by Barb Hendee
He had seen these clothes before. Sgaile of the Anmaglahk had worn them, the elven assassin who'd hunted him in Bela.
Leesil turned but stopped short before he could flee.
Between the trees ahead of him stood a tall man with his back turned. Narrow framed and square shouldered, black hair cropped short in a military style, he wore an indigo silk dressing gown. Leesil stepped closer, one hand reaching down for a punching blade. It wasn't there.
As he drew close, he saw a strange wound at the base of the man's head below the stubble of his hair. Blood seeped out, running down the man's neck to soak the robe's collar.
The man reached back to touch the spot, then looked at his hand and smeared the drop of blood between thumb and fingertip. He peered over his shoulder at Leesil. His long face was accented with chin beard and scant mustache below prominent cheekbones and a bony shelf of brow.
Leesil's throat closed up at the sight of Lord Progae's hazel eyes. He had never forgotten his first target.
"It never seems to stop, does it?" Progae shook his head with a sigh, neither angry nor sad, nor even surprised as he looked down at Leesil's hands. "The blood, I mean. "
Leesil barely found his voice. "I had no—"
"Choice?" Progae supplied. "I understand. You followed orders, and undoubtedly were in no position to disobey
None of us under Darmouth's sway ever were. But I wonder about them. " He looked down at the ground. "Was this necessary? Did you have to let this happen?"
Leesil stepped around Progae, keeping a careful distance from the man.
He stood on the lip of a shallow and wide depression in the earth, ringed about by a handful of trees. There lay three curled bodies, a woman with her arms wrapped about two girl children.
There was little flesh left on them, their skin pulled tight over bone in starvation's last day before death. The children's eyes were closed, but not the woman's. The rag she'd wrapped around her head didn't hide her thinned hair.
Leesil had slid a stiletto into Progae's skull while he was alone in bed.
His wife and daughters were turned into the streets. The eldest was taken as an additional mistress by a lord who was loyal to Lord Darmouth. There had been no such half-salvation for the wife and the two younger daughters. As the family of a traitor to Darmouth, they'd found no noble or commoner who'd risk taking them in. Leesil never found them and heard only later that they'd starved to death in an alley.
"Couldn't you have done something?" Progae asked. "It's not as if they tried to usurp Darmouth. "
Leesil still felt blood on his hands and wiped them on his gray vestment, but it continued to run between his fingers. He backstepped until Progae faded from his elven night sight.
Another voice carried through the forest. "We have a tenuous position here, Le"shil. "
High and lilting, it was touched with a strange accent he hadn't heard in many years. Not unlike the voice of Sgaile, used to the Elvish tongue and not wholly comfortable with a human language.
"Mother?" Leesil whispered.
"You are anmaglahk" came his mother's voice through the night forest.
It was a quiet and hollow statement of fact with no pride in it. She had said this to him long ago... not long before he'd taken Progae's life.
He spun about, searching for the voice. There was movement in the trees, but no more than shadowed silhouettes. Lord Darmouth's first mistress, Damilia, who'd conspired with Progae, stepped forward into his sight. She wore a deep green gown and ermine wrap, and a stray lock of auburn hair hung across her left eye. Her neck was deeply bruised around the welt left by a garrote wire. Leesil drew back from her.
"Leesil!" A woman's voice called again.
"Nein'a?" he shouted. "Mother, where are you?"
Among the trees, more figures closed in, stepping out into his way as he tried to evade them.
Latatz, Progae's sergeant at arms, bleeding from a double wound to the heart. The blacksmith of Koyva, his throat cut. Lady Kersten Petzka, wrapped only in her towel, her skin sallow from a deadly taint in her bath. They had all committed horrendous acts in service to Lord Darmouth or in their schemes against him. Or both.
But not Josiah.
The little old minister with his white hair and mirthful violet eyes stepped from the shadows, mouth spread by a swelled and blackened tongue. He'd never once raised hand or word against Darmouth. With no suspicion, the old man took in a young half-elf to train in a scribe's skills. Leesil had betrayed him to a hangman's noose because of Darmouth's paranoia.
Leesil raised bloodied hands to shield his eyes and fled.
Farther out in the forest, he caught glimpses of one lone shadow as it lunged through the trees like an animal on the hunt.
"Here. I am here, " his mother called out through the night.
"Mother?" Leesil called back.
He could find her if he moved quickly, but a second voice called from behind him. "Wait for me! I am coming for you!"
Leesil glanced back. The hunting shadow raced after him. He glimpsed a pale face before the figure seemed to dive out of sight, into the brush.
"Magiere?" he whispered, not wanting to rouse the shadows of the dead once again. "She's here.... My mother is here. We have to hurry!"
He raced on through the forest until a shimmer of white appeared ahead.
A tall, lithe woman sat before an ancient oak with her back turned. White-blond hair hung to the small of her back in a straight, silky wave. Leesil remembered her dress from the last evening of his youth, when he'd fled the Warlands at the sight of Minister Josiah hanging by his neck in the town square. Caramel like her skin, the gown's pattern of fine green leaves seemed like a wild vine printed upon her slender body. He dropped to the ground behind her, reaching out for her shoulder.
Slowly, Nein'a turned toward him.
Her once beautiful face was shriveled dried flesh across her skull. Large and slanted eyes were now empty sockets. She was long dead.
"Too long... too late, " whispered Nein'a's corpse. "You're far too late for me. "
She crumpled to dust before Leesil's eyes.
He couldn't move, couldn't even cry, and knelt there alone in the dark. Dusty grit from her corpse caked in the blood on his outstretched hands.
Magiere landed before him in a feral crouch, sending the dust of his mother billowing up around them. Her irises were full black, teeth extended in a canine snarl.
"Come back to me, Leesil, " she said. "Please, I need you. "
IWynn ran up the inland road, but once outside the town, she did not know which way to turn. The blue-white mist still plagued her vision, making her steps uncertain, but at least the eddies and currents had stopped moving. Vordana was certainly gone. And further clouding her thoughts was Chane.
"Leesil!" Wynn called out. "Chap... Magiere?"
She could not ask for Chane's help, and she hoped with all her heart that he was on his horse and gone. If Magiere found him following them, she would destroy him, and part of Wynn now understood the dhampir's way.
And still, Chane had come in search of her, to bring her back to sages' guild and the warm comfort of her own life. This was not the action of a monster.
"Chap!" she shouted again.
She stumbled along the road, looking both ways through the dense forest and calling their names over and over.
"Mother..., " a voice cried out. "Nein'a?"
It was Leesil.
Wynn took off through the woods. "Wait for me!" she called. "I am coining for you!"
Her short robe caught on a bramble. She stumbled and jerked it free. When she turned to hurry on, she caught sight of something vivid amid the forest's weave of blue-white essence. It was the back of Leesil's glowing white-blond hair, and she rushed toward him.
His amber eyes were the same bright yellow sparks that hurt to look at, but he stared through her vacantly.
"Come back to me, Leesil, " she said in a moan. "Please, I need you. "
Leesil did not move. Wynn tried shaking him, but she could barely move his body. Scarf missing, his long hair was tangled with tree needles and leaves.
'Too late..., " he whispered. "Oh, Magiere, we took too long... and she died... alone. "
He was lost in delusion. Wynn bit her lower lip, unwilling to start weeping again. She needed some way to rouse him, or at least make him recognize her.
Wynn reached into her robe pocket and felt the cold lamp crystal. She squeezed and ground it until its sharp edges hurt her palm. She kept rubbing, hard and quick, making certain its light would burn painfully bright.
"Look at me, " she said sharply. "I am Wynn... see we!"
She grasped his jaw with her free hand, pulled out the crystal, and thrust it directly in front his eyes. The light was intense.
Leesil jerked his head away from her hand and grabbed both her wrists.
"Wynn?" he asked, and then sucked in a sharp breath. "My mother... dead. I'm too late. "
"No!" Wynn answered, and closed her hand around the crystal to mute its glare. "It was not real. Vordana planted a seed in your mind that your own fears gave shape. Magiere and Chap are out here somewhere and may be wandering in the same state. We have to find them before anything happens. "
Leesil looked around the clearing. "Magiere?"
He let her go and got to his feet with effort. Wynn stood, as well, swallowing down nausea as her vertigo surged.
"Which way?" he asked.
"Back to the road, and the town... and perhaps you can track her?"
He was still trembling, but he was Leesil again, and Wynn followed as he pushed on through the forest.
IChap ran through a dying land. Trees and brush wilted before his eyes as shadows ambled through the forest. The world was dying... it was his fault. Spirits were wrenched from the trees and the earth to be swallowed by the walking shadows.
Chap slowed among the dead oaks and spruces to look back along his path. There was nothing left alive. The silhouettes came ever closer with a lone figure out in front, a heavy sword glinting in its grip. It stepped out into view.
Magiere wore black armor of scales like those of a massive serpent. Her filthy hair hung in matted tendrils. Her face was as sallow as Parko's, the first Noble Dead she had ever killed. Brother to Rashed in life and afterlife, Parko had lost himself on the Feral Padi, existing only for the sensual ecstasy of the hunt. Magiere's irises were full black, not like the colorless crystalline of hungry undead, but Chap saw Parko's ecstatic madness in her eyes.
She roared, no longer recognizing him, and exposed long fangs amid yellowed teeth.
Behind her, the shadows solidified into a horde.
Noble Dead drew near on all sides. Vampires with their pale skin, elongated nails and teeth. Wraiths like black shadows that shifted in and out of physical presence. There were two of the ardadesbarn, the half-dead of Wynn's continent. And packs of ghul from the Suman Empire's northern arid mountains, mortal demons who fed on the living flesh.
There were remnants of living things from the end of the last epoch—the end of the human's Forgotten History. Hulking locatha, more reptile than humanoid, and squat goblins with features like hyenas and yellow eyes that twitched.
Some wore tattered clothes or scavenged armor, and most wielded weapons of war.
All eyes were upon Magiere, waiting expectantly.
Chap had sacrificed eternity among his brethren Fay. He had taken the flesh of one lifetime, so that he might fulfill an all-encompassing purpose: to keep Magiere in the light, bound to Leesil... to keep her from the enemy's hands and the purpose for which she'd been made. He looked at her standing before this horde like the general of an army.
He had failed.
"Majay-hi. " Magiere spat at him.
Chap's sorrow welled up and spilled from him in a wail.
She knew him. And she had become his enemy.
Magiere rushed him, falchion rising and ready to fall. And the horde surged forward, leveling all living things in its path.
Chap stood listless, unable to fight back. The blade fell and bit deep between his shoulder and neck....
Magiere's hungered face faded—but the pain did not.
Chap stumbled and then blinked.
Magiere and the horde and the dead world all vanished.
Around him was the empty Droevinkan forest. Through the trees to the south he saw the manor house and grounds. Something wet dragged across his ear. He jerked away and saw two filmy eyes staring at him in puzzlement.
Shade whimpered as she nosed him again. His shoulder hurt, and she had blood on her muzzle. She licked him, and Chap flinched at the pain running through the base of his neck. She had bitten him and now tried to clean the wound.
He remembered the decayed Noble Dead in the town, the sorcerer, and something piercing through his thoughts like a thorn. He growled at the memory, and licked Shade's head in return.
This simple creature had found him and, without true understanding, had called him back. The delusion remained in his memory, and he could not shake its weight from his spirit. Chap bolted for the town, keeping a pace that Shade could match.
IMagiere's cuts and scrapes stung as she skidded to a stop in the town's midway. In her mind, she saw Leesil's wrist as he'd offered himself to her. Where was he... or Chap and Wynn... or the creature they'd faced? "Leesil?" she shouted. "Can you hear me?"
All was quiet, and the only movement was the flickering light of the tripod braziers. She ran up the road to the last place she remembered of the battle with Vordana. Her torch and Leesil's punching blades lay abandoned on the ground. She gathered them up.
"Magiere!"
She whirled at Wynn's voice and saw the young sage round the corner from the inland manor road. Leesil was beside her.
Magiere's breath released in relief as she ran toward him. But she stopped short, remembering again the half-real moment he'd tried to make her feed upon him. She couldn't reach out, afraid to step too close. Wynn grabbed her by the arm, surprising her. The young sage faltered a moment, blinking twice.
"Look at me!" Wynn demanded. "What did you see?"
"Don't ask me. "
Wynn shook her. "It was all a he. Vordana's spell took your inner thoughts and turned them on you. Do you hear? It was not real. What you saw never happened. "
Magiere looked down into the sage's face. Wynn was so resolute and certain, but Magiere would never be sure. If what she'd experience had come from within herself, then not all of it was a lie.
Wynn suddenly swallowed hard and pulled her hand from Magiere's arm. She turned her face away, as well. Leesil stared up the inland road toward the forest.
"He was lost, like you, " Wynn said. "And Chap is still out there. We have to find him. "
Magiere reached out for Leesil's hand.
It remained limp in her grip for a moment, and a sharp edge of fear arose in Magiere when he didn't look at her. He said nothing, not even one of his irritating quips tossed out at the wrong moment. What had he seen in the forest?
Leesil finally squeezed her hand with a deep breath, and took his punching blades from her.
"Where is that monster?" he asked. "We can't just drop our guard. "
Magiere heard running footsteps and released Leesil's hand, ready to draw her sword. It was only Geza hurrying toward them down the main road. His own sword sheathed, his blue-gray cloak billowed behind him, exposing his learner armor.
"You destroyed it, " he panted. "People are waking, and for the first time, I no longer feel the fatigue that comes when I step outside the manor grounds. "
Magiere glanced up and down the road. "We didn't destroy anything. "
"But you must have. Can't you feel it yourself?"
She shook her head. She'd never felt the slow drain of this place as the others had.
"Maybe, " Leesil replied. "But I'm too tired to be sure. "
"I did it, " Wynn whispered.
All eyes turned on the little sage in her
snagged breeches and soiled short robe. Her braid had come loose, and her hair hung in tangled waves about her face as she stared at the ground.
"You?" Magiere asked. "How?
Wynn remained silent for a moment and didn't raise her eyes.
"After you ran off, I was alone, " she said. "I shot Vordana through the eye and fled to the smithy. He caught me in there. I think he wished to toy with me. When he was close enough, I pulled the brass vial from his neck and threw it into the forge coals. It melted and broke open. Smoke rose up everywhere. When it cleared, he was gone. "
As Wynn's words sank in, Magiere shook her head. "I'm sorry, Wynn. I'm sorry we left you with that thing. Are you sure he's gone?"
The sage still wouldn't lift her head. Magiere realized Wynn had been through too much for one night. She should never have come on this journey, but if she hadn't... what would have become of Leesil? Of this town?
When Wynn finally looked at Magiere, she cringed away immediately. Her eyes rolled, and she clutched her head. Before anyone could catch her, she toppled to the ground. Leesil dropped down beside her.
"What is wrong with her?" Geza asked.
"I don't know, " Leesil answered, and he pulled Wynn up to lean against him.
"I cannot stop... seeing, " Wynn moaned. "Please make it stop!"
"Oh, damn!" Magiere said. "I'd forgotten her eyes. "
"We should take her back to the manor, " Geza suggested, reaching down to lift the sage.
"And do what?" Leesil asked. "She can't take any more. We have to stop it, now!"
"How?" Magiere answered too harshly. "She's the only one who understands what happened. At the manor we can at least care for her until she can undo this herself. "
"She's not the only one who knows, " Leesil said, his voice quiet and cold. "There is someone else. Stay here where I can find you, or bring her if you hear me call out. "