by Barb Hendee
“Is it always this quiet?” Chane asked, looking around.
Nikolas was slow in answering. “Not that I remember.”
Wynn noticed a young man ahead dragging a small girl child along the roadside beyond the village’s far limits. They were perhaps hurrying toward the nearest dwelling. The man stalled, likely spotting the wagon, and he veered sharply, jerking the girl along as they ducked into a stand of trees. Neither of them made a sound.
Wynn pulled out her cold-lamp crystal and swiped it harshly across her thigh to ignite a pale light from it. It wasn’t until the wagon passed near the trees that she saw anything more.
The man peeked out at her from behind a tree.
He looked pale in the crystal’s dim light. His face was more heavily lined than she’d have guessed, as his quick movements moments before and his fully dark hair suggested a younger man. His right eye twitched at the sight of her, as if she frightened him.
“Shade?” Wynn whispered, and immediately memory-words rose in her head.
—Not—you— . . . —He—remembers—dark robe—but not like—your—blue one—
In a blink both man and child vanished deeper into the trees.
“Another sage?” Wynn asked. “Has he seen someone else like me?”
Shade rumbled but didn’t huff or raise memory-words in Wynn as an answer; that meant Shade didn’t know.
“Something is wrong here,” she said, feeling foolish for stating the obvious. Master Columsarn had alluded to that in his letters. But it was likely not a good idea to go poking about right now.
Once the village was too far behind to see, and Wynn was still lost in worry and thinking of the deformed hare, Osha tapped her on the shoulder.
She almost squeaked in fright.
“This place . . . land . . . sick . . . die,” Osha whispered.
He didn’t have to point at anything, for she saw the brush, bushes, and trees along the road. Too many appeared wilted or dying. Wynn closed her hand over the crystal to smother most of its light.
No one spoke for a long while, until they approached the outskirts of another village.
“Beáumie,” Nikolas whispered.
In size it was similar to Pérough, though this place appeared nearly deserted, with even fewer people visible as the wagon rolled through. They ran for doorways while holding hoods low over their heads to hide their faces.
“I don’t like this,” Nikolas said. “It’s nothing like I remember.”
As the wagon passed beyond the village, a cold drizzle began to fall. Shivering and pulling her cloak tighter, Wynn tried to clear her head to form a proper question for Nikolas about anything else that was different from in his youth. Then she heard him suck in a breath, and she glanced back.
He was crouched low, looking up ahead of the wagon.
“The keep,” Chane said, and Wynn turned forward again.
The road rose up a thinly forested slope, growing steeper near the top, and she heard the sea from somewhere beyond. But her gaze locked on what was visible at the crest far ahead. The first thing that caught her eye was the light of flames. In the deepening darkness, she spotted the keep’s outline first, constructed on the rise and likely with its back to the sea below it. Some form of gate in a surrounding wall faced the road’s far end. Whatever braziers burned there were on the inner side and set high upon the gate’s sides. She made out only one large square structure beyond the gate, rising to about twice its height. As they rolled up the incline, even closer, she spotted a single tower that rose above the keep’s left corner. The whole place looked so stark—so unwelcoming—against the starless skyline.
Chane suddenly pulled up the horses, and as the wagon halted, he sat there gazing upward. “Do we go on?”
Right then, instinct told Wynn to tell him to turn around. “We have to.”
Chane flicked the wagon’s reins, urging the horses up the road’s rise toward the gate in the darkness haloed by orange-red light.
• • •
As the wagon rolled up to the iron-lattice double gate, several things surprised Chane and several did not. He did not find it odd that the gates were closed and that two guards stood peering out at newcomers with unwelcoming suspicion. He was surprised to find no gatehouse or tunnel or portcullis.
Beáumie Keep was surrounded by a stone wall some four yards high, encompassing its inner dirt courtyard; the entrance was framed by two pillars rising barely higher than the wall. As Chane reined in the team of geldings, he looked through the gates’ iron lattice and straight to the keep’s double doors—which were up a rise of six broad stone steps. At a guess, the keep’s rear wall faced the cliff over the ocean shore. Likely it had been built here due to the solid stone of the knoll and cliff for a sound foundation.
A little more disconcerting were the astonished and angry faces of the two guards looking out at him. By the light of the braziers on the pillars’ inner tops, both men wore leather armor with riveted steel plates under gray tabards and cloaks. Chane could not make out the emblem on the tabards, but neither man wore a helmet beneath his cloak’s hood. Both began whispering to each other until . . .
“Stay where you are!” one called out.
Chane could not be certain in looking through the gate’s iron slats, but the second guard might have reached for a sword at his hip.
“Turn back and leave . . . now!” the first guard shouted.
Chane considered doing so, there and then, but Wynn’s hand closed on his forearm. Wynn had faced much in the past few years and would not be intimidated by a pair of guards—admirable but sometimes unwise.
“We have an invitation,” she called out.
Then one of the keep’s far double doors opened.
A tall figure emerged and stepped down the stone stairs to the dirt yard. Chane could not make out a face, but by the heavy folds of a full-length skirt below a long wool tunic and cloak, he could see that it must be a woman. As she came toward the gate, he realized why her face had been difficult to see in the night. She had dark skin—darker than anyone he had ever met, with brown-black, tightly curling hair all the way to her shoulders.
Taking in her large eyes over a flared nose and very full lips only slightly lighter than her skin, he wondered who she was. She was dressed like neither a servant nor a noble.
The dark-skinned woman paused halfway to the gates as both guards looked back. One guard left his post to go and meet her, saying something so low that Chane could not catch it. After looking out through the gates for an instant longer, the woman turned and vanished back into the keep. The guard who had gone to her went running off toward what appeared to be a barrack on the courtyard’s north side.
Chane was about to advise that they leave.
From out of the barrack came a short, muscular man with a nearly shaved head. He was dressed like the two guards—except that his hood was thrown back. The way the messenger guard followed two paces behind suggested that the short one had authority over the others.
“What is this about?” he barked before he even reached the gate.
“Nothing, sir,” the first guard answered, straightening stiffly. “We’re just turning a wagon away.”
As the short man—apparently in command—neared the gates, he peered out through the lattice, and his eyes roamed over all in the wagon.
“Captain Holland,” came a voice behind Chane, and he turned halfway on the wagon’s bench, as did Wynn.
Nikolas stood behind Wynn and between Osha and Shade in the wagon’s bed.
“It’s me,” Nikolas continued, pulling back the hood of his cloak. “My father sent for me.”
The short one squinted and then frowned. “Master Nikolas?”
“Yes, please let us in. We have come a long way.”
Chane heard a tremor in the young sage’s voice, but perhaps Nikol
as’s speaking up might disarm the tension here.
“I’m sorry,” the captain said, polite but firm. “There’s been plague in the villages, and I have standing orders not to let anyone through.”
“Plague?” Wynn repeated. “We saw no signs of plague.”
Indeed, what Chane had seen in passing through two villages was strange but not indicative of disease.
The captain’s eyes narrowed as he fixed on Wynn, and a scowl rose again on his face. “Turn the wagon around and leave. I have my orders.”
“Captain Holland! Open those gates . . . now!”
At this new voice shouting from somewhere in the courtyard, the captain turned about, as did the two other guards. All three stiffened to attention as a small young woman walked brusquely toward the gate.
She was pale, though beautiful, with a narrow jaw, a heart-shaped mouth, and a high brow of perfect skin. A mass of shiny, straight blue-black hair fell over the shoulders of a velvet gown of dark emerald green. She wore no cloak and gave no regard to the rain. Behind her followed the much taller dark-skinned woman.
“My lady?” said the captain, with his back to Chane.
The small woman stopped and looked through the gate from about five paces off. Her eyes locked on someone other than Chane, and the harshness of her gaze faltered for a blink.
“Open the gates,” she repeated. “Master Columsarn has asked to see his son, and I doubt this small group stopped in either of the villages.”
Her dark eyes shifted focus, possibly to Wynn, and then slightly upward as she studied Chane.
He felt Wynn’s hand touch his arm.
“Duchess Sherie Beáumie . . . the duke’s sister,” she whispered.
Chane glanced at Wynn and wondered how she knew this, but she kept her eyes forward.
The woman—the duchess—approached the gate as the captain quickly stepped aside. But when the captain turned to follow her, he appeared worried and took a hesitant glance back toward the keep. The darker-skinned woman stopped three paces behind all the others.
Duchess Beáumie continued looking at Chane on the wagon’s bench. “Did you stop at either village along the road or speak to anyone?”
“No,” he answered.
If she found his near-voiceless rasp odd, she did not show it as she turned her head toward the captain. “As you see, they came in contact with no one.”
Chane, born into a minor barony with a mother fragile and weak in both body and mind, had met but a few noblewomen who gave orders as if they never expected to be questioned.
The captain nodded instantly to his duchess and then to his men, though he still looked troubled. One guard swung the rotating gate bar, and both men pushed the gate’s halves outward.
Chane flicked the reins, and the horses passed through as the duchess and her companion stepped aside. The guards closed the gate immediately once the wagon entered the courtyard.
“Everyone out,” Chane whispered, setting the brake as he reached back for his packs.
Wynn reached for her own pack and pulled her sheathed sun-crystal staff from beneath the bench before she hopped down. Osha and Nikolas gathered their belongings and got out the back as Shade leaped over the side to join Wynn.
In the cold, wet night, and under the red glare of the gate’s brazier, Nikolas appeared almost ill as he rounded the wagon’s back. Chane caught the duchess’s eyes on the young sage.
There might not have been hatred in her stare, but Chane recognized pain and resentment when he saw it.
“You came,” she said simply, looking away.
Nikolas said nothing, and the young woman glanced over the rest of the group while appearing to regain her composure. Her perfect brow wrinkled slightly at the sight of Osha and the overly large black wolf standing beside Wynn.
She addressed Nikolas again. “Your father and I did not expect an entourage.”
Her haughty tone appeared to catch Wynn off guard. Wynn might not be intimidated by a pair of guards, but she had little experience with arrogant nobles.
Chane understood them only too well—as he had been one of them. Drawing himself to full height, he stepped in next to Wynn.
“The guild sent this sage with some texts for Master Columsarn,” he returned with equal disregard for the duchess’s position. “Two sages could not travel such a distance without protection.” He lightly brushed back his cloak’s folds, exposing his longsword on one hip and his shorter sword on the other. Osha’s longbow was also in clear view.
“Please,” Chane said, “take us inside before one of them catches an illness in this rain.”
The young woman’s veneer was well practiced, not taken aback even in recognizing someone of her own kind—by his bearing and manner.
“Of course,” she said coldly. “Come. Someone will see to your horses.”
Turning, the duchess led the way toward the keep. The dark-skinned female lingered until all of them passed by, and then she followed behind.
Chane did not care for that, though when he glanced down, Wynn was looking up at him with an expression that clearly asked,
What have we gotten ourselves into now?
• • •
Shortly after, Wynn found herself in the keep’s central hall, with Shade pressed up against her leg. The open chamber was surprisingly bare, with no tapestries and only one long table and eight tall wooden chairs at the room’s far end. But the table was dusty, as if it hadn’t been used or tended in a while. At least a fire, providing warmth and light, burned in the great hearth to one side of the hall.
The duchess—Sherie—took a dry stalk from a bucket near the hearth and touched it to the flames. She lit a few candle lanterns and set them on the table.
“Rooms will be made ready immediately,” she said. “Dinner is past, but I will have the kitchen prepare food as well.”
She seemed different than she had in the courtyard: slightly less sure of herself and almost in a hurry to get them settled. Even before she set down the third lantern, she gestured with curling fingers toward the taller, dark-skinned woman. That one came close in long, firm strides and, after a whisper from the duchess, she left the hall.
Wynn wondered about the sudden subtle change in the duchess, though there was much she could guess as she glanced at her companions. Chane appeared almost cold and disinterested, though his gaze roamed over everything. Osha was clearly ill at ease as he looked over the bare stone walls. He hadn’t said a word since they reached the gates.
Nikolas’s face was pallid, and he wouldn’t raise his eyes.
Wynn found it hard to imagine how Nikolas and Sherie had ever taken to each other, considering the way they were now. Then again, lost love, betrayal, and perhaps even murder could change people drastically. After what Nikolas had told her and unknowingly showed Shade, Wynn couldn’t imagine how he must feel.
Sherie hardly appeared glad to see him.
“I want to see my father,” Nikolas said, and his voice sounded too loud in the hall after the moment of silence.
Sherie looked up from setting the third candle lantern on the table. Her pale skin was flawless, and Wynn had never seen anyone with such an abundance of shining hair. It was not hard to imagine a sixteen-year-old Nikolas being attracted to her, though it left Wynn wondering about what Nikolas had been like back then for her to want him.
“He is being checked on,” the duchess answered. “If he is well enough, you may see him.”
Nikolas took a hesitant step toward her. “Is he that ill? His letter suggested that . . .”
He never finished, as swift footsteps carried into the hall. Wynn turned the other way as a young man strode in from a side archway, and she recognized him immediately.
Although Sherie was small with soft curves, her brother, Karl, the current Duke Beáumie, was tall with hawkish features. Their c
oloring was identical, though he was dressed all in black, with silver fixtures and adornments from his tunic to his pants and high leather boots. The young duke wore vambraces on both forearms above heavy leather gloves on his hands. But in some details his appearance was different from the memories Shade had passed to Wynn.
His skin looked stretched over his face with a feverish shine. His blue-black hair lacked its previous luster from Nikolas’s stolen memories and hung flat, combed but perhaps in a hurry and not washed in a long while. And more . . .
His sister lost her composure, as if she was beyond surprised by his sudden arrival.
“Karl . . .” she started and didn’t go on.
Wynn noticed three men standing at attention outside the hall’s main entrance. Their presence didn’t surprise her, but their appearance did.
Most nobles employed as many armsmen as they could afford, but these three were dusky skinned with dark hair—not as dark as that of the duchess’s companion, but they were all obviously Suman. Instead of armor, they wore long silk tabards of deep yellow over white muslin shirts and loose pantaloons—and they had curved swords in hand, the blades resting against their shoulders. One was about the height of Nikolas but much more muscular in build. The other two were tall and slender.
Why would a duke of Witeny employ Suman guards?
“What is going on here?” the duke demanded. “Who gave permission to open the gates?”
“They were opened for me,” Nikolas said quietly.
The duke turned, looking past Wynn as he spotted Nikolas. In turn Nikolas hesitantly studied the friend of his youth.
The duke stood frozen in silence at the sight of the young sage.
A cascade of erratic shifts passed through Karl Beáumie’s expression: first shock and then confusion, followed by a shudder of panic. It ended in a sudden, possibly forced smile.
“Nik?” he said, and the smile turned to a manic grin as he strode over, grabbed and embraced Nikolas. “I had no idea. . . . Why didn’t you send word? I would have sent an escort to bring you through the villages.”