Chapter Twenty

Chane took in everything as one Suman ran toward the trunk—but he lost sight of the guard Osha had wounded. There were four saddled horses; a small chest lay beside one of them, and the slightly larger trunk had rolled off the roadside. The running Suman skidded to a stop behind the trunk with his sword drawn as the duke backed up to the right of the man.

But where were the keep guards?

Chane felt that same tiny emptiness in his gut.

The beast within him lunged to the end of its bonds as he stalled longer in staring at Karl Beáumie. What he felt now was impossible. His senses told him the duke was a living man; he could smell this. Even if he had still worn the ring of nothing, he would have sensed an undead this close, if not sooner. Then he spotted the ruddy thôrhk—an orb key—around the duke’s neck.

“Step away from that trunk, both of you!” he rasped.

Instead the duke thrust both hands outward as his mouth began to work without a sound.

Nothing learned so far suggested the man had arcane skills. Then those silent utterances became whispers.

“Osha!” Chane rasped as loudly as he could. “His hand!”

• • •

Osha reached over his shoulder as Chane charged and felt for an arrow without a thread ridge above its feathers—one without a white metal tip. He pulled and fit it to the bowstring in one movement as he shifted laterally from tree to tree for a better line of sight. And he listened for any sound in the forest.

Too few guards of any kind were in sight, compared to the reported number that had left with the duke. One Suman stood over the trunk while another partially hid behind one of the saddled horses, but Osha saw not a single keep guard. Suddenly the Suman that he had hit with the first arrow came back into view—from a position crouched behind the upturned wagon—and this one reached for his sword.

Osha’s next arrow hit the thigh of the man’s same leg.

The Suman screamed out as he collapsed.

Hoping this might keep the other one near the trunk where he was, Osha drew another normal-tipped arrow as he shifted again.

He heard steel clash against steel just once and, when his sight line cleared again, he spotted Chane through the trees. Too much had changed in that instant, and a headless Suman lay on the ground.

Duke Beáumie faced away from Osha, and his empty hands were outstretched toward Chane, perhaps in fear and trying to hold off the undead.

Osha took aim at the armed Suman standing over the trunk.

“Osha!” Chane rasped. “His hand!”

Osha hesitated, quickly checking everything. Did that mean the duke or the Suman guard?

Then the duke’s head turned.

It took an instant before his gaze fixed. There was intent—not fear—in his eyes, and he twisted around with his hands outstretched toward Osha.

Osha’s aim shifted as the air between the duke’s hands began to warp. Before he could loose the arrow, fire erupted at the duke’s feet and then raced out through the trees straight at Osha.

Osha held his place as he released the bowstring.

• • •

Sau’ilahk spotted the elven archer out between the trees and immediately turned his conjuration on that new target. Flames erupted at his feet and raced into the forest.

His right hand lurched violently aside, and he cried out in sudden pain.

Shock chilled him at the sight of an arrow’s shaft through his malformed hand . . . and then he heard Chane coming.

Whirling back the other way, he saw his last able guard attempt to engage Chane . . . and actually block Chane’s first swing. The fight would likely last only a few moments at best.

Sau’ilahk reflexively reached for the duke’s sword on his hip, but he possessed no skill with such a weapon, and his hand was wounded, still impaled with an arrow. He was injured and outnumbered, and his body was not yet immortal. He doubted he could lift or drag the trunk with only his left hand.

The key he had once used to find an orb was still around his neck. He could use it again if need be.

With a hard swing, Chane sliced through the guard’s chest, and the man went down.

Sau’ilahk ran into the forest.

• • •

The instant the arrow left the bow, Osha threw himself aside. In his roll, he heard low branches and fallen leaves crackling as a heat struck his back. He came to his feet, still scrambling away before he turned.

All that was left of the racing line of fire were sizzling sounds, smoke, and bushes burning here and there. His first instinct as an’Cróan was to stomp out every last flame before the forest caught fire. Instead he drew another arrow and looked back along the fire’s path.

He spotted neither the duke nor Chane nor anyone through the smoke-hazed darkness.

Shock vanished at how the duke, a mere man, could send fire out of nothing into trees.

Osha fitted another normal steel-tipped arrow to his bow’s string and held it in place with the first finger of his bow hand as he ran for the road by the shortest route.

“Chane!” he shouted.

As he broke through onto the roadside a dozen paces west of the wagon, he did not have a chance to look for the undead.

The black majay-hì—and then Wynn—burst out of the forest on the road’s south side at a run. Osha veered toward them and then skidded to a stop as Captain Martelle came out on their heels.

Another guard came right behind the captain, and both men had swords in hand.

Wynn ran on for the overturned wagon, but Shade wheeled when she reached the road’s center.

Osha would never let anyone harm Wynn, or a majay-hì, but he hesitated at shooting men who were deceived in their duty.

He aimed and fired in front of the captain.

When the arrow struck the road, the captain stumbled in trying to halt, and the guard following behind collided into him. Both lost their balance and struggled to keep their feet.

Osha had already fitted another arrow and drawn it back, but he would not fire unless he had to. As he was about to warn them off, a swirl of dust passed him and rushed down the road.

A shape took form within it, and Osha stalled longer.

Dust in the darkness faded and a slender, cloaked figure clubbed the keep guard at a run. The guard collapsed as the figure halted two steps beyond him and turned.

Osha barely made out a mask obscuring the face within the cloak’s hood, but he did not mistake it for Chane.

Aupsha lunged before the captain could spin around—or Osha could take a clean shot.

She clubbed the captain with the heavy, dirt-coated branch in her hand. The blow struck the side of his head, and he went down and still in a blink. Shouts rose in the trees beyond the road’s far side.

Expecting more guards, Osha glanced away in less than a blink, and when he looked back . . .

Aupsha was gone.

He had no more time to ponder the way the masked woman had appeared. He ran for where Wynn had likely run behind the upturned wagon.

• • •

Wynn never slowed, knowing Shade would harry the guards long enough. She rounded the downed horses and ran behind the upturned wagon. Most of the flames from a fallen lantern were dying out, but . . .

A headless body in a yellow tabard stalled her. Another body in yellow lay not far beyond the first.

Chane stood between one Suman still alive on the ground and a trunk toppled on its side. The Suman leaned up against the wagon’s vertical bed just beyond another dead guard pinned under the wagon. He cowered away from the point of Chane’s longsword. A black-feathered arrow protruded from his thigh . . . and another from his haunch.

Chane’s head turned, and he pulled his glasses down upon spotting her. Only his eyes showed a little through the holes in his leather mask. She heard someone coming behind her and turned, ready to flash the staff’s crystal.

It was only Osha, and he stopped behind the downed horses, spinning around as he drew and aimed his bow back toward the open road.

“Shade!” he shouted.

The dog appeared within a breath and raced in at Wynn’s side.

Wynn had no idea what had happened here, but any relief that they’d all survived was short. The duke was nowhere to be seen, and she hurried to Chane.

He didn’t even look down and merely grabbed her forearm to pull her away from the wounded Suman as he tilted his head once toward the trunk.

“Open it quickly,” he said. “See that it contains the orb.”

“Wait,” Wynn countered. “Where is the duke?”

Shade started clawing at the trunk, and Osha soon came to help her. Wynn looked back and up to Chane, for he still hadn’t answered.

“Where’s the duke?” she repeated.

“Run into trees,” Osha answered instead, but Wynn still waited on Chane.

He brushed back his hood, stripped off his mask, and stuffed it into his belt. As he took a step toward the forest, she shifted Jausiff’s device to her other hand, holding it and the staff as she grabbed his arm with her free hand.

“Osha is correct,” Chane said. “But . . . perhaps so was Shade . . . somehow.”

Wynn didn’t know what that meant, but she let go of him and looked warily in all directions.

“Sau’ilahk is here?” she asked quietly.

There was a long pause. “No.”

She looked up and found Chane, with his longer dwarven sword in hand, still watching the trees.

“I sensed—felt—something,” he said almost absently. “I could smell the duke, and he was alive . . . but . . .” His narrowed eyes shifted toward Shade.

“Did the duke have an orb key?” Wynn asked.

Finally Chane looked down at her. “Yes. You stay with Shade and Osha and—”

As Chane’s gaze shifted again, Wynn followed it.

Both Shade and Osha had backed off from the opened trunk. There inside of it was the dark form of a globe and a spike, as if carved from one piece of stone.

“Get it to our wagon and guard it!” Chane rasped.

He took off into the forest before Wynn could make him explain the strange things he had said. Osha rose, bow in one hand with another arrow fitted to its slack string, and he stared after Chane.

“We have the orb, so the duke is no longer needed,” he said in Elvish. “Why did Chane go after him?”

Wynn ignored this and looked down at Shade. If the duke knew how to manipulate an orb with a key, had he also learned—from the wraith or on his own—how to use a key to track an orb?

“Go!” she told Shade. “Help Chane get that orb key, no matter what.”

Shade hesitated, but perhaps she knew enough to value what was at stake. Leaving Wynn and Osha alone with the orb, she bolted off after Chane.

“Martelle and that other guard could awaken any moment,” she told Osha. “There are more keep guards out there . . . and Aupsha. We need to move now.”

Osha crouched and grabbed one end handle of the trunk, then waited for her to do likewise as he eyed the one Suman left alive. Wynn didn’t turn to look at that man, who’d been watching and listening.

How much of what had been said had that one understood? What else, if anything, might he know to connect to what he’d heard? Her thoughts turned darker than she would have ever imagined.

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 the 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.

Feeling Chane’s grip on his left wrist falter, Sau’ilahk immediately wrenched his taloned hand free and drew it back. He could not kill an undead with mere claws, but he could slash out Chane’s eyes. Once blinded, the tall undead would flounder, and Sau’ilahk could take Chane’s head with the duke’s sword. And Wynn, in watching for her protector’s return, would see only the duke command his own guards to seize her.

And if the guards were not there, she would die even more quickly.

Burning pain suddenly shot through Sau’ilahk’s forearm. Teeth pierced his skin, and he screamed more in shock and anger than in pain.

The dog’s touch did not burn him as it once had in his spiritual form.

Sau’ilahk had to let go of Chane as Shade wrenched on his arm, and this time he cried out as his skin tore. He closed his left hand in a fist.

Branches still blocked clear sight, but he did not have to see to strike.

At the loud crack of his fist’s impact, skin on his other arm tore again. But the jaws came off, and he thrashed out of the branches to find the dog on the ground.

Her eyes were barely open where she lay slack-jawed and motionless.

One of Wynn’s precious protectors was dead. There was one more to finish before he could find her.

A hissing rasp rose out of the tree behind him. Sau’ilahk had begun to turn when a heavy weight slammed into his back and drove him face-first to the earth.

• • •

Panic and pain more than hunger fed Chane’s fury as he fell atop the duke. He had heard Shade attack, and then the duke’s grips had torn away one after the other. He had heard the deafening crack of a fist and then nothing more from Shade.

Trying to get free, the duke bucked wildly beneath him. With one hand Chane slammed the duke’s face back into the earth as he fought to keep the man pinned. Chane could feel the damage to his ribs along his back. He could not hold the duke down and still reach one of his swords. Fright and fury brought back all that happened.

The line of fire in the forest . . . the strange, tiny emptiness he had felt . . . Shade halting, poised in the road upon first spotting the overturned wagon . . .

It all nagged him again with what was not possible and yet had to be.

There was no duke anymore; the only thing that could have caused all of this was the wraith.

Somehow, Sau’ilahk had taken a man’s flesh.

The wraith had maimed Nikolas, murdered and fed upon young sages, and now killed Shade—and it kept coming for Wynn.

Panic and pain died. Hunger took their place. The beast inside consumed Chane whole, and the night grew brilliant in his eyes.

He snarled his fingers into the duke’s—Sau’ilahk’s—hair and wrenched his prey’s head aside. Diving down hard, he sank his teeth into the exposed side of the neck and throat. Blood welled and leaked from his mouth as his prey went into a frenzy. Chane clamped down until his teeth hit bone.

No euphoria came this time as life filled him. He drank until the thrashing beneath him grew weak. He kept on and on until he heard a beating heart begin to slow.

Chane tore his teeth out before that heart stopped.

He wanted that black spirit to know—feel—its last moment. After a thousand years or more, it would die in horror, knowing that it had failed and would never touch Wynn.

The beast within Chane settled into sated contentment.

But there was no such contentment for him as he stared at Shade’s still form. Why did he feel such sorrow, such loss, over one born as a natural enemy to his kind? They had tolerated each other only for Wynn’s sake.

Slow, shallow wheezing reached Chane’s hunger-sharpened ears. He barely noticed it at first beneath the breeze in the forest. Then it caught and rolled, as if the next breath came before the last one could finish—two different, barely audible breaths overlapping each other.

Chane looked down at the torn mess of Sau’ilahk’s throat and then back at Shade. Without thinking, he clamped his hand over the duke’s mouth and smothered any further breaths until the duke’s heart stopped.

Still he heard a weak, slow set of halting breaths.

Chane lunged from his crouch and cleared the distance to drop on all fours beside Shade’s limp form. It was painfully long before he heard another shallow breath from her.

• • •

Osha jumped from atop the wagon and ran up the road before Wynn could even call to him. The light behind him winked out: she had likely let the staff’s crystal fade. It did not matter—he knew exactly where he would find Aupsha lying hobbled.

He kept his eyes on that spot in the dark and drew another arrow with a Chein’âs head as he ran, until he actually saw and closed on her.

Aupsha lay curled on her side and clutching the shaft of the arrow deep in the back of her thigh. She watched him from within her leather mask, and he heard pained panting. Beyond and to the right of her lay the trunk, toppled over on its front.

Osha’s relief came at that sight, for the orb that Wynn sought was safe. Almost looking at Aupsha again, he took a step.

A handful of mucky dirt and pebbles struck his face and chest.

He retreated instinctively, swiping the back of his hand across his face. His sight cleared as Aupsha came out of a roll and grabbed one handle of the trunk. He drew back the next arrow, and then she and the trunk came apart.

Aupsha and the trunk blew away in the dark—and the orb was gone again.

Osha stood wide-eyed for an instant. He rushed along the road, keeping the breeze directly against his back, and he followed where it pushed him slightly toward the northern side.

He was not beaten yet. He would not be beaten at all.

From what he had seen when she had first taken the trunk, she could not go far with it.

Osha halted shy of the roadside trees and raised the bow outward while drawing back the arrow set in its string. He waited, feeling for the piece of white metal beneath the bow handle’s leather wrap to grow warm and begin to pull in his grip.

He waited for the handle to track the Chein’âs arrowhead embedded in Aupsha’s thigh. The bow handle did not move in his hand.

Osha panicked.

On his way to Wynn’s homeland, every time he lost an arrow during practice and then sought it out, he had felt the bow try to turn in his grip and lead him when he went astray. Why did it not do so now? He calmed himself and began listening, just as the tainted greimasg’äh had taught him.

Brot’ân’duivé had been merciless, forcing Osha to find every movement of air along any path an arrow could fly. What could not be seen of the air’s movement often left something to be heard in its passing. There were also sounds that distinguished anything not caused by even the slightest breeze.

It was dark now without Wynn’s light. In his thoughts he noted the position of every form he knew only by the way the air’s movement changed its sound.

He heard underbrush rustle softly, and not from the wind.

The bow’s handle tried to torque that way in his grip. He let it turn him as he dashed off the road, and only a few steps into the trees a glint ahead caught his eye. He ran for it only to look down upon a black-feathered arrow lying upon the forest floor. Its white metal head was obscured with blood; this sight filled him with alarm and two thoughts.

The bow handle could not track an arrow while the thief rode the wind.

Aupsha had pulled it out, and now he had no way to find the orb in her possession.

He snatched up the arrow and held it in his grip upon the bow, and he turned, aiming the other notched arrow among the trees. His panic only grew at having failed Wynn, and he had left her alone, unguarded, in trying to do as she had asked.

Osha went still and listened again.

Either of the guards left unconscious upon the road might soon recover, and there was still one keep guard unaccounted for. More troubling, the one remaining Suman, though wounded twice, remained near her. Osha was torn between continuing here or running back to Wynn.

But she placed the orb’s retrieval above all else, including herself.

Leaves rustled in the forest as a branch crackled.

At that sound not made by the air, Osha took off through the trees.

He traversed across the wind until it blew straight at him, always keeping his eyes fixed toward the position of that sound. When he found a clear line of sight, he halted, raised and drew his bow, and turned slightly as he peered through the forest.

It was a dangerous place to stop, but if she tried to come on the wind, she would have to appear right in front of him . . . or behind him.

A dark shape passed behind one far tree trunk.

“Stop!” he ordered in Numanese.

The form halted as it hobbled beyond the tree’s other side while it dragged the trunk. Its hooded head turned toward him. He could not see the masked face inside the hood and did not need to.

“Drop trunk,” he shouted. “Step way.”

“You think . . . you do what is right,” she called back, her words broken by labored pants. “It belongs with . . . my people! You cannot keep it safe . . . more than we can.”

“Drop!” he commanded again, inching forward, blindly feeling each step before weighting a foot.

He did not want to kill. He had never done so, even after being given his place among the Anmaglâhk. He had seen enough death since then or knew of too many who had died suddenly in the night after Brot’ân’duivé and Most Aged Father declared war among the caste.

Osha did not have to kill to stop Aupsha, but he would not let her take to the wind again. His gaze dropped along the black shadow-filled split of her cloak to her unwounded thigh. She could not see his face—his eyes—inside his own hood any more than he could see hers.

Aupsha threw herself backward.

Osha almost released the arrow but stopped himself as she vanished from his sight behind that far tree. He lowered the bow as he rushed leftward, and then heard her shift the other way in her stumbling. At his next reverse she countered again, keeping the tree between them.

She was listening as he would for any move that he made.

He planted himself in silence. He now needed distance for what he must do.

There was one further thing he had learned of his “gifts” from the Burning Ones. This he had not shared with anyone, even the blood-soaked greimasg’äh.

Osha raised his bow and drew back the arrow with a white metal head . . . just as he had one late morning on the way to Wynn’s homeland.

One morning in the Broken Lands, he had stayed out too long in practice. As he had aimed at a far oak’s knot on his final shot of that day, the air grew still, and he let loose. In the same instant, Brot’ân’duivé shouted for his return. The distraction caused a flinch, and his aim shifted.

Even as the arrow left the bow, Osha knew it would miss the oak on the right side. He cursed under his breath and swung the bow out of his way to watch the arrow’s flight.

And the arrow neared the oak in an instant. . . .

Osha heard Aupsha struggling away beyond the far tree, and he let fly through the dark just to the left of the tree’s trunk. In less than a breath, as the arrow passed the trunk, he shifted his hand—and the bow’s hand—directly in line with the tree.

It was not just the bow’s white metal handle that answered to the call of a like arrowhead.

Both were one and answered to each other.

That late morning alone in the woods, as the greimasg’äh had called out, the arrow missed the oak on the left instead of on the right . . . when he had shifted the bow out of his line of sight.

Out in the dark, the arrow’s flight turned slightly as if nudged by a sudden breeze.

It vanished beyond and behind the tree, and Osha took off at a run before Aupsha even shrieked.

He only hoped—wished—the wound was not mortal as he rounded that far tree. And he saw nothing but the small trunk containing the orb rolling and crackling through low weeds down a slope to his feet.

Osha left the trunk where it lay and ran on, fitting the already-bloodstained arrow to his bow’s string. Atop the rise, he halted to listen. The only sounds he heard were those caused by the wind in the forest. He lowered the bow to his side and held its arrow against the string with his left hand.

Even if Aupsha had slipped away upon the breeze, she would be too far downwind to quickly double back for the trunk. She had been wounded again, though he did not know how badly or where. He could track her again by the second arrow carried with her once—if—she reappeared.

Osha hurried downslope for the trunk—and the bow twisted in his grip.

He halted, looking down it, for he had not raised the bow up to seek out an arrow.

One step below the rise’s crest lay the arrow he had guided around the tree. Its white metal head was obscured with blood, as was two-fingers’ width of its shaft. He snatched it up as he ran and slid downslope, for there was no time left to wonder where Aupsha had gone now.

Osha slung his bow over his shoulder as he slid both arrows back into his quiver. He grabbed the trunk containing the orb and stalled for an instant at its weight. Then he went running through the forest for the road. Often glancing behind himself, he hurried back for Wynn.

No one, especially a cloaked and masked shadow, reappeared among the trees.

Osha had the orb. He had not failed Wynn.

• • •

Chane ran with Shade in his arms, and she did not stir even once at being jostled so roughly. Her breaths were still slow and shallow. The blow might have done more damage than he could sense or see.

Back in the clearing, he had hesitated only long enough to grab the blood-smeared orb key off the duke’s—Sau’ilahk’s—shredded neck. He then quickly hung it around his own neck and retrieved his swords before he had gathered up Shade.

Amid his flight, shocks of pain shot through Chane’s back into his chest as he began to wonder . . . to fear. . . .

Had the death of the duke’s body truly taken Sau’ilahk with it? Had the wraith been trapped and killed by that as well? And, worse, how much should he tell Wynn?

She—they—had one too many times believed Sau’ilahk to be finished off. How could he tell her what he had realized in the final moment as he had faced the duke, and then share his own uncertainty? What was crueler, to know or not, and either way be left in doubt?

Unable to even shout at Shade to awaken, Chane looked down on her. He let hunger come again to eat his pain and charged faster through the trees than a living man could have with such burdens. His anger grew at the knowledge that even Wynn—or anyone within reach—might be unable to do anything for Shade.

• • •

Wynn anxiously watched for Osha’s return, for he had been gone far too long. She was about to go after him when Captain Martelle climbed to his feet.

Looking around, the captain appeared beyond confused. There were two other guards on the ground. One of them wasn’t moving, but the other began to stir as the last of the keep guards stumbled from the trees with a large knot on his forehead. That one stopped and stared at the others as Martelle continued turning slowly, looking everywhere.

Karl Beáumie was nowhere to be seen.

Wynn was lost for what to do. If she ran after Osha, what would happen if Chane and Shade returned to face the guards? She looked into the northern trees, but even if they were returning, it was too dark to see anything in there.

Someone snatched the staff out of Wynn’s hand.

She turned in surprised anger and looked up into the bleary and equally angry eyes of Captain Martelle. He now held her staff in one hand and a sword in the other.

“Where is the duke?” he demanded.

Wynn hesitated again, trying to think of a believable lie. “He ran off . . . after . . . after some of the Sumans turned on him. My swordsman went after him.”

For the moment, trying to take her staff back would be foolish, even if Martelle believed her. She could hardly blame him, since she’d used the staff to blind him and his men. Grabbing the staff in a sudden lunge to ignite a flash might not work this time.

Martelle’s angry expression turned confused as well, and he didn’t make another threatening move. After all, she was a sage, and Aupsha was the one who had actually attacked his men, though they wouldn’t recognize the servant woman the way she was attired now.

All that became pointless as the captain stepped around her and headed for the wagon’s front end and the dead horse. Wynn clenched her jaw as she followed. What would he think when he saw the dead bodies of the Sumans that lay beyond the overturned wagon?

The horse she’d freed had rushed off but remained in sight down the road. The captain halted before he fully rounded the dead one, and Wynn knew what stalled him.

A headless body lay there, likely Chane’s first opponent.

She circled wide so as not to startle the captain, but by the look on his face, he wasn’t remotely troubled by the deaths of the duke’s foreign guards. Perhaps he understood that something was terribly wrong with his duke and this was all part of it, but Wynn grew worried over something more. She stopped herself from spinning frantically to search and perhaps prodding the captain to act rashly.

The one wounded but still-living Suman was gone from behind the wagon.

Wynn swallowed hard, half wishing she hadn’t let Osha stop her.

Martelle stepped along the wagon’s back, but Wynn again looked down the road—and still there was no sign of Osha. She considered whether to tell the captain what was truly happening here. When she glanced back, he had paused, taking in all that he saw. He finally stopped studying the carnage and almost turned.

The captain looked out into the trees but farther inland than where Chane had gone. Wynn wasn’t certain what Martelle saw. His features hardened, and his breaths grew heavy, sharp, and audible. He took off into the trees at a rush, and Wynn hurried after him.

It was so dark that she wasn’t certain what he was doing. When he stopped ahead of her by one tree and stood there looking down, she reached into her robe, pulled out a cold-lamp crystal, and swiped it along her robe.

Wynn stepped wide around the captain as the crystal ignited in a soft glow. The captain didn’t even look up.

Beyond his feet lay the body of another keep guard.

The man’s hair was so grayed that it looked nearly white under the crystal’s dim light. He had shriveled and aged beyond recognition of who he was . . . had been.

Wynn knew what this meant. Her breaths quickened until she began to shake as she looked everywhere through the trees.

Sau’ilahk was here somewhere.

“Did you see what happened to him?” Martelle asked.

Wynn spun on him. “Give me the staff now!”

The anger in Martelle’s face increased, as if bits and pieces of all that had happened to him came back. He faced her and didn’t even glance at the staff.

“Where’s the archer, the Lhoin’na?” he asked.

“Give me that staff, or we’re all dead! It’s the only thing that can stop who did this.”

The captain leaned the staff farther out of reach and raised the point of his sword into her way. Then she heard footsteps behind her and looked back. Another guard stepped around the wagon’s front and the dead horse as he looked from her to his captain.

Wynn turned and bolted out of either’s reach for the nearest open way between the trees. A loud thud from somewhere on the road carried in the night.

“Not move! Stay!” someone shouted.

Wynn knew that broken Numanese before she even halted and turned.

Osha stood some twenty paces inland, in the middle of the road. He had one arrow drawn back as he aimed at the guard and the captain near Wynn. Another arrow was gripped in his hand holding the bow.

And at his feet was the orb’s trunk.

Wynn didn’t have time for relief. Osha suddenly swung the bow and pointed it up the road past the overturned wagon.

“Stay! Quiet!” he shouted, likely at the other guards still out there.

Wynn barely heard the captain shift a slow step behind her. She didn’t turn as fast as Osha did, and she followed the line of his aim back to Martelle watching her and him. And then she flinched back another step.

A sword’s tip appeared from behind the captain and dropped lightly on his left shoulder.

“Do not move!” a voice rasped. “I do not wish to harm you.”

Chane stepped out of the shadows behind Captain Martelle; the tip of his long dwarven sword still rested on the captain’s shoulder. Wynn sagged in relief for an instant and then hurried in to jerk her staff out of the captain’s grip. Up close, she stalled at the sight of Chane.

He wasn’t wearing his cloak, and his hair was wet. A dark smear showed on one side of his jaw, as if something had been wiped away in careless haste.

And a thôrhk—an orb key—of ruddy metal hung around his neck.

About to ask, Wynn looked him straight in the eyes. Chane shook his head once and quickly looked away, leaving her at a loss. Obviously he didn’t want her saying anything as yet, but where was Shade?

Chane looked over her head toward the wagon’s front. His eyes narrowed as his features hardened, and his gaze remained fixed as his head jerked once toward the wagon. Wynn backed away from the captain before she turned to see the one guard near the wagon’s front retreating slowly.

“Osha?” Chane shouted, though it was only a strained rasp.

“Have them all!” Osha shouted back.

He swung the bow slightly as he tracked the retreating guard, and Wynn quickly threw the lit cold-lamp crystal out to give him more light. It bounced to a stop a few yards from the trunk.

“Please join your men,” Chane said as he nudged the captain to follow the one guard. “We have no intention of harming any of you. You need only listen to what I will tell you.”

Wynn glanced at the orb key still around Chane’s neck, though he kept his eyes on the captain.

Wynn and her companions had not only recovered an orb but its key as well this time. They had all survived, but . . .

Wynn grabbed Chane’s arm as he passed, but he wouldn’t look down at her.

“Back the way I came,” he whispered. “A short way into the trees. She is . . . injured. Hurry . . . and I will come for both of you.”

Wynn swallowed so hard that it hurt. She didn’t even question her safety in knowing Sau’ilahk could be near, and she took off into the dark forest.

“Shade!” she shouted, trying to get out her spare cold-lamp crystal as she ran.

She heard nothing but her own clumsy footfalls and her own fast breaths. She didn’t get the other crystal out until she spotted a dark heap in the open between three tall trees.

Wynn recklessly dropped the staff and fell to her knees as she swiped the crystal twice across her thigh. All but Shade’s head was covered with Chane’s damp cloak, and the tip of her tongue hung from between her front teeth.

“Shade?” Wynn whispered, leaning close.

The dog didn’t even twitch, though her eyes appeared open in the barest slits.

Wynn carefully peeled away the cloak. A careful touch revealed that blood was still wet in Shade’s neck fur and along one foreleg, but there wasn’t much, not enough to leave her in this state. Wynn carefully felt everywhere, though she feared causing more injury. Her fingers lightly passed over the back of Shade’s head.

Her fingers stained red, and her breath caught.

“Please open your eyes. . . . Look at me. . . . Say something.”

Not one memory-word came to Wynn.

Her bloodstained fingers trembled in hovering less than a finger’s length above Shade’s body. Her sight warped and blurred as the tears began to fall.

“Don’t you leave me, sister,” she whispered. “Not like this.”

Almost holding her breath as she watched Shade, Wynn still sat there in the dark. Even when Chane and Osha came, she couldn’t move.

Chane quickly rounded her and crouched on Shade’s far side, and still Wynn watched only Shade.

“We must leave,” he whispered. “I have given the keep guards the treasury chest and as much of a story as I could concerning the duke taking flight. We need to go before they question anything and turn back.”

Chane lifted Shade, and Osha had to pull Wynn to her feet.

• • •

In a forest clearing, a corpse lying facedown in the wet dirt twitched in the predawn.

Sau’ilahk opened his eyes but saw—heard—nothing at first. Everything was so quiet—too quiet—now that all of the wind had died. He lay still, not even blinking, as he tried to understand where he was. Then he remembered Chane Andraso and the black majay-hì. At that he panicked and tried to lift his head, but it barely rolled over the wet earth.

The sound of that movement was all he heard. Not a footfall, a paw’s claws upon the ground, or even a breath.

Sau’ilahk grew frantic. Why could he not even hear his own breaths?

And he remembered . . . dying . . . after Chane tore out half his throat and then suffocated him with one hand.

Sau’ilahk sucked in air and choked on blood congealed in his throat. He struggled to push himself up and put a hand to his neck. He felt the mess of his own flesh, and his hand came away coated in a sticky black-red mess.

Shock numbed his mind, and when he could actually think again, there was something missing . . . something he had not felt in that one touch to himself.

The thôrhk—the orb key—was gone.

And he could feel no heartbeat within his chest.

Sau’ilahk.

At the hissing whisper from Beloved, his god, Sau’ilahk tried to scream and only choked.

You have what you always desired . . . a body immortal and immune to death. Does this not please you?

And the only way he could answer was within his own thoughts. No! Not flesh like I was . . . not undead still. What have you done—allowed to happen?

You blame me?

Sau’ilahk faltered. Beloved had not led Chane Andraso here, had not instigated the fight that led to this. Still, had his god somehow known? Once again Beloved had deceived him, tricked him with a half-truth as fulfillment of a promise from a thousand years ago.

Something more occurred to him. . . .

He had lost both the orb and the key to which Beloved had guided him.

It is of no matter. That orb . . . that anchor of Existence . . . served its first purpose and will serve again where it now travels. It shall serve, as you will, until I am free at last.

Sau’ilahk went colder inside than the chill of his dead flesh.

He—his desire, his anguish—had been nothing more than a tactic for some purpose known only to his god. He was left with a corpse, not as a body but as a prison.

Be content . . . servant.

This time the hiss carried a threat, like the scales of a great serpent grinding grains of sand in the dark place of dreams where it slept.

Sau’ilahk felt a faint, uncomfortable tingle on his skin.

Light grew over the forest to the east, and he waited for it to turn him to ash . . . and he waited. To see a dawn after a thousand years would have once been a joy. To face it now would at least be freedom from the cruelty of his Beloved.

Sau’ilahk watched as the sun did rise, and he began to moan and sob. But the dead could not weep, for a corpse could not shed tears.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 6034