by Barb Hendee
“The duke has sealed the keep, even to the servants in their rooms,” she said. “The counselor was locked in his chamber but not under guard, so I released him first.” Her tone grew impatient. “The duke has left, taking his Sumans and some of the keep’s guards on horseback. But he is aboard a wagon . . . with a covered load in its rear.”
“Back up now,” Chane ordered.
Aupsha lingered for a breath before retreating to the outer passage’s far side.
Chane slipped out, looked both ways, and found that the second guard was also down. The others came out behind him.
“We cannot delay for your doubts,” Aupsha added sharply.
Osha immediately rushed for Wynn’s room as Shade dashed to the passage’s end and peered down the stairs. Chane remained poised before the tall dark servant, now dressed and armored more strangely, more foreignly, than she herself had always appeared.
“Do you know what’s in the wagon?” Wynn asked, stepping in on Chane’s right.
“My guess would be the same as yours,” Aupsha answered, “and I have little patience left.”
Chane was about to push Wynn back and sidestep toward her room when Osha returned and handed off his blades. Chane took them and quickly strapped them on as he kept his eyes on Aupsha.
“Is my staff still there?” Wynn asked.
“Yes,” Osha answered.
At Chane’s glance, the elf was already stringing his bow, and the strange and narrow canvas bundle was again tied over his back.
“Get your staff,” Chane told Wynn. “Nikolas, go with her.”
As the two ran off, Shade came trotting back.
“Anyone?” Chane asked, and Shade huffed once for no.
Only then did Aupsha look away at Shade with a brief narrowing of her eyes. “I will go below and verify that the artifact has been taken,” she said.
“Why would I trust you for that?” Chane challenged.
Aupsha let out a slow breath, as if suppressing distaste. “Whether it is there or not, the duke has tried to lock away everyone who knows him . . . and has fled the keep. That alone is enough reason to stop him from whatever he has been doing.”
Chane was half tempted to remove Aupsha here and now, but if the duke had been so mad as to use the orb in some way, the man would not have relinquished it in taking flight. Still, Chane wondered what might happen if he was mistaken. What if Aupsha, who knew the duke much better, had a reason for sending all of them off and out of the way?
“Someone must find the counselor and the compass I left with him,” she said. “Only that device has a chance to locate the artifact if it has been removed. You will also need Lady Sherie to manage any remaining guards.”
“Wait—where are you going?”
At that, Chane found Wynn at his side again with her staff in hand.
“You and Nikolas get our packs,” he told her, and she looked from him to Aupsha. “Please,” he added, “we must move quickly and be prepared for anything.”
With obvious reluctance, she and Nikolas went off.
Chane barely turned to see Aupsha heading for the passage’s back. And before he could go after her . . .
“I come with you . . . to help,” Osha called out.
Aupsha halted and turned. Her mask was down over her face once more, and it was impossible to gauge her reaction.
Wynn returned and handed off Chane’s packs. It was obvious what Osha intended to do, and she held out a cold-lamp crystal.
“Take it, just to be sure,” she told him. “Meet us in the courtyard when you’re done . . . and be quick.”
Before Osha even nodded, Aupsha had turned away. He took the crystal and followed her.
“Nikolas, Shade, and I will find Jausiff and Lady Sherie,” Wynn said to Chane. “You get our wagon ready, but be prepared to clear us a path if the guards won’t listen to the duchess.”
Chane disliked the idea of them all splitting up this way, but there were too many paths to follow, and Wynn was already headed for the stairs with Shade.
Only Nikolas lingered, eyeing Chane, until Chane stepped off after Wynn.
• • •
Osha slipped ahead down the stairs to the passage’s rear, and Aupsha said nothing. He did not like having her at his back, but whatever lay below, he intended to see it first, and he brushed Wynn’s crystal across his tunic several times to heat up its light.
He would have preferred to remain with Wynn, but he had seen her face upon learning that Aupsha intended to verify the orb’s presence or absence beneath the keep. He had seen such an artifact once in his time with her—and Magiere, Léshil, and Chap. He would know another one when he saw it. But when he and the strangely armored woman reached the rear passage with its end door out the north side . . .
Around the corner and down the two steps, the door leading below was wide-open.
He glanced at Aupsha, but the mask made it impossible to read her. This door being open did not bode well, and she slipped into the lead as they descended more stairs beyond the door. Another passage at the bottom led them into a narrow stone chamber with six heavy doors of old wood, three to each side.
Aupsha halted, and Osha had to sidestep to view the chamber. Something more caught his attention immediately.
A body lay crumpled on the floor, though Osha recognized it only by the garb of a Suman guard. The man looked nothing like any guard he had seen, for this one was aged, too old to be in service. The corpse’s eyes were half-open, as was his wrinkled mouth, but those eyes were as clouded and pale as his near-white hair.
Aupsha was still frozen in place and looking down when Osha heard the crackling squeak of leather. He followed the sound to her nearer gloved hand, now clenched in a fist.
“You see this before?” he asked.
At first she did not answer, and when she did so, she did not look at him.
“Once. Among my dead . . . a few were not broken but left like this . . . dead or dying.”
Osha waited no longer and ran from one door to the next. All were locked except the second one on the right. The only things he found in that small, dark room were a plain old table and a strange iron stand. The latter had a waist-high round hoop at the top, in place of any surface on which to set anything. When he left that room, Aupsha had not moved.
“Nothing here,” Osha said. “Other doors locked.”
Aupsha stared down at the body a moment longer and then turned back toward the passage out. “It does not matter. The artifact would have been guarded, always. It is gone.”
“We find it,” Osha said, quickly following. “We take it back.”
Again he slipped ahead to light the way, anxious to protect Wynn now that they knew the orb had been taken—or at least moved. He slowed as they reached the stairs and listened for anything above. No sound echoed to his ears as he crept up the stairs and through the opened door. He closed his hand over the crystal as he peered around the archway’s side.
There was no one in the back passage along the way they had come. He heard no sounds except the sea outside below the keep—and then a snap of cloth.
A sharp movement of air, like a brief breeze, tossed Osha’s hair. He looked back and then spun fully around. Wide-eyed, as he looked down the stairs, he opened his fist to release the crystal’s light.
Osha saw no one, even in the lower passage.
Aupsha was gone.
• • •
Chane reached the keep’s main hall at a run and raced on to the front doors. He halted to crack them open only a little.
He saw no one near the stable or the other, smaller structure on the courtyard’s left, but the rented wagon was still outside. To the right were the barracks and what might be another small storage building, and straight ahead two keep guards in gray tabards huddled together before the gate and peered out
through its lattice ironwork. Another one atop the wall to the gate’s left faced the other way, looking down the road. That one held a heavy crossbow.
Chane had no difficulty in hearing them.
“Where could he have gone?” the shortest man on the ground called up to the one atop the wall. “And why did he take Lieutenant Martelle?”
Sharpening his sight, Chane recognized the man on the ground as Captain Holland.
The man on the wall did not even turn around as he answered. “Don’t know. He just ordered the lieutenant to gather a few others, and they headed off with the duke and those Sumans. Good riddance on the latter!”
“How long ago?” Holland called back up.
“Not long,” the guard above answered. “Going by the wagon’s lantern, they turned off below and headed inland instead of along the coastal road. But they had no provisions that I saw, not for what little bulk was in the wagon. And no instructions from the duke. He just ordered us to open the gate.”
Chane grew uncertain. Preparing their own wagon would not be so easy if the captain and his men were confused by the duke’s taking men out in the middle of the night. If Chane headed for the stable, he might be detained and questioned. Such an event could be better handled if the duchess was here to at least try to clear the way.
Lost in thought, he did not hear the fast footfalls until they grew close.
Chane turned and reached for his sword. Osha came at him at a run through the main hall, but he was alone.
“Where is Aupsha?” Chane whispered.
Osha shook his head. “The way below not locked. We found no orb. We return to back passage . . . near door to outside . . .” He shook his head again.
It did not make sense to Chane. “Why would she break us out, accept our help, and then vanish?”
Osha shook his head once more.
Chane turned back to peer through the cracked-open door. The situation was even more uncertain now, for it seemed they had two choices: risk going for the wagon and team without attracting attention or wait for Wynn to arrive with the duchess.
The former seemed an unlikely success, so he held his place a little longer.
• • •
Wynn trotted with Shade behind Nikolas toward Jausiff’s study, for that was where Nikolas suggested that his father would return once Sherie had been freed. The young sage, with his slightly longer legs, shot out ahead and reached the door first.
“Father?” Nikolas called, banging on the door. “Are you in there?”
When no one answered, he tried the handle and found it locked.
“Where else might they be?” Wynn asked.
“I don’t know,” Nikolas answered. “Maybe Sherie’s chambers.”
Before Wynn could say more, he strode back down the passage toward the stairs. Wynn trotted after, followed by Shade, and halfway there they heard voices carrying down the stairs.
Jausiff and Lady Sherie stepped down into the passage.
“Father,” Nikolas breathed in relief, and perhaps his first instinct had been right.
“Nikolas?” Sherie said, hurrying toward them. Her gaze shifted to Wynn and then Shade. “You are free.”
“Aupsha let us out,” Wynn answered. She quickly told them everything that had happened that she knew so far, and then focused on Jausiff. “Aupsha wants you to get her device to track the artifact’s direction.”
“One moment,” Jausiff said, unlocking his chamber with one key on a heavy ring. “I haven’t seen a single guard wherever I went in the keep. All I know is that Karl left with his Suman contingent. You say Aupsha went to the lower level?”
“Yes. Osha went with her to verify that the artifact had been taken.”
Jausiff hurried to his desk and this time pulled out a tiny brass key on a string around his neck. He unlocked the chest behind his desk table and began pulling out various things and setting them aside in meticulous stacks.
Wishing he would hurry, Wynn bit down on her impatience. He finally straightened up, turned about, and set a small case of thick, stiff leather on the desk. When he undid the lashings and opened it, there was the piece of ruddy metal to which he referred as a “compass.”
Shade pushed in close at Wynn’s side before the desk, and her ears pricked up. But Wynn barely glanced at the dog as she waited for Jausiff to do . . . something.
Jausiff stretched out his arm, his hand open and palm up with the slightly curved piece of an orb key resting in it. Wynn was so fixed upon the object that she was startled as the old sage whispered something.
Jausiff’s eyes were on the “compass,” and when Wynn looked down, for an instant she thought she saw the ruddy metal quiver, or perhaps move or rotate just barely. The master sage closed his grip on it.
He stepped around the desk, with the device held out in his upturned fist. He kept turning slightly left and right as he walked all the way into the outer passage. Wynn rushed in behind him as everyone else present followed.
Jausiff went all the way down the passage to the stairs leading to below. He turned rightward once, and there was a scowl of confusion on his old face. The aging sage quickly turned to face up the passage again toward the keep’s rear.
Jausiff halted in only three more steps, and his hand holding the piece of an orb key dropped to dangle at his side.
“The artifact is no longer inside the keep,” he said.
Wynn turned on Sherie. “My lady, that artifact is dangerous. It’s what has been causing changes here in your brother, as well as in the surrounding land. Chane is trying to ready our wagon even now, but we need you to get us out of here past any remaining keep guards.”
Sherie appeared stricken, troubled, and doubtful as she looked from Wynn to the keep’s counselor. It was obvious that she had difficulty understanding anything that had happened here—that her own brother had ordered her locked into her room.
“Why would he leave?” she demanded. “Why take this object away from here after all he has done to hide it and whatever he has been doing with it?”
“I don’t know,” Wynn answered honestly. “But if you want to help him—and stop all of this—you must get us through the front gates.”
At that the duchess turned halfway and looked to Nikolas right behind her. Perhaps she wondered what he had to do with all of this, though he wouldn’t have much to tell. It seemed to take effort for Nikolas to even meet Sherie’s eyes, and when he finally did so, he simply nodded to her.
“This way,” the duchess commanded, walking forward to take the lead.
• • •
Chane, thinking that he—and Osha—should take a chance and head for the stable, began to doubt his choice to wait.
“Chane?”
At that whisper, both he and Osha turned to find Wynn and Shade hurrying toward them, along with Nikolas, the elder sage, and the duchess in the lead.
“Why aren’t you out there?” Wynn asked. “Are the horses harnessed?”
Chane shook his head. “The guards outside are agitated by what has happened. I thought it best to wait for Lady Sherie.”
“Where is Aupsha?” Jausiff asked, pushing in closer.
“Gone,” Osha answered.
“Gone?” the elderly sage repeated in shock.
“Step aside,” the duchess ordered, advancing immediately.
Chane did so. She passed him without slowing and pulled open one of the front doors. She did not pause as she strode out in the courtyard and straight toward the gates.
“Get to the horses,” Wynn urged as she passed him in following the duchess. “Osha, go and help him.”
Neither of them hesitated as the others followed Wynn.
Chane quick-stepped with Osha on his heels as they aimed straight for the wagon. When they reached it, Osha jumped up before the bench, and, as Chane was about to go in
to the stable for the horses, he paused, looking up at the elf.
“If the duchess cannot convince the guards, can you put down the one atop the wall before we near the gate?” Chane asked.
Osha finished untying the reins from the brake lever and straightened. At his simple shrug, his strung bow dropped off his shoulder, and he caught it without even looking.
“Not one,” he answered. “All three.”
Chane, not interested in the elf’s bravado, rolled his eyes as he turned at a trot for the stable doors.
• • •
Wynn stayed close behind Nikolas as they followed Sherie, and Shade remained at her right, while Jausiff came along a little wide on her left.
“How does your device work?” she asked.
He glanced sidelong at her and then held up his hand, still gripping the small metal object.
“Simply hold it once it is active, as now,” he answered. “It produces a . . . a pull in a general direction.”
Wynn couldn’t hold back one more question. “Was Aupsha the one who carried your messages to Calm Seatt?”
“This is hardly the time—”
“Did she?” Wynn insisted, for there might not be another time.
“Yes,” he admitted. “She possesses certain . . . abilities and was able to escape the keep. No one knew she was gone, because she and I were believed to be locked away in a self-imposed quarantine.”
Wynn glanced ahead. Sherie had almost reached Captain Holland, who stood waiting, his troubled gaze on only her.
“Did Aupsha have the device with her?” Wynn rushed to ask.
“Certainly,” Jausiff answered. “How else would I have it now?”
Wynn ignored that, for this all told her something more, at a guess. The key piece, the device . . . the “compass” was the only way anyone could have tracked the orb hidden away with the Stonewalkers. Both messenger and would-be thief were one and the same somehow, though this didn’t explain how Aupsha had traveled from Calm Seatt to the dwarven underworld in one night.
She must have been so confused, probably thinking the orb of Spirit had been moved to Dhredze Seatt on the peninsula. Only when a blank wall of rough stone had stopped her had she fled back here, realizing the orb she was after was still in the keep.