by Barb Hendee
Shade mirrored their movements, and Wynn raised a hand to hold Shade off.
“Stop this—it accomplishes nothing!” Jausiff commanded, this time in Numanese.
“Lock the door,” Aupsha answered likewise.
“And then you will release her?”
No answer came, and Jausiff finally headed for the open door. Aupsha turned, forcing Wynn to do so as the master sage passed. Jausiff gripped the door to push it closed . . . and it bucked out of his grip as he stumbled back.
Osha lunged into the room with a dagger in his hand. He halted at the sight of Wynn’s situation, and his gaze shifted up above her head.
“Let her go!” he ordered.
Shade’s snarling grew louder, and the blade at Wynn’s throat pressed until it made her skin sting. Jausiff stepped between Wynn and Osha, though he flinched when Shade snapped at him.
“Put your weapons away, both of you!” the old sage commanded.
Neither Osha nor Aupsha moved.
Wynn wasn’t exactly afraid—though she knew she should be. In her searches for the orbs, she had been in worse positions than this.
Osha was positioned squarely before the door, and he’d left it open without even looking back. The sounds of fast footsteps and voices carried in from the passage outside. Sherie and then Nikolas, followed by Captain Holland and two standard guards in gray tabards, rushed in as Osha shifted around the room to stand beside Shade’s left hip.
The cluttered chamber became quite crowded.
Osha held his dagger out as all of Shade’s hackles rose.
Wynn hoped no one would be stupid enough start something now.
The duchess looked at Osha and then Aupsha and finally at Wynn with her mouth still covered by Aupsha’s free hand.
“They are treacherous, my lady,” Aupsha said. “The Lhoin’na cornered me with questions he should not know to ask, and this sage”—she jerked sharply on Wynn’s face—“did the same with your counselor.”
Sherie’s normally pale face went white, and she turned toward Nikolas. “Is that why . . . why you were being so kind? To separate us so your companions could go at my staff one by one?”
“No!” Nikolas answered, shaking his head so hard that his streaked hair swung.
“Then what are they really doing here?” Sherie demanded. “Why did you bring them?”
“Everyone stop!” Jausiff called in a booming voice that belied his age.
Even Shade ceased snarling and settled to a rumble as Jausiff followed up with a labored sigh.
“My lady,” he added, turning to the duchess, “please dismiss the captain and his men . . . and lock the door. We have matters to discuss in private, and Aupsha may have misread the situation.”
Sherie fixed her regal glare on him, and Wynn watched as mixed confusion and doubt passed across the duchess’s face.
“Please, my lady,” Jausiff urged.
Sherie barely turned her head to speak over her shoulder. “Captain, take your men and wait outside.”
Holland hesitated with a glance at both Osha and Aupsha before he obeyed.
Without moving, Sherie commanded Nikolas next: “Lock the door.” Once he did so, she turned her scrutiny back on the master sage. Clearly she felt betrayed but was uncertain whom to hold responsible.
“And now?” she asked, though there was a slight tremor in her voice.
“Aupsha, release the journeyor,” Jausiff said. “And you, Master Elf, put that blade away. Both of you disarm—now!”
Osha’s eyes were moving in watching anyone present. He still hesitated when the hand came away from Wynn’s mouth, though he looked directly at her.
“Do it, Osha,” she said.
She watched his jaw clench as he lowered the dagger. The blade’s edge at Wynn’s throat released some of its pressure. Osha’s large amber eyes widened as some incensed fury twisted his long features.
“You . . . bleed!” he hissed.
Osha raised his blade again and took a step as Shade’s jaws clacked around a snarl.
Wynn and Sherie shouted in the same instant.
“Put it away!”
“That is enough!”
Osha froze and Shade stood her ground. Only when the blade’s edge fully left Wynn’s throat did Osha reluctantly put the dagger behind his back. It was a moment longer before he revealed an empty hand. Despite losing his Anmaglâhk stilettos, he had somehow rigged the dagger to be drawn and returned to concealment as needed.
Wynn touched her throat where it stung, making it worse. Her fingers came away with a smear of blood. Even then she could barely move in trying to catch her breath.
When Aupsha sidestepped toward the door, Sherie shouted, “Do not move!”
Aupsha froze, and to Wynn it appeared that Jausiff was not the only one whom Aupsha served. There was far more collusion here than she would have first guessed, but it appeared that not all of them knew everything about . . . whatever this was about.
“What is happening here?” the duchess demanded of the elder sage.
“A moment, my lady,” he answered, and his gaze hardened as he studied Wynn. “Before we proceed, you will prove to my satisfaction that you are who and what you claim to be, a true sage and a cathologer. Succeed . . . and we continue speaking in here. Fail, and the duchess will call the guards back in.”
Wynn had lost control and realized she would have to play Jausiff’s game. Worse, she and everyone but Chane were now trapped in this room. If she failed, someone would soon enough find Chane “dead” in the guest quarters. After that, being thrown out of the keep would be the best and least likely outcome for failure.
Before she could even agree or disagree with the terms, Jausiff shot the first question at her.
“Who is the assumed creator of the symbolic system used to catalogue and shelve texts in the guild’s libraries and archives?”
Wynn raised one eyebrow. The youngest apprentice of any of the five orders could answer this.
“Kärêm al-Räshìd Nisbah,” she answered. “It was his own system as an imperial scholar, and used in the libraries of the Suman Empire some six hundred years ago.”
Jausiff said nothing, and then, “If I needed to search the archives for Spirit by Air, what symbols would I seek and what texts would I find?”
This was a more complex question, suited to a journeyor, for even apprentices were not generally allowed in the archives. The guild’s emphases of orders were often represented by geometric symbols associated with the prime Elements of Existence: Spirit, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. In turn, any works that fell into an order’s fields of endeavor were marked and shelved by those symbols. Columns of such symbols on casements, and even on some shelves and texts, were used to classify, subclassify, and cross-reference their subject matter.
“You would look for a square above a circle,” she answered, “where you would find material on myths and legends shelved by delineation of historical context.”
This time he nodded once. “How many lexicons are there at the Calm Seatt guild for the pre-Numanese dialect of Êdän?”
Wynn almost answered “two” but stopped herself.
Êdän was pre-Numanese, yes, but it was an elven dialect no longer spoken and not a precursor to modern Numanese. So old, in fact, that it predated the Lhoin’na tongue and even the old dialect of the an’Cróan, Osha’s people.
A trick within a trick that only an advanced journeyor of Cathology might know, but still Wynn wondered. . . .
Jausiff likely hadn’t visited the guild for many years, probably since before her time. Shortly after she achieved journeyor status, the Lhoin’na guild branch had gifted a second, updated Êdän lexicon to High Premin Sykion. Jausiff wouldn’t know this.
“One,” she answered.
He took a step back toward his desk. “I
t seems you are what you claim to be.”
“I told you,” Nikolas said irritably.
“Seems!” Jausiff repeated as he turned and snatched a book off his desk. “As to who you claim to be, through whom you serve . . .”
In his hand was one of the texts Wynn had brought to him; she knew it by its cover.
The Processes and Essence of Transmogrification.
Wynn grew nervous again, not knowing what Jausiff was up to now. She hadn’t even finished skimming that book, let alone studied it enough to answer any questions about its content.
“You said three questions,” she challenged.
He ignored her. “Where would I find this text—by its subject matter—shelved in the library?”
Wynn stalled, though she knew the answer. That text wouldn’t be found in any openly accessible library. He would know this as well, because of the person who had received his request for it . . . through whom you serve.
No, mentioning Premin Hawes wasn’t the real point.
Jausiff was apparently as paranoid as Wynn about sharing anything with anyone. No one in collusion with any minion of the Enemy would do all of this in sharing information. And that actually made Wynn trust him a little more.
“Well, where is it shelved . . . in the library?” he repeated.
“It isn’t,” she answered. “Such a text would only be in the archive under the control of a domin and master archivist . . . or in the private holdings of a domin—or premin—of Metaology.”
The old sage dropped the book on his desk with a thud and, with a scowl and snort, he nodded once to the duchess.
Lady Sherie was not so easily assured. “Someone explain what is happening here!”
“These interlopers are a danger,” Aupsha insisted.
Everyone else appeared to ignore her.
Wynn dropped—almost fell—to her knees beside Shade and rested her hand on the dog’s back. For all the talking going on in this room, few people seemed to be speaking to one another.
“You asked me your questions, Jausiff,” Wynn said clearly. “May I do the same?”
His eyes glittered. “By all means.”
“You called Nikolas here to help with the duke, but you didn’t want him to see the texts you’d requested. Why?”
Jausiff’s eyes narrowed once again. “How do you know that I . . .” He trailed off, perhaps realizing the answer before he finished the question. “Hawes showed you my letter. Who are you that a premin of Metaology would trust you this much . . . send you here?”
“Someone she felt was qualified to understand whatever is happening.”
Jausiff walked to a nearby cabinet and opened it quickly to remove something from inside. He returned holding a little cork-capped glass jar smaller than his palm. This he handed to Osha, who just stared at it.
“Put some on her throat,” Jausiff instructed, gesturing quickly to Wynn.
As Osha knelt by Wynn and fiddled to open the jar, the old sage glanced at the duchess and nodded, though he still ignored Aupsha, who watched everything warily. Wynn flinched when Osha applied the salve to her cut, but she felt a rush of hope. Would Jausiff finally be candid?
Nikolas could no longer contain himself. “Father? You called me home, telling me you were ill! Then you said you wished me to ‘help’ with Karl, but except for Sherie, I don’t see anyone trying to help him.”
“Maybe your father is trying to help in his own way,” Wynn interjected, and apparently having gained some cooperation, she turned to her own questions. “Why those specific texts? I know it has something to do with the duke’s behavior or with what’s happening in the villages and the surrounding land.”
Jausiff folded his hands behind his back. “Yes, in the villages, I saw things . . . unnatural. Not a simple sickness among the people, but . . . other things in the land around the keep.”
“Many dead, dying trees,” Osha interrupted. “Hare . . . with five leg.”
“When did you first notice?” Wynn asked Jausiff.
“About a moon ago.”
“And when did you first see changes in the duke?”
“Half a moon before . . . perhaps earlier,” Sherie answered this time, her noble sternness fading. “He went out one night, claiming to settle a fence line dispute in an outlying village and that he’d spend the night there. I thought nothing of it, but when he returned late the following day . . . the Suman guards came with him. He wouldn’t say why or from where, but it was eight more days—nights—when he took to wearing gloves. He looked exhausted, if and when he was up at all during the day. Later, when I went to his room past supper for some issue, I found it empty. I checked every night after that, and he was never there. I would guess that had begun long before I noticed.”
“Where he go?” Osha asked.
The duchess slowly shook her head. “Somewhere in the lower levels. All the stores below were moved to the main floor, though he never gave a reason. After the Suman guards appeared, no one was allowed down there but Karl and them.”
Jausiff took over from there. “Both the duke and the effects in the surrounding land are worsening.”
Wynn knew that the time frame between changes in the duke and the land was too close for coincidence. Obviously the others here shared this conclusion. Something else too disturbing for coincidence struck Wynn.
Last night Shade had gone berserk in claiming that a Fay had manifested somewhere near or inside the keep. Wynn looked to Jausiff, and without warning . . .
“What were you doing in the back passage last night?” she asked. “What was that device you were carrying?”
She knew this might cause confusion and worse, and she wasn’t wrong. Sherie and Nikolas both started in surprise and asked at the same time, “What is she talking about?”
Aupsha hissed and stepped in on Jausiff.
A string of words erupted from her in that unknown language, and Jausiff snapped back at her in kind.
Wynn didn’t know what they quarreled about and only guessed that Aupsha did not want the questions answered. However, Wynn knew enough to let the initial outburst pass, and even as Osha rose tensely, she placed her hand on Shade’s back.
“Shade,” Wynn whispered, and an image rose in her mind.
It was so intense that she clenched her eyes shut.
Wynn found herself running through a dim cave more swiftly than she could have. And her hands—the hands—pumping in rhythm with her strides had long, slender fingers with dark skin.
The memory Shade had caught was from Aupsha.
An agonized sound of pain escaped Wynn’s—Aupsha’s—mouth.
Dark-skinned, similarly dressed people—bodies—were strewn about the floor. Some had their throats torn open or their heads at severe angles from broken necks. All of their eyes stared blankly out between limp eyelids.
Wynn—Aupsha—cried out in pain again.
She slowed, looking to the cave’s rear, where a heavy door appeared to have been shattered outward from within. Just inside that smaller space was an empty pedestal with a round hole in the center.
Inside the memory, Aupsha screamed as she rushed through the door.
Someone lay beyond the pedestal inside the small chamber. At the elderly man’s moan, she rushed over, falling to her knees. His abdomen and light cotton shift had been torn open. He was covered in his own blood and would not live much longer.
Wynn—Aupsha—scooted closer to cradle the old man’s head. His features were Suman, as was his hair, but he was darker than any Suman she had seen. Perhaps he was of mixed heritage. His long and curly chin beard was fully gray. When he whispered in his own tongue, Wynn picked out meanings in the words through Aupsha’s remembrance . . . or perhaps it was something in the way Shade passed this memory.
“Father,” Aupsha sobbed.
“I
t is gone,” he whispered, looking up at her in panic, though he struggled to keep his dark eyes open. “After so many hundreds of years, the artifact has been taken from us. . . . We have failed our sect’s sacred duty to safeguard it.” When he coughed, blood seeped over his thick lips. “Get a compass piece and find it. . . . You must find it . . . and bring it back!”
“Who took it?” she asked, weeping openly. “Father, who did this?”
The old man went still in her arms.
Wynn jerked her hand from Shade.
All of Aupsha’s grief and anger threatened to overwhelm her . . . and then came her own fears, her suspicions, and she grew sick inside.
“What was stolen from your people?” Wynn asked before she even opened her eyes. “What is this . . . compass . . . you used?”
The chamber had gone silent, and when Wynn’s eyes opened, everyone was looking at her.
The curved knife reappeared suddenly in Aupsha’s hand as she charged. Wynn cringed back as Shade lunged outward and Osha stepped in with his own dagger somehow in hand.
“Hold your place!” the duchess shouted.
Aupsha barely hesitated, but it was enough for Jausiff to step in and grab her arm.
“Stop this!” he shouted. “Remember that you came to me for help . . . not I to you!”
Aupsha turned on him, and Wynn reached out for Shade, but the dog wouldn’t retreat. Neither would Osha.
“You will keep your place,” Sherie ordered Aupsha. “Or you are gone! Now, what is happening here?”
Jausiff remained fixed on his tall, dark attendant, though he raised a hand to the duchess to hold her off. “I promised to help you,” he said to Aupsha, “and you trusted me once you learned who and what I was . . . a sage, a preserver of knowledge.” He pointed at Wynn. “So is this young woman. Though I had reason to doubt her at first, I believe she might be able to assist. Enough nonsense!”
Aupsha remained rigid, her face a mask of anger. Finally she stepped back, and Wynn waved Osha off as well.
“Master Columsarn!”
Wynn flinched at that sharp utterance, and the duchess stepped slowly and steadily up to the master sage.
“You will explain all of this immediately,” Sherie added, “including everything you have kept from me.”