by J. C.
"What in—? Wynn, you're bleeding. Is that Chane?"
The sage lifted her face, but she didn't look at him. She had ceased weeping and stared vacantly into the dark.
Magiere had no pity for her. She had betrayed them.
"We have to burn the bodies," Magiere said.
Wynn blinked once and grabbed Chane's sword. She could barely lift it, but she pointed the blade out, and her shoulder started bleeding harder. "You are not touching him!"
Leesil's eyes darted back and forth between the sage and Magiere, unsure what was happening. Chap whined loudly, and barked twice.
"No?" Leesil said, looking to the dog. "No to what?"
Magiere kept her angry eyes on the sage as she joined Chap once again.
She heard an eerie scream in the distance, and a hissing sound much closer. A glimmer flew through a tree only a stone's throw into the forest. It was the child ghost who had led her to Ubad.
"We don't have time to burn bodies," Magiere said. "Ubad is dead, but his servants are still out there. We need to go."
"They're coming back?" Leesil said. "There was wind earlier that seemed to drag them all away."
He stepped slowly, either in fatigue or in fear of startling Wynn as he neared the young sage.
'Time to leave," he said quietly.
Wynn's effort failed all at once as the sword tip dropped to the ground. Leesil picked up the blood-soaked bandage at her feet. He pressed it into her shoulder, closing the torn short robe over it.
Chap led the way, holding his rear left leg off the ground now and then as he loped ahead. Leesil was beside Wynn, and it was difficult to tell who held whom up as they hurried. Magiere followed last, watching both ahead and behind.
She spotted open space ahead out ahead. They were almost free of this marshland forest, filled with its apparitions of the dead and scaled coils of night. A wail rang out through the trees behind them, growing louder, closer, and Magiere looked back.
The grizzled soldier with the stomach wound rushed through the air toward her.
"Run!" she shouted. "The forest ends just ahead."
Leesil glanced back, caught sight of the ghost, and gripped Wynn's shoulders, propelling her forward. Magiere drew her falchion, flashing it in the air as she tried to catch the spirit's attention.
More illuminant shapes appeared among the trees. Spirits dived through her but caused her no pain. When she thought her companions neared the forest edge, she ran after them. She wished only to be away from this place and the discoveries of this night.
Leesil, Chap, and Wynn had broken through the tree line and waited in the open. She ran for them, and when she passed the last tree, the wails behind her grew. Leesil caught her in midstep to steady her, and they both turned to look back.
Angry spirits passed through high branches and back down again. They wailed and cried out, but none passed beyond the forest's edge.
Behind Magiere was the old ruined keep, and she saw their wagon and Port and Imp waiting outside the stockade. She wished for at least some dull relief, but she felt nothing at all.
"Wynn's shoulder needs attention," Leesil said.
Magiere couldn't look at the sage. "You see to it once we're under way."
As the others trudged toward the wagon, Magiere looked back to the spirit-laden forest. With all that had happened there, she'd forgotten one who hadn't been saved. Leesil was more worn than she was, Chap limped, and Wynn was wounded. There was no time to go back for one who'd been left behind.
Magiere turned away toward the wagon with sudden shame, her mother's bones left in a tomb of granite.
* * * *
Welstiel did not know how long he'd been unconscious, but the night was fully dark, and he felt no approach of dawn. Ghosts wailed all around, and he tried to shut out their clamor. Weakened and tired, he climbed to his feet and remembered Ubad was dead. He stepped into the clearing for one last look.
There was blood on the ground—he could smell it—but there was no sign of the necromancer's corpse.
Welstiel gazed into the tree line all around him.
Perhaps one of the minions had retrieved the body, but he had no intention of investigating further. Not at the risk of being discovered while depleted and alone. His role here was done. He would find Chane, scry for Magiere, and leave this place for what he hoped would be the last time.
He walked slowly through the dank forest, opening his senses to the night. He wanted to avoid being seen by anything living, should Magiere and her companions still be nearby. Nothing living entered his awareness. What he did smell was the stench of decay and putrefaction.
The scent grew stronger as he walked, until he had to withdraw the willful expansion of his senses as he stepped into a small clearing.
There were the two bodies of animated dead he had seen earlier this night—and Chane.
Welstiel stood there for a long while.
Finally he stepped closer, looking down at Chane's fallen sword and at the black fluid soaked into the collar and front of his fine white shirt.
Chapter 18
Leesil drove the wagon into a bustling village before dusk on the second day after leaving the ruins near Apudalsat. The sight of an inn with soft smoke billowing from its chimney brought some small relief.
The past two days had been filled with painful silence. Magiere sat beside him on the wagon bench, ignoring Wynn and speaking to him only when necessary. Wynn was curled into a ball beneath her blanket in the wagon's back and often seemed lost and far away even when her eyes were open. Leesil had applied salve to her wound and bound it as best as he could, but the worst of her injury wasn't to her body. She hadn't spoken since leaving the clearing and Chane's corpse.
As yet, Leesil was uncertain what had transpired between Magiere and the spirit of her mother. They needed time alone for that, and a night's separation would be best for Wynn and Magiere. He climbed down from the wagon, found the innkeeper, paid for two rooms, and arranged for the care of Port and Imp. Then he returned for their belongings.
"There's a hallway in the back of the common room," he told Magiere. 'Take the first room on the left while I settle Wynn in the next one. Chap can stay with her tonight."
Magiere looked at him without blinking. She glanced down at Wynn's form curled in the wagon's back. Without a word, she climbed out, grabbed their trunk by herself, and carried it inside.
Leesil climbed into the wagon's back and crouched down beside Wynn. He was still exhausted from facing Vordana, but he could carry her if need be.
"There's a soft bed waiting. Can you walk?"
Wynn stirred but didn't look at him. "I can walk."
Hearing her voice was encouraging. Leesil stepped off the wagon and reached up to grasp her by the waist and lift her down. Chap ambled along beside them to the inn. His limp had lessened over the passing days.
Leesil settled Wynn on the end of the bed in her small room. It had a straw mattress, but by its bulk, it had been recently restuffed and would be suitably soft. The innkeeper left hot water in a small lidded pot, so he added tea leaves from Wynn's pack. While he waited for them to steep, he pulled back the bed's old quilt.
"Let's take your boots off and get you settled."
He helped with the boots, and she obeyed him without a word. He checked her bandage, pulled the quilt up around her chin, and then knelt down close to her face.
"Magiere did what she had to. I'd have done the same."
"No, you wouldn't have," she whispered, staring up at the bare rafters in the ceiling.
"Yes," he said firmly. "Chane wasn't some undead boy living on small animals in the wild. He tried to kill Magiere in Bela, and he tried to burn Chap alive. I'd have punched a blade through his throat without a second thought. That is what we do, and you're the one who asked to join us."
Wynn rolled away from him, and it was a long moment before she spoke. "Will she send me away?"
"No. She would never abandon you here," he said, and
reached out to stroke the back of her hair. "And I wouldn't let that happen either. You're part of this now, for better or worse, but you'll have to earn her trust again. In time, perhaps, she'll be back to growling at you."
He hoped this was true, though he knew Magiere judged Wynn's lie of omission as a betrayal. However, he believed in second chances. How could he not, given the ones that he'd had himself? Sorrow over this rift with Magiere was only part of Wynn's anguish. The loss of Chane, whatever he'd meant to her, wasn't something for which Leesil could offer comfort. Wynn was young and new to their calling, and Leesil still didn't know if this was the right life for her.
"Get some sleep," he said. 'Tomorrow we hurry west out of this land and then north. It will be hard traveling through the winter, but when we reach my mother's people, all that knowledge you're so proud of will finally be useful."
He stood up and put some water into a bowl for Chap. Then he poured tea into two tin cups sitting near the pot. One he left by Wynn's bedside, and the other he took with him. He gave Chap a tilt of his head toward the bed. The dog hopped up on the end and curled into a ball, watching the sage intently.
"It's going to be all right, Wynn," Leesil said. "I promise."
Wynn didn't move. "Good night, Leesil."
He stepped into the hall and closed the door with a sigh. Comforting Wynn, though complicated, seemed simple when compared with opening up Magiere's thoughts. And getting her out of this land was the most urgent thing on his mind.
* * * *
Chap curled against Wynn's feet as Leesil closed the door. He was satisfied but not relieved.
For all his fears—more so, the fears of his kin—Magiere had faced Ubad without faltering. He had kept his faith in her, and she had not failed him. The Fay would have to accept that he had made the correct choices in the end.
There remained the apparition of the enemy's chosen form—the black scaled coils in the forest—and this still sent waves of panic through his spirit. It had not been Magiere's journey into the past, after all, that was quickening the coming days. After an age in the mortal world, the enemy was already aware, reaching out from within its slumber to gather new servants. It had been waiting, watching for Magiere.
And it had spoken to her.
This last event troubled him deeply, though he did not know what it meant. There would be more trials ahead, some worse than those of this past season. He would be with her— and Leesil, another whose spirit was dark and yet chose to live in the light.
Chap heard Wynn's breath deepen into a slumbering rhythm. He cared for this little sage but was as surprised as Magiere that a Noble Dead had shadowed them. This undead had come too far without him knowing. More disturbing, the sage had hid it from him. She would have to be watched.
Chap closed his eyes and let the quiet of the room, filled only with Wynn's soft breaths, settle around him. All else was too much to consider now, and there was time enough for one more quiet night of warmth.
* * * *
Magiere sat in an old chair in the corner when Leesil entered their room. He didn't speak at first and, instead, handed her a tin cup. The smell of mint tea filled her nose before she saw the leaf settled to the cup's bottom. She put the cup down on the floor without tasting the tea.
She was quiet as well, but not angry at him. Was she even angry at all anymore? This left her bereft, as anger had always been her strength.
Leesil looked about the room. "It's too familiar. We started this journey in a small inn not much different than this."
"Yes," Magiere answered, and now that he spoke, she didn't want him to stop. It made all things better just to hear his voice. "It's over. There's nothing left to find."
He held his hand out. She'd always liked his hands, so tan and slender.
"Come sit with me," he said.
She came to the bed with him, wishing they were curled beneath a blanket by a campfire instead. It felt strange to be indoors.
"Tell me what your mother showed you," he said.
She longed for them to speak more freely of the things that mattered, but old habits ingrained by earlier years together were hard to break. That he simply asked seemed new and pleasing, and he deserved to know. If he was to link his life to hers, he needed the truth as much as she did.
He listened in silence as she told him everything. From her father drinking the blood of the five to Magelia's rape and Bryen's death. She told Leesil of Welstiel's involvement and the murdered infant, and how he'd had carried her away while Magelia bled to death.
"Oh, Magiere," Leesil whispered.
"There's more behind all of this," she said. "Ubad sacrificed a lifetime of effort to create me. And my mother showed me that something whispers to Welstiel. Ubad referred to it as his patron. But I'm not what they think... what Ubad thought I would be."
She told him of the tendrils that had trapped her and Chap, and how Ubad had tried to force her to feed upon the forest's summoned spirit within them, to drain life from them.
"It didn't work, Leesil. I am not what he thought."
"You are Magiere," he said as if it were an obvious fact.
When she spoke of the black-scaled coils that appeared at Ubad's call, Leesil looked about the room as if watching for something.
"Whatever it was," she finished, "it abandoned Ubad and spoke to me. 'Sister of the dead, lead on,' it said."
Leesil was silent, lost in thought, almost as if he'd not even heard this strange message she'd received. He took her hand, not yet looking at her, and Magiere's thoughts would not stop turning.
"The coils' voice ... could it be what whispered to Wel-stiel in my mother's vision?"
Leesil frowned. "Welstiel."
"I am his sister," she said.
"And he tried to use you, no less than that old death-monger. If he comes near you again, I'll take his head."
His protective manner both warmed and annoyed her. She pulled her hand away, took off her boots, and crawled up to lay on the pillow.
"And what makes you think I need your protection?" she taunted him, but he didn't smile. "It's over, and we can head north to find your mother.... I'm sorry this took so long."
"I'm sorry the answers you found were worse than the questions." He scooted up to lie beside her. "For better or worse, you've learned where you came from. But it's not over. Something started here, and I fear it will follow us."
There was no hint of the humor in his amber eyes that she had grown so accustomed to.
"Ubad and Vordana are dead," she insisted. "As well as Chane. There is no one left here to get in our way as we look for Nein'a."
Leesil stared up at the ceiling, then sat up to look at her with a hard expression. His voice was flat and full of warning.
"When rumors of a hunter of the dead reached Ubad, he placed servants in fiefs throughout the Antes and Sclaven to watch for you. They're still there, and whatever this black coiled thing was in the forest, we must get you out of this land."
Magiere knew all that he spoke of before he said it. She wasn't blind to what they'd uncovered and didn't yet understand. But she wanted to pretend for one night that it was over. She looked into his face, and he seemed to know how disheartened his words made her.
Leesil closed his eyes, and Magiere saw him swallow hard. He placed his dark hand on her pale one.
"I helped you all the way to the end of your search," he whispered. "I need to get you out of this land quickly, so now will you follow me to the end of my journey?"
"Of course ... how can you even ask that?"
He was so somber. Leesil could usually be counted upon to lighten the mood, even when his methods were in poor taste. He lay back with his face near hers, and she reached out to touch his cheek.
'Tomorrow," she whispered. "We'll start at first light... all the way to the end."
Then he smiled. "And I love you, my dragon."
Epilogue
Welstiel dragged another half-conscious peasant through the trees an
d dropped him next to the other two, all of them bound and gagged.
It had taken two nights of weary travel to find a place where he could accomplish what was now necessary. Within the hilly outskirts of a village off the main road, he'd found an outlying cottage. He had waited anxiously as dawn approached, and a man and his two tall sons left for their day's labors.
The sun had almost breached the horizon, and Welstiel felt a warning sting upon his skin. When the men were out of sight, he rushed into the cottage and struck down the middle-aged woman preparing clothes to be washed.
He filled his teacup brass bowl with purified water and drained the woman to a husk to replenish his energies. Then he settled to wait out the day until the men returned near dusk. One by one, he'd dragged them back into the forest, back to Chane's corpse.
In a shallow hollow he had dug in the earth, barely deep enough for a grave, he laid out Chane's body and carefully adjusted his head in place. A lowly end for one who had been born a noble. Yet the importance of a proper burial, according to one's station, was another superstition to be dismissed.
Welstiel dragged the father to the grave, drew his dagger, and slit the man's throat. He tossed the dying man into the grave atop Chane's body. The two sons quickly joined their father, all bleeding out their lives, like loved ones of ancient days who chose to die with their fallen patriarch rather than live on in sorrow.
He settled upon a nearby downed tree with folded hands, leaning his elbows upon his knees as he stared at the piled bodies and waited.
Welstiel rubbed his temples and tried to clear his mind. Half the night passed as he sat in vigil. He looked upon Chane's face again.
"Are you awake yet?" he asked.
Chane opened his eyes.
About the Author
Barb and J. C. Hendee live just outside of Boulder, Colorado, close to the Rocky Mountains.
He teaches English for the Metropolitan State College of Denver, and she teaches for the University of Colorado at Denver.
Barb's short fiction has appeared in numerous genre magazines and anthologies. She is the author of the novel Blood Memories. J. C.'s poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction have also appeared in many genre magazines. Visit their Web site at www.nobledead.com.