by Barb Hendee
Feeling Chane’s grip on his left wrist falter, Sau’ilahk immediately wrenched his taloned hand free and drew it back. He could not kill an undead with mere claws, but he could slash out Chane’s eyes. Once blinded, the tall undead would flounder, and Sau’ilahk could take Chane’s head with the duke’s sword. And Wynn, in watching for her protector’s return, would see only the duke command his own guards to seize her.
And if the guards were not there, she would die even more quickly.
Burning pain suddenly shot through Sau’ilahk’s forearm. Teeth pierced his skin, and he screamed more in shock and anger than in pain.
The dog’s touch did not burn him as it once had in his spiritual form.
Sau’ilahk had to let go of Chane as Shade wrenched on his arm, and this time he cried out as his skin tore. He closed his left hand in a fist.
Branches still blocked clear sight, but he did not have to see to strike.
At the loud crack of his fist’s impact, skin on his other arm tore again. But the jaws came off, and he thrashed out of the branches to find the dog on the ground.
Her eyes were barely open where she lay slack-jawed and motionless.
One of Wynn’s precious protectors was dead. There was one more to finish before he could find her.
A hissing rasp rose out of the tree behind him. Sau’ilahk had begun to turn when a heavy weight slammed into his back and drove him face-first to the earth.
• • •
Panic and pain more than hunger fed Chane’s fury as he fell atop the duke. He had heard Shade attack, and then the duke’s grips had torn away one after the other. He had heard the deafening crack of a fist and then nothing more from Shade.
Trying to get free, the duke bucked wildly beneath him. With one hand Chane slammed the duke’s face back into the earth as he fought to keep the man pinned. Chane could feel the damage to his ribs along his back. He could not hold the duke down and still reach one of his swords. Fright and fury brought back all that happened.
The line of fire in the forest . . . the strange, tiny emptiness he had felt . . . Shade halting, poised in the road upon first spotting the overturned wagon . . .
It all nagged him again with what was not possible and yet had to be.
There was no duke anymore; the only thing that could have caused all of this was the wraith.
Somehow, Sau’ilahk had taken a man’s flesh.
The wraith had maimed Nikolas, murdered and fed upon young sages, and now killed Shade—and it kept coming for Wynn.
Panic and pain died. Hunger took their place. The beast inside consumed Chane whole, and the night grew brilliant in his eyes.
He snarled his fingers into the duke’s—Sau’ilahk’s—hair and wrenched his prey’s head aside. Diving down hard, he sank his teeth into the exposed side of the neck and throat. Blood welled and leaked from his mouth as his prey went into a frenzy. Chane clamped down until his teeth hit bone.
No euphoria came this time as life filled him. He drank until the thrashing beneath him grew weak. He kept on and on until he heard a beating heart begin to slow.
Chane tore his teeth out before that heart stopped.
He wanted that black spirit to know—feel—its last moment. After a thousand years or more, it would die in horror, knowing that it had failed and would never touch Wynn.
The beast within Chane settled into sated contentment.
But there was no such contentment for him as he stared at Shade’s still form. Why did he feel such sorrow, such loss, over one born as a natural enemy to his kind? They had tolerated each other only for Wynn’s sake.
Slow, shallow wheezing reached Chane’s hunger-sharpened ears. He barely noticed it at first beneath the breeze in the forest. Then it caught and rolled, as if the next breath came before the last one could finish—two different, barely audible breaths overlapping each other.
Chane looked down at the torn mess of Sau’ilahk’s throat and then back at Shade. Without thinking, he clamped his hand over the duke’s mouth and smothered any further breaths until the duke’s heart stopped.
Still he heard a weak, slow set of halting breaths.
Chane lunged from his crouch and cleared the distance to drop on all fours beside Shade’s limp form. It was painfully long before he heard another shallow breath from her.
• • •
Osha jumped from atop the wagon and ran up the road before Wynn could even call to him. The light behind him winked out: she had likely let the staff’s crystal fade. It did not matter—he knew exactly where he would find Aupsha lying hobbled.
He kept his eyes on that spot in the dark and drew another arrow with a Chein’âs head as he ran, until he actually saw and closed on her.
Aupsha lay curled on her side and clutching the shaft of the arrow deep in the back of her thigh. She watched him from within her leather mask, and he heard pained panting. Beyond and to the right of her lay the trunk, toppled over on its front.
Osha’s relief came at that sight, for the orb that Wynn sought was safe. Almost looking at Aupsha again, he took a step.
A handful of mucky dirt and pebbles struck his face and chest.
He retreated instinctively, swiping the back of his hand across his face. His sight cleared as Aupsha came out of a roll and grabbed one handle of the trunk. He drew back the next arrow, and then she and the trunk came apart.
Aupsha and the trunk blew away in the dark—and the orb was gone again.
Osha stood wide-eyed for an instant. He rushed along the road, keeping the breeze directly against his back, and he followed where it pushed him slightly toward the northern side.
He was not beaten yet. He would not be beaten at all.
From what he had seen when she had first taken the trunk, she could not go far with it.
Osha halted shy of the roadside trees and raised the bow outward while drawing back the arrow set in its string. He waited, feeling for the piece of white metal beneath the bow handle’s leather wrap to grow warm and begin to pull in his grip.
He waited for the handle to track the Chein’âs arrowhead embedded in Aupsha’s thigh. The bow handle did not move in his hand.
Osha panicked.
On his way to Wynn’s homeland, every time he lost an arrow during practice and then sought it out, he had felt the bow try to turn in his grip and lead him when he went astray. Why did it not do so now? He calmed himself and began listening, just as the tainted greimasg’äh had taught him.
Brot’ân’duivé had been merciless, forcing Osha to find every movement of air along any path an arrow could fly. What could not be seen of the air’s movement often left something to be heard in its passing. There were also sounds that distinguished anything not caused by even the slightest breeze.
It was dark now without Wynn’s light. In his thoughts he noted the position of every form he knew only by the way the air’s movement changed its sound.
He heard underbrush rustle softly, and not from the wind.
The bow’s handle tried to torque that way in his grip. He let it turn him as he dashed off the road, and only a few steps into the trees a glint ahead caught his eye. He ran for it only to look down upon a black-feathered arrow lying upon the forest floor. Its white metal head was obscured with blood; this sight filled him with alarm and two thoughts.
The bow handle could not track an arrow while the thief rode the wind.
Aupsha had pulled it out, and now he had no way to find the orb in her possession.
He snatched up the arrow and held it in his grip upon the bow, and he turned, aiming the other notched arrow among the trees. His panic only grew at having failed Wynn, and he had left her alone, unguarded, in trying to do as she had asked.
Osha went still and listened again.
Either of the guards left unconscious upon the road might soon recover, an
d there was still one keep guard unaccounted for. More troubling, the one remaining Suman, though wounded twice, remained near her. Osha was torn between continuing here or running back to Wynn.
But she placed the orb’s retrieval above all else, including herself.
Leaves rustled in the forest as a branch crackled.
At that sound not made by the air, Osha took off through the trees.
He traversed across the wind until it blew straight at him, always keeping his eyes fixed toward the position of that sound. When he found a clear line of sight, he halted, raised and drew his bow, and turned slightly as he peered through the forest.
It was a dangerous place to stop, but if she tried to come on the wind, she would have to appear right in front of him . . . or behind him.
A dark shape passed behind one far tree trunk.
“Stop!” he ordered in Numanese.
The form halted as it hobbled beyond the tree’s other side while it dragged the trunk. Its hooded head turned toward him. He could not see the masked face inside the hood and did not need to.
“Drop trunk,” he shouted. “Step way.”
“You think . . . you do what is right,” she called back, her words broken by labored pants. “It belongs with . . . my people! You cannot keep it safe . . . more than we can.”
“Drop!” he commanded again, inching forward, blindly feeling each step before weighting a foot.
He did not want to kill. He had never done so, even after being given his place among the Anmaglâhk. He had seen enough death since then or knew of too many who had died suddenly in the night after Brot’ân’duivé and Most Aged Father declared war among the caste.
Osha did not have to kill to stop Aupsha, but he would not let her take to the wind again. His gaze dropped along the black shadow-filled split of her cloak to her unwounded thigh. She could not see his face—his eyes—inside his own hood any more than he could see hers.
Aupsha threw herself backward.
Osha almost released the arrow but stopped himself as she vanished from his sight behind that far tree. He lowered the bow as he rushed leftward, and then heard her shift the other way in her stumbling. At his next reverse she countered again, keeping the tree between them.
She was listening as he would for any move that he made.
He planted himself in silence. He now needed distance for what he must do.
There was one further thing he had learned of his “gifts” from the Burning Ones. This he had not shared with anyone, even the blood-soaked greimasg’äh.
Osha raised his bow and drew back the arrow with a white metal head . . . just as he had one late morning on the way to Wynn’s homeland.
One morning in the Broken Lands, he had stayed out too long in practice. As he had aimed at a far oak’s knot on his final shot of that day, the air grew still, and he let loose. In the same instant, Brot’ân’duivé shouted for his return. The distraction caused a flinch, and his aim shifted.
Even as the arrow left the bow, Osha knew it would miss the oak on the right side. He cursed under his breath and swung the bow out of his way to watch the arrow’s flight.
And the arrow neared the oak in an instant. . . .
Osha heard Aupsha struggling away beyond the far tree, and he let fly through the dark just to the left of the tree’s trunk. In less than a breath, as the arrow passed the trunk, he shifted his hand—and the bow’s hand—directly in line with the tree.
It was not just the bow’s white metal handle that answered to the call of a like arrowhead.
Both were one and answered to each other.
That late morning alone in the woods, as the greimasg’äh had called out, the arrow missed the oak on the left instead of on the right . . . when he had shifted the bow out of his line of sight.
Out in the dark, the arrow’s flight turned slightly as if nudged by a sudden breeze.
It vanished beyond and behind the tree, and Osha took off at a run before Aupsha even shrieked.
He only hoped—wished—the wound was not mortal as he rounded that far tree. And he saw nothing but the small trunk containing the orb rolling and crackling through low weeds down a slope to his feet.
Osha left the trunk where it lay and ran on, fitting the already-bloodstained arrow to his bow’s string. Atop the rise, he halted to listen. The only sounds he heard were those caused by the wind in the forest. He lowered the bow to his side and held its arrow against the string with his left hand.
Even if Aupsha had slipped away upon the breeze, she would be too far downwind to quickly double back for the trunk. She had been wounded again, though he did not know how badly or where. He could track her again by the second arrow carried with her once—if—she reappeared.
Osha hurried downslope for the trunk—and the bow twisted in his grip.
He halted, looking down it, for he had not raised the bow up to seek out an arrow.
One step below the rise’s crest lay the arrow he had guided around the tree. Its white metal head was obscured with blood, as was two-fingers’ width of its shaft. He snatched it up as he ran and slid downslope, for there was no time left to wonder where Aupsha had gone now.
Osha slung his bow over his shoulder as he slid both arrows back into his quiver. He grabbed the trunk containing the orb and stalled for an instant at its weight. Then he went running through the forest for the road. Often glancing behind himself, he hurried back for Wynn.
No one, especially a cloaked and masked shadow, reappeared among the trees.
Osha had the orb. He had not failed Wynn.
• • •
Chane ran with Shade in his arms, and she did not stir even once at being jostled so roughly. Her breaths were still slow and shallow. The blow might have done more damage than he could sense or see.
Back in the clearing, he had hesitated only long enough to grab the blood-smeared orb key off the duke’s—Sau’ilahk’s—shredded neck. He then quickly hung it around his own neck and retrieved his swords before he had gathered up Shade.
Amid his flight, shocks of pain shot through Chane’s back into his chest as he began to wonder . . . to fear. . . .
Had the death of the duke’s body truly taken Sau’ilahk with it? Had the wraith been trapped and killed by that as well? And, worse, how much should he tell Wynn?
She—they—had one too many times believed Sau’ilahk to be finished off. How could he tell her what he had realized in the final moment as he had faced the duke, and then share his own uncertainty? What was crueler, to know or not, and either way be left in doubt?
Unable to even shout at Shade to awaken, Chane looked down on her. He let hunger come again to eat his pain and charged faster through the trees than a living man could have with such burdens. His anger grew at the knowledge that even Wynn—or anyone within reach—might be unable to do anything for Shade.
• • •
Wynn anxiously watched for Osha’s return, for he had been gone far too long. She was about to go after him when Captain Martelle climbed to his feet.
Looking around, the captain appeared beyond confused. There were two other guards on the ground. One of them wasn’t moving, but the other began to stir as the last of the keep guards stumbled from the trees with a large knot on his forehead. That one stopped and stared at the others as Martelle continued turning slowly, looking everywhere.
Karl Beáumie was nowhere to be seen.
Wynn was lost for what to do. If she ran after Osha, what would happen if Chane and Shade returned to face the guards? She looked into the northern trees, but even if they were returning, it was too dark to see anything in there.
Someone snatched the staff out of Wynn’s hand.
She turned in surprised anger and looked up into the bleary and equally angry eyes of Captain Martelle. He now held her staff in one hand and a sword in the other.
“Where is the duke?” he demanded.
Wynn hesitated again, trying to think of a believable lie. “He ran off . . . after . . . after some of the Sumans turned on him. My swordsman went after him.”
For the moment, trying to take her staff back would be foolish, even if Martelle believed her. She could hardly blame him, since she’d used the staff to blind him and his men. Grabbing the staff in a sudden lunge to ignite a flash might not work this time.
Martelle’s angry expression turned confused as well, and he didn’t make another threatening move. After all, she was a sage, and Aupsha was the one who had actually attacked his men, though they wouldn’t recognize the servant woman the way she was attired now.
All that became pointless as the captain stepped around her and headed for the wagon’s front end and the dead horse. Wynn clenched her jaw as she followed. What would he think when he saw the dead bodies of the Sumans that lay beyond the overturned wagon?
The horse she’d freed had rushed off but remained in sight down the road. The captain halted before he fully rounded the dead one, and Wynn knew what stalled him.
A headless body lay there, likely Chane’s first opponent.
She circled wide so as not to startle the captain, but by the look on his face, he wasn’t remotely troubled by the deaths of the duke’s foreign guards. Perhaps he understood that something was terribly wrong with his duke and this was all part of it, but Wynn grew worried over something more. She stopped herself from spinning frantically to search and perhaps prodding the captain to act rashly.
The one wounded but still-living Suman was gone from behind the wagon.
Wynn swallowed hard, half wishing she hadn’t let Osha stop her.
Martelle stepped along the wagon’s back, but Wynn again looked down the road—and still there was no sign of Osha. She considered whether to tell the captain what was truly happening here. When she glanced back, he had paused, taking in all that he saw. He finally stopped studying the carnage and almost turned.