by Barb Hendee
There had to be more, but at the moment he had other pressing concerns to address. She looked a little weary, with ink stains on her right thumb and forefinger. Did these sages do nothing but study and write? No wonder they were so misguided.
No, that wasn’t fair, for he knew what she’d been doing all day. He’d had a hand in her gaining access to the translations—and he expected to be compensated.
And Rodian’s attention drifted to the wolf or . . . what had she called it?
It was taller than any he’d seen during his military assignment in the eastern reaches. Packs sometimes raided farm livestock in deep winter, but this one . . .
The animal’s head reached Wynn’s hip, and it walked with her in some tame mockery of its true wild nature. How—why—was this beast even tolerated by her superiors?
When they finally reached the courtyard, Snowbird saw him from the front gates and whinnied. The wolf stopped, ears pricking up, and Rodian eyed it warily, ready to cut it down if it went for his horse. But the beast remained quietly at Wynn’s side.
“What did you learn today?” he asked. “Anything rational that might help?”
Wynn just stood there, gazing across the courtyard and down the gatehouse tunnel at Snowbird. Rodian’s anger got the better of him.
“Someone wants something here badly enough to kill for it,” he nearly shouted. “And you saw that black-robed man outside of a’Seatt’s shop. Whoever it is has knowledge of the folios’ movements . . . and can read your sages’ script. How many people does that leave, Wynn? Not many, from my count.”
“You’re not hunting a living man!” she responded harshly. “And you’ll never stop it through your usual means. If you truly wish to protect your people and the sages, then you’d best alter both your strategy and thought . . . immediately.”
Angry as he was, Rodian was still taken aback. Wynn breathed hard and calmed slightly.
“Talk to Nikolas again,” she said, “when he is more himself. Talk to il’Sänke—he has knowledge that you don’t. Talk to me . . . when you’re actually ready to listen.”
He stood dumbfounded at her outburst. Of all the things he’d expected, a torrent of evasive nonsense wasn’t among them. She now sounded like one of her superiors.
“What is in those texts?” he demanded.
Wynn shut her eyes tightly for an instant, as if the answer wasn’t something she wanted to think on. Rodian almost faltered at whatever weight seemed to press her down.
“More things you wouldn’t believe,” she whispered, “especially from me.”
Rodian’s anger hardened like ice. He’d thought her sensible, possibly his only ally within the guild, but they’d gotten to her—High-Tower, Sykion, possibly even il’Sänke. What had they demanded in exchange for placating her desire for the texts and avoiding her claim in court? Or perhaps they were right, and she was so addle-minded that she couldn’t see he needed her help.
“Faith that denies fact isn’t faith,” she whispered suddenly. “It’s only fanaticism. Even if I could tell you, I won’t batter myself against that wall inside your head. Tear it down yourself, if you’ve any real interest in the truth.”
Wynn walked away with the wolf toward the keep’s main doors, leaving Rodian standing alone.
Anger spent, Wynn felt numb as she shoved through the main doors. Rodian wasn’t going to acknowledge the truth.
When she reached the common hall’s main archway, she held out one hand, palm open, trying to make Shade wait.
“I’ll be right back with dinner.”
She backed away into the hall as Shade watched her, but the dog did stay. Wynn hurried to ladle a bowl of soup, and then plopped a joint of roasted mutton on a spare wooden plate. A warm fire blazed in the hearth, and there were few people left in the hall. Wynn suddenly didn’t want to sit locked in her own room.
And then Shade appeared at her side.
Either ignoring or not understanding that she shouldn’t come in, the dog looked up at Wynn, then raised her nose, sniffing at the plate.
Heads turned their way, and Wynn almost fled the hall. But Shade kept poking at her arm and huffing. Wynn took a long breath. Trying not to meet any eyes, she strode toward the hearth. She settled at its right end upon the ledge, far from where most people sat at the tables.
Wynn set the wooden plate on the floor, and Shade began chomping on mutton. She set aside her bowl and stepped over to retrieve a water pitcher from the nearest table, along with an empty mug and bowl. Three initiates were still cleaning up, but none came to clear the tables nearest Wynn. She heard frantic whispering that grew louder as she headed back to the hearth.
“There’s no such thing! It’s just a wolf.”
“Kyne, don’t get stupid!”
“Let go!”
“That thing could eat your whole head.”
“Oh yeah, well . . . you’re just a big, ignorant coward. . . . Let go of me!”
Wynn kept her head down, focusing on her bowl as she ate.
“Is she really . . . a majay-hì?”
Wynn flinched at the surprisingly close voice and looked up straight into an ivory face covered in freckles.
The girl in an initiate’s tan robe and smudged apron couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Her wonder-struck eyes peered cautiously at Shade, now with the mutton pulled off the plate and trapped between teeth and forepaws.
Wynn swallowed a piece of carrot. “How do you know that word?”
“Reading,” the girl answered, still staring at Shade.
Wynn almost smiled. Now, here was a cathologer in the making standing before her.
“Can I pet her?” the girl asked.
Wynn glanced down. Shade had stopped chewing, her unblinking eyes locked on the girl. Wynn didn’t know if Shade would ever submit to being touched by anyone else, but she preferred not to hurt the girl’s feelings.
“She’s still getting used to things here,” Wynn answered. “Maybe later.”
The girl’s expression fell, as overcome fear washed away in disappointment. She backed up and scurried off.
Looking down into her spoon, Wynn grimaced at the irony of worrying about a young initiate’s feelings. Sages were dying over the ancient texts she’d brought here, but she still thought upon the wonder of one small girl. Had she ever been so naïve herself?
Probably.
Shade renewed chewing her mutton, all the way down to the bone, and then rose on all fours to lap water from the bowl.
Wynn’s dinner became as tasteless as sawdust. Reaching out, she touched Shade’s back, allowing a memory to surface of them sitting on the floor of her room that morning.
Shade raised her head with pricked ears and whined. Perhaps privacy seemed welcome to her as well.
Wynn picked up the bowl and plate and left them on a nearby table. Shade slipped ahead of her, straight toward the main archway, and Wynn hurried to catch up. Out in the courtyard the dog appeared to remember the way perfectly, heading for the south dormitory’s door. But on the way up the stairs, Shade startled several apprentices. They all flattened against the upper landing’s walls.
Shade padded past, giving them no notice, and Wynn followed quickly, not looking at them either.
She breathed a sigh as she reached her room. But when she slipped inside and Shade pushed in around her robe’s skirt, Wynn kicked a folded slip of paper lying on the floor. Her name was written on its outer fold.
Someone had pushed it under her door—a common practice when a message was clearly addressed and the recipient couldn’t be found. Leaning down, she picked it up and unfolded it. Her breath caught when she saw the handwriting and the message written in Belaskian.
I need to know you are all right. I am at an inn called Nattie’s House, at the corner of Starling and Twine streets on the outskirts of the Graylands Empire. Come, if you can, and bring me a cloak. If not, send me word now.
Wynn held on to the paper as her concern grew. What was Chane thinking
? If anyone had sneaked a peek at the note . . .
She didn’t want to think of what might’ve happened from that. At least he hadn’t been badly injured or was well enough to write. Yet he’d told her where he was, after insisting it was better she didn’t know.
What had she done to him with the sun crystal?
“Shade,” she called. “We must go out.”
The dog poked her head out from beneath the table-desk. For an instant Wynn considered showing her a memory of Chane—and then quickly thought better of it.
What might Shade sense—or see—in such a memory? Somehow the majay-hì hadn’t picked up Chane’s undead nature last night. Strange as that was, Wynn had no wish to give this natural hunter of the undead any more knowledge of Chane than was necessary. Not yet.
But she couldn’t leave Shade locked in her room. If the majay-hì became agitated, and someone came at any sound of commotion, it would just cause more trouble. She would have to figure out how to keep Shade away from Chane when the time came.
Wynn grabbed her cloak and pulled the scroll case from its deep inner pocket. She still didn’t know if the black figure had come after it or her last night. But leaving the scroll behind seemed a wiser choice. She stuffed the case deep under her mattress, bracing it against one of the bed’s support boards, and then grabbed the staff from the corner beyond her desk.
She paused, staring at the leather sheath protecting the crystal.
If Domin il’Sänke found out, after her renewed promise, she might never learn how to use it correctly. But what else could she do? She couldn’t go out without some means of defense. Though she still didn’t know for certain what the black figure was, it had vanished after the crystal flashed. Sunlight drove all vampires into hiding.
One more thought occurred to her.
She dashed to her trunk, pulling out a tiny jar of healing salve. Would it even work on Chane? Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to try. Then she spotted Magiere’s old dagger tucked in the chest’s side—given to Wynn as a gift.
Wynn stared at it. She’d used it more than once, even against the undead, and sometimes with disastrous results. Still, she couldn’t ignore anything that might help keep her alive, and she picked it up.
Shade slipped under Wynn’s arm and clamped her jaws over the dagger’s sheath. At the brush of the dog’s muzzle against Wynn’s hand, an image erupted in her head and consumed her.
She saw the black figure.
Like a cloth-draped column of solidified night, it slipped straight through a building’s back wall.
Wynn was disoriented in fright, and had no idea where she was in that memory. She seemed to be looking down an alley behind that place, but from a lower height, as if she knelt upon the filthy cobblestones. The noise of wood cracking, glass breaking, and other racket erupted from within the building.
And then everything in the alley suddenly raced by. She bolted, swift and low, along the alley floor, charging by the building and out the alley’s far end. Swerving through the empty street, she rounded the city block to its front side. There she slowed, creeping along the buildings, finally coming to a stop. Above the peeling door of a garish and weathered shop, Wynn saw a worn painted sign.
Shilwise’s Gild and Ink—the scriptorium where a folio had been left overnight and stolen.
She was crouched two shops down from it, but the scribe shop was now silent.
Until the weathered front door exploded outward in the night.
Shattered wood shards scattered over the porch and street as Wynn cowered back. The black figure slid out through the opening, a leather folio clutched in its cloth-wrapped hand.
It didn’t waver in Wynn’s sight. This was Shade’s own memory.
The figure looked as solid and real as anything along the street. But when it turned, gliding along the buildings, it passed straight through a lantern post, as if the stout iron pole wasn’t even there.
The memory’s intensity softened.
Wynn stared at Shade, eye-to-eye, with the sheathed blade still in the dog’s jaws. Had Shade been hunting the black figure, as well as watching over her all this time?
And on the night Rodian had sprung his trap, the figure had slid out through the front wall of the Upright Quill—but pulled the folio through a window. Perhaps, by whatever magic, it couldn’t pass the folio through something solid.
But why destroy the front door of the Gild and Ink? With no one about, it could’ve simply slipped through the wall and pulled the folio through an easily breakable window. Or better yet, it could’ve found some less telltale way to get out, with no one around to see it.
No one but Shade, that was.
Wynn was at a loss for what any of this meant, nor why Shade had shown her this now. It had been a clear image of the undead breaking out of a shop, appearing solid, yet it had walked through an iron pole.
This attempt to talk in memories was frustrating, but it was all Wynn had. Shade was trying to tell her something about the black figure. How many Noble Dead, or even other undead, had Wynn known of since she first met Magiere, Leesil, and Chap? She had to at least eliminate the obvious, and put her hand on the side of Shade’s neck.
Wynn relaxed her mind, letting memories rise, but careful not to let any of Chane come clearly to mind. There was Vordana, Welstiel, and the memory of Magiere speaking of her undead father, Bryen Massing. The first two were mages as well as Noble Dead.
Shade growled and looked away with a huff.
Wynn exhaled sharply. Shade’s reaction wasn’t like Chap’s clear usage of two barks for “no,” but it was plain enough. So now what? The only other undead that Wynn had encountered were Ubâd’s animated corpses and enslaved spirits.
Shade dropped the blade and grabbed Wynn’s wrist in her jaws. Rapidly alternating memories filled Wynn’s head—her own memories. . . .
The ghost of a murdered girl who served the necromancer . . .
Then the black figure on the night Shade had come to Wynn’s aid . . .
Black figure and ghost child alternated over and over.
Wynn didn’t like what this implied.
“A spirit?” she whispered, remembering the ghost child who’d once spoken with that vile necromancer’s own voice.
Shade gently tightened her grip on Wynn’s wrist.
Wynn looked at the dog and suddenly wished she still had her doubts. It would’ve been far less unsettling to cling to her notion of an ancient Noble Dead mage grown powerful over a thousand years.
How could a spirit, as much as it might pass through a wall, pick up a folio in its hand, rip out a city guard’s chest, and look as solid and real as a cloaked man? And why hadn’t Shade simply shown her ghosts in the first place?
The latter answer came quickly. Because Shade had never seen a ghost, until that memory rose in Wynn’s mind when she’d thought of other forms of undead.
Shade couldn’t dig for memories but only recall ones she’d seen surface in someone else’s thoughts. And she’d never seen a ghost herself, because the undead couldn’t enter the an’Cróan’s elven homeland—Shade’s homeland.
Wynn glanced at Magiere’s useless dagger lying on the floor between her and Shade. And again she wished Shade was wrong.
This black spirit took lives, fed upon the living. Only Noble Dead did this to maintain their fully sentient existence, versus ghosts, mindless corpses, and such lesser undead.
Wynn felt even worse.
Was this thing—spirit—a new form of a Noble Dead? Vampires were Noble Dead, the terms merely interchangeable.
With no more time to ponder the rest of what Shade had shown her, Wynn dropped Magiere’s blade into the chest; then she hesitated again. Rodian still had men outside the portcullis. Could she be lucky enough to slip by them again, this time with a large wolf? And she saw her old clothing—elven clothing, weathered and travel-worn—in the bottom of the chest.
At the very least, it was better not to be spotted beyond the guild grounds
in a sage’s robe. She quickly changed clothing and pulled on her old cloak.
Wynn peeked into the passage outside her room. Spotting no one, she slipped out with Shade. She checked again before they stepped into the courtyard and then hurried across—not to the keep’s main doors, but to the building on the northern side, where supplies and kitchen stores were kept.
She carefully opened a door there and, finding the storeroom dark, slipped out her cold lamp crystal. With one quick stroke along her tunic’s front, the crystal glowed no more than a low candle. Rows of barrels, crates, and sacks of dried goods filled the space, but she urged Shade in and turned immediately to the right. Through another door she entered the back scullery behind the kitchen.