by Barb Hendee
Leesil’s head turned again as he looked, likely for any option of retreat, back the way they had come. Magiere did the same.
Up the pier, before the Djinn’s ramp, Captain Amjad watched them as he appeared to be talking to three more of the uniformed men. There was one sailor with him as well, and Magiere thought it might be the one who hadn’t returned from that small trading station.
“Left now, and out of sight,” Leesil whispered.
The armed men up the pier were already advancing. As Magiere turned back, she spotted the ones ahead clearing the archway . . . and then clusters of more to the left and right, pushing through the crowds.
She reached for her sword as she looked for the best position to protect Wayfarer, and something more made her panic sharpen.
Someone was missing, though he couldn’t have slipped around her.
Brot’an had vanished.
• • •
Wynn knelt beside Shade, who still lay silently on a small, rickety bed at the inn in Oléron. It had taken the previous night, the following day, and until well past dusk before they reached the small port where they’d first hired the team and wagon. Osha and Chane had traded off in driving during their onward rush—in which Chane had lain dormant during the day under a cover of canvas in the wagon’s back. Osha stopped them only briefly during the past day to rest the horses.
And even now Shade hadn’t regained consciousness.
“Please, wake up,” Wynn whispered far too many times to count.
She took a soaked rag from a bowl of freshwater she’d gotten from the innkeeper. Again she tried to squeeze a bit of water into Shade’s mouth. If Shade didn’t revive soon to drink or eat . . .
Wynn shuddered and pushed aside the rest of that thought.
Along the journey she’d forced Chane to tell her everything that had happened—including everything he hadn’t planned to tell her. She still wondered how the wraith could have taken Karl Beáumie’s body. At that, she glanced at the trunk sitting beyond Shade’s bed in the room’s rear corner.
Everything Wynn learned of the orbs only made their true purpose more uncertain and the need to hide them forever that much greater. But hiding one wasn’t so easy.
Once they’d gained room at the inn, Osha and Chane had started arguing about how and where to hide the orb of Spirit. Perhaps their bickering was aggravated in part by frustration, for none of them knew how to help Shade. Wynn had carefully cleaned Shade up as much as possible and then used the last of any healing salve she still possessed to tend the minor and more visible wounds. The dog never even flinched in pain.
Of course Chane wanted to turn over the additional orb to Ore-Locks and the Stonewalkers. Osha vehemently countered that Aupsha had already discovered that there was an “artifact” hidden in the dwarven underworld. Even when Chane pointed out that Aupsha couldn’t get anywhere near that orb, Osha remained unconvinced—and so was Wynn. Their incessant arguing finally drove her to push them both out of the room, and they’d left in silence.
Wynn again tried to squeeze a little water between Shade’s jaws, but most of it ran out to soak the bedding. She collapsed on the bed’s edge and stared at Shade until she finally closed her eyes and reached out blindly to slip her fingers in Shade’s neck fur.
So many had been hurt or lost along her way; yet losing someone dear wasn’t something she’d been prepared to face. And not Shade—never Shade—and not so slowly and cruelly.
And nothing was finished yet.
Magiere, Leesil, and Chap—and Brot’an and Leanâlhâm—were searching for the last orb. If they found it on their own, would that even be the end? Worse, Wynn now had a device made from an orb key that might make finding the last orb easier.
But it was now dormant . . . useless . . . and she couldn’t go back to the keep to speak with Jausiff.
There was no telling what had happened there after the keep guards returned. Chane seemed certain that Nikolas was safe with the duchess and his father until the young sage found his own way back to the guild. Even then there would be questions from his—and Wynn’s—superiors.
And what of Aupsha? Where had she gone? There was too much risk of her coming after the device and the orb if Wynn tried to go back.
Even returning to Calm Seatt and the guild was now a severe risk. Eventually the duke’s body would be found. If by chance she arrived before word of all that had happened, sooner or later her superiors would hear of the death of a nobleman in an allied nation. Then there was more of her “meddling,” all under of the guise of a sage in the wrong order, in critical affairs and secrets of a war to come. Without any proof of what had really happened concerning the orb and Sau’ilahk—without revealing the orb itself—what could she possibly say in her own defense?
The last time she’d gone afoul of her superiors would pale by comparison. The best of outcomes would end with her being cast out once and for all. Even Premin Hawes, if she were still at the Numan branch, wouldn’t be able to circumvent that. And more likely Wynn would end up in a cell under the rule of the city guard, if High Premin Sykion had her way. More and more it seemed that perhaps turning the orb over to Ore-Locks was the only option to keep it safe . . . before Wynn faced anything else.
She shouldn’t have wept anymore, but she did, clenching her fingers in Shade’s fur.
—Remember—
Wynn flinched. She didn’t want to think about one more orb to hide . . . one more to find. All she wanted was for Shade to come back to her.
—Remember . . . device—
Wynn flinched again, blinking the tears out of her eyes. She barely lifted her head, wondering . . . what? One long breath with an awful smell ran warmly over her face.
Wynn slapped the tears off her cheeks and stared into half-opened crystal-blue eyes . . . and they blinked once.
She almost lunged in as Shade groaned, the first real sound the dog had made since her injuries.
—Remember . . . whispers—
“Don’t!” Wynn exhaled, quickly putting her hand over Shade’s eyes, and then she added more softly, “Don’t talk; don’t move. Just . . . just rest.”
Shade tried weakly to move her head. Wynn was caught between stopping this and fearing she’d caused more harm to an unknown wound. One of Shade’s eyes peeked around her fingers to gain a line of sight. More memory-words rose in Wynn’s mind.
—Remember . . . device . . . whispers . . . Jausiff—
Wynn tried to understand. Shade was obviously struggling to tell her something important, though she shouldn’t be straining herself this way.
The only thing that came to mind that matched up with those isolated words . . .
Wynn thought back on the moment in Jausiff’s chambers when the elderly master sage had first displayed the device. He had whispered something over it, and she tried to remember anything more. Whatever he had said had been too soft for her to hear as he’d stood there behind his desk and . . .
Suddenly the whole memory shifted dizzily in Wynn’s head. Her perspective changed, dropping low until she just barely saw over the desk. That angle of view blurred into and over her own as the one moment began again from its start.
The whispers suddenly magnified, more distinct, until she heard the old sage’s words. That second memory overlying the first vanished suddenly and left Wynn’s head spinning. As she clamped a hand over her mouth, she was thankful that she hadn’t even eaten yet this night.
“Don’t . . . do that again . . . please,” she barely got out.
Shade’s eyes were already closed again, and Wynn leaned in quickly in returned fright.
The dog snorted once in half sleep, and Wynn relaxed a little in quick, shaky breaths, as she hoped such effort hadn’t harmed Shade any further. But Shade had heard the words Jausiff had spoken and, between the two memories, somehow made them clear to Wynn.
The only problem was that she didn’t understand one word that she had heard.
She sat there, waiting and listening to Shade’s even breaths, and then finally reached inside her robe. She took out the center third of the orb key and stared at it. What she’d heard sounded something like Sumanese, but it wasn’t any dialect she recognized.
How old were those words? Likely they were from a lost time, when Aupsha’s ancestors had first cut up an orb key so that it couldn’t be used on an orb, but the pieces were still functional for something else. A part of Wynn already doubted too much, but she quickly repeated those exact sounds as Shade had heard them.
She closed her hand on the device and waited, for there was an orb already in the room—and nothing happened. She lifted the device and swung her arm in an arc, toward and away from the orb’s chest—and again nothing.
Wynn sagged where she knelt, closing her eyes.
Of course it didn’t work like some children’s fairy tale of strange words that could cause miraculous things to happen. Even when she’d learned key phrases to ignite the staff’s sun crystal, it wasn’t words that mattered.
It was the meaning that sparked her intention to make the sun crystal respond.
Wynn scrambled on all fours to her pack, then ripped out and tossed aside its contents until she found quill, ink, and journal. Using the symbols of the Begaine Syllabary, she quickly scrawled those words as best she could without knowing them. That was all she could do for now, but simply possessing the unknown phrase changed everything.
She needed someone like herself, who understood all that was at stake. She had to find someone who also knew of orbs, of a war to come, of the dangers of simple fragments of knowledge . . . and of dead languages from another land. That wasn’t even Premin Hawes.
Wynn rose to her feet, quietly stepped close to Shade, and whispered, “I’ll be back right away. Don’t move.”
With that she hurried out to find Chane or Osha, for all of their plans had changed.
• • •
Osha returned down the road into Oléron. As in any stop made on the way to that little coastal town, he—or Chane—had always gone back along the road to watch and listen for any sign that they were followed. Tonight he had heard nothing as he stood listening to the wind for what it could tell him . . . and for any other sound it did not cause.
Osha walked softly through the dark past the stable and on toward the inn where he had left Wynn.
A majay-hì—a sacred one—had fallen in battle against an undead. For that, he felt shamed in his relief that Wynn had not been harmed, though Shade was so different from her own kind, or at least from what he knew of them.
How different and dark was this world outside of his people’s lands. Perhaps no darker than what he had left behind, but all the more confusing, for he did not understand it.
An undead and a majay-hì, enemies by their natures, fought side by side. And they did so because of a precious little human woman and her purpose.
Osha knew little of the undead: he had seen them only once before, when he had gone with her, Magiere, Léshil, and the sacred one called Chap to search for an artifact in some frigid peaks. If he had known then what that would lead to, would he have stopped it if he could have?
No . . . not if it had meant never knowing Wynn.
Even in the brightest light of day, darkness was not always seen until it revealed itself. He was well aware that she had considered killing that one Suman guard . . . the one whom he had wounded twice and left helpless.
Darkness had taken part of Wynn, just as it had taken him. She did not see it as he did within himself. One could not fight an enemy if one did not know it was there. He had learned at least that much in his time among the Anmaglâhk. And knowing was worth even more than seeing.
In seeking Wynn Hygeorht, Osha had traversed half the world, only to find someone else.
Where was the woman he loved?
He had to find her and bring her back. For the present there seemed to be little hope of this, but he had learned to be patient, to watch . . . and to listen.
He arrived at the inn’s front to find that the undead was not there.
Claiming concern that the keep might have a shoreside dock below the cliff, Chane had gone his own way to the docks. A boat might be used to reach the port by sea instead of by the road. It was a short walk from the landing to the inn, and he should have returned to the inn first.
Osha went for the inn’s door but stalled. He could do less than even Wynn could in helping Shade. That frustration, the helplessness, had led to his arguing with her undead companion. It only made her desperation, and his, that much worse.
So he stood in the dark outside the inn. He heard the footfalls even before he spotted Chane’s approach.
“Anything?” the undead asked.
“No,” he answered. “You?”
Chane shook his head once and stared at the inn’s front door. “Have you gone in? Is there any change with Shade?”
Osha eyed Chane, who in turn did not look at him. “No. Not go in. Wynn not come out.”
“So . . . we have a truce between us . . . for her?”
The sudden question almost made Osha snap a denial. This was a strange world; perhaps he would have to be strange as well for now.
“Yes,” he answered, “for her purpose, we have truce, but not for—”
The inn’s door swung open, and there she was. Wynn started slightly at the sight of both of them. Osha had no chance to finish, though his faltering with Numanese might have been less clear in attempting to say . . . but not for Wynn herself.
“Shade?” he asked quickly, cutting in before Chane could speak.
Wynn swallowed once. “Better, I think. She . . . she awoke briefly to speak with me. I don’t know yet how bad it is or . . . how much. . . . She needs more time and care.”
And, of all the stranger things, Osha heard the tall undead heave a sigh that sounded like relief.
“All right,” Chane said. “Can she be moved to a ship, perhaps tomorrow? We need to leave here as soon as possible and head north directly to—”
“No, we’re not going to Dhredze Seatt and Ore-Locks,” Wynn cut in. “We’re heading south.”
No one said a word for a moment, and then Osha noticed something in Wynn’s hand.
She held that strangely discolored bit of metal she had used to track the orb and the duke.
“What are you talking about?” Chane demanded.
Wynn turned on him in an instant. In the argument that followed, Osha could not keep up with what was said. All he caught was what seemed to be a name he thought he had heard once before, though he was not certain.
“This is madness!” Chane finally rasped so harshly that it had to have hurt his throat. “You cannot trust him. Even any truth he utters is only a trick for his own means.”
“I know that now!” Wynn returned. “But he’s the only one left that I can approach about how to activate this again.” And she thrust the piece of an orb key into Chane’s face. “This is the quickest way to find the last orb. Even with another orb still in our hands, that’s why we have to go south now.”
“And to Magiere—and Leesil and Chap—as well?” Chane shot back.
Wynn looked away and said nothing. Osha could see that was an answer unto itself.
“I am going to look in on Shade,” Chane rasped at her.
He jerked the door open and slammed it shut after he entered.
And still stranger, in only now understanding what their argument was about, Osha found himself in agreement with the undead—concerning the orb, at least. He was finally alone with Wynn once more.
Osha held back the hundred or more questions concerning what had changed her so much. All he could ask was . . .
“Who is this . . . Il-
san-kay?”
Epilogue
Domin Ghassan il’Sänke was shoved roughly through the doors of the great domed chamber atop the imperial castle at the center of il’Dha’ab Najuum. At present that wide, round space—at least half a stone’s throw across—was empty.
The four imperial guards in their golden raiment retreated outside and, when they shut the huge doors tight, a double boom echoed around him.
Ghassan looked about the mosaic floor. Its polished shapes of colored marble were arranged in a looping, coiling pattern centering upon a single one-step dais three yards in diameter. All of the great chamber was awash with tinted sunlight filtering through a like mosaic of glass panes in the dome above. There was only one other exit: the far doors, of purest ivory slats, with sweeping golden handles as long as his forearms. Beyond those doors would be even more imperial guards than on the route by which he had been brought here.
This was not a place that anyone wished to visit.
Aside from serving as a location where dignitaries met in negotiation with the emperor, it was a place of judgment under the heavens. He was to be judged before the emperor, perhaps for treason—or something worse.
He no longer wore the midnight blue robe of Metaology, for he had been in hiding. His short, dark brown hair with the barest flecks of silver was in disarray: strands dangled to his thick eyebrows above piercing eyes separated by a straight but prominent nose. His borrowed clothing of a plain head wrap, a dusky linen shirt, and dark pants over soft leather boots was little more than that of a wanderer.
When he had been found—however he had been ferreted out—he had not struggled to escape, though he could have. His life might end here in this highest of places, but this was where he needed to be. Among those who might come here, there was one he hoped for . . . as the far doors began to open.