going to explain the curse of her mantic sight. Even if the duchess believed her, it would take too long and raise more questions—and possibly suspicions. And in a silent war with an opposition seeking the same secrets as she did, Wynn had learned never to share any secrets of her own with anyone until necessary.

Sherie still watched her, and Wynn didn’t answer the question as she waited.

“Very well,” the duchess said. “I will expect to hear from you . . . soon.”

As the duchess turned away, she offered the lantern. Wynn shook her head and held up one of her cold-lamp crystals. She waited until Sherie was fully gone from sight.

“Osha, I’m going to do this while sitting,” Wynn said, and she handed him the crystal. “Do you remember how to use it?”

He nodded and brushed it once with his other hand. A soft light rose inside the crystal.

“Don’t make it too bright. Too much light might be seen under the door . . . or interfere with what I’m going to try. If I start to topple, catch me before I hit the floor and make any noise.”

Osha looked up from the crystal, asking in Elvish, “What do you mean? I thought you had been honing your ability while at the guild.”

“Yes . . . but once I start, it can be difficult the longer I go on,” Wynn answered. “Shade may have to help me end it, if I can’t do so myself.”

Even Shade rumbled in displeasure as Osha shook his head in doubt.

“No more time for arguments,” Wynn warned, hooking a finger at them as she turned to the door. “Both of you be quiet and let me focus.”

Her mantic sight was a hard-won blessing forever caged in a curse. It was not a true talent or a metaologer’s ability based on years of training and knowledge. This wild taint had been left in her from tampering with a mantic form of thaumaturgy. Once the sight was engaged, she could see the presence of the Elements, one at a time, in—and through—all things. So far Spirit was the only one that she could see well, but that was the one she needed to see now.

She went down the two steps and knelt before the door, leaving herself a little room. Osha dropped to one knee behind her on the left as Shade settled near to her right. Extending the first finger of her right hand, Wynn traced the sign for Spirit on the floor and encircled it.

At each gesture, she focused hard to keep those lines alive in her mind’s eye, as if they were actually drawn upon the stone. Then she scooted forward to sit atop the pattern and traced a wider circumference around herself.

It was a simple construct, but it helped shut away the outer world as she closed her eyes to seek out the elemental essence, rather than presence, of the world and let it fill her. Starting with herself, as a living being in which elemental Spirit was strongest, she imagined breathing it in from the air as well. Then she felt for it, as if it could flow up into her from the floor’s stone.

Wynn held inside her head the first simple pattern she had stroked upon the floor, as she called up another image. Chap—Shade’s father—appeared in the darkness of her closed eyes, and she held on to him as well.

Shade huffed once beside her, and Wynn’s concentration faltered at the sound. She managed to pull both pattern and image back into focus. She envisioned Chap as she’d once seen him before with her mantic sight.

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.

• • •

Chane grew more desperate as time crept by. But to escape this room, he would have to break the door. In doing so he would lose the element of surprise.

Wynn sat on the end of Osha’s bed nearest the door. Her chin rested in her hands with her elbows propped on her knees. If there were more than two guards posted outside, the chance of injury to her—before Chane could clear a path—was too high.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“That I wish I could see out into the passage . . . or into the next room to know if our weapons are truly there.” He thought he had heard them dropped in there, but he wanted to be certain.

“Weapons are there,” Osha stated flatly where he leaned against the wall. He had not moved since listening to the guards enter Wynn’s room.

Wynn looked up at Chane. “Do you want me to try?”

The question confused him at first and then he understood. “No! Even one use of your mantic sight has always left you incapacitated.”

“I’m better.”

“Twice is foolish!”

Shade rose from where she lay, sat before Wynn, and growled at her. Clearly the dog agreed with him.

“Only way,” Osha butted in. “She can do.”

Chane turned on him. “You do not know anything about it!”

“I know her,” Osha added, stepping away from the wall.

Before Chane could think of putting the elf down . . .

“Stop it, all of you!” Wynn ordered, even grabbing Shade by the muzzle as she fixed on Chane. “I only need a moment, maybe two, to get the count and position of the guards, and maybe glimpse where our weapons and my staff are. If there are too many out in the passage, then nothing is lost anyway. And it’s better than just sitting here!”

Beyond the far bed—Chane’s bed—Nikolas silently eyed everyone, though his gaze flinched away when Chane looked over.

No one spoke for too long, and Wynn pushed her way around Shade to head for the door.

Both Chane and Osha started after her for differing reasons.

“No,” Osha said before Chane could, and the elf pointed to the room’s front corner at the foot of the first bed. “Best—short—to look from passage to room.”

That was not what Chane would have said, and he wanted to put Osha down right then. Wynn got in his way as she ducked back around the bed and crawled atop it to the corner.

Shade started growling again, but Chane knew it would not matter.

“Shade, enough!” Wynn snapped over her shoulder. “I don’t have a choice.” And she began tracing with a finger atop the bed.

“What are you doing?” Nikolas asked.

Chane found that the young sage had crept closer, not flinching now as he watched. No one answered Nikolas, and the sooner this was over, the better.

Wynn scooted forward over whatever she had traced upon the bed. At another pass of her finger around herself, she closed her eyes.

Nothing happened at first, and then she gagged.

Chane hated this, but he did not touch her yet. He only stepped around Shade for a better angle to see.

Wynn opened her eyes and shuddered as she peered at the wall between the room and the passage outside. Her head turned slowly, as if she followed something along the wall. Then she stopped, her sight line aimed roughly toward the passage’s back end.

“Two guards . . . keep guards,” she whispered, and then swallowed hard as if choking something down. “Both outside our door . . . with crossbows.”

She turned slowly the other way until Chane could no longer see her eyes. She stalled, then wobbled, and Chane almost rushed in. Wynn caught herself with one hand as her head turned further, and she faced the corner of the wall between their current room and hers.

“Bow . . . quiver . . . swords . . . are . . .”

Chane heard her gag, though she just sat there, facing the wall.

Then she began to topple back.

“Wynn?” Osha almost shouted, reaching for her.

Chane leaped onto the bed and dropped an instant before Wynn fell back across his knees and thighs. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth was slack.

“Wynn!” he rasped.

Her eyelids did not even flutter.

• • •

Sau’ilahk pushed Karl Beáumie longer and harder than ever before.

A quiver ran down the young duke’s arm to the deformed hand gripping the key, which held the spike out of the orb by the barest fraction. Lines of perspiration, all sparkling in the harsh, scintillating light escaping the orb, ran in rivulets down the man’s face and jaw.

“Must . . . stop,” he whispered. “Enough.”

A moment more, my lord. Only another moment . . . to gain eternity.

Sau’ilahk solidified his right hand and, without warning, gripped over the top of the duke’s deformed one.

Karl Beáumie lurched backward, slipping halfway through Sau’ilahk as he tried to pull free.

Sau’ilahk twisted his grip upon the duke’s hand and the key.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 740