by Barb Hendee
“Come now, young ones,” Domin Ginjeriè called. “We need to get these hung quickly.”
Ginjeriè carried a large basket in her arms. She was followed by two apprentices and ten initiates in a double line, all bearing similar baskets filled with damp blankets. The initiates babbled and jostled each other, a few nearly toppling one another’s burdens.
Wynn remembered herself once partaking in the late-autumn “washing” ritual. At the close of each fall, one domin oversaw the laundering of as many blankets as possible before winter set in, when drying them outdoors became impossible. Wynn should have smiled at such a fond memory, but she didn’t.
“Domin, he’s pushing me!” a little girl shouted.
“Marten, do you wish to walk alone . . . in front of me?” Ginjeriè called without looking back.
Wynn watched the double line of initiates trotting behind the domin, and her gaze fell to their moving feet. One domin, two apprentices, and ten initiates walked step by step toward the gatehouse tunnel. Wynn kept staring as words from the scroll echoed in her head, along with what she’d seen in the translations.
Six and twenty steps . . . to five corners.
She’d wondered about five ancient Noble Dead uncovered by name, who had “divided”—and the strange mention of “five corners” in the scroll. Li’kän was locked away beneath the ice-bound castle, and hopefully Häs’saun and Volyno were simply no more. That left only the other pair of the five—Vespana and Ga’hetman.
But another grain of truth began to dawn upon her, and it was so much worse.
The double column of sages, thirteen in count, fell into shadow as they tramped out of daylight into the gatehouse’s tunnel.
“Oh, no more of this . . . please!” Wynn whispered to herself.
Not five corners for five ancient Noble Dead. Not six and twenty—twenty-six—steps taken, as some metaphor of distance. Whatever the five corners meant, the other measure was for pairs of feet—two by two, totaling thirteen.
The Children numbered thirteen.
How many of the other names she’d read were those of other ancient undead, possibly still somewhere in the world? It was bad enough that the one she’d banished with the sun crystal couldn’t be one of them. The Children were ancient vampires, and the wraith had been some new spirit form of Noble Dead.
And Wynn thought immediately of Pawl a’Seatt.
The stoic master scribe with the odd family name had claimed to have been hunting undead in his city. He’d implied that he had sensed the wraith’s presence, though he hadn’t been able to find it. Magiere was the only other person Wynn knew of, besides Chap, who had such ability. Chane had been fervent in claiming that Pawl a’Seatt was an undead, yet Wynn had seen the scribe master in daylight. None of it made sense.
He couldn’t be a dhampir, not for what Wynn knew of Magiere’s singular birth and what great efforts that had taken. He couldn’t be one of the Children, if Wynn’s guess that Li’kän’s forced servitude was common to all such.
Who—what—was Pawl a’Seatt?
The only other thing Wynn knew was that none of the Upright Quill’s staff showed any fear of the shopowner, beyond his strange actions on the night of Jeremy’s and Elias’s deaths. Pawl a’Seatt wasn’t guilty of those deaths. He had always been protective of his employees, watching over them each night when they left the guild grounds. And he had a long-standing and respected relationship with the guild.
Wynn turned toward the keep’s main doors, rather than heading on to il’Sänke’s quarters. She had one more stop to make.
When she reached the hospice, Nikolas was reclined against the bed’s headboard. He gazed up, perhaps at the ceiling or at nothing at all. At the sight of his lost eyes, Wynn almost wished she’d just slipped away instead. But she couldn’t be so cruel, and she had something important to tell him.
Shade trotted in on her heels, and thankfully, Domin Bitworth wasn’t present.
“Your color is better,” she said.
Nikolas rolled his head toward her, only then realizing someone was there, and he half smiled.
“Do I still have gray streaks in my hair?”
She pulled over a stool and sat beside him. “You may be stuck with those, but they make you look distinguished.”
Then he noticed her clothing and the pack, and any hint of happiness drained from his fragile features.
“You’re leaving?”
“Yes, I have an assignment,” she lied. “I just came to say good-bye . . . and that I’m glad to have your friendship.”
He rolled his head back and focused on the ceiling again. What else could she say? This poor young man had more demons in his past than the memory of the black-robed wraith. His few friends here had either died or left him.
“Nikolas, listen to me,” she said. “Look at me. If anything like this ever happens again . . .”
She grabbed his hand.
“If something . . . unnatural ever plagues you or the guild, don’t waste time going to Sykion or High-Tower or even Captain Rodian. They cannot help.”
At this Nikolas’s brown eyes filled with confusion.
“Go to Master a’Seatt,” she insisted, “at the Upright Quill. Tell him everything. He will know what to do.”
Nikolas blinked and then nodded once as he squeezed her hand.
“I have to get going,” she said, and stood up, shouldering her pack.
“But you’ll come back?” he asked quickly.
Wynn glanced back from the doorway. “When I can.”
She hoped that wasn’t a lie as she headed outside into the courtyard with Shade.
Wynn blindly made her way through the northwest door, down the hallway through the storage house, and into the workshop building. She had barely rounded the hallway’s end and climbed the stairs, pulling out the key to the quarters, when she spotted il’Sänke in the upper passage.
“Where have you been?” he shouted.
The domin’s dark-skinned face glistened with perspiration. His eyes looked wild with panic instead of the anger in his voice. He looked her up and down, taking in her pack and traveling attire, then shook his head.
“You . . . you idiot!” He rushed at her.
Shade snarled in warning, and Wynn had to grab her.
Il’Sänke snatched the key from Wynn’s hand and turned back to unlock his quarters. He slammed the door inward with his palm.
“Get in here!”
Wynn still felt shamed for what had happened to him before the council. But she’d just had a horrible revelation, and she was sick of being told what to do. She just stood in the passage, returning his glare in silence.
“You do not even know what you have done,” he hissed. “How much danger your dramatic gesture could bring you. Nor what you might have done instead!”
And Wynn grew so very confused.
“Inside,” he said, and this too was not a request.
Wynn slipped silently past il’Sänke into the study, with Shade rumbling all the way.
Domin il’Sänke tossed the key onto his desk. His robe’s hood fell back as he ran both hands through his dark brown hair. Then he jammed one hand into his pocket and pulled out a cold lamp crystal.
“Take this back!” he demanded, and thrust it out.
Wynn looked at her crystal and shook her head.
“I cannot,” she said. “I won’t be shut away, left to do nothing, while they do little more than that.”
“Why let them?” he said. “You can choose not to.”
There was something in il’Sänke’s gaze that unsettled her, as if her next denial might make him more outraged or frightened or both. Thundering footsteps rolled down the passage outside, and Domin High-Tower barreled through the open door, his bushy red hair disheveled.
“Wynn,” the dwarf exhaled. “Think, girl! You have pushed things to the limit, but do not throw away all you have—”
“She does not have to,” il’Sänke snarled over his shoulder.
“You . . . and your council gave her all she needs to see to that.”
Wynn looked up, at il’Sänke. “Make some sense . . . please!” she said.
He shook his head, gritting his teeth. “Can you not see it for yourself? Any rope they try to bind you with can be pulled on both ways.”
“The guild does not play at politics!” High-Tower snapped.
“Oh, spare me!” il’Sänke spit back. “This is all about politics, the politics of fear.” And he fixed on Wynn. “You can choose your own assignment and still remain one of us. In the end, the council will have no choice but to accept this.”
Wynn barely grasped what he was getting at. When she glanced at High-Tower, the dwarf’s face was flushed, but he remained silent. That was strangest of all, that he didn’t even try to cut il’Sänke off. As if he wanted her to hear this but dared not say it himself.
“They are afraid of you,” il’Sänke added, “with all you know . . . stepping beyond their reach. They fear what you might reveal to others, once free of your oath to the guild. They need a hold on you, or at least that is what they want you to believe.”
Il’Sänke shook his head, and the hint of a smile spread on his face. Somehow it wasn’t comforting.
“You can do anything you want,” he added.
“The council will never agree,” High-Tower said, but it seemed weak and less than a true denial.
“Then do something, you dried-out mound of mud!” il’Sänke countered. “Or I will. I have no doubt I can procure her a place in my branch the moment I arrive there.”
“I’m not going to the Suman Empire!” Wynn cut in.
High-Tower sighed. “She must present a proposal for approval . . . if she wishes to request her own assignment.”
“Then write it yourself,” il’Sänke returned. “And sign it! Tell the council she has changed her mind about resigning. They will agree to anything in that event.”
“The specific assignment has to be outlined.”
“No, it does not,” il’Sänke answered.
High-Tower closed his eyes, and il’Sänke held out the crystal once more.
Wynn’s head was spinning as if she stared at these two through her mantic sight. But the nausea in her stomach was now from fear that this small hope might not be real. She reached out and quickly snatched the crystal before it might vanish.
Il’Sänke slumped in exhaustion, bracing a hand on the desk.
Wynn still had no idea why the foreign domin was so frightened by the idea of her resignation, as if her action might force him to do something horrible.
“I will need funding,” she said.
“You will get it,” he assured her. “If not from them, then through my branch . . . and no, you will not have to go to the Suman Empire.”
Wynn gazed down at the crystal in her palm.
She was still a sage.
Near midnight, Wynn sat on the second bench of a hired wagon with Chane. He carried the scroll in one of his packs, along with Wynn’s brief translations, and she held on to the sun crystal’s staff. The driver, paid double for the three-night journey, steered a course along the bay road as they headed for the far peninsula peak of Dhredze Seatt.
In truth, Wynn didn’t care how they traveled, so long as this search led to answers—and the texts.
Glancing back at Shade stretched out in the wagon’s bed, Wynn knew that someday, possibly soon, Shade would discover that Chane was undead. The ensuing scene would be unpredictable—probably ugly—but she would leave that until it came.
She glanced over at Chane. What would happen when he grew hungry?
But again . . . she would deal with that when the moment arrived.
Chane and Shade were the only ones available who believed in the reality of the Noble Dead—and possessed the ability to face them.
To her left, beyond dark trees obscuring the bay, she could hear small waves lapping at the rocky shore.
“It may be hard for you, traveling only at night,” Chane said.
She jumped slightly, as he hadn’t spoken for most of the night.
“I’ll adjust,” she answered.
But would she, to any of this? She traveled at night with a vampire and a majay-hì to Dhredze Seatt to learn . . . what?
To find the texts, and to learn of a forgotten place, another dwarven seatt, lost in a forgotten time. And why had the wraith, whoever it had once been, desired information from the scroll and folios?
She glanced up at Chane’s clean profile in the darkness. No matter what he might be, she could count on him while she uncovered the truth.
“I’ll adjust,” she repeated.
EPILOGUE
The gaudy and worn painted sign above the scriptorium’s front door read, THE GILD AND INK. But the night street was empty, and the only person inside was busy in the back workroom.
There, a portly bald man stood before a tall wooden table with his back turned to the open door leading to the shop’s front room. He wore a rich velvet tunic over a linen shirt. The quill in his hand was poised above a stack of freshly scribed parchments.
Master Shilwise never noticed the darkness within his shop’s front room intensify as something bulged inward through the front wall.
A figure in a black cloak and robe wavered and then vanished. Its transparent form reappeared, wavering yet again, as if struggling to become real. Once wholly solid, it slid silently along the floorboards, through a stand bearing a displayed book, and into the rear workroom.
And still Master Shilwise was poised unaware above the parchments—until he shivered. The air had turned suddenly chill. He spun around, and his eyes widened as a hiss filled the workroom to its rafters.
“Reverent One!” Shilwise whispered, and swallowed hard. “I’m relieved to see . . . I heard that you were . . .”
“Destroyed?”
With that one word, the hiss became a voice surrounding Shilwise. And the black figure went on.
“Or had you simply hoped so?”
The question seemed to coil about Shilwise, squeezing him with frigid cold.
“No!” he whispered, shaking his head. “I would never. You’ve been more than generous for what you’ve asked of me!”
“And still, no one suspects?”
“That I can read the sages’ symbols?” Shilwise finished. “No, not even my own scribes. And with the way you ransacked my shop”—and a touch of bitterness leaked into his voice—“I’m the last person anyone would suspect to have aided you.”
The black-robed figure floated closer. Shilwise quickly slipped out of its way.
It approached the table, and its large, sagging cowl tilted downward over the parchments. Hands and fingers wrapped in frayed black cloth extended from the robe’s sleeves and gripped the table’s edge.
For an instant Shilwise thought he saw the table’s wood through one of those hands.
The black figure wavered, its whole form turning translucent.
“Are you . . . all right?” Shilwise asked.
The visitor ignored this question. “All of them are here?” it asked, still looking upon the parchments.
Shilwise nodded. “All the extra copies I made, in plain language . . . both from what my shop processed, and what you acquired from other scriptoriums.”
“And what of the female journeyor?”
“I don’t know,” Shilwise answered. “I’ve heard nothing. And you asked me to have her watched only two days ago.”
“Has your spy learned anything of use? Where are the original texts?”
“Only hints and whispers, Reverent One.”
“Hints of what?”
“Something concerning dwarves,” he answered, “some visitors glimpsed once or twice on guild grounds, wearing dark gray or black attire. But they weren’t actually seen coming or leaving; they were just there. But . . . now that Pawl a’Seatt is the only one working for the guild, I’m uncertain how to proceed.”
The black figure appeared to sag,
one hand slipping through the table, and then it straightened.
“Reverent One?” Shilwise asked, uncertainty thick in his voice.
“No . . . you have been fully hindered and can go no further.”
The hand that had slipped lifted up.
Shilwise watched as those wrapped fingers extended before the black cowl’s opening. Some effort seemed to be applied, for the hand became solid once more. It lowered but slowed before reaching the table . . . and shot straight for his throat.
Shilwise’s face twisted, eyes and mouth widening to their limit.
All that came from his throat was a strangled gargle, then a choke, and not another sound. He tried to claw at the figure’s wrist, to break that grip. His hands kept slipping straight through the figure’s arm, and merely thrashed in the air.