First and Last Sorcerer

Chapter Nine

After a further trek through the city, Chap reached their final destination by following the domin—along with Leesil, Magiere, Wayfarer, and Osha. Wynn had gone off another way with Brot’an, Shade, and ... Chane.

Chap was too exhausted to know what to feel at having seen his estranged daughter again—and far too drained to wonder why Wynn’s old Suman mentor was not dressed in a proper sage’s robe. Perhaps this semi-numb feeling also lessened his disgust at the shabby state of the tenement, from its bleached wood to its warped door. But he could still be shocked.

After entering the building, heading upstairs, and going to the end of a dingy passage on the top floor, Chap watched as the domin grasped something—nothing—to the left of a window looking out over a dark alley.

The window vanished as a door appeared and its iron lever handle was gripped in the man’s hand.

Chap instinctively rumbled and stiffened all the way to his hackles as Wayfarer sucked in and held a breath.

“It is all right,” Osha assured in his language. “Follow the domin inside.”

Chap growled at having no choice. As he stepped forward, Wayfarer’s small fingers clenched in his fur. They entered a cluttered but well-furnished room apparently unseen from the outside. Worse, straight ahead past a doorless opening on the right was that same window.

He saw the same view of the building across the alley in the dark and disliked it even more than the door suddenly appearing in the passage’s end. It seemed that the tenement itself was longer when viewed from within this place.

Scrolls and other texts filled shelves along three walls, while several cold lamps with large brass bases provided a little light from their dimly lit crystals. To the room’s left was a round table with three high-backed chairs of dark wood. Folding partitions separated another space near the doorless opening. The floor was covered in fringed carpets and various cushions.

Chap advanced cautiously until he peered through the opening on the right and found that it was a bedchamber. A small chest sat on the floor near a bed at the room’s far end. In a few more steps, the footboard of a second, nearer bed came into his view. With a glance at Leesil, he huffed once and lifted his muzzle toward that room.

Leesil dragged Magiere in there, and Chap followed while trying to comprehend all that had happened this night. It was difficult to accept that they were finally free while facing so many unanswered questions.

Wayfarer hurried to his side, trying to get behind him.

“Be assured that you are safe and will not be found here,” the domin said.

Chap twisted around to see the man hovering in the bedroom’s open archway. The domin suddenly back-stepped, turned halfway, and looked toward the way they had all come.

“Excuse me a moment,” he added and walked off.

Chap was not letting that man out of his sight.

He went to the opening, peeked out, and noticed that the main door looked normal from the inside. The domin grabbed its inner handle, jerked it open, and there was Wynn outside in the dingy passage.

She started slightly with her right hand outstretched as if ready to grab the door’s outer handle, but she did not get a chance. Strange, since that handle would not be there to see or touch—unless the domin had instructed her about its secrets. Her other hand was oddly clenched in a fist.

“Inside, quickly,” the domin urged.

She did so while tucking her fist into her robe’s pocket. When her hand came out, her fingers were open and held nothing.

Chap wondered what she had tucked away in that pocket, and then his daughter, Shade, entered next. He numbed all over for an instant, then saw Shade limping, and inched farther out of the bedchamber. She ignored him and padded off to the main chamber’s far front side, vanishing beyond the folding partition.

Wynn hurried after Shade, and the undead came in next.

At the sight of Chane, Chap could not hold in a low snarl, which dragged on as Brot’an entered last. However, Brot’an was still carrying a large familiar pack and travel chest. Leesil had dropped both near the dock on the day of their arrest.

Brot’an must have somehow retrieved them later, after his escape.

Chap felt no gratitude for that, though he was relieved. The chest held irreplaceable items, such as Magiere’s own thôrhk and the one for the orb of Fire. It was fortunate that Leesil had dropped his burdens that day. Chap did not want to think of the repercussions should that chest have been captured with them and searched.

At least it was safe now.

As Brot’an stepped farther inside, the old shadow-gripper barely glanced at Chap.

Chap didn’t know what he disliked the most—the undead, the aging assassin, or this place.

Chane did not look into those crystalline sky blue eyes watching him from the bedchamber’s entrance. The majay-hì would be unable to sense him as an undead due to the “ring of nothing” he nearly always wore. The small circlet of inscribed brass on his left third finger hid everything but the physical presence of whoever wore it.

Had Chane not been wearing it, Chap would most likely have been unable to control his savage reaction to an undead—and the same would be true of Magiere once she regained her strength.

Chane had no intention of taking off the ring. Still, he could not help feeling uncomfortable in the situation, so he followed Wynn to the room’s other side. At least in that, Chap’s sight line was blocked by the sitting area’s partition. The tall elf called Brot’an paused to catch il’Sänke’s attention, and the two took to whispering. Chane could have heard them if he let hunger rise to heighten his hearing. Instead, he ignored them.

He already knew who was in the bedroom ... who Chap now guarded. What came next was also expected in part.

As Shade settled beside the table of tall chairs, her right front foreleg gave way a little. Wynn was at the dog’s side in an instant, dropping down to feel Shade’s leg and shoulder. With one hand still on the dog, she twisted on her knees and looked up at Chane.

“What happened?” she asked, almost accusingly. “You were supposed to stay clear of the guards once you drew them off.”

Chane was uncertain what to say after promising her that he would not kill anyone—and after what had happened in the dead-end alley.

Shade snarled once and clacked her teeth.

Wynn shrank away as she jerked her hand back.

There was no knowing what Shade had passed to Wynn in that touch—either a few words or even a memory. Wynn dropped her eyes and hung her head. Chane heard her shuddering quick breaths. Of course, she was worried at the thought of Shade being injured again.

“I’m ... I’m sorry, Chane,” Wynn whispered without looking up. “I didn’t mean to ... It was just ...”

As she lightly touched Shade, the dog settled her large head on her forepaws with an irritable huff.

Chane waited, for he did not believe the matter was settled.

Wynn had once said that any one of them might be lost in seeking their goal. And yet after Shade’s last dire injury, Wynn panicked at the dog’s slightest wound. Perhaps Chane envied Shade a little in that, though he as well had reacted in kind once the threat to Shade had been eliminated in that alley.

Strangely, Wynn said nothing more, whether or not Shade had told or showed her what had happened.

“Enough,” il’Sänke warned, clunking down a large brass bowl upon the table. “Keep your personal issues to yourselves. We must get the others fed and tended.”

Wynn nodded and rose, but something more puzzled Chane as he looked away from her. Osha stood off near that unnerving front door, his expression flat and his unblinking eyes fixed on the floor. Why he had not gone to see the others in the bedroom was puzzling.

Il’Sänke slapped a pile of folded cloths into Osha’s stomach, and the elf’s eyes popped open as he grabbed the pile in reflex.

“Make yourself useful,” the domin ordered. “Take these and go with Wynn. Wynn, you get the bowl and that water pitcher to clean any wounds. Use bed cloths for toweling as needed and report any injuries that require medicinal care.”

With a nod, Wynn hurried for the brass bowl on the table.

Chane peered toward the partition. He could imagine Chap standing beyond it, still on guard at the bedchamber’s entrance. When Chane turned back, Shade was watching him, but he could not read her expression, so he closed his eyes once in a brief nod to her. That was as much thanks as he could risk in the moment, and she slowly closed her eyes to rest.

Aside from the so-called dhampir, whom he had helped rescue, he was in the company of two majay-hì, natural enemies of the undead. Even more bizarre, one wanted him dead for a final time, while the other had shielded a secret from Wynn—and done so for his sake.

Chane’s world grew more complicated with each night because of the woman he loved.

Chap still stood at the bedchamber’s entrance, though from his vantage point the only one he could see was Osha. That young one’s surface thoughts were filled with something chilling: an arrow in the dark from his bow had killed one of his own.

Chap and those with him had known since first meeting Osha that he was ill suited to the calling of an anmaglâhk. That the young one had fallen from—been forced from—his calling did not change this.

Now Osha had killed for Wynn’s sake.

Chap would have wished it otherwise for the once innocent young an’Cróan. All of them except for Wayfarer had committed questionable acts. The necessity of those acts would never lessen their burden.

Wynn broke his thoughts as she came around the partition with a large brass bowl under one arm and a matching, sloshing water pitcher in the other. Before he could speak with her in the way that only they could, she pushed past him into the chamber. Osha followed her, and Chap spun around into the room.

Leesil knelt beside the first bed, where he had laid out Magiere, and covered her with bedding. Wayfarer stood near him, watching only Magiere. When Leesil looked up at Wynn’s approach, his gaze quickly shifted past Chap and Osha to the bedchamber’s entrance. And his features twisted in a glare, as if he might rush out at someone in the outer room.

“Don’t start,” Wynn warned. “Everything else waits until we get the four of you fed and tended. Then you need rest, not another fight ... or argument.”

Leesil neither answered nor looked at her again. He turned back to watching his wife, who lay on her side with her eyes almost closed.

Chap understood Wynn, though if Magiere were well enough, the young sage might not have gotten her way so easily. Chane’s presence could not simply be ignored. As Wynn settled on the bedside, and Osha brought her the pile of folded cloths, Chap glanced again at Magiere but then dropped his gaze.

He was supposed to watch over and protect all of them, including Wayfarer.

From the instant they had stepped onto the docks of this city, he had failed. And Brot’an had vanished and remained free. Chane was not the only one who Chap wanted gone—or dead. As to secrets that might have been ripped out of Magiere in a moon’s worth of screams, he already knew one she did not have.

Chap had insisted on hiding two orbs without Magiere or Leesil knowing where. What only he knew could never be taken from them, but this was not enough. Something had been taken from Magiere.

When that gray-robed figure had come to the cell, the darkness within its hood had turned toward Chap. It remained fixed on him for too long, as if that one had known him long before that visit. Whatever it might have related to Leesil in that cell, Chap knew by his friend’s last question what the robed figure had come for.

How did he do that ... get in my head like ... like you?

No, not like him, but there was no doubt that Magiere had suffered worse in being subjected to sorcery. On the rushed walk from the shrine, he had seen snippets of recent memories in her half-conscious mind. He knew some of what she had endured in that cell. Somewhere in her memories was what he had done—hidden two orbs—if not how and where he had done so.

The robed figure could not have taken such information from him. A Fay-born into the body of a Fay-descended majay-hì was not easily overcome, but ...

How long had it taken that robed figure to learn from Magiere that he knew the whereabouts of two orbs? How long had she been tortured simply to get at him before the torturer came to silently taunt him, face-to-face? And in an act that only Chap knew of, he had done far worse than Osha.

The guide Leesil had hired to take Chap into the wilderness had been left a mindless husk. Without hands of his own, Chap had possessed the man’s body with his own spirit—that of a Fay—in order to handle and hide two orbs.

And there was another orb here in this room, in a chest.

He knew, for Wynn could not help letting that slip into her thoughts.

Yes, they had all done terrible things, some worse than killing and some worse than what he had done to that innocent guide. In the moon of Magiere’s screams, he had done worse in doing nothing.

He would have let her die rather than reveal the location of any orb.

Chap’s sins had grown until he now shrank from weighing them as a whole, and this was no time to do so. Someone else in this place was linked to everything since that day on the docks. When he, Magiere, Leesil, and Wayfarer had been mysteriously released, he had recognized the stranger with Wynn.

When Chap and his companions had been brought to judgment, the one called Domin Ghassan il’Sänke had been present in the high glass-dome chamber. And in the streets this night, Chap had been unable to dip a single surfacing memory in that man.

It was as if this domin, no longer dressed as a sage, was not truly present ... just like Chane ... just like the gray-robed figure who had come to their prison cell.

By the time Wynn finished with Magiere and had tended Leesil, Chap, and Leanâlhâm—no, Wayfarer—they were all too exhausted to eat much. She had to stop Wayfarer from drinking too much water and making herself ill. Osha helped settle them in the two beds, but Wayfarer panicked at being left to sleep alone in the second bed. Chap jumped up and settled beside the girl, and Wynn dropped on the floor at the foot of Magiere and Leesil’s bed. Osha stood by the room’s entrance, facing outward.

It wasn’t long before Wayfarer drifted off. In the silence, Wynn realized that since her arrival at the sanctuary Osha hadn’t said a word to anyone, at least as far as she’d heard. He hadn’t even looked at her unless he had to, and she wanted to ask ...

Leave him alone.

Wynn looked over at Chap lying on the second bed’s edge with Wayfarer fast asleep behind him. Before she could speak ...

No ... not until he wishes to speak of it, if he does.

That was even less help, and what was ... it? She grew more worried as she peered at Osha.

There were other important things to discuss, though not in here, so she got up as quietly as possible, but not quietly enough. Osha glanced over his shoulder at her.

His long face lacked any expression, and that troubled her even more. With a quick wave to Chap, Wynn slipped out of the bedchamber, and both Chap and Osha followed. Rounding the partition, she found Ghassan at the table speaking in a low voice to Brot’an. Chane was listening to them from nearby.

There was too much here that Wynn didn’t know, from whatever numbed Osha to the core to what had happened to Shade while she and Chane led the guards on a wild chase. Wynn stepped in beside the table and, without greeting Brot’an, faced Ghassan.

“How long will the imperial guards keep searching for us?”

The domin settled back in his chair. “It will escalate, as your companions drew intense interest. At the moment, this does not matter, for while we are in here we are beyond finding.”

“Guards not only hunt us.”

At Osha’s sudden broken Numanese, Wynn swiveled enough to spot him standing beside the folding partition. Before she asked what he meant, his gaze shifted away from her, and his expression filled with anger.

Wynn followed that gaze to the back of Brot’an’s chair.

Osha fought a wince as Wynn looked back at him, but he remained focused on that closest chair. It was hard to remain still while so smothered in his self-loathing and loathing for the greimasg’äh.

“What?” Wynn asked quietly.

Osha slipped into his own tongue. “Ask him,” he rasped, sounding almost like Chane.

Wynn turned toward that nearest chair, but before she could ask anything ...

“The loyalists followed Magiere,” Brot’ân’duivé answered without leaning out into Osha’s sight.

Osha looked to Wynn and saw anxiety beneath her calm olive-toned expression.

“So the anmaglâhk really are here in the capital?” she finally asked.

“What is this about?” Ghassan cut in.

It was too much for Osha, and he was not relieved when Brot’ân’duivé explained. After that, Ghassan turned on Wynn.

“You omitted telling me that your friends are hunted by assassins,” he accused. “It makes sense now, but you have no concept of the risks taken tonight by others who—”

“I did tell you!” Wynn interrupted. “That first night you brought us here. Or at least I wondered ... after you told us you’d seen two people at the palace who looked like Osha. These loyalists—that team of assassins—should have been left behind up north.”

“More happened along the way,” Brot’ân’duivé said. “But the loyalists may no longer be a concern. I eliminated Dänvârfij this night.”

“And what or who is that?” Ghassan demanded.

Osha’s stomach clenched as the greimasg’äh explained dispassionately. Osha had not known Dänvârfij well, but even as less than friends they had been connected by death and loss in their lives.

“Fréthfâre is a cripple,” Brot’ân’duivé continued, “and Léshil severely wounded Én’nish. Rhysís is the only able one left among three, and he will have to tend to the other two.”

That last name struck Osha hard; it gave him a face out of memory for the one he had murdered.

“Two ... not three,” he whispered.

Wynn’s attention turned to him, as did the domin’s. Even the greimasg’äh leaned out around the back of his chair, but it was Chane’s reaction that fixed Osha for an instant.

The undead straightened with narrowed eyes. He glanced once at Wynn. When he looked back again to Osha, he slowly nodded.

That Chane guessed and approved of what Osha had done did not help. When Osha looked away, his gaze met that of the greimasg’äh. He felt the sudden urge to add more scars to that old face, if he could.

“We are waiting for the rest,” Brot’ân’duivé said.

Osha kept to his own tongue rather than struggle with another in relating the least of what had happened ... and why it had happened. Wynn watched him as the greimasg’äh translated for the others, and she looked at him with something between sadness and sympathy. Perhaps she knew how sick he felt inside.

However, Osha expected at least the greimasg’äh to question him.

Brot’ân’duivé turned out of sight, settling to face the domin’s puzzled frown. “Then only two remain, and they are ineffectual, thus removing any concern.”

Osha hoped Wynn saw what else this meant.

If loyalists were no longer a threat to Magiere, Léshil, and Chap, then the greimasg’äh’s presence was pointless. Osha bore enough guilt and regret over having left Leanâlhâm in that traitor’s care, though the others had watched over her.

Ridding themselves of Brot’ân’duivé might amend that, if not the taint of what Osha had done this night.

“Wynn ...” Brot’ân’duivé said slowly. “You remained in Calm Seatt to seek another orb. So ultimate success or failure are the only reasons for you to have come here.”

Wynn froze at the sudden change of topic, and silence hung for too long. Chane inched a little toward her slightly, shaking his head. Osha knew that warning was pointless.

The greimasg’äh had not asked a question, so he had already guessed the truth.

“Yes, we found another orb,” Wynn answered.

Brot’ân’duivé betrayed no emotion at all; Wynn’s answer was half of the reasoned assumptions he had already calculated. There was another orb within this place rather than hidden away like all others, and by count, a final one yet to be found. He half listened as she summarized the finding of the orb of Spirit.

She finished, “We have it with us in—”

“Shut up, Wynn!”

At Léshil’s command from somewhere off behind Osha, Wynn twisted to face that direction. What she would have said or not mattered little to Brot’ân’duivé.

The orb was here.

What mattered more was that whoever took possession of it might partly control the acquisition and use of the other three and the finding of the fifth. That was the true point to consider, and Léshil had grown cunning enough to know this.

Brot’ân’duivé ignored the predictable argument that ensued somewhere behind his chair. It would break the moment Wynn countered Léshil with her own needs and plans. Brot’ân’duivé had grown concerned that this group was now too large, but other factors now weighed against changing this.

He required only Léshil, though to keep the half-blood compliant might require Magiere as well. Then there was Chap, the only one present who knew the resting place of two other orbs. Guiding and controlling Léshil was the way to coerce the majay-hì. And for the fourth orb hidden with the dwarves in their underworld, Brot’ân’duivé needed to reinforce Wynn’s trust.

“Leesil, lower your voice!” Wynn finally broke in. “There’s no point arguing over who has what and where. Not until we know why all of you were imprisoned.”

Ghassan listened as Leesil, whose name the two elves pronounced strangely, grudgingly recounted being captured. The half-breed and the other prisoners had been dragged to the domed audience chamber before Prince Ounyal’am.

They had been more fortunate than they knew, for Ghassan had been present as well.

In that chamber, they had been accused of mass murder. He now reasoned that the assassins who had done the actual killing, disguised as two shé’ith, had been present as the prisoners’ accusers. Most of these details, including some that no one else knew, were of little use at present to Ghassan.

“A few sages were there and one of them panicked at seeing us,” Leesil added. “There was also an aging man, dressed in the same colors as the guards, who told the prince to have us locked up.”

“That would be Counselor a’Yamin,” Ghassan added bitterly. “The sage in gray was High Premin Aweli-Jama.”

Wynn’s attention shifted to him. “Your high premin was there?”

Ghassan nodded curtly. “But not my high premin anymore.”

“No trial and not much talk after that,” Leesil finished. “We were dragged away and locked up until tonight.”

Wynn hesitated and then, “Why is Magiere ... worse off than the rest of you?”

Ghassan wanted to hear this as well, but the half-breed fell silent and hung his head. The condition of the “dhampir” was a grave concern. The only reason for this night’s risks was to gain control over someone who could track an undead.

Wynn blinked rapidly and looked away ... and downward. Ghassan traced her gaze to the huge gray dog who had followed her out of the bedchamber. When Wynn cringed, clenched her jaw, and then shuddered, Ghassan eyed the one called Chap.

He knew that Wynn had some hidden way to communicate with Shade. At a guess, and by the way Wynn locked gazes with the gray one, the same held true between them. So what had Chap passed to Wynn just then?

“Only by her screams,” Leesil whispered as if in answer to a different question than the one Wynn had asked. “That was all I had to know she was still alive ... for so many days and nights.”

Ghassan grew anxious still watching the gray majay-hì. It took little effort to quickly raise glyphs, signs, and sigils in his mind’s eye. Try as he might, he could not catch a single thought in the dog’s mind. When he turned that incantation upon Wynn, she had no true memories to glimpse concerning what Chap might have related. And the last one Ghassan focused upon ...

Leesil’s mind was overwhelmed with one vivid moment.

A figure in a gray robe that scintillated softly with signs, symbols, and sigils filled Ghassan’s awareness. That someone had found the dhampir to seek information from her—and her alone. By what had been said or implied, prolonged interrogation in only thought had another purpose beyond gaining that information.

She and her torment could be used as a way to force something out of one of the others.

Before Ghassan could attempt to read more, Wynn stepped into the table’s edge and fixed on him.

“What are you up to?” she asked.

For that instant, she startled him.

“Who helped you get them out?” she went on. “You start answering or—”

“Or what?” he shot back, for his patience had thinned.

When she stalled, he quickly raised another set of symbols and shapes in his mind’s eye. As he fixed those onto her surface thoughts, Chane stepped in behind her and dropped a hand on her shoulder.

Wynn’s mental presence vanished from Ghassan’s awareness, and every sigil and sign he had raised vanished amid his shock.

Chane’s other hand settled on the hilt of one sheathed sword. Wynn did not even glance away, as if this were all something familiar to her.

“What in seven hells is going on?” Leesil demanded.

When he tried to step in, Osha raised an arm to block him and nodded to Wynn. The black majay-hì struggled up, shifted away from the table, and stood near Chane, watching.

“Chap?” Leesil asked. “Wynn?”

Ghassan watched her, and she kept her eyes on him as she waved off the half-blood.

“Answer me!” she demanded. “What do you know about the one who tortured Magiere? Chap says it was somehow done without touching her.”

The last part was the most telling. None of them greatly concerned him, though he needed to regain control and steer their focus. Only the elder elf concerned him. That one faced him across the table, apparently relaxed but unblinking with his hands in his lap and hidden from sight.

“Ghassan?” Wynn asked.

Perhaps he should have told her sooner. She might have been useful here and now, but nothing could be done about it. Keeping an academic tone, he looked her straight in the eyes.

“Do you recall me telling you that my sect had been guarding a prisoner?”

“Yes.”

How should he do this—slowly in hints or quickly for shock? “This prisoner has no corporeal body but vast arcane knowledge. It ... He survives by entering and taking control of the living. The closest word for it in your language might be a ... ‘specter.’”

No one reacted or said anything at first.

“How long have you known this?” Chane asked.

Again, the answer required more information than Ghassan wished to share. Perhaps the overprotective vampire would be a better foil than Wynn, but Ghassan continued to address her directly.

“My sect held him imprisoned for many, many years. Khalidah once served what you call the Ancient Enemy as the leader of a trio known in records as the Sâ’yminfiäl ... the Masters of Frenzy. Others such as the dwarves of ancient times called them the Eaters of Silence.”

All of Wynn’s ire faded from her oval face as her mouth fell open. Obviously part of what he related was familiar to her; he knew this and used it. She had uncovered much in her blundering and stubbornness, including those infamous texts she brought back from across the world, which had been seized by her own guild branch.

“Your sect had this thing imprisoned?” she finally got out. “Now it’s loose ... and you didn’t tell us? It will be hunting you, anyone with you, and—”

“You were never in danger while with me,” Ghassan interrupted. “And Khalidah now has more desirable prey.” His impatience and frustration took hold. “The arrival of your foolish friends, and their own ignorance, drew the specter to where it most wanted to be: the imperial grounds. Any safeguards that I and mine placed there may no longer be enough!”

The gray majay-hì rumbled and looked up, and Leesil immediately lowered his eyes to meet its gaze. Chap’s head then swiveled toward Wynn, and she looked to him as well.

Ghassan was at a loss for what any of this meant as Wynn turned back to him.

“How?” she asked. “Chap wants to know how you could have protected us.”

Ghassan blinked at this phrasing as well as her point of focus. Behind her, the undead’s gaze shifted between the others, one by one. Worse still, the elder elf had neither spoken nor moved, and Ghassan could not help a quick glance at Brot’an.

He realized his mistake too late as someone gripped the back of his hair.

“What are you doing?” Wynn shouted.

Ghassan’s head wrenched back harder than he thought possible—and then forward and down. His forehead struck the tabletop, and everything blackened before his eyes.

“Chane, stop!” Wynn cried.

Ghassan barely kept his feet as he was ripped out of the chair and whipped in an arch. Snarls erupted from both dogs amid shouts from others. Before he could place any voice, he crashed face-first into a bookcase. His cheekbone struck a shelf, stunning him again, and the grip on his hair shifted quickly to his neck as texts tumbled over his head.

Something pointed, cold, and hard settled at the back of his neck.

“Do not move,” Chane hissed, “or look at anyone ... or I will ram this blade into your skull!”

Wynn turned frantic amid the chaos. She was about to rush at Chane when Leesil grabbed her arm, Shade ducked in her way, and Chap lunged around her.

“What is that thing doing?” Leesil snarled.

No doubt he was referring to Chane, and he’d already pulled the one winged blade still strapped on his thigh. Brot’an was on his feet, and then Chane’s voice pulled her attention.

“So this undead, Khalidah, is inside whoever interrogated Magiere. How?”

Chane had his older, shorter blade’s tip pressed against Ghassan’s neck, but the domin didn’t answer him.

“Chane, that’s enough,” Wynn admonished. “Back away and—”

Be silent and let him finish!

Wynn shuddered and dropped her gaze, though Chap had already turned his head back to Chane and Ghassan. She choked back her anger and sense of betrayal.

Even though Leesil had drawn a weapon, neither he nor Chap had attempted to stop Chane. And they hated him so much that either would have used any excuse to go at him.

What was happening here?

Listen to him ... carefully.

Again she looked down to find Chap’s eyes on her, and when she looked up again ...

“Wynn, think,” Chane rasped, eyeing the back of Ghassan’s neck. “All of those years, he and his sect kept this spirit trapped—but how? They would have had to study it, what it could do, and how it could push into another’s mind. And he claims he can protect us ... so how?”

Chane glanced back when she didn’t answer immediately. Even worse, Wynn simultaneously heard Chap’s voice in her head echo Chane’s words in her ears.

“Through sorcery!”

And still Wynn couldn’t speak.

Leesil, and Magiere, and even Chap had each suffered a horrifying encounter with an undead sorcerer called Vordana. A long while back in Magiere’s homeland, that undead had trapped each of them in their own phantasm, where they’d lived out their worst fears. Now both Chap and Chane, regardless of hate for each other, had reached the same conclusion about Ghassan il’Sänke.

Before Wynn could think what to say ...

“What is ... sorcery?” Osha asked somewhere behind her.

Brot’an likely knew a correct translation in their language, but she wasn’t giving him a chance to complicate matters or take control. She knew only one similar word in their tongue.

“Tôlealhân.”

It meant will-craft.

Wynn heard Osha shift suddenly—along with the slide of something on cloth or leather. She didn’t dare take her eyes off anyone in front of her, and Shade, who hadn’t moved or said anything, still stood in front of her facing away.

Someone grabbed the back of her robe and jerked on it.

Wynn stumbled in retreat as Osha jerked on her again. Before she righted herself, he drew an arrow, fit it to the bowstring, and aimed it at Ghassan, though most of the domin was still blocked by Chane. That arrow had a white metal tip.

“Osha,” Chane rasped, “if he gets away from me—”

“He dead!” Osha answered.

Any uncertainty or shame Wynn had seen in Osha’s face was gone, and again he acted to defend her, along with Chane, with deadly intent. Even if she could stop one of them, she would never stop the other. And after all of this, Brot’an just stood there watching, which worried her more than anything else.

“Enough!” Ghassan shouted, still pinned to the shelves. “If I wished to act against you, then why endanger myself and others who helped free three hunters of the undead? And why again if I could get to the dhampir on my own ... without any of you?”

Wynn shook her head in confusion. “You broke them out to help you hunt this specter?”

“Magiere isn’t hunting anything!” Leesil cut in.

“And why did you come here?” Ghassan snapped back. “Think of the order of events. Wynn told me that Magiere came seeking the orb of Air, and yet your spouse and you were imprisoned. She faced someone with the skill to extract her secrets. One with such power would not need a host of any great importance to infiltrate the imperial grounds. But if need be, he will take such a host. And then do you think any of you will be free to seek another orb?”

Once again the room fell silent, and Wynn began to piece things together.

Whoever had helped Ghassan from inside the imperial grounds would have access to or control over prisoners. It might even be the one who had sentenced them, and yet the crime they were accused of should have led to execution in this land.

Just how high did the fallen domin’s connections reach within the imperial grounds?

And should the specter seize someone with that much authority ...

Wynn tried quickly to absorb all of this. She had been a naive fool again in not seeing the worst possibilities. Still, if what Chane claimed about the domin was even half true, Ghassan was as dangerous as Vordana or worse.

She believed he’d helped her friends because of their own friendship, yet he had gotten in her way more than once in their days at her guild branch. He had made the sun-crystal staff that had saved her several times since then, but he had also followed her in secret into a lost dwarven stronghold. He tried to beat her to the orb now hidden in the dwarven underworld. And he had provided this sanctuary that no one else could find.

Wynn’s skin began to crawl as she looked about this place that was hidden to all senses. No, not hidden, but rather it somehow got into the minds of those who came near it and blocked itself from their awareness, even by touch.

“Don’t listen to him,” Leesil whispered.

That frightened her as well. It was bad enough that Chane and Chap of all people were in agreement here. Then there was Osha, who could take deadly action by merely relaxing his fingers on his bowstring.

“Nothing can be done tonight.”

Brot’an’s sudden words almost doubled Wynn’s fright.

“Regardless of what action we follow next,” he stated flatly, staring at Ghassan, “it must wait until Magiere is well. Discussion must be paused, and he is not to be left alone. Two at least must watch him at all times.”

She looked away in time to see all the pale color drain from Chane’s irises. She had to do something fast.

Wynn slammed her shoulder into Osha’s side. As his bow veered and his big amber eyes widened in shock, she grabbed his drawn arrow with both hands and pulled it down with her weight.

“Chane, step away—now!” she ordered.

“Léshil? What is hap—?” And a gasp followed this, pulling Wynn’s attention.

Wayfarer stood peeking around the partition’s edge at everyone.

Even for her weakened state, the girl paled all the more at what she saw. The noise must have awakened her, as it likely had Leesil, and Wynn thought of Magiere also resting in that other room.

“Oh, damnation!” Wynn whispered, and then, “Leesil, get her back in the other room.” When he turned on her, she cut him off. “Do it— Chap, you too. Neither of you understand all that’s at stake. I’ll explain soon. Now ... just go!”

Leesil still hesitated. He looked so worn and pale, even for his tanned complexion, that only anger and fear probably kept him on his feet. He finally turned away and shooed Wayfarer off around the partition. When Wynn turned back, she was caught by Chap’s glare.

I will be waiting.

Wynn cringed but nodded, and as Chap went off around the partition, she looked to Chane, who still held Ghassan at sword point.

“Back away,” she said.

He was a minor conjurer, self-taught in his living days, as well as anything else. Perhaps something in that had clued him in more quickly than anyone else. She should have listened to him sooner, but it didn’t matter now.

“Chane, please,” she added.

His jaw muscle clenched, but he stepped back. The tip of his sword was the last thing to withdraw out of the domin’s reach.

Ghassan turned slowly around, poised and composed, as if nothing had happened.

“I suggest you all get some rest,” he said.

With the rise of one dark eyebrow and a slight tilt of his head, he nodded once to her. Even that was not going to settle the worst of this as exhaustion took Wynn, but he was not wrong about most of them needing rest.

Eventually, and hopefully soon, Magiere would recover.