Chapter Twelve

Not long past nightfall, a figure garbed in a full-length hooded black robe and cloak materialized in one small room of the keep’s underground chambers and passages. Inside a voluminous, sagging hood—where there should have been a face—was only darkness. Though the chamber’s air was still and stale, both robe and cloak shifted subtly, as if upon a breeze.

Sau’ilahk awakened from dormancy, fully aware and alone, for the man who usually awaited him was late.

It did not matter yet.

He raised one arm, and his sleeve slid downward. For an instant he stared at his own thin arm, hand, and fingers all wrapped in strips of black cloth. Even to him, his arm looked so real, so corporeal, but it was not. Anything might pass through it, as if it were a mirage upon the great deserts of his homeland. Focusing with intent, he turned his hand solid as he drifted across the chamber without the sound of a single step. He paused at the one small table, worn and bleached with age, and looked down upon the single object lying there. . . . A circlet, broken by design, made of ruddy metal.

It was thick and heavy, slightly larger in circumference than a great helm, and about a fourth of it was missing. From its open ends, protruding knobs pointed straight across the gap at each other.

Some might call it a thôrhk, a neck adornment worn by few honored dwarves, but it would more correctly be called a key.

Sau’ilahk picked it up with his willfully solidified hand and turned slowly away from the table. This chamber, carved from solid rock, was not large, but it was private, secure, and suited to his needs. It had perhaps once been a storage room or a cell for prisoners. One solid but aged wooden door behind him would open into a main subterranean chamber lined with similar doors that could also be locked.

To the right of the door was an iron tripod stand.

Three legs supported a like iron ring, which held the only other object in this locked room.

The globe resting in the stand was slightly larger around than the object he held, but it was not made of the same ruddy metal. Rather, the globe appeared fashioned from some unknown material, neither metal nor stone, and it was dark as char, with a surface faintly rough like evenly chiseled basalt. A spike of matching material pierced down through the globe’s center; its broad tapered top was wider from side to side than a clenched fist. The spike’s pointed tip also protruded through the globe’s bottom between the stand’s legs. But both spike and globe appeared formed from a single piece.

The very sight of it still caused Sau’ilahk to quiver with elation after a thousand fleshless years of yearning. Oh, how long had he suffered in his search for . . .

The orb—“anchor”—of Spirit.

His impatience growing, Sau’ilahk glanced at the door and then raised the thôrhk before the hollow of his dark hood. This object had been his salvation—once he’d finally realized it could serve a purpose beyond opening an orb . . . an anchor.

Earlier this year, he had been led by Wynn Hygeorht on a futile chase all the way to Bäalâle Seatt, a vast, forgotten, and long-fallen mountain stronghold of the dwarves in ancient times. He had hoped to find this very orb in that place, but the one hidden in the deepest depths was not the one he had sought for a thousand years.

Desperation had almost broken him in that moment and nearly pushed him into eternal grief and madness. That orb beneath a forgotten seatt was useless for his need to regain the flesh—his physical form—cheated from him by his god, who had promised him eternal youth.

Immortality—eternal life—was not the same as eternal youth.

One served the spirit while the other served the body, though the mind could cling to and go on with either. If only he had known then . . .

His spirit, that essence of self and a shadow of life, had gone on, but his body had aged and withered and died just the same. It had been even longer until his dead flesh decayed to dust, and he rose from his mountain tomb as only a spirit, an undead.

How he had screamed in horror and then raged that first night.

Nearly a thousand years later, in Bäalâle, in a dead-end tunnel far beneath the dwarven seatt, all that had been left to him was spite and the need to flee his pursuers. Before they caught up and found the false orb that meant nothing to him, he took the thôrhk—the key—he had found as well and hid it within the cave’s stone wall. He fled that place in the same anguish and betrayal that he had felt upon the first night he arose in death—but also in a growing hatred for his god.

How many days had followed in which he’d writhed in the grip of Beloved during his dormancy? How many following nights had he awoken, until one night came with a whispered hint from his god. . . .

Back to Bäalâle . . . back to the key . . . That is your hope of salvation.

This made no sense. It was the wrong key . . . for the wrong orb. Both were worthless, and he believed this urging to be another of a thousand lies from his god. He ignored that whisper, but in the nights that followed, Beloved teased him and beat him down in the dark.

The key is your only salvation . . . servant.

What other choice did he have? To find that little whelp of a sage yet again and hope she stumbled upon the true orb of his need?

Sau’ilahk relented and returned to Bäalâle Seatt. More whispered hints followed once the key was in his possession. And through Beloved’s teachings, he learned one thing he had never realized.

Any key could be used for any orb.

He also learned how to use the one that he had like a compass, and it led him to the hiding place of the anchor—the orb—of Spirit.

Since a time just past the end of what was now called the Forgotten History, that orb had been hidden away in an underground sanctuary in the mountains above the great desert. Beloved told him next to nothing of the strange sect that guarded it or of how they had even acquired the one anchor he sought.

It did not matter then, for taking it from them had been easy, and his joy could not be measured.

But it mattered now.

Sau’ilahk?

At the hissing voice inside his thoughts, he choked down hatred and obediently answered, Yes, my Beloved?

That very title stoked ire that he quickly quelled.

You teach the duke to use the anchor—its power—to gain your promised reward?

Yes, Beloved. I will have flesh again soon . . . as you promised.

A knock on the door cut him off . . . and then brought puzzlement. The man he awaited was the lord of this keep, and he never knocked.

However, outside the door were some of the Suman retainers—mercenaries—that Sau’ilahk had acquired to help gain the orb and move it to this place. He had instructed them all to serve the duke as needed.

The door opened.

One of Sau’ilahk’s Suman servants stepped halfway around the door’s edge and bowed his head at the sight of his master.

He was tall for his kind, and slender, and the other Suman guards viewed him as their leader. Also unlike the others, this one wore a close-trimmed beard along his jawline; with one center peak that ran up to his lower lip. His curved sword was still sheathed, so no immediate threat was likely.

“Master, forgive the intrusion. . . . I have news,” Hazh’thüm said, his eyes still lowered.

The very air around Sau’ilahk vibrated under his conjury to give him a voice. “What news?”

“Visitors in the keep. The duchess ordered the gates be opened, and she allowed strangers inside.”

The absurdity of this did not fully register at first.

Sau’ilahk had made it clear to the duke that no outsider was to be allowed into this place until their work together was completed. Likewise, no one here was to leave. Sau’ilahk would not risk anyone beyond the keep learning of his presence or the changes in the duke.

“One visitor is the son of the old counselor,” Hazh’thüm continued. “The duchess would not leave him outside, but he was not alone.”

“What of the others?”

“A young female sage, a tall swordsman, and a Lhoin’na archer. There was also a large black dog.”

Sau’ilahk stalled for an instant. “A female sage with a black dog . . . or do you mean a wolf?”

Hazh’thüm hesitated. “Perhaps, Master, but I have never seen such an animal with my own eyes.”

“What color was the woman’s robe?”

“At first it seemed black, like the dog . . . or wolf. Once the wagon passed under the gate’s braziers, perhaps blue but still very dark.”

None of this made sense, from all that Sau’ilahk knew of sages. If this one was a metaologer, then she could not be Wynn Hygeorht. But another female sage with a black “dog” seemed too unlikely. Then again, to his knowledge, Wynn had never traveled with an elf of any kind.

“What does the sage look like? And what of the swordsman?”

Hazh’thüm faltered, as if struggling for a description. “I could not clearly see her face, but the Numan male was tall, pale, with brown hair that tinged red. Perhaps that was only the brazier’s light. He was plainly dressed, though his clothes were finely made, from what I could see.”

The hiss from Sau’ilahk’s conjured voice began even before the servant finished a description that could fit Chane Andraso . . . an undead of flesh rather than spirit.

A female sage with a black “dog” in the company of Chane Andraso could only be Wynn Hygeorht!

How had she found him?

His first wild instinct was to find and kill her, but he hesitated.

“Does she carry a staff, perhaps with a covered upper end?”

Even with eyes still down, Hazh’thüm nodded. “Yes, Master.”

“You are dismissed!”

Hazh’thüm backed out, never looking up, and closed the door.

Sau’ilahk wallowed in fear and hate. The staff’s crystal emitted light that emulated the sun in the hand of that whelp of a sage. He had been burned out of existence once by that tool and had survived only because of Beloved’s intervention . . . and then he had suffered long for his failure.

Of course, that failure had not been his fault.

Wynn Hygeorht was nothing compared to him, but she was gifted with luck beyond belief. And she had a penchant for attracting or acquiring unusual allies, from an undead guardian and a majay-hì—a contradictory combination—to Stonewalkers, foreign sages, and more. How did a Lhoin’na archer fit in?

And how had Duke Beáumie reacted to this forced intrusion at the hand of his sister?

Slowly Sau’ilahk forced a state of calm reason.

The wisest path was to remain hidden and proceed with his current plans while he worked to learn more. Wynn could not reach him down here . . . and the young duke’s body was almost ready. A matter of a few nights at most.

The clack of an iron lock cut him off, and he heard the chamber’s door creak in opening. Sau’ilahk waited, still and silent with the thôrhk gripped tightly in his solidified hand.

The door swung open.

Duke Karl Beáumie quickly stepped in. Though tall, young, and handsome, with hawkish features and high cheekbones, he was not as beautiful as Sau’ilahk had been in life.

Dressed all in black with silver fixtures and adornments, the duke wore vambraces on both forearms above heavy leather gloves on both hands. Half turning his head, he ordered one of the Suman guards in the outer chamber to relock the door as he finally closed it.

None of Sau’ilahk’s Suman retainers would open that door again until the duke called to them to do so—as he always did.

That is, unless Sau’ilahk said otherwise.

He took in the sight of his nightly visitor.

The duke’s complexion had lost some of its luster since Sau’ilahk had first made his presence known to the young noble. His blue-black hair hung in an unkempt, unwashed tangle and his flesh was stretched tightly over his face. Dark circles of fatigue surrounded his eyes.

These lesser effects of the work they did together could not be helped.

Sau’ilahk bowed his cowled head in false respect.

My lord.

Since the first night of their secret work, a bond had formed between them, and the duke could hear Sau’ilahk in his mind as if the words were spoken aloud. But the young man did not respond to the greeting, and his haunted eyes fixed upon the orb.

“How much longer?” he asked, with a slight tremor in his voice. “How long until I need never fear death?”

Not long now, my lord.

Sau’ilahk’s pretense of continued servitude had served him well. He would not have found this place, or Karl Beáumie, without Beloved’s assistance. He knew he should be grateful, but gratitude was nearly impossible among the mounting deceptions and betrayals of his god.

And yet the young duke was nearly perfect for Sau’ilahk’s need.

Once Sau’ilahk had stolen the orb, Beloved had whispered that he must take it far from the southern territories. As he had fled north, he realized that what he sought next would be difficult to find. That obstacle had not occurred to him before in his obsession to merely find the orb of Spirit.

Sau’ilahk’s own flesh had long ago become dust. He needed a living body.

First and foremost, he needed someone young and beautiful. That went without question, for he had been so in his own time. Others had stared at him in awe, and he would have that again.

Second, he needed someone with enough power and position to hide, safeguard, and protect the orb until he found a way to make his new flesh immortal. He would not be cheated by Beloved again in asking for only “eternal life” . . . and then watch his new flesh wither as his own body had.

Third, he needed someone who feared death over all else, for whatever reason—someone willing to believe anything for the prospect of eternal life. Such a man was not as easy to find.

Beloved had whispered again to Sau’ilahk: Go to the coast of Witeny, to Beáumie Keep.

How his god had known of this place had made Sau’ilahk wary. Was this another manipulation, trick, or task to be followed by another and then another? In the end he could not take the chance of ignoring his god, not since he had finally gained the correct orb.

With newly acquired servants, plied with promises and threats and one death as an example, he had sought out this unknown place and the young duke. The rest had been a surprisingly easy seduction, and Sau’ilahk had always been gifted in that.

“There has been a development,” Karl said, the tremor in his voice increasing. “The keep has been breached. We have strangers among us.”

I have been informed. Can you not send them away?

The duke stared at him. “Not easily. One of them is . . . an old friend, not just of mine but of my sister.”

And he brought others?

Mild surprise, followed by a twist of frustration, rose on the duke’s pallid face. “Yes, an emissary from the guild . . . with bodyguards. She is delivering books to my counselor, but I cannot turn her out into the night.”

Sau’ilahk pondered this and wondered about these texts. Perhaps Wynn Hygeorht’s arrival was pure coincidence.

The duke’s expression shifted again to desperation, and he whispered sharply, “We must finish! We cannot let this interrupt the work—our work. I want no more haunts in my dreams . . . no more fear of retribution for what I did.”

Sau’ilahk would have smiled if he had a face that anyone could see. Karl Beáumie was as determined as Sau’ilahk to make the same body immortal and a vessel that could not be killed. He would never again fear death or what vengeful spirits lay in waiting on its other side.

“I cannot fail,” the duke whispered.

Sau’ilahk did not know the whole story, but he had gleaned bits and pieces over many passing nights. The elder duke had died by the hand of his son. Whether by accident, intent, or perhaps both in a moment of opportunity did not matter, for Karl Beáumie was desperate never to follow his father.

Shall we begin?

Duke Beáumie took a labored breath. With his left hand, he pulled off his right glove, exposing a grotesque transformation.

That right hand was deformed, slightly twisted in shape. The nails of his thumb and first finger had distended and yellowed, as if slowly changing to pale talons night by night. Patches of skin here and there up to his wrist were brittle, flaking, and sallow. In places there were hints of scales like a reptile’s. And in one spot tiny follicles of fur appeared to sprout, while two other places were almost downy in a sickly brown, like a fledgling that had not yet gained true feathers.

Sau’ilahk was unconcerned by such temporary imperfections. These were only side effects of their work together, and all such could be corrected in time.

Beáumie’s attention remained fixed on the orb. His features were flooded with both longing and loathing.

Sau’ilahk held out the thôrhk to the duke. Take the key . . . my lord.

“We must accelerate our efforts,” the duke said. “Can we finish tonight?”

Nothing would have pleased Sau’ilahk more now that Wynn Hygeorht had come again. But he had no intention of failing for a lack of patience. The process of emptying the duke’s body of his spirit was a delicate matter. The essence of Spirit was an animating force that gave life to physical organisms. If the spirit was ripped out too quickly, rather than thinned and severed at only the final instant, the body might be uninhabitable.

It is best to give your flesh time for each increment of the transformation. Each small step toward immortality must stabilize before proceeding to the next.

With an expression of anger, the duke blindly extended his deformed hand, and Sau’ilahk placed the thôrhk—the key—into the man’s grip. Without even looking at his tutor, Duke Beáumie slid in toward the iron stand and the orb.

Proceed as I have taught you so far.

Beáumie reached out with his misshapen hand holding the key. Knobs at its open ends fit perfectly into two grooves in the protruding spike’s head. With a now-practiced ease, the duke lowered the key’s open ends around the spike’s head and slid its knobs along the grooves, and they settled fully into place. The key fit perfectly like a handle made for this.

Sau’ilahk merely waited, for the young duke had repeated this act many times. He knew the precise fraction to pull the spike enough to let a whisp of the orb’s power reach out for him, supposedly to strengthen the bond between spirit and flesh.

At least so he believed.

Even Sau’ilahk was uncertain how much of the orb’s power a human body could withstand all at once. This endeavor was only slightly less trial and error for him than it was for the duke. In fear of having to start over, Sau’ilahk would take no chances.

Karl Beáumie twisted the key handle one quarter turn to the right and then back, as Sau’ilahk had taught him—as Beloved had taught Sau’ilahk. He then rotated the handle downward until it was level with the floor, all without letting the key’s knobs slip out of place.

Sau’ilahk began to whisper a spell, a conjury, only in his thoughts. It was one that had taken him many nights like this to contemplate and construct, in order to control the specific effect the orb would now release upon the duke. But Sau’ilahk lost his focus as something changed in the young duke’s expression.

My lord?

Beáumie’s eyes twitched repeatedly as he stared not at the key under his grip but at the orb—at the place where the spike would separate from the whole. Some terrible longing filled his face, like . . .

Sau’ilahk remembered being trapped for years—decades—in the cave of his burial.

In that first night of his death, some thousand years ago, he had not known that desiccation and small insects, which came to feed on his rotting corpse, would eventually free his eternal spirit. He had known only the torment of not being truly dead but trapped forever, unable to turn his head to see where stones had been piled in the cave’s mouth to inter his remains.

Sau’ilahk knew—saw—that desperation on Karl Beáumie’s face.

No!

The duke jerked the spike from the orb, and scintillating light filled the chamber as he screamed.

• • •

Wynn lay under the covers in the far bed of her guest room and no longer tried to sleep. Her mind was too filled with worries, self-recriminations, and mysteries. Huddled close for warmth, Shade lay beside her, and though she tried to sort out her tangled thoughts, Wynn’s eyelids finally drooped. Without warning a flash of dizziness and nausea welled inside of her.

It felt as if she’d mistakenly invoked her mantic sight. A yelp echoed in the room as something thrashed and pushed off the bed.

The straw mattress bucked, and Wynn lurched upright.

The sudden movement threatened to make her vomit potatoes and carrots all over the bedclothes. She clamped a hand over her mouth and reached out for Shade. The dog was gone, but a mewling growl rose in the pitch-black room. Wynn fumbled for the cold-lamp crystal left on the near table, and she rubbed it for friction.

Soft light from the crystal filled the room.

Shade stood in the room’s center, between the beds, with her hackles raised and her ears flattened as she faced away toward the door. But she quickly turned—and kept turning—and looking all ways.

“What?” Wynn barely got out before her dinner threatened to rise again.

Shade twisted her head to look directly at Wynn. —Fay!—

Wynn came fully awake, scooting back up the bed into the room’s corner. She groped for her staff nearby, not that it would do anything for her, but it was all that she had.

Sniffing and snarling, Shade raced around the room, and Wynn looked everywhere, not even knowing what to search for. From what she remembered of the two times she’d faced a Fay manifestation, and from what little Chap had told her of his communion with his kin, a Fay—the Fay—had to inhabit something physical in order to come at her.

And the dizziness and sickness would not stop.

—Wynn . . . stay . . . hide . . . here—

Shade rushed the door, rose with her forepaws braced against it, and clamped her jaws on its handle. She tried to twist it by rotating her whole head.

“Wait!” Wynn choked out, and stumbled across the room to help.

Shade whirled off the door and charged. Both the dog’s forepaws hit Wynn’s chest and knocked her over the nearer bed’s foot, and Shade lunged in on her with a snarl.

—Stay—

The door suddenly opened.

“What’s all this—?”

Shade spun with a snap of jaws as Wynn spotted a guard peeking in through the open door; one hand was pressed against his stomach. His eyes widened at the sight of Shade, and his other hand released the door’s outer handle to reach for his sword.

Before Wynn could grab for Shade, the dog rammed the guard’s legs. The man toppled over Shade as she bolted through the door. Wynn struggled over the bed’s foot.

“Shade!” she cried as she stumbled for the door and then slowed as the world swam before her eyes. She stepped through the opening, and the whole passage seemed to suddenly burst with sight and sound in her head.

The second guard came weaving from the passage’s back end; his sword was drawn, but he hit the side wall with his shoulder. Chane and Osha burst out of their room, and then Osha gripped the door’s frame as if he needed to grab something to stay on his feet.

“What is happening?” Chane rasped, spotting Wynn.

She wasn’t certain, but all of the color had drained from Chane’s irises. Shade raced by, perhaps trying to reach the passage’s back end. Chane saw the approaching guard try to step in the dog’s way with his sword raised.

“Get away from her!”

Chane’s broken voice grated in Wynn’s ears as he lashed out, fingers curled like claws. The guard’s body lurched backward as his feet left the floor. Osha sank down against the next door’s frame as Shade darted up the passage.

Only Chane appeared unaffected . . . except for his eyes.

Dizziness overwhelmed Wynn. She collapsed as the passage vanished from her sight.

Unbidden thoughts rose in her mind: memories of childhood, growing up at the guild . . . sailing with Domin Tilswith to a new continent . . . the first time she saw Chane . . . the long trek homeward with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap . . . Shade’s appearance in the night streets of Calm Seatt . . .

Images kept coming, one dying under the next. This was nothing like Chap or Shade calling up memories. It felt as though pieces of her were being torn away. Terror made her try to scream out. . . .

“Chane!”

Wynn never even heard her own voice as her mind went dark and silent.

• • •

Sau’ilahk slammed his solidified hand down on the duke’s grip and the raised key. The force drove the spike back into the orb. All of the scintillating and blinding light escaping the orb vanished from the chamber.

Karl Beáumie collapsed and lay still upon the floor, though his eyes had not fully closed.

Sau’ilahk felt emptied . . . hungry . . . starving . . . and as if dark dormancy might swallow him whole in the night instead of at dawn. When he looked at his own hand, wrapped in shreds of black cloth, it flickered, with the stone below showing through from one moment to the next.

It took all that remained of him to crouch over the duke and not feed upon him right then. He did sense a spark of life still within Karl Beáumie’s limp form. Relief flooded through Sau’ilahk, followed by anger and sharpening hunger. What a fool, to risk everything out of impatience born of fear!

Sau’ilahk examined his prone subject more carefully. The duke’s right hand was further twisted, the talons longer, and misbegotten scales and wisps of fur and tiny feathers had spread farther up his forearm. Would the glove even fit anymore to hide such effects?

Sau’ilahk turned for the door and drew close so that his conjured voice might vibrate in the air beyond it.

“Hazh’thüm, assist me.”

No one entered.

Sau’ilahk tried to solidify his hand to grab the door’s handle. His effort failed. He had been drained when the orb had been fully opened, perhaps in the wrong way. And so he slipped straight through the door.

In the outer chamber of six doors, he found Hazh’thüm and another of his Suman guards trying to push themselves up off the floor. Hazh’thüm was gasping, and his eyelids fluttered.

Sau’ilahk wondered how far the orb’s effects had been felt.

“Get up!”

“Master,” Hazh’thüm choked. “Forgive me.”

“The duke requires care. Take him to his room and avoid being seen, if possible.”

Hazh’thüm shuffled to the door, fumbled as he unlocked it, and then entered. But Sau’ilahk remained, watching the second guard. That one still braced against a far door as he gained his feet, and then lowered his eyes before his master.

What was his name again? It did not matter.

Sau’ilahk struggled under intense hunger and tried not to fade from the world into dormancy. He needed life’s energies if he was to remain for the night. . . . He needed to feed.

• • •

Osha had seldom been truly frightened in his life. But waves of fear washed through him beneath dizziness, sickness, and unwanted memories of his entire life flooding his head. He had lost control of his body as everything darkened before his eyes and left only those flashes of his past rising into his awareness to then dissipate like smoke in the dark.

For anyone with his training as an anmaglâhk, to be this helpless was worse than anything imaginable.

As suddenly as it started, the horrifying sensation ceased.

Osha found himself lying on the passage’s cold stone floor as his head began to clear.

“Wynn!” someone rasped.

After that the passage was quiet.

Osha did not even hear the majay-hì snarling as he pushed himself up. There stood Chane with his back turned as he lifted Wynn’s limp form from the floor as if she weighed nothing.

“Wynn?” the undead rasped.

Osha wanted to shout at that thing to put Wynn down. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. Then he heard struggling behind him. He spotted the young sage, Nikolas, trying to pull himself up in the opened doorway of the third guest room. Both guards who had been in the passage were down but conscious and visibly shaken.

Besides the undead holding Wynn, only the majay-hì was mobile. Turning circles as if searching, Shade paced the passage and then rounded in a trot straight toward Wynn and Chane.

“I’m all right. . . . Put me down.”

At Wynn’s whisper, Osha struggled up and hurried toward her.

Chane slowly set her on her feet, though she wobbled in trying to step around him, and the undead turned as well.

Osha saw that Chane’s eyes had no color at all. He grabbed Wynn by the wrist and jerked her away behind himself as he pulled a dagger from his tunic.

“Back!” he snapped, pointing the blade at Chane.

He knew enough of such monsters—from his time with Magiere, Léshil, and Chap—to know what those colorless eyes meant. No matter what it cost him, he was not letting that thing anywhere near Wynn in such a state.

The majay-hì suddenly lunged between him and the undead.

Shade turned on Chane with a low rumble as she bared her teeth, and then Osha felt Wynn grab for his outstretched arm.

“Stop it!” she said. “Chane would never . . .”

When she did not finish, Osha took one fleeting glance. She was staring at the undead, so at least now she saw what had happened.

Chane lowered his eyes and backed away, and the majay-hì’s rumble lessened.

Wynn jerked upon Osha’s arm. “Go help Nikolas . . . now!”

Both guards appeared to be recovering like everyone else. Only the majay- hì had been unaffected by whatever had happened . . . and Chane had succumbed in a different way. But as long as Shade was aware of the additional danger . . .

Osha finally relented, retreating rather than turning his back, until he could take hold of Nikolas and pull the young sage to his feet.

Chane, his face still averted, whispered in Belaskian, “What happened?”

Osha glanced once at both guards rising. Likely the undead spoke in his own tongue so the guards and Nikolas would not understand. Any moment, those guards would have questions of their own, before or after driving everyone back into their rooms. Osha spun his dagger and flattened the blade against the inside of his wrist to hide it at the ready.

“Shade sensed a Fay,” Wynn answered quietly—also in Belaskian. “That’s all I know . . . so far.”

To Osha this did not seem so bad. “Fay?” he repeated to her in Elvish. “Not an undead? I felt . . . I felt as if my life was being pulled from me.”

Her eyes bleak and shadow ringed, she pivoted to look up at him. The last thing he wanted was to cause her more worry or pain.

“She said it was a Fay,” Wynn confirmed as she knelt beside the majay-hì.

How strange it was that a sacred one would be so familiar with a human.

Shade refused to be stroked or comforted, and padded away, still looking up and down the passage. Then she darted halfway past one dazed guard to peer into Wynn’s room.

“A Fay . . . here?” Chane asked sharply, and his colorless eyes turned on Wynn. “Why? There are too many people present.”

“I don’t know,” she answered.

One guard jerked his sword from its sheath and pointed it at Chane. The second guard stumbled closer as he commanded his partner, “Take that wolf out of here now! And all of you . . . back in your rooms.”

Before Osha could grab Wynn, she stepped between Chane and that outstretched sword.

“Shade is not dangerous to anyone here,” she argued, “but she sensed something wrong, perhaps a predator in the keep. That’s all. No one is taking her anywhere.”

It was a weak explanation, and neither guard appeared to accept it.

Osha pulled Nikolas behind himself in preparation.

“Or would you like to wake the duke or duchess and explain your actions?” Wynn went on.

Neither guard said a word. Perhaps losing control over “guests” during whatever had happened was not something for which they cared to answer in the middle of the night.

“Get that animal out of sight, and get back to your rooms,” the first guard barked, and then looked to Osha. “You two, as well.”

Osha had expected this and longed to speak with Wynn. Whatever had happened here was nothing he had ever experienced before. Apparently neither had she, and what it had to do with “Fay,” as humans referred to the sacred nature of the world, left him baffled.

“We should do as they say,” Nikolas said weakly.

The young sage did not look any better than Wynn did . . . any better than Osha felt. He nodded politely to the young man, and Nikolas wearily turned in to his room.

“I am staying with you,” Chane stated.

Osha turned back and found the undead looking down at Wynn with those colorless eyes.

“No!” Osha snapped, unable to keep quiet this time. “I stay . . . with Wynn.”

Chane’s expression twisted into sheer hatred.

Osha stepped in behind Wynn. That thing would not stand over her—watching her—while she slept.

“Get to your rooms!” the guard ordered.

“I’ll be fine with Shade,” Wynn said over her shoulder. “If I need you, trust me: you will hear me.”

Then she grasped the front of Chane’s shirt with one hand and whispered something Osha could not hear.

The undead turned his face away from her. An instant passed before he nodded, stepped around her, and headed for the second door.

Wynn looked to Osha. “There’s nothing to fear from him.”

Osha did not believe her and clenched his teeth as he, too, turned away. The guards watched him as he headed for the second chamber along the passage. There was nothing more for him to do except spend the remainder of the night locked away with Chane.

Unless there was something more to be done, he considered, as his thoughts turned over what had just happened to all of them.

• • •

Back inside her room Wynn felt far less certain about anything than she’d claimed to the others. Shade refused to settle and kept pacing. Still feeling sick, Wynn knelt and stopped Shade. When she placed her hand on the dog’s back, Shade was trembling.

“Are you sure you sensed a Fay?”

Shade stood there for an instant before one memory-word popped into Wynn’s head.

—Fay—

The dog began pacing again, leaving Wynn kneeling on the floor in fear and uncertainty. As frightened as she was, she could not understand why a Fay would manifest near or inside this keep and then suddenly vanish. For that matter, she still remembered the time the Fay had attacked her through trees, back in Osha’s homeland. Chap had come to her aid with a pack of wild majay-hì, including his future mate, Lily.

She hadn’t succumbed to any sickness or blacked out then, though she’d nearly died. If a Fay—the Fay—had manifested here, perhaps Shade’s presence had warned it—them—away. She, like her father, was not a normal majay-hì.

Still, that didn’t explain everything that had happened.

• • •

Chane knelt in the room’s far corner and dug quickly into his pack. He heard Osha enter and close the door, but all that mattered to him was that he found what he needed to quell the gnawing hunger inside him.

It was as if all the life that he had gained in feeding upon the deer had been torn out of him. The beast within him strained against its chains, and its starved howls and screeches tore at him inside.

And the smell of Osha’s life thickened in Chane’s fully expanded senses.

He did not need full light to find the bottle in the pack’s bottom, though; desperate for the remaining black-red fluid he had gathered using the brass cup, he fumbled with it in his panic.

Chane almost downed all of the bottle’s contents.

He stopped, for doing so would affect him too much. He had no privacy, and with Osha present—watching—he did not dare become that incapacitated for even a few moments. He took only a sip, and even that was punishing, as he quickly replaced the stopper in the bottle and shoved it into his pack.

“What you do?” Osha growled.

The acrid tang of ground metal and heavy salt coated Chane’s mouth as he swallowed. He did not collapse in convulsions this time, but still a burning like acid filled his gut as concentrated life trapped by the brass cup spread through him. He clenched his jaws and waited for it to pass, though he heard leather squeak before he realized his grip on the pack had tightened too much. And he began to shake.

“Answer!”

Chane ignored the elf and waited for the shallow convulsions to pass. He could still feel the hunger, but he would not drink more and leave himself vulnerable while that forest whelp was present. Finally the beast within him settled to a low, growling complaint.

When he rose and turned, Osha still stood before the door.

Chane had no intention of discussing anything and decided to simply wait for Osha to fall asleep.

Instead of pressing matters, all the elf did was settle on the bed nearest the door and light another of his little candles upon the side table. He leaned back, fully clothed with his boots on, and reclined against the wall behind the bed’s far side. Osha closed his eyes as if resting.

Chane turned away, settling on his own bed in annoyance, which quickly shifted to worry. He had no idea what was happening inside this keep—what had happened moments ago—and the blind ignorance quickly wore on him.

What had caused Shade to claim that she sensed a Fay? What had caused Wynn and the others to fall ill and then recover so quickly? What had left him upon the edge of losing his control to the feral nature that hid within him?

His thoughts drifted back to something Wynn had said earlier . . . about a single memory Shade had stolen from the young duke:

Just a flash . . . an image of two of those Suman guards standing in front of a door in a dim, windowless passage. Maybe . . . maybe underground.

Why would the duke order two Sumans to guard an underground door—if it was underground as Wynn or Shade had claimed? If this door had been the one thing to pass through the duke’s thoughts, then what lay beyond it?

Chane watched Osha, still reclined with his eyes closed, and knew that he would have to wait until the elf fell truly asleep. That had not happened yet, judging by the sound of the man’s forced breathing. The next obstacle would be getting past the guards in the passage. A diversion or distraction was needed if Chane was to seek this door perhaps somewhere below the keep.

To his frustration, Osha opened his eyes a little, glanced at the burning candle, and then closed his eyes again.

Desperation, impatience, and still-nagging hunger goaded Chane.

He rose and went to the door to put his ear against it. Listening for any sounds outside, he heard nothing. He assumed both guards would still be at their posts even after the turmoil, but without peeking outside, he could not know for certain.

“Not yet.”

Chane glanced back to find Osha watching him, and he then looked to the lit candle. Had the elf been waiting—timing—something of his own?

“Do not tell me what to do,” Chane answered.

Osha merely closed his eyes. “If any need go out, I go. I am . . . was anmaglâhk. No one see—hear—me.”

Chane hissed before a dry reply. “And how would you get past two guards?”

“I will,” the elf answered, “when time right.”

Chane paced back toward his bed but did not sit. “Fool! Go to sleep.”

Neither of them spoke again for some time. Osha opened his eyes infrequently but always to look at the candle while ignoring Chane. And then, at another, later glance at the candle . . .

Osha rose off the bed. “I go.”

Chane was on his feet before the elf finished. “You are staying here, out of my way.”

Osha turned toward the door at the foot of his bed.

Chane almost lunged to grab the elf, but then stopped himself. “And how are you going to get past those guards?”

Soft footsteps rose in the passage outside.

Osha froze, cocking his head.

Chane realized the elf heard them, too, and he took a step. When Osha twisted toward him, he froze. Raising both of his hands, open and empty, Chane slowly pointed at the door. Osha sidestepped to the corner behind the door and then along the room’s side wall. Chane cracked the door open to a sliver and peeked out.

With the door opening inward, and its hinges toward the passage’s back end, he could see along the door to that end of the passage. The guard stood with his back to the far wall and stared straight across the passage.

Chane looked back at Osha and then nodded toward the candle. Osha rounded wide and snuffed out the flame. The passage outside was very dim, and, as Chane pulled the door farther inward, he did his best to keep inside the frame and out of the rear guard’s sight line. When he had pulled the door open enough, he took a quick peek toward the passage’s front end, retreated, and quietly closed the door.

“What you see?” Osha whispered.

Reluctantly Chane told him. “The guard near the stairs is missing.”

Osha nodded. “I overpower guard . . . without him know too soon. I move fast; he not . . . remember.”

Chane scoffed. “Even so, he might be found when the other returns. And if one of us is found missing, we will be blamed, no matter if he remembers who put him down or not.”

“Then what you do?” Osha challenged, folding his arms.

“A distraction first,” Chane rasped. “Be quiet and let me focus, but be ready to crack the door open.”

He went to his pack and dug out the gloves he used as part of his coverings for withstanding daylight. Returning to the closed door, he focused upon it and then along the chamber’s front wall as he imagined the passage’s end toward the stairs that he had just seen.

Chane stilled his thoughts and held out his right hand with the palm turned up. In his mind he drew lines of light and slowly crafted symbols to overlay his sight. First a circle, then around it a triangle, and he scrawled the needed glyphs and sigils stroke by stroke into the corner spaces between the two. He prepared to aim . . . as a small wisp of fire ignited in his palm. Then Chane felt his flesh begin to sear beneath the glove as Osha sucked in a sharp breath.

“Now!” Chane whispered.

Osha stepped in and pulled the door slightly.

Chane crouched, lowering his hand. Throwing the flame was not possible, for it was fueled into existence by only his concentration. Even fire could not hang in the air without something physical as fuel to feed it. But making the flame move might work. When the back of his hand flattened on the stone floor, he shifted his mental pattern slightly into the passage and . . .

The flame crept off his fingers and around the door’s frame.

“Close it,” he whispered, and Osha silently shut the door.

Chane clung to concentration as he moved the pattern in his mind’s eye along the wall of the room, parallel to the passage. The bed in the way did not help in that. When his gaze reached the room’s corner, where the passage would turn down the stairs, he heard noise outside. Perhaps the flame had died the instant it was out of his sight.

“Fire!” a voice shouted out in the passage.

Osha pushed at the door, but Chane raised a hand. “No danger,” he barely whispered, and already the steps of running feet had passed the door’s far side. “The flame will go out.”

Then he regretted having explained it at all.

Chane dug inside his shirt and pulled out a cold-lamp crystal. It was a spare that Wynn had given him in their journey to find the orb of Earth, but he did not ignite it yet. Opening the door slightly, he heard the guard descending the stairs, and then came mute voices from somewhere below. He quickly slipped out, and, as he was unable to stop the elf, Osha followed him.

The situation rankled Chane as they hurried up the passage the other way to find another route to the lower floors.

• • •

Sau’ilahk was alone in the small stone chamber with the orb.

Hazh’thüm had already removed the body of the other guard—the one Sau’ilahk had drained of life—and the duke had been carried away to his private chamber above in the keep. It was inconvenient for Sau’ilahk to have sacrificed one of his small contingent, but it had been necessary to recover from the orb’s unexpected influence. If nothing else, the remainder of his servants would be that much more cowed into obedience.

What mattered most was whether the duke would recover.

Any effects upon his flesh could be dealt with once the process was complete. Sau’ilahk dwelled instead on the almost-certain presence of Wynn Hygeorht.

Why was she here, and what had truly called her to the keep?

He had to know, and in thinking, he gazed at the orb. The act he had in mind would cost him much of the energy sapped from one guard—not as much as the fully opened orb had taken from him—but there was little choice if he was to remain undetected until he learned more.

Floating to the chamber’s center, Sau’ilahk focused inward.

In midair, he envisioned a glowing circle the size of a splayed hand for Spirit. Within this he formed the square of Air, and in the spaces between the nested shapes, he stroked glowing sigils with his thoughts. He fixed upon this grand seal for his first conjuration as a small part of his energies bled away in a passing wave of weariness.

He needed something more than what one element could provide, for Air only recorded sound and so would be worthless in the night when everyone was asleep. He needed something capable of sight, capable of slipping through stone rather than limited to following passages.

A silent breeze grew inside the chamber.

Sau’ilahk called the breeze into the seal’s center. The room’s temperature did not change, but the pattern’s center space warped like air over a searing desert at noon. That nearly invisible distortion held its place, and he solidified one hand to cage it in his fingers. Then he conjured yet again for the element of Fire.

A yellow-orange glow began emanating from within his grip.

Next came Spirit, for the necessary connection with it, though this would also give it a will and make it harder to control. And last came Earth. . . .

Exhausted, Sau’ilahk slammed the servitor into the chamber’s stone floor.

The square for Earth via Stone rose in umber lines around his splayed hand and then the blue-white circle for Spirit as he embedded a fragment of his will. More glyphs and sigils of iridescent white filled the second pattern upon stone.

All the glowing marks in his sight vanished as he whispered in thought, Awaken!

A glow rose in the stone beneath his hand and began to rush about as if light swam beneath the chamber floor. He closed his fingers like hooks, and he straightened, making a motion as if drawing something to the surface.

The floor bulged like a bubble erupting from gray mud.

One glowing eye like molten glass winked at him as his servitor heaved its oblong body out of the floor and stood up on four three-jointed legs of stone that ended in sharp points.

Go!

It skittered up the chamber wall and sank through the ceiling above him. Sau’ilahk lost all sight of the orb’s chamber as his servitor swam through the keep’s stone.

Here and there, darkness broke as it surfaced upon the ceilings of passages, rooms, and chambers, one after another. He saw through it, catching sight and even sound as a servant here or a guard there went about duties late into the night. Not one ever looked up to spot the small monstrosity that submerged back into the ceiling and moved on through the keep.

The duke had not been present when the “guests” had been housed, but there were few spaces in this small place for such. Sau’ilahk had already wandered the keep himself in the last quarter of some nights. He guided his servitor to the third floor and the only spare chambers he had found with beds.

When the servitor surfaced again, he looked down at a young male with white streaks in his hair. Over the end of the bed lay the gray robe of a sage. Something about this one struck Sau’ilahk as familiar. As if struck by some recurrent nightmare, the young man murmured and gasped in his sleep.

Sau’ilahk drove his servitor across the ceiling and through the wall to the next room.

It was empty. Though someone . . . perhaps two people were clearly lodged here. Two cloaks hung on pegs near the door. Two packs, one near the other, were at the foot of one bed. A bow and quiver with black-feathered arrows, as well as something long wrapped in canvas, lay on the floor beside the bed nearest the door.

Sau’ilahk stalled too long in looking about the room. Where were the occupants, considering how late into the night it was? He finally drove his servitor on to the next room.

The servitor froze upon the ceiling as Sau’ilahk succumbed to pure hatred.

Wynn Hygeorht sat on the floor below and watched the black majay-hì pace about. Neither was doing anything comprehensible, and nothing in the room offered a clue as to why they were here. And she was garbed in a midnight blue robe.

Sau’ilahk had no idea why, and he did not care. There was no doubt that the previous room housed the undead called Chane and likely the unknown Lhoin’na who had come with them. But if so, where were they?

A sudden wave of weariness overtook Sau’ilahk. He was being drained too much in maintaining a continuous connection to his servitor, and he would need his energies for the next night to come. Once he had finished his work here and achieved his long-awaited desire for living flesh . . .

Wynn Hygeorht would never leave this keep alive.

• • •

Osha continued after passing through the archway at the back of the passage. He led the way, with the undead creeping too close behind him. It stood to reason that there would be stairs somewhere else on this level of the keep.

“There,” Chane whispered, pointing past Osha. “A landing.”

Squinting in an unlit passage, Osha took several more steps before he saw it. He flinched at a sudden pale light rising behind him and looked back to see a crystal, much like the ones that Wynn carried, in Chane’s hand. It was glowing softly.

Chane stepped ahead.

Osha was admittedly relieved not to have the undead at his back, and admittedly his unwelcome companion could walk in relative silence. So far they had heard no one raise an alarm, and as long as any guard returning to the guest quarters’ passages did not look into the second room, they would not realize anyone was missing.

Chane quickly descended all the way to the main floor and then paused as he closed his hand over the crystal. Osha listened as well and heard no movement or voices. Carefully Chane stepped out, rounding quickly into a wide passage, and then Osha heard something.

Chane halted, and they both listened for a moment.

Osha heard the distant, muted sound of waves breaking on a shore.

“We are somewhere near the keep’s back wall,” Chane whispered, opening his hand slightly to let the crystal’s light escape. “And some opening to the outside, from what I hear.”

Osha nodded. The area was cold and appeared deserted. He noticed old cobwebs above in the corner where one wall met the ceiling. This passage must not be a main path used in the keep. At his best guess, they were facing northward, and possibly the passage led out of the keep’s north side.

Chane crept onward until they reached where the passage continued ahead but also had a branch to the left, likely leading toward the keep’s front. He stalled there and closed his hand on the crystal, and as he put that hand behind his back and retreated one step, Osha was forced to retreat as well.

When the undead flattened against the passage’s left wall, Osha shifted to the right side to do the same. Ahead and beyond the left-side passage, where the main passage they followed continued straight, a small light glowed faintly. It was not large enough for a torch or lantern, and did not flicker, either.

Osha slowly shifted forward along the wall. His people could see better in the dark than humans could, but without a moon or stars in an open sky, that was not enough illumination to tell where that light came from . . . and then it vanished.

Osha froze.

The light reappeared and had moved, perhaps farther along the passage’s far half. He heard soft scrapes of footsteps down there, and then something poked his shoulder.

Osha slapped at the contact and quickly reached behind his back for his dagger, and then he heard a soft hiss. Chane leaned close enough for Osha to see his scowl.

Chane looked down to where his fist holding the crystal was now beside his rearward hip. With his other hand, he pointed at his fist and then toward that other light.

Osha looked along the passage in the dark.

He did know how Chane had made the connection. Only three other people that they knew of in the keep might have a sage’s crystal. Had Wynn slipped out to go searching for something on her own before they had? No, the majay-hì would have never tolerated that, and Nikolas Columsarn doing so seemed as unlikely.

That left only the elderly counselor, the young sage’s father. Then again, Chane had acquired a crystal, so . . .

Osha waved Chane back and then slid forward along the wall until he could peek down the side passage.

It appeared to run all the way to the keep’s front. There were two doors and at least one archway that he could see along the length. He held his breath and slipped across that passage, and flattened himself at the far corner where the hallway met the one he had left. Before he could peer around that corner, the undead slipped across and flattened beside him.

Chane quickly raised his fist; the crystal’s light made it glow faintly. He held up two fingers on his other hand and pointed toward the corner.

Osha scowled, but he would not ask how Chane knew there were two people near that other light. He peeked around the corner with one eye, and, indeed, he made out two shadowy figures. Both were muted in form by bulky cloaks and hoods. When the shorter one turned slightly, a soft light appeared in the hand of the other one and illuminated an elderly face inside a hood.

Jausiff held out some strange metal object in his hand.

Osha could not make out the other person’s face, but from the height alone it might be Aupsha—as she was taller than Jausiff and claimed to be his servant. The elder sage appeared to be studying the floor, and when he turned up the passage, Osha lost sight of what the sage was doing. The other figure turned as well in following the old man, and the pair slowly continued onward, stopping every few steps. In another dozen of their paces, Osha noticed something more.

At the passage’s far end was a door with some sort of small opening at head height. Perhaps it had small bars across it, but Osha knew that was from where the sound of the waves came. The door had to lead out to the northern side of the keep’s courtyard. And, more, the right side of the passage’s end near that door was too dark compared to the walls of the passage.

There was a turn or archway there, though the layout made no sense if the passage ran along the keep’s rear wall.

What would the old sage be doing here, studying the passage’s floor step by step?

Osha heard other steps more clearly, and quickly turned the other way to find Chane staring down the side passage. Those footfalls were hard and rhythmic, at least three pairs, perhaps four.

Light began to grow in the archway down the side passage.

A gusting breeze suddenly rushed out of the main passage, and in curling around the intersection’s corner, it whipped Osha’s loose hair.

Instinct and old training took hold, and Osha slipped around the corner. He barely had time to note that all light in the main passage, all the way to the far door, was gone. Osha planted one foot against the passage’s far wall as he pushed against the near wall, and he hand-and-foot-walked up both walls to hide against the passage’s ceiling.

• • •

At those sounds of footfalls down the side passage, Chane was caught between ducking back the way he and Osha had come or trying to catch whoever was down the main passage’s far end. He barely heard more than felt a sudden movement of air behind him, and when he turned . . .

Osha was gone.

Chane ducked around the near corner. Even with his senses still fully widened, he saw no one in the passage all the way to where it ended at a heavy wooden door with iron fixtures and a barred sentry window. There was no sign of the two living beings he had smelled . . . or of Osha.

He heard that those other footfalls had already entered the side passage.

Hoping to slip outside and hide until whatever guards came and went, Chane ran to the passage’s end door. It was not only bolted within by a heavy bar—the bar itself was fixed in place by a padlock.

Where was Osha, let alone anyone else who had been in this passage?

Chane quickly peered out through the door’s small barred sentry window and saw no one outside between the grounds’ outer wall and the barracks off to the left. When he turned, there was an archway to the door’s right side. Stepping through there and down two steps to a landing revealed only another short flight of stairs, parallel to the passage, that ended at another heavy door. He checked it and found it locked. He was trapped with nowhere to go.

Chane returned to the passage’s end and the door leading outside.

He could smell Osha, though perhaps that lingered from the elf’s passing. A vulgar dwarven word came to mind—yiannû-billê—heard once from Ore-Locks addressing a pompous Lhoin’na shé’ith who had gotten in their way.

Where had Osha, that gangly, interloping “bush-baby,” gone to now?

Three keep guards rounded the far corner in the passage. The one in the lead held an opened oil lantern. All three stopped at the sight of Chane.

Fighting his way out of this would do no good and only get Wynn thrown out of the keep.

“Forgive me,” Chane said, forcing modesty. “I seem to have taken a wrong turn. Could you direct me to the privy?”

• • •

Hidden in the dark against the passage’s high ceiling, Osha watched as Chane was marched off. He waited until the sound of footsteps and any semblance of light faded completely.

Only then did Osha drop softly to the floor. He believed he could still make it back to the guest quarters on his own, but instead, he soft-stepped to the passage’s end and the door.

Neither Chane nor the guards had found anyone else here, but the old sage and the tall companion had to have gone somewhere. Most likely, judging by the sudden breeze, they had slipped out the door. Yet that was not possible. He would have heard any attempt to open the heavy iron lock with a key. And, likewise, he looked through the right-side archway and down a short flight of steps to another door. Since the undead had quickly returned to the main passage, then that lower door must be locked as well.

Osha lingered longer in looking up the passage. Where had that sharp breeze come from? Where had the elder sage and his tall companion gone? Why had they been inching along and peering at the floor, and what was that object the sage held while the companion handled the old one’s crystal?

Osha found himself at a loss for any answers. The guards would most likely return Chane to the guest rooms. The moment they did so, they would notice one other guest was missing upon putting him in his room.

Wynn had specifically warned them not to cause trouble. Raising an alarm among this place’s inhabitants and causing a full search would certainly qualify. Still, if Osha chose to, he could evade the guards until morning and look about further before simply reappearing at the morning meal.

So little, mostly more questions, had been gained in this search, but Wynn had her purpose to fulfill. He wanted her to believe he served that—for her—and not to cause her even minor failures. She, and whatever she needed, was all that he had left of value in a life without purpose.

With a sigh, Osha crept back the way he had come.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 820