In Shade and Shadow

by Barb Hendee

  “Look out!”

  Chane dodged at the shout, but as the panicked horse raced by, the cart clipped his side. He spun and stumbled, but didn’t fall. Everyone around stopped to gawk.

  “Are you all right?” the vegetable man asked, running up.

  Chane didn’t answer. Both sages had stopped, and the tall male stared straight at him. Recognition dawned on the journeyor’s face. Had he been seen back near the Inkwell?

  “I am fine,” Chane answered in a hoarse whisper. “Go catch your horse.” He slipped back down the side street, cursing himself.

  Wynn emerged in the main hall, tired, hungry, and disoriented by how quickly time had passed in the catacombs. Only a few others were still about, talking, reading, or sipping tea at the tables.

  Domin il’Sänke sat reading by the fire.

  “Wynn?” someone called anxiously from her right.

  She turned to find Nikolas awkwardly waving her over. Two covered bowls and slices of buttered bread sat on the table in front of him.

  “I waited for you,” he said.

  Domin il’Sänke glanced up from his book.

  Wynn offered him a tired smile and went to join Nikolas. His robe was slightly disheveled, and his straight hair still hung into his eyes, but she couldn’t recall the last time someone had waited supper on her.

  “I had research to do,” she said, her journal, lamp, and quill still in hand. “Keep the bowls covered a little longer. I’ll run these things up to my room and be back.”

  Her answer brought an odd relief to his face. She knew how it felt to be lonely, or just alone, and when company mattered more than food.

  “The lentils will keep,” he said. “I’ll put our bowls by the hearth.”

  Wynn headed for the hall’s main archway. A chill breeze rolled in as she approached, as if someone had opened the keep’s doors. She heard someone heave up from a chair too quickly behind her, and she glanced back. Il’Sänke strode straight toward her with a hard gaze, and then Miriam’s frightened voice echoed from the entryway.

  Wynn hadn’t made out the girl’s words, and il’Sänke rushed by in a trot, his robes swishing around his feet. She waved to Nikolas, and they hurried after the domin.

  Around the corner beyond the main archway, Wynn spotted a panting Miriam standing before il’Sänke halfway down the hall to the front doors. The girl was clutching a folio to her chest, and Dâgmund stood behind her, lowering his cowl.

  Miriam’s hood was thrown back, and her face glistened as if she’d been running. For once she didn’t cringe in il’Sänke’s presence.

  “Domin . . .” she breathed. “We were followed! Someone followed us!”

  Dâgmund looked less frightened than Miriam, but he was clearly troubled.

  Wynn pursed her lips. Why had Domin High-Tower sent a journeyor metaologer out with Miriam? A few more initiates and apprentices from the main hall began gathering in the passage behind her.

  Il’Sänke turned stern eyes on Dâgmund. “Is this true?”

  The young man nodded once. “A tall man in a long dark cloak. I saw him twice. He had to be the one.”

  Il’Sänke held out his hand. “Give me the folio.”

  Miriam shoved it at him without hesitation and exhaled loudly in relief.

  To Wynn’s surprise, il’Sänke stepped past the pair of couriers to the empty entryway. Beyond anyone’s reach, he opened the leather flap and pulled out the short stack of pages. The domin scanned their contents once, and then placed them back inside.

  Wynn would’ve given anything to peek over his shoulder.

  In that instant il’Sänke glanced at her.

  Without a word he strode silently past Miriam and her companion—and Wynn. The cluster of gathered initiates and apprentices scattered to the passage walls to let him through. Wynn quickly followed him back into the common hall, but Domin il’Sänke never paused. He headed straight for the narrow side archway. Wynn sneaked after him, all the way to the turn, and watched him head straight for the door to the north tower—and Domin High-Tower’s study.

  What had he seen in those pages?

  “Come have supper,” Nikolas said softly.

  Wynn had forgotten about him standing right behind her.

  “Put your things away later,” he added. “Just come and eat.”

  She simply nodded and followed him back to the table in the common hall. But Wynn’s thoughts were locked on the folio, and the frustration of watching il’Sänke scan those pages right in front of her.

  Chane was seething as he stalked back toward the Graylands Empire. He had come so close and then lost the folio through clumsiness. And he was hungry, as if anger made his need that much worse.

  In the past, the beast within him had reveled in the hunt, in the smell of fear in his prey, and relished their attempts to fight back. He had fed indiscriminately, taking whoever pleased him in the moment.

  Some things had changed since he had last spoken with Wynn.

  His choices had become more particular, and the beast within whimpered in suppression or howled in rage at his self-denial. Chane struggled with his longing for the euphoria of a true hunt and a kill.

  He had been in Calm Seatt for just over a moon, but he had learned its districts quite well. When he needed—rather than wanted—to feed, he headed into the southern reaches of the Graylands Empire. Tonight he walked shabby and dim byways, listening and watching. Most people here were squalid and wretched, but those were not the criteria of his choices.

  An old woman with no teeth shuffled by, muttering to herself, but he ignored her. Finally he passed a shack set between a faded tavern and what might be a candle shop on the corner. Muffled shouting escaped one shutterless window, and Chane slipped into the shadow of the candle shop’s awnings.

  “You put that back!” a woman shouted. “That’s for milk and bread. Wager your boots at dice, if that’s all you care about!”

  A loud crash followed, and the sound of a woman weeping. The shack’s front door burst open as a large man stepped halfway out. He had not shaved in days.

  “Leave me be!” he snarled back through the doorway. “I’m going to the Blue Boar to ask about . . . to find some work. I’ll get the milk and bread myself, so stop sniveling!”

  So obsessed was he with maintaining control, Chane was startled by a familiar, uncomfortable tickle at the back of his mind. And the beast within rumbled in warning, bringing him to awareness.

  The man was lying. He turned down the street, leaving the door wide-open.

  Chane slipped out to follow. This worthless creature was an acceptable choice—a liar, a wastrel, and a waste of human flesh. He was no loss to this world, just another head in the cattle of humanity. Three streets down, Chane halted short of the next alley’s mouth.

  “Sir,” he rasped in Numanese, knowing that both his voice and his accent might cause suspicion. “I could not help overhearing a mention of dice.”

  The filthy man stopped and turned, eyes squinting.

  For this part of the city, Chane was well dressed in hard boots and a dark wool cloak hiding all but the hilt of a longsword.

  The man blinked in indecision. “You lookin’ for a game?”

  Chane took a step and pulled out his pouch, allowing the coins to clink.

  “Depends on the price to get in.”

  He stepped only as far as the alley mouth’s other side, and noted that the closest passerby was two cross streets to the west. The large man’s eyes fixed on the pouch, and he smiled, perhaps seeing some witless foreigner to take in among his regular companions. He strolled back toward Chane.

  “Isn’t no fee to enter,” the man said. “And we bet what we please—no holds barred.”

  The instant he reached the alley’s mouth, Chane dropped the pouch.

  The man’s gaze flicked downward in reflex.

  Chane’s hand shot out and latched across his mouth and jaw. Spinning, he wrenched the man into the alley’s deeper darkness. The ma
n was as strong as he looked and struggled like a bull, and he suddenly rammed an elbow into Chane’s ribs.

  Chane didn’t even flinch. He slammed his victim against the wall and drove his distended fangs into the man’s stubble-coated throat. The smell of stale ale and sweat filled his nose, but the beast trapped inside of Chane lunged against its bonds.

  Once, he would have played with his victim until fear permeated the air. He loved that sweet, musky smell—or was it the beast within who savored it more?

  He bit deeper, gulping like a glutton. Salt warmth flowed into his mouth, and the beast inside grew wild with joy. He drank so fast that the man went into convulsions. The would-be gambler’s blood slowed to a trickle before his heart could even stop.

  Death was a blink away.

  Chane wrenched his head back and released his grip on the man’s jaw. He stepped away and watched the body slide down the alley wall, until the corpse sat propped up with throat torn and eyes still wide.

  It was over so quickly—too quickly. Even the rush of life making Chane’s head swim and his cold flesh tingle with heat brought no pleasure. And the beast inside him whimpered like a dog pulled back before finishing its meal.

  Chane had seen his own maker, Toret, and then Welstiel, raise new minions from selected victims. Not all rose from death, which was why careful selection was necessary. But there was still a slim chance that a victim taken too quickly might rise the following night. Toret had believed that for a Noble Dead to make one of its own, it had to feed a victim its own fluids. That was another superstition.

  All it took was devouring a life—suddenly, quickly, all at once—and the close contact of a Noble Dead in the instant between life’s end and death’s coming. Chane had been lucky in the past not to have any of his prey rise.

  Or had they? In recollection, aside from his time in Bela with Toret, he had always been on the move with Welstiel. He had never stayed long enough in one place to be certain.

  Chane wanted no minions. And certainly not this side of beef sitting limp in the alley. The last trickles of blood ran down the corpse’s neck, staining his filthy shirt like black ink in the alley’s darkness.

  Chane closed his eyes and saw Wynn’s pained face staring back at him in accusation.

  He opened his eyes, pulled out a fish knife stolen off the docks, and cut the man’s throat deeply. When the corpse was found, his death would seem a common murder by some desperate cutpurse. Kneeling down, he searched the man and took every coin he found for his own needs.

  Chane stepped from the alley and retrieved his own pouch, adding new coins to old. He began walking “home” toward the inn and never looked back.

  CHAPTER 8

  Wynn spent the next day in the catacombs with two terms stuck in her head—thkyensmyotnes and blâch-cheargéa.

  She searched deep through the archives, even trying to find possible variations on the term “vampire.” But her continent’s earliest peoples had no such words in any language. The varied ones she’d learned in the Farlands wouldn’t be found in this branch of the guild. Several times she got lost in the maze of stone chambers and rooms. All she could do was follow the elemental symbols upon the edges of bookshelves.

  Spirit, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.

  Circle, triangle, square, hexagon, and octagon.

  The fewer the symbols in a column, the closer she was to the catacomb’s front below the keep’s rear wall. The most primary and general texts for each field of knowledge, indicated by one lone geometric shape, were closest to Domin Tärpodious’s main chamber. Soon enough she found her way back and headed into other reaches of the archives.

  Whenever she found a tome, sheaf, book, or scroll of interest, she backtracked to the nearest alcove. There she settled to read, never certain of how long she sat alone in the light of her cold lamp. Again, Wynn gained little more than a headache and tired eyes—until sometime close to supper.

  . . . Master Geidelmon stared at the warth, though he could not make out its face within the cowl. The dark harbinger drifted into the kitchen’s dim candlelight, appearing like a tall figure clad in a wafting shroud of black . . .

  That one word—“warth”—wasn’t familiar to Wynn, but she quickly turned the page of the old ghost tale.

  . . . Tall and trim, its stature was much like Geidelmon once had, before he had sunk into years of gluttony. Rapture in food and wine had left him so rotund he could not even rise and flee. And following the portentous visitation, the next morning he was found slumped dead upon the table, a joint of mutton still lodged between his teeth.

  The term, and even the whole tale, sounded like something Wynn had read before. But everything was beginning to sound like something she’d read before. She propped her elbows on the table, resting her head in her hands. She’d finally had enough of it.

  Just the same, she recorded the term in her journal and then left for the comfort of her own room. But as she emerged into the castle’s main floor, she paused.

  The new library wasn’t far off.

  Wynn wove through the passages to its nearest entrance. It had no door, only a tall double-wide archway of finely crafted frame stones. The topmost four were engraved with Begaine symbols, one after the other, for the sages’ creed.

  TRUTH THROUGH KNOWLEDGE . . . KNOWLEDGE THROUGH UNDERSTANDING . . . UNDERSTANDING THROUGH TRUTH . . . WISDOM’S ETERNAL CYCLE.

  Hurrying in, she fingered along a tall bookcase on the main floor, passing over a dozen lexicons, until she found the one she sought on the bottom shelf. Groaning at its bulk, she hefted it up and dropped it on a table. It took time to find any similar term.

  waerth, n. [Origin unknown; found in early southern regional dialects, prenationalization of the Numan Lands.] One of several possible alternate spellings for the obscure modern Numanese term wraith [râth].

  Wynn flipped pages to find the referenced entry for “wraith”: a dark or black apparition, sometimes similar to, or in the likeness of, a particular person. Found in folklore as an omen of immediate impending demise, though sometimes said to be seen shortly after an individual’s death.

  Wynn slammed the thick book shut—portents indeed!

  More superstitious nonsense, which brought her no closer to the truth concerning what hunted her people and the folios. She jotted down the new term and definition next to her entry for the warth and left the library, hurrying all the way to her room.

  Once inside, with the door tightly shut, Wynn flopped onto her bed. After a while she crawled over to peer out her narrow window. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the keep’s walls, she heard eight bells ring out softly.

  The last eighth of day, called Geuréleâ—“day’s winter”—in the dwarven time system used throughout the Numan Lands. Dusk was coming, and the day’s work hardly seemed useful.

  Every time she thought of how she’d carried back a wealth of texts written by ancient undead but wasn’t even allowed to see them, it left her so angry that her stomach burned. If she could only find some common thread within the folios’ contents, she might provide Premin Sykion with a possible motive.

  But for this to happen, the premin council had to acknowledge that the folios—and the entire project—were connected to the deaths and thefts. Otherwise, even a sound theory of motive would be disdainfully dismissed, like her tales of dhampirs, vampires, ghosts, and . . .

  Wynn sighed and dropped back down on the bed. Rubbing her temples, she tried to drive angry obsession from her head. She needed clarity and calm as she went to her table-desk and began reviewing her notes.

  Nonsensical accounts of animated corpses feeding on flesh replaced anger’s burn with queasiness. She wished Domin il’Sänke would finish the sun crystal. But at least she was shut away in her room once again, where she worked best.

  Her possessions were simple: a bed, a table for a desk, her cold lamp, a small chest, and all her journaling equipment. In spite of slight nausea, she was getting a bit hungry, having not eaten since b
reakfast.

  At a knock on her door her heart thumped hard, and she thought, Please let it be il’Sänke, with the sun crystal finally completed. She ran for the door and jerked it open.

  Nikolas stood outside, his face drawn and pale.

  Wynn sagged in disappointment but tried to express concern. “What’s wrong?”

  He opened his mouth once, then closed it, and Wynn forgot her own worries.