First and Last Sorcerer

Chapter Fifteen

Wynn halted on the house’s landing when Ghassan froze in the opened doorway ahead of her. Panting in fright and exhaustion, she tried to shove him out of her way to no avail.

“What are you waiting for?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, so she tried to push him aside enough to see into the house. And when she did ...

A gray-robed figure stood down the long, dark hallway ahead. The pit of its hood shifted slightly from the domin to her.

“No!” Ghassan snapped.

Wynn thought that was meant for the specter, and then the domin’s hand clamped over her eyes, and he shoved her back. Stumbling, she swatted away his hand, but he stood fully in the doorway, blocking her as he stared into the house.

Something mournful, then pained, and finally hateful twisted the domin’s features.

Ghassan fixed on a gray robe he had not seen before this night. He could not see what—who—hid within the hood, but he felt something worming into his mind. His will alone could not stop it, and whispers swarmed over his thoughts to smother them.

One voice cut through all of them.

“Oh, so much anguish and hate—both so tiny and pathetic. A morsel compared to the meal I deserve, after what you and yours did to me ... for so long.”

Ghassan tried to block out that voice. In its place, a swarm of whispers crawled over his mind like carrion beetles.

...worthless ... coward ... where were you ... when they all died, even her ...

He lost focus and cringed, fearing that name they might whisper at him.

...lovely ... so truly kind ... and so satisfying to us ... your Tuthâna ...

Yes, she had been the best in nature if not skill of all within his sect. She had warned him from afar to hurry back, when he had lost against Wynn and her comrades in seeking an orb in a forgotten dwarven city. Her warning had come too late ... to reach her.

Ghassan did not know he had screamed until someone struck him in the side. That sharp pain made him gasp.

“Wake up!” Wynn cried. “Don’t let it get to you!”

All Ghassan’s pain-fed rage fueled the burning lines, sigils, and signs that filled his view. That fiery pattern overlaid his sight of the gray robe standing serenely in the dark. Then he heard a scream, and shouts, shattering wood and feet pounding upon stairs. The gray hood turned slightly, perhaps looking toward those sounds, as did Ghassan.

The others were below, but at least one was coming up. When his gaze shifted back in less than a blink, he looked into that hood’s blackness.

All lines of light shattered to splinters within his sight. Like glass shards, they cut and stung his mind instead of his flesh. He heard a spiteful titter in his head.

“And now there is another that I will take again, though not for myself. She belongs to her maker.”

Ghassan lurched back as an unseen force struck his whole body. He saw the gray robe drift up the hallway farther into the dark. He barely grabbed the doorframe’s sides as someone rushed up from out of the cellar.

Magiere spun, looking everywhere. No matter where she turned, she did not appear to see the gray-robed figure lingering just beyond her. Something was wrong with her face, though it was not clear in the dark.

Ghassan lurched again as the force upon him grew.

“Get out ... you petty little pretender.”

Wynn began shouting, pulling on him, and all he could do was fix on Magiere. He barely raised and held one sign in his mind’s eye for an instant. He uttered one command into her thoughts before his focus broke.

—Clarity—

Ghassan stumbled back, dragging Wynn with him, and heard the front door slam shut.

As Magiere charged out of the cellar, her insides burned, her guts ached, and hunger overran all of that. Fed on hate born of fear while she’d been in that cell for a moon, something more had happened to her near the end that she’d told no one.

She’d lost everything except a name that wasn’t hers.

Each time her tormentor came, less and less of her life—her memories—remained when he left. She forgot faces, events, places, as piece by piece was taken from her or lost under anger, then panic, and then fear ... and then nothing.

The last piece she clung to in the dark was only a name.

By the end she was alone and too weak to move. The face that matched the name blurred more and more after each visit. It faded further away in the dark of her cell and her mind. And she then couldn’t remember Leesil’s face anymore.

Even when he’d come for her, her first thought was to kill him.

She’d opened her eyes when he spoke because she could hear a voice too close that wasn’t in her head ... wasn’t the torturer’s but was somehow familiar. That terrified her.

When she saw and then remembered him, it made it that much worse.

After that, Magiere swallowed down that moment and kept it hidden. She’d locked it in the place inside where she’d always feared that she was the worst threat Leesil might ever face. He mattered more to her than anyone, and she might have killed him if she hadn’t been so weak when he found her.

Magiere couldn’t bear this. Each time it slipped into her thoughts, she wanted to die.

As she lunged out into the main floor hallway and halted, she didn’t think—didn’t care—whose flesh was inside that robe. Hunger sharpened violently, and by that she knew her prey was close. Though the hallway was nearly too bright in her fully blackened eyes, she couldn’t find what she was hunting, no matter which way she turned.

Something moved at the hallway’s front end.

When she twisted toward it, dim light well beyond the open door seared her sight. She saw only a dark silhouette in a doorway and ... pain cut through her head like a thin, sharp blade. So much pain that it stripped away hunger with one word.

—Clarity—

Magiere chilled as the hallway darkened before her eyes.

The fire in her that she’d longed for died with two thoughts.

What had she done now, and where was Leesil?

“Get up!” Wynn shouted to Ghassan.

She’d barely gotten to her knees after he’d shot backward and nearly flattened her. Just before that, she was certain she’d glimpsed Magiere in the hallway. Somewhere in the house, the others were trapped with Khalidah, and who knew what had—was—happening in there.

The domin lay on his back, breathing quickly and shaking as if struck. Shade leaped over him and went to the closed door, but it didn’t even flex when she hit it with her forepaws.

“Oh, seven hells. Please, Ghassan, get ... up!” Wynn begged as she yanked on his arm.

His eyes snapped wide and did not blink as he looked at her. He lurched upright to a sitting position on the landing.

Wynn looked quickly about, for she’d dropped the staff in her tumble. When she spotted it lying farther back with its butt end overhanging the landing’s steps, she sighed in relief. At least the crystal hadn’t broken. She reached for it.

“They are coming up!” Ghassan said behind her.

Wynn looked back as she gripped the staff below its long crystal. “Who? I saw only Magiere ... and that robe.”

“We must get inside another way,” he said. Strangely, he looked up at the landing’s roof.

Wynn never had a chance to follow his gaze, for the staff lurched in her grip. Shade snarled and wheeled from the door. All Wynn could do was tighten her grip, but the staff jerked harder. Her knees skidded and she barely twisted around as she was dragged to the edge of the steps, and she looked into the face of another imperial guard.

Where had he come from?

He held the butt of the staff with one hand ... and a raised sword in the other.

Wynn did the only thing she could: she gripped the staff with both hands and shoved on it.

She never saw what happened as someone—something—snatched the fallen hood of her robe and yanked her backward. She heard the hood or robe start to tear as she skidded across the landing. When she pushed up, Ghassan stood over her. Nearer the landing’s edge, Shade half crouched with all her hackles stiffened.

A muffled crack made Wynn roll away to one knee, and when she looked beyond Shade ...

Brot’an rose up and dropped the guard’s body. The man’s neck was twisted at an impossible angle, and his head flopped as it hit the street.

Wynn didn’t have time to turn sick at the sight.

Ghassan pulled her up by her free hand and wrist, and she swallowed hard once.

“Where’s Osha?” she asked.

Brot’an stepped up on the landing, ignoring Shade’s rumbled warning. “Watching from above, I would hope. Without further arrows, I came down ... fortunately.”

Ghassan too quickly dragged Wynn past Brot’an off the landing and down into the street.

“Enough talk,” he commanded. “Wynn, hold on to the staff at all costs.”

“What are you doing?” she asked. “We have to get inside.”

“We will ... from above.”

“What?”

Nearly lost in frustration, she was about to jerk out of his grip and run for the door.

Ghassan pulled her in and wrapped both his arms tightly around her. Shade lunged off the landing, closing in.

Ghassan ignored the dog and looked to Brot’an. “Let no one out of that door until you hear from one of us.”

Brot’an took another step, looking once at Wynn. Shade snapped her jaws at the domin.

Wynn had no idea what Ghassan intended—but she also had no notion for how to get through that door if the specter could drive him out so easily.

“Shade, enough!” she said. “Stay with Brot’an and do as he does.”

“Do not let go of the staff,” Ghassan repeated.

Wynn never had a chance to respond.

All she heard was another snap of Shade’s jaws as Ghassan’s arms tightened ... and her feet left the ground. She should have never looked down.

Shade quickly became smaller and smaller below as Wynn rose higher into the night within the domin’s grasp. And it felt like her stomach had been left behind. She really was about to get sick.

Pain vanished from Magiere’s head. Everything around her turned suddenly dark, though she still felt that gnawing in her gut like hunger. The burning inside her began again as she turned.

She heard someone pounding up the cellar stairs but ignored the sound. That thing she wanted to mangle was close.

Magiere bit down against her elongated teeth, trying to stop any further change.

Her other half—her dhampir half—had been forced back, and she couldn’t let it take control again. She struggled to keep from losing her hold on reason. If she lost control and slaughtered the host before dawn, the specter could flee completely unseen and take another host.

She had to remember that; all they’d done this night would be for nothing.

“And nothing is what you are ... but a toy and tool.”

Magiere spun at the voice so clear but without the torrent of whispers surrounding it.

“You could be so much more for your making ... if you let me take you to your maker.”

Gasping, she fought to push hunger down again. She had to remember herself more than anything now as she caught the shimmer of something slipping up the stairs at the hallway’s right side.

Magiere ran for those stairs, clawing her way upward. She thought she heard footsteps in the hallway below and ignored them. No one else should get near that thing—no one but her—as she took the steps two and three at a time. When she reached the top, she pulled the Chein’âs dagger from its sheath at her back. With that and her falchion in hand, she ran for the first open doorway nearby.

White curtains hung over a single glass-paned window at the room’s back. There was a small bed on one side and a chest of drawers on the other, and everything smelled faintly of dust. As she inched inward, she saw no place to hide, but she eyed the window ... until she saw its latch was still closed on the inside.

Magiere turned, about to leave and search other rooms, and she froze.

The gray-robed figure stood in the room’s doorway, though she still couldn’t see his face.

It didn’t matter as hunger burned again, and she felt her rage rising up.

...what are you ... why have you come ... who do you serve?

Magiere held her place in that gale of whispers. She was not chained down this time. She bit down on her lip, hoping pain would keep her aware ... keep her from charging blindly to hack that robe into shreds.

And the robe shifted into the room.

“What did you think ... to kill me with steel? I have lived a hundred lifetimes and will live a thousand more. How long will you last denying what you are ... why you are?”

Her head swam and then her sight of the room as well. Everything warped before her eyes.

“You are as trapped as in that cell, alone and helpless wherever you go, until you go where you belong ... with me.”

In her growing nausea, something rose to eat it away. It came up her throat like the fire and hunger, and screeched in her head to drown out the whispers ... and that one voice. Or had that sound like an animal burst from her own mouth?

Magiere’s right hand opened and the falchion fell. She held on to the dagger as the room became less and less dark. On the edge of her awareness, she knew this wasn’t entirely due to her dhampir half.

Outside the window behind her, night was quickly fading at the coming dawn.

She lashed out with her empty hand. Hardened nails like claws tore into the gray fabric covered in glinting symbols. The only thought she could hold on to was ... Daylight.

Magiere twisted to fling her tormentor toward the window. Somehow he halted without going through it. The hood turned until its black pit faced her again. When the hint of his voice began to cut into her mind, she shut it out, lunged, and slammed into him.

Magiere barely heard shattering glass as she clawed at her prey.

Leesil ran out into the hallway behind Chane. Chap emerged an instant later, still shaky on his feet, but Leesil had lost sight of Magiere. With Chap limping at his heels, he hurried halfway to the closed front door and stalled to look into the empty sitting room. He looked everywhere, every way, in every shadowed spot and corner. Panic pushed him to something he thought he’d never do.

“Where is she?” he barked at Chane. “Where is the host? You should know—feel them—so where, now!”

Even in the dark, Chane’s eyes glinted like fractured crystals as he looked around. When he turned back, he shook his head. Perhaps he truly did not know.

Leesil wanted to hiss. Instead, he pushed past Chap and then Chane, looking again into every shadow as he headed toward the back of the house.

Ghassan’s feet touched the rooftop. He released Wynn and let her drop onto her knees. Running to the roof’s side edge, he looked down.

His first impulse upon shooting up through the air by his will had been to propel them both through the first window he saw in the top floor. He had feared dropping or injuring Wynn, though it was not like him to put safety before necessity.

“What are you doing?” Wynn asked as she gagged and stumbled nearer.

Ghassan ignored her. Down below, the majay-hì was still barking. He wished the scar-faced elder elf would quiet the dog. Then he leaned out carefully to peek down over the roof’s eave for the nearest window.

A near deafening crash from the house’s rear pulled him around.

Wynn sucked a breath as she turned with him, but Ghassan launched himself across the flat roof by his will. When he reached the rear edge and looked down, Magiere was falling in a shower of shattered glass and flapping gray fabric.

Wynn appeared at Ghassan’s side, though she turned and shouted toward the house’s front, “Shade, to the back!”

Ghassan gave her no more time than that.

He grabbed her around the waist as he summoned glimmering patterns and symbols across his sight. Thankfully, she kept quiet this time. As she wrapped an arm around his neck, he stepped off the roof and threw his will against the lower ground as they fell.

The ground still came up too fast.

In that blink he could slow their descent only so much, and he still buckled upon impact. Wynn lost her hold on him and collapsed to the ground. At a glance, she appeared unhurt as she braced on her staff and pushed up to her knees. Shade rushed around the house’s rear corner, but Ghassan looked only for ...

Magiere struggled up with a long silver-white dagger in hand, and Ghassan barely recognized her. Completely black orbs filled her eye sockets in a pale face twisted like a monster of pure rage. Cheeks, forehead, and any exposed skin were flecked with red from bleeding cuts. She looked insane, perhaps no longer knowing who or where she was. And her teeth ...

Ghassan had never seen such in a mouth supposedly human.

The robed figure—Khalidah’s host—lay just beyond her and attempted to push himself up. One arm gave way as if injured, and with a grating shout Magiere charged at him.

“Not yet!” Ghassan shouted, for the sun had not crested.

Something in his voice must have broken through her madness, for she froze and hung over her opponent with the dagger held up.

Her target had not even flinched and pushed himself up to his hands and knees. As he turned, half of his hood was torn away.

Ghassan lost his voice at the sight of Counselor a’Yamin in the gray robe. Sharp eyes in a heavily lined face stared back at him through white hair in disarray.

The counselor rose as if something invisible pulled him gently up to his feet. He did not stoop with age anymore.

Ghassan went cold inside. He suspected Khalidah had taken someone highly placed, but he had never guessed how high. And how long had the specter been so close to the prince?

If not for the sect’s medallion that Ounyal’am wore, all it would have taken was a whisper from a’Yamin in the prince’s sleep. The secret of the tie between an imperial heir and the sect would have been lost ... along with the prince.

The counselor’s eyes narrowed as he took in all those around him, and only then did Ghassan notice that Brot’an had come as well.

“Everyone hold,” Ghassan commanded.

He did not know if the specter was more desperate than aware, and he had already been beaten down once. There was also Magiere’s bloodthirsty state, and all of this had to end now.

Ghassan grabbed Wynn’s free wrist as he blinked for clarity. In that instant, he wrapped his thoughts—his very self—in walls of glowing glyphs. His quick incantation slipped out in a whisper under the strain. When his eyes snapped open, he reached for the specter’s presence ...

A’Yamin’s old face smiled at him.

Something clawed over the shell around Ghassan’s mind.

He began to choke as that shell cut off the air he breathed. Incomprehensible words fought to breach the barrier and get to him like worms boring and wriggling inward. One glowing glyph after another withered and decayed, until the last began to rot before his sight.

A chorus of whispers broke through, and Ghassan could almost make out their words.

He quickly retreated deeper inside himself, building more walls as he fled into his own mind’s depths. He used the last of his will to focus and to squeeze hard on Wynn’s wrist ... or he tried to will it so. He could no longer feel anything at all. And on the edge of Ghassan’s awareness, he heard Wynn cry out.

“Magiere, pull him down, now!”

Wynn’s arm wrenched downward. She had to brace on the staff as Ghassan dropped to his knees still gripping her wrist. The old man in the gray robe hooked his fingers and tried to charge at her ... or maybe at the domin.

In one sudden step, Magiere caught the back of the shimmering gray robe, wrenched the old man around, and slashed. The Chein’âs dagger split the robe’s front and the vestment beneath it. Smoke rose from the wound.

The host’s eyes widened over a gaping mouth.

Normal blades caused little injury to the undead. The white metal weapon gifted to Magiere by the Burning Ones was more than steel.

The host screamed and Magiere slashed again and again.

Wynn’s relief turned into horror as Magiere tormented her prey. The dagger’s blade raised lines of smoke in every slash, under every scream, until the old man was beyond torment and obscured by smoke.

Wynn had no idea what to do as Khalidah’s host writhed. Pounding footsteps came behind her and she looked back to see Osha come around Brot’an. Osha stopped upon spotting Magiere and looked to Wynn as if expecting her to do something.

No one did anything. Wynn didn’t dare step into Magiere’s frenzy.

Leesil and Chap burst from the house’s rear door. Then Chane ran out behind them. Wynn couldn’t help looking their way, but in that brief distraction Magiere had straddled the host, pinned his legs to the ground, and grabbed his throat with her free hand.

She struck again, and this time sank the blade into his stomach.

His next shriek turned to choking convulsions.

Ghassan’s grip clenched tight so suddenly that Wynn almost collapsed. The sun had not quite crested.

“Magiere, stop!” she screamed out. “Leesil, Brot’an ... stop her!”

But it was Chap who got there first.

He slammed headlong into Magiere’s back, and they both tumbled and flopped over the host’s head and across the ground. Leesil came an instant later, stopped short, and eyed Magiere warily as she spun on all fours to look for her victim.

The host’s body went still with eyes wide toward the night sky. Limbs twitched as a discoloration in the dark wavered above him. But this wasn’t smoke.

“Now, you little fool!”

Wynn regained sense at Ghassan’s sharp whisper. She pulled up the dark glasses hanging beneath her tunic and held them over her eyes. There was no time to warn anyone as she thrust out the staff’s crystal and shouted aloud in Sumanese:

“Mên Rúhk el-När ... mênajil il’Núr’u mên’Hkâ’ät!”

White light exploded from the staff’s end.

Even with her glasses held in place, Wynn couldn’t see anything but the light. The black lenses adjusted, but she saw only smoke rising from the body. Whatever else had been there was gone.

Magiere lay curled away on the ground with Leesil crouched atop her, his face covered in the crook of one arm to shield his eyes. Likewise, Chap hunkered beyond them with his crystal-blue eyes shut tight. Above them, the glow of dawn began to spread.

Wynn wiped the crystal’s presence from her thoughts. The bright light died, but how long did they stand, sit, or cower there in silence, unable to move?

Ghassan had released his grip on Wynn’s wrist and sat on the ground with his head bowed, and she stood staring at the host’s body. Its blackened wounds barely smoked anymore, though its eyes were still wide, its mouth gaping, and it didn’t move.

Had the specter been burned ... destroyed? She believed so.

Brot’an held out a hand to pull up Ghassan, and Osha stepped in toward Wynn.

“You are all right?” he asked in Elvish.

Wynn didn’t know and looked to the three beyond the body.

Magiere now curled around Leesil with her face pressed into his stomach as he held her. Chap sat close watching, and though he looked up once, not a word from him popped into Wynn’s head. When Magiere fell into this state, only Leesil or Chap or both could ever bring her back to herself.

But this time had been so horrible.

“Where’s Chane?” Wynn asked weakly.

He’d come to this fight fully prepared and covered, but who knew what had happened since then. Chane never before had to face both the staff and dawn at the same time.

“He turned back before the sun came,” Osha answered.

Wynn sighed in relief. At least he’d made it inside before falling dormant.

“Was he still fully covered?” she asked. “Had he been burned?”

Osha shook his head as if to answer that he didn’t know.

Wynn turned and ran for the house, and Shade caught up to her.

Osha stared after Wynn. He had stood on a rooftop and fired arrows into the bodies of men to protect her. He had come after her to make certain she was safe. And even when he stood beside her, it was not him she thought of.

It was Chane.

It would always be Chane.

Magiere didn’t really hear Leesil’s whispers, and Chap had finally given up trying to chatter into her head. Even the soothing memories he called up from the depths in her mind didn’t touch her. The last clear thing she remembered was searing pain before she’d crashed through the window and fallen. Other things ... what she’d done ... were not so clear, and that made the scant bits she did remember so much worse.

Pulling back, she elbowed up enough to lift her head from Leesil’s lap. The early-dawn light hurt her eyes, and when she looked for the others, there was the body.

That sight left her numb. It had no connection to her. It was the specter she had hated, not this shell.

“Is it dead?” she asked with an edge in her voice.

Beyond the corpse stood Ghassan, pale and unsteady. The domin managed a nod to her, but his gaze quickly returned to the body with something like puzzlement.

Magiere wished she could remember—could have seen what had hid in that flesh—when it finally died.

“We must leave. Now,” Brot’an said. “We have lingered too long, and the city is awakening.”

Ghassan flinched as if startled and looked up at the elder assassin. “Yes ... yes.” And then he frowned and glanced around. “Does Chane live?”

“He’s in one piece,” Leesil answered from behind Magiere. “Wynn already went to ... to check on him in the house.”

Ghassan nodded slowly with a long breath. “All of you return to the sanctuary. Wayfarer will let you in.”

“And you?” Brot’an asked.

“Chane will be dormant until dusk,” Ghassan answered. “This house is safe now, and I will assist Wynn in moving him to the hidden room in the cellar. We will join the rest of you after nightfall.”

“You’d sit in a cellar all day ... for him?” Leesil asked.

“Enough,” Magiere whispered.

At his sudden silence, she didn’t look back. If Chane hadn’t been there for what happened in the passage below the house ...

“Do you really think you can get Wynn, Shade, and Chane out of there after dark?” Leesil asked. “There are bodies everywhere. This place will be overrun with imperial and city guards soon enough.”

That did make Magiere look up.

“No, it will not,” Ghassan answered calmly and fixed on Magiere. “Go now. All of you.”

Magiere stared at the corpse again, wishing she could have watched Khalidah die and remember it clearly. Leesil grabbed her arm and pulled her up, but some things Khalidah had said began coming back.

How long will you last denying what you are ... why you are?