by Barb Hendee
"Can you tell us the best route?" Welstiel asked.
You'd do better to wait for the thaw," the old man answered. "It's a ways, and at least then most of the path would be clear."
"Yes, but where?" Welstiel's grip tightened on the mug, and he struggled to relax his fingers.
"Thirty leagues… or likely more, into the Crown Range," the woman answered.
Chane let out a hissing sigh.
"Hard going, so it'll seem longer," said the man.
"Just head southeast until you reach a large ravine," his wife continued. "Like a giant gouge in the mountainside. It stretches into the range, so you can't miss it. The passage is marked by flat granite slabs. Come to think, they might not be easy to spot in the snow. Once down through the passage, you'll see your stronghold, but it'll be blocked away by winter now."
Welstiel stayed silent. It was the only way he could contain a rising relief that had waited for decades. A chance meeting with two Móndyalítko thieves put the end of his suffering in sight.
Elation faded like the vapor of hot tea in a cold breeze. Was it chance?
Perhaps his dream patron relented from years of teasing hints. Perhaps those massive coils in his slumber took a more active role in his favor.
A season had passed since he had trailed Magiere into Droevinka, the land of her birth. Before her birth, in his own living days, Welstiel had resided there. Ubâd, his father's retainer, had waited there all Magiere's life for her to return within his reach. When she came and then rejected him, the mad necromancer had called out to something by a name.
il'Samar.
In hiding amid Apudâlsat's dank forest, Welstiel watched dark spaces between the trees undulate with spectral black coils taller than a mounted rider. The same coils of his dreams—his own patron—or so it seemed. And it abandoned Ubâd in his moment of need. Welstiel had watched as Chap tore out the old conjuror's throat.
He turned the warm mug in his hands as he studied the Móndyalítko couple. What he had seen in that dank forest left him wondering.
Were this il'Samar and his patron one and the same? If indeed his patron could reach beyond wherever it rested—beyond dreams and into this world—had it done so here and now? Should he trust such fortune appearing when he desired it most?
He had learned all he could from the old couple. He rose and leaned over on the pretense of opening the grain sack. The old man stood as well.
Welstiel drove his elbow back into the man's chest just below his sternum.
The old man buckled, gagging for air. Before Chane's mug hit the frigid earth, his fingers closed on the old woman's throat.
"Wait!" Welstiel shouted. He whirled and smashed his fist into the man's temple, and the aged Móndyalítko dropped limp, face buried in the grain sack.
The pulsing life force of the woman in his hands drove Chane half-mad. He jerked her head back until it seemed her neck might snap, opening his jaws and exposing elongated canine teeth.
She gasped in fear, but couldn't draw enough breath to scream. He bit down hard below her jawline, drinking inward the instant he broke her skin, desperate to draw blood into his body.
Welstiel rushed in and back-fisted Chane across the cheek.
Chane stumbled away. His grip tore from the woman's throat. She screeched once as his fingernails scraped bleeding lines across her neck.
He spun with his teeth bared as Welstiel struck the woman down and she crumpled next to her mate.
"I said wait!" Welstiel shouted.
Chane closed in slowly, enraged enough to rip his companion's throat out instead.
"There is a better way," Welstiel stated. "Watch."
Something in his voice cut through Chane's hunger, and he paused warily.
Welstiel held up both hands, palms outward. "Stay there."
He hurried to his horse and retrieved an ornate walnut box from his pack. Chane had never seen it before. Kneeling by the unconscious old woman, Welstiel opened the box and glanced up.
"There are ways to make the life we consume last longer."
Chane crouched and crept forward, forcing himself to hold off from savaging the woman as he looked into the walnut box.
Resting in burgundy padding were three hand-length iron rods, a teacup-sized brass bowl, and a stout bottle of white ceramic with an obsidian stopper. Welstiel removed the rods, each with a loop in its midsection, and intertwined them into a tripod stand. He placed the brass cup upon it and lifted out the white bottle.
"This contains thrice-purified water, boiled in a prepared vessel," he said. "We will replenish the fluid later."
He pulled the stopper and filled half the cup, then rolled the woman onto her back. Chane pressed both hands against the ground and fought the urge to lunge for her throat.
"Bloodletting is a wasteful way to feed," Welstiel said, his voice sounding far away. "It is not blood that matters but the leak of life caused by its loss. Observe."
He drew his dagger and dipped its point into the blood trailing from the woman's nostrils. When the steel point held a tiny red puddle, he carefully tilted the blade over the cup. One drop struck the water.
Blood thinned and diffused beneath the water's dying ripples, and Welstiel began to chant. It started slowly at first, and Chane saw no effect.
Then the woman's skin began to dry and shrivel. Her eyelids sank inward and her cheekbones jutted beneath withering skin. Her body dried inward, shrunken to a husk as her life drained away. When Chane heard her heart stop beating, Welstiel ceased his chant.
The fluid in the cup brimmed near its lip, so dark it appeared black.
Welstiel lifted the small brass vessel and offered it to Chane. "Drink only half. The rest is for me."
Chane blinked. He reached out for the cup, lifted it, and gulped in a mouthful.
"Brace yourself," Welstiel warned and tilted his head back to pour the remaining liquid down his throat.
For a moment, Chane only tasted dregs of ground metal and salt. Then a shock of pain in his gut wrenched a gag from him.
So much life taken in pure form… it burst inside him and rushed through his dead flesh.
It burned, and his head filled with its heat. He waited with jaws and eyes clenched. When the worst passed, he opened his eyes with effort. Welstiel crouched on all fours, gagging and choking.
Chane's convulsions finally eased.
"This is how you feed?" he asked.
For a moment Welstiel didn't answer, then his body stopped shaking. "Yes… and it will be some time before we need to do so again, perhaps half a moon or more."
He crawled to the unconscious old man and repeated the process. But this time, instead of drinking, Welstiel poured the black fluid into the emptied white bottle and sealed the stopper.
"It will keep for a while," he said. "We may need it, with so little life in these peaks."
For the first time in many nights, the painful ache of hunger eased from Chane's body. He rose up, his mind clearing. He felt more… like himself again, but he turned toward Welstiel with growing suspicion.
"How did you learn this?"
"A good deal of experimentation." Welstiel paused. "I do not share your bloodlust."
A cryptic answer—with a thinly veiled insult.
Welstiel picked up the abandoned kettle and poured tea into two mugs. He held out one to Chane. "Drink this. All of it."
"Why?"
"Does your flesh still feel brittle like dried parchment?"
Chane frowned and absently rubbed at his scarred throat. "Yes… for several nights past."
"Our bodies need fluid to remain supple and functional. Otherwise, even one of our kind can succumb to slow desiccation. Drink."
Chane took the mug and sipped the contents, annoyed that Welstiel lectured him like a child. But as the liquid flowed down his throat, the ease in his body increased. He retrieved the grain sack, but also untied the donkey and let it go.
Welstiel watched this last act with a confused shake o
f his head.
Chane kicked the fire apart to kill its flames and headed for his horse, glancing once at Welstiel as if noticing him for the first time.
They mounted up, and Chane led the way southeast until dawn's glow drove them once more into the tent and another day of hiding from the sun. He thought he knew most of Welstiel's secrets—or at least hints of them. What else of import did his companion hide?
* * * *
Eyes closed in half sleep, Magiere rolled and reached out across Wynn for Leesil. Her fingers touched hard stone beneath a flattened blanket. She sat up too quickly, and Wynn rolled away, grasping the cloaks and blankets with a grumble.
"Leesil?" Magiere called in a hushed voice.
She teetered with exhaustion and her head swam in the dark. She tried to force her dhampir nature to rise and expand her senses.
No feral hunger heated her insides or rose in her throat. She'd held her dhampir nature in part for too many days, and now it wouldn't come in her exhaustion.
Magiere crawled around Wynn, feeling along the cave's rough floor until her fingers struck sharply against the side of the skulls' chest. She cursed, shook her hand, and followed the chest's contours until she touched the cold lamp crystal atop it. She rubbed it briskly, and it sparked into life between her palms.
Wynn slept rolled in Chane's old cloak beneath Magiere's own and the blanket. The makeshift sling had slipped off the sage's arm. She seemed in no serious pain or she would've fully awoken. There was no sign of Leesil—or Chap—anywhere in the slanted cavern.
Magiere's gaze fell upon something that made her tense, and she shifted to the bottom edge of their makeshift bed. Amid clinging strands of Chap's fur lay a small arrow. She picked it up, glancing warily about the cave.
Its light yellow shaft was too short for any bow and too thin for a crossbow quarrel. Tiny featherings bound at its notched end were a strange mottled white and almost downy at the forward ends. In place of a metal head, it ended in a sharpened point—or would have if it weren't blunted. Its last flight must have dashed it against something hard.
And it lay in Chap's resting place. Where had he found it?
Magiere tucked it in the back of her belt and rose to head up the way they'd come. The crystal's light spread wider and caught on something else.
Beside where she'd slept was a small mat of green leaves, each as large as her opened hand. They held a pile of what appeared to be grapes. Magiere dropped back to one knee.
Each fruit was the size of a shil coin, and dark burgundy in color, but they were not grapes. A green leafy ring as on a strawberry remained where each had been plucked from a stem. They looked more like bloated blueberries. There were more than she could quickly count, enough to overfill a cupped hand.
Magiere looked about, wondering how anyone could have approached while they slept, especially with Chap present. Then she spotted another pile near where Leesil had rested.
Where had they come from in these winter mountains?
Magiere checked Wynn one last time to be sure she rested peacefully. She considered waking the sage to eat or to ask what she knew of the berries. Instead she quietly picked up her falchion and headed for the opening to the path back outside.
She called out softly when she reached the next smaller pocket along the way. "Leesil? Chap?"
A rustling echo carried up the passage from behind her.
"Leesil?" came a voice, and it grew louder in panic. "Magiere… Chap, where are you?"
Wynn had awoken. Magiere hesitated between calling out and turning back, and finally retreated to the cavern so that Wynn saw she wasn't alone.
"Here," she said, "I'm here."
A distinct scrape and padding footfalls sounded from the passage behind her. She looked back to see two sparks in the dark passage that became crystal blue-white eyes.
Chap trotted out, silver-gray fur rustling and his tail high, as if he'd been out for a morning run. Leesil followed, carrying a torn horse pack and another set of saddlebags. His cloak's hood had fallen, and white-blond hair swung loose around his dark face to his shoulders. His oblong, slightly pointed ears showed clearly.
"Where in the seven hells have you been?" Magiere growled at him.
Leesil stopped, looked at her in bewilderment, and then held up the saddlebags. "Where do you think? I climbed back down and gathered what was left."
She paused, slightly embarrassed. Of course that was what he would do, but he might have thought enough to let her know.
"Next time, you wake me before you disappear! I told you—"
"That I'm not to leave your side," Leesil finished for her, "or you'll club me down before the second step."
For three slow blinks, his amber eyes glowered in cold silence. Magiere's anger melted toward the edge of despair. Was there anything left of the man she'd once resisted falling in love with? Or had he too been murdered in Dar-mouth's family crypt?
The barest smile pulled the corners of Leesil's mouth. Not quite the mocking grin he used to flash at her, but still…
"Were you worried sick about me?" he asked. "Afraid I'd been packed off by some prowling cave beast?"
A hint of the old Leesil reappeared—the one who'd teased her so often. The one she'd known before this journey of unwanted answers, their own dark natures, and too much death.
Leesil's smile vanished, as if he'd read her thoughts and couldn't face them.
"We should take stock of what's left," he said, and stepped past, heading for Wynn.
Magiere followed, feeling bruised inside. "How's the shoulder?"
"It is stiff, and it aches," Wynn answered, shifting her arm back into its sling. "But I can move it without sharp pain."
Wynn pulled back her hood, running fingers through her tangled, light-brown hair, and then winced.
"What's wrong?" Magiere asked too sharply.
"Nothing," she answered. "I have a lump like a… I banged my head when I hit the cliff, but I will be fine."
Wispy tufts of hair stuck out above Wynn's forehead. Chap circled around Leesil, sniffing at her wrist.
Magiere set the cold lamp crystal on the chest and crouched. She unwrapped Wynn's bandage to inspect her wounded wrist. Chap whined softly, and Wynn settled her good hand upon his head.
"That's good to hear," Leesil said. "Shouldn't be long before—"
"Did you find Imp?" Wynn asked.
Another long silence, and Magiere waited for it to end.
"No," Leesil answered. "I sent her down the path before we carried you here. It's still dark out, but the storm has faded. Hopefully she'll make it to the foothills."
Magiere dropped from her crouch to one knee.
They were only animals, Port and Imp, but they'd been with her for the better part of a long journey. She barely hung on to what she had left of herself—what was left of the Leesil she wanted. Anything more she lost sliced away another piece of her.
Chap licked at Wynn's cheek, and his ears perked. He turned around to sniff the cave floor beyond the blankets. Magiere was too lost to give him much notice.
She wanted to say something comforting to Wynn but couldn't think of anything. They had survival to attend to, and this place might offer hidden threats beneath its guise of sanctuary.
Chap barked sharply, shifting about until he faced all of them with his nose to the ground. Magiere realized what the dog had found. She grabbed the crystal and held its light up.
"Bisselberries?" Wynn whispered. "But… where? I have not seen such since… How did you find—"
"How do you know these?" Leesil dropped onto his haunches before the pile.
"These are bisselberries," Wynn repeated, then picked up one plump fruit, dropped it in the hand with the bandaged wrist, and tried to split its skin with a fingernail. "That is what my people call them, or roughly that in your language. We buy them at market to make puddings and jams for the harvest festival or special occasions. But they have to be—"
"Stop jabbering!" Magier
e snapped. "How could they grow in winter mountains?"
Wynn scowled at her, still trying to split the berry's skin.
"They do not grow here. They only come from…"
Wynn's big brown eyes widened as she looked up at Magiere; then her breath quickened, and her voice vibrated with nervous excitement. "Elves… they only grow in the elven lands south of my country!"
Leesil spun to his feet, pulling stilettos from his sleeves. Magiere snatched her falchion and jerked it free of its sheath, as he turned about, searching the shadows.
Chap's rapid chain of barks echoed around the cavern.
Magiere spotted him off near the far right wall, opposite the opening they had come through.
"Stay with Wynn," Magiere told Leesil, and trotted toward the dog.
Chap dropped his head as she joined him. At his forepaws was a small hollow where the floor met the wall. She couldn't see far into it, but it seemed another passage below headed deeper into the mountain's belly. Chap huffed at her, head still low.
Another pile of berries lay on a mat of leaves near the hollow's far edge.
"No, don't!" Leesil snapped.
Magiere twisted about to see Leesil slap away a berry that Wynn tried to pop into her mouth. The sage looked up at him with shock.
"We are starving, you idiot!"
"Better than dead!" he countered. "We're not eating anything left by one of them."
"It's not elves," Magiere said as she returned. "Not that I can guess. Look at this."
She pulled the small arrow out, and Leesil's brow wrinkled.
"I found it on our blankets when I awoke," she added, "along with the berries near my head. Chap found more of those over there by another open-ing.
Leesil took the shaft, turning it in his hand. "Too thin for a crossbow… too short for any bow I know of, and it looks newly fletched. That other opening must be how… whoever got in here. Maybe another passage out to the mountainside."
Chap thumped Leesil's leg with his head, then stepped out a ways to the cave and looked upward. Magiere picked up the crystal, rubbed it harshly, and held up its brightening light.
Above them in the ragged slanting walls were other openings scattered about. Their irregular positions, sizes, and shapes suggested they were natural and hadn't been dug. Leesil headed for the far wall, eyes raised to one larger opening.