First and Last Sorcerer

Chapter Seventeen

Just past dusk, Wynn stood in the cluttered main room of Ghassan’s hideaway with him and Magiere. In her open hand, she held the tracking device made from part of an orb key, and she couldn’t quite gauge their reactions at first.

“A sect?” Magiere repeated. “Another one, and it cut up an orb key?”

At that notion, Magiere looked outraged or stunned or something else—Wynn couldn’t decide which. Ghassan was another matter, eyeing the device like a treasure he didn’t know was possible. And he fixed on the device so long in silence that Wynn grew more uncomfortable.

Everyone else was present, as Wynn didn’t wish to explain more than once, and most likely they would all be involved in recovering the orb of Air. Of course, Chane, Osha, and Shade already knew about the device.

Leesil stood one step behind Magiere, glanced away, and didn’t look back again.

Chap eyed Wynn rather than the device, as did Brot’an.

Wayfarer remained near the sheet-curtained bedchamber.

Osha kept his distance as well, leaning against a cabinet at the room’s front, listening but not looking.

Chane hovered behind Wynn, as if she needed protection, and so did Shade on her left. With eight people and two large dogs, the place felt a tad small.

Considering all the varied reactions around her, Wynn remembered Shade’s earlier warning about waiting to tell everyone until Chane was up and awake. Perhaps that had been sound advice after all.

“How does it work?” Brot’an asked.

Of course he would be the one to get straight to the point.

“It is activated by a spoken phrase,” Wynn answered, “though in a long-dead language, something Shade heard the last time it was used. She passed the words precisely to me, but I’ve tried them with no success.”

On impulse, she thought it best to show them, so she closed her grip on the device and spoke the words aloud as best she could.

“Nä-yavít, a’bak li-bâhk wihkadyâ, vakhan li’suul.”

Nothing happened, of course. She even swung her arm in an arc away from the bedchamber, where everyone knew one orb was stored. She hoped the device might wrench itself back that way, but it didn’t.

“See, nothing. It’s not the words but their intent, like when I ignite the sun crystal.” Her gaze shifted to Ghassan. “I don’t know their intent, but I hoped you might.”

He shook his head slightly, which made her panic in thinking he was as lost as her.

“You never cease to astonish me,” Ghassan said with a sigh. “The things you have asked me to make ... the objects that find their way into your possession ... and the places in which you end up. Do you realize how rare a thing you now hold?”

“Of course I do!” Wynn answered. “But it’s worthless if we can’t reactivate it. That’s half the reason I came all this way ... and you are just as much trouble as what you claim about me!”

Magiere still appeared disturbed that anyone would cut up an orb key. “We don’t need it. The keys—thôrhks, handles—can track orbs.”

“Not like this,” Wynn countered, holding up the device. “Wait until you see.”

But if she couldn’t make it work again, none of them would see.

Ghassan held out his hand. “May I?”

Wynn hesitated, though this was what she’d come for. With no other option, she placed the device in his palm.

He took a deep breath and released it slowly, as if he’d just gained something by chance that he’d not known existed, or if, how to find it.

“The phrase you uttered,” he said, still gazing upon the device, “translates roughly to ‘By your bond, as anchor to the anchors of creation, show me the way.’ So the intent must focus upon the device’s connection to the orbs in recognition of what they are, their purpose, and the nature of the one sought and its individuality. The words spoken must be based on this. Whether such knowledge must be firsthand or general, we shall see.”

Wynn’s heart sank at first but beat faster with hope. She hadn’t been certain even Ghassan would understand a dialect that might be a thousand or more years old. But he’d easily translated it, and that was more than Wynn had hoped to gain.

She reached out. “Let me try again.”

Instead, he stepped back, closed his eyes, raised the device out level, and spoke with force.

“Nä-yavít, a’bak li-bâhk wihkadyâ, vakhan li’suul.”

His arm instantly straightened and leveled with his shoulder. Seemingly of its own accord, his fist—holding the device—lurched toward the bedchamber’s opening.

Wayfarer almost jumped out of the way. Osha quickly crossed to stand before her and eyed Ghassan and the device in a less than friendly manner. The room went silent as everyone stared, for the device had directed Ghassan toward the orb.

After Wynn’s own failures with that object, the solution had come so easily that she wasn’t sure how she felt. Of course she was elated, but she hadn’t expected him to take matters—or the device itself—out of her hands. Glancing up and back at Chane, she found him watching Ghassan.

“How do you turn it off?” Magiere asked, breaking the silence.

“Loss of contact,” Wynn answered. “Just let go and it goes dormant.” And as she finished, she stepped to Ghassan and held out her hand.

Was that a hesitation—a slight frown—before he dropped it into her palm?

Wynn slipped the device into her short-robe’s pocket, though it was heavy enough to make her robe sag. Ghassan eyed her carefully as Chane watched him.

“Yes, that’s ... impressive,” Leesil said, though he didn’t sound impressed. “But I don’t see what good it is if it always goes for the nearest orb.”

Wynn took a slow, calming breath. He sounded more like the old Leesil, always free with a sarcastic, unhelpful comment, and she wasn’t in the mood.

You do not fully trust this domin.

Chap’s words took Wynn by surprise, and she looked into his crystal-blue eyes.

And neither do I, but your urging back in Calm Seatt is what brought us here. Tell the domin about the new clue from the poem, as there is nothing else for us to try. We—I—shall see what he makes of it, perhaps even what he does not say in words.

Wynn doubted Chap could catch a single rising memory in someone like Ghassan. Several years before, Chane had taken a scroll from the library of a six-towered castle guarded by a minion of the Ancient Enemy. It was the same place in which Magiere, Leesil, and Chap—and Wynn—had found the first orb.

Inside the scroll was a poem in a dead Sumanese dialect. The words had been scribed with the black fluids of a long-gone Noble Dead, likely a vampire, and then blackened over with a full coating of ink. Only through Wynn’s curse of mantic sight, in seeing the words devoid of elemental Spirit, had the poem been uncovered. Metaphors and similes in the verses hinted at the last resting places of the orbs.

Wynn’s mantic sight had certain drawbacks. It made her ill, so she could maintain it for only short time periods. As a result, full translation of the poem had been slow and sporadic. Ghassan already knew about the poem, as he had helped to translate the first section.

The “Children” referred to the first thirteen vampires to walk the world, likely the true origin of Noble Dead and perhaps created by the Ancient Enemy to guard the orbs, some of which had been moved from their original locations. The poem had not been helpful in those cases, but Wynn remained hopeful that the orb of Air hadn’t moved from where it had been hidden a thousand years ago. Her mind turned over one verse in particular.

Back in Calm Seatt, she’d uncovered another clue with the help of Premin Hawes, head of Metaology in the guild’s Numan branch.

Wynn looked to Ghassan. “Premin Hawes helped translate another line that might assist our search.”

One way or another, they’d all come seeking the domin, and there was nothing left to try.

Ghassan raised one eyebrow. “And?”

Wynn closed her eyes, reciting what Premin Hawes had uncovered.

“The Wind was banished to the waters within the sands where we were born.” Opening her eyes, she launched into suppositions that she, Chane, and the premin had drawn. “The ‘we’ most likely refers to the Children, since one of them wrote the poem. We know they were created somewhere in what are now called the Suman territories, though the empire didn’t exist then. There were separate nations and not the ones of today.”

She paused for a breath.

“So that line must hint at someplace near where the Children were first created as servants of the Enemy. But there is nothing but desert between here and the Sky-Cutter Range, and it stretches from coast to coast across this continent. The only ‘waters’ are at the coasts, but that goes against ‘within the sands.’ Premin Hawes said that much more than nations and people could have changed in a thousand years. Perhaps there was once a body of water in what is now desert?”

Ghassan said nothing for longer than she liked and then glanced away. “Ah, Wynn. What a sage you would have made. I am banished from my guild branch, hunted in my own homeland, and after this I fear you will end up the same.”

True enough, yet she didn’t have time to worry about it now. “Ghassan! Have you—or anyone—ever read of a recorded body of water in this region?”

Magiere stepped closer and looked less friendly in waiting for the answer.

Slowly, Ghassan nodded. “There was once ... a shallow salt lake, perhaps large enough to count as a small sea.” Then he hesitated. “But that does not help us now.”

“Why not?” Magiere demanded.

“Because the ‘sand’ in the reference covering the lake’s bottom was saturated with salt. As the lake dried out, crystals hardened and formed a vast reflective surface. With more heat over time, and wind, it fractured, broke down, and blew for leagues in all directions. Then there is also the distance to reach the dead lake bed.”

Wynn frowned. “I don’t see the problem.”

“Not only is it too far to travel in a single night,” he continued, “in the worst heat of the whole nation, but salt crystals in the sand catch and reflect the sun. Anything there in the daylight will die—be cooked—by the sheer heat. Some have tried, and their bones might still be found in the crater ... if anyone could go there and live to leave again.”

Ghassan turned to Magiere. “No one can survive the crossing.”

“I could,” Magiere said and looked to Wynn’s robe pocket. “And that thing can lead me.”

“No!” Leesil snapped.

Wayfarer slipped away into the bedchamber. She could not bear to listen any longer. Both beds were still unmade, and she thought to at least straighten the blankets for something to do. Instead, she stood staring down at the chest containing the orb.

“Are you unwell?”

Turning, she found Osha peeking in around one side of the sheet curtain.

His long white-blond hair hung loose, and where it fell down the sides of his head, it divided around his ears, exposing their elongated tips. He was so tall he had to hunch or his head would have banged the opening’s top as he stepped inside.

Of any male among Wayfarer’s people that she had met, only Brot’ân’duivé was slightly taller than Osha.

“Yes ... I am well,” she answered and looked away.

“You do not wish to hear the discussion?”

“They will argue until exhausted, and then Magiere will do as she wants. I have no say in this or whether I go with them or not. They have not even noticed me gone.”

When she glanced back, he was studying her, as he had done too often of late.

Osha stepped closer. “They have not noticed I am gone either.”

No, probably not. Magiere, Leesil, and Chap—and Osha’s beloved Wynn—had their “purpose,” as Brot’ân’duivé would say. The greimasg’äh would also follow wherever they went, as would Chane and Shade ... in their devotion to Wynn. The strange domin had his secrets too, and he would follow after Wynn or Magiere.

Wayfarer knew she was merely an extra responsibility to them. Osha at least had his bow and his skills.

What good was she to anyone?

She had been marked by her people’s ancestral spirits, driven out to wander beyond her people’s lands and be forgotten. This was proven by the name she had taken—the name she had been led to take—upon visiting the ancestors.

Sheli’câlhad ... “To a Lost Way.”

Osha was also a wanderer, for being caught in Brot’ân’duivé’s war with his caste, but instead of turning to her in shared loss, his heart had turned to someone else.

The shouting in the outer room grew louder, and Wayfarer could not shut it out. She even heard Chap snarl and then bark, and those sounds made her look for anything to take her thoughts elsewhere.

In the room’s far corner, at the foot of the bed she slept in with Chap, was the pile of Osha’s belongings. Among those was his long, narrow cloth-wrapped bundle.

He hated that bundle perhaps as much as she hated her true name. He never opened it unless someone forced him to do so, but a thought—a memory, a little thing she could not quite catch—nagged at her now.

“I want to see the sword again,” Wayfarer said without thinking.

Osha did not answer.

She turned, seeing pain and shock in his eyes, as if she had asked for something offensive. Stiffening, she shrank away half a step and dropped her gaze. How would she feel if he ever slipped and called her by that hated name again?

“Please,” she began, hesitantly. “Could I see it?”

“You have already seen it.”

His tone warned her not to ask again, but now that she had started, she could not ... would not stop.

“Only for a moment on the ship leaving Bela, and I was not myself then ... still mourning a lost family and home ... a lost life.” She paused and strengthened her voice. “I did not truly look at it, and I wish to now.”

When he did not answer, she again added, “Please,” as she raised her eyes.

Osha’s mouth tightened. He crossed the room in three long strides and snatched up the long, narrow bundle. Grabbing the cord holding the cloth closed, he opened it in one wrench.

The cloth unrolled in his grip and the blade fell on the bedcover without his having to touch it.

Wayfarer stepped closer, studying the long, sweeping white metal sword. The nearly straight blade was as broad as three of Osha’s fingers. The last third swept slightly back from the forward edge in a shallow arc to the point, and even the back of that last third was sharpened. Where the top third joined the blade’s lower part, a back barb swept forward toward the tip.

The hilt strut had been fitted with tawny, shimmering wood like that of the living ships of their people, though it was not covered in a weave of cured hide strips. The strut had been bare when Osha first received it, and he had not seen to having it finished. Brot’ân’duivé had done that in the fashion of anmaglâhk stilettos.

When the greimasg’äh had returned to their cabin, having seen to the hilt being finished, it was the only other time Wayfarer had seen the blade. She had not paid attention, for her own suffering had been too great.

The hilt might be twice as long as the width of Osha’s hand. Like the blade curved slightly back, that hilt’s end swept slightly forward. Two protrusions extended where the hilt met the blade’s base. The top curved forward while the bottom one swept slightly back.

Wayfarer then remembered where she had seen such a weapon, though she had never seen such elsewhere the first time she saw it. The other time had come after Osha had left her and stayed behind for Wynn.

“I have seen this ... or a drawing of it in a book.”

When she looked, the revulsion on his face shifted to confusion. “Where?”

“In the library of a guild annex in Chathburh,” she answered. “I was looking through a book written by a people akin to us on this continent, the Lhoin’na. This is the weapon carried by their protectors—their Anmaglâhk—called the Shé’ith, only they ride horses and carry large weapons openly for all to see.”

Osha slowly shook his head as his expression darkened again.

Wayfarer’s thoughts tripped one over another.

“You never told me where the sword came from, only that it was forced on you. Who did this?”

His head dropped as he growled back at her. “Who else works in the white metal?”

She had guessed the Chein’âs—the Burning Ones—must have made it. They were a race that lived in the fiery depths of the world and created all weapons for the Anmaglâhk.

“Why?” she insisted. “Why would they force a Lhoin’na weapon on you?”

Her questions had gone beyond poor manners, but she found it hard to care. She knew nothing of Osha’s childhood, his family, or why he had worked so hard to become an anmaglâhk. She knew nothing of his reasons for inner turmoil over this past year. To ask such things was a breach of polite conduct.

“Why?” she repeated.

“They called me again to the fire caves,” he whispered. “They took my weapons, the gifts they give to only anmaglâhk.” Spreading his forearms, he displayed the burn scars on them and his wrists, and dropped his head as he glared at the sword. “They forced that thing on me, along with the bow handle and arrowheads. I was no longer Anmaglâhk.”

Wayfarer tilted her head in thought. Did Shé’ith use longbows as well as swords? She tried to remember the drawings in the book.

“Do you miss being Anmaglâhk?” she asked.

“No,” he answered slowly. “I miss knowing my purpose. I thought I had found it. I was wrong.”

Wayfarer did not understand what he meant by that. She thought of when she had gone to the ancestors for her name-taking, of the long cruelty of the vision she had been shown, of a place that looked like the forest of her people but was not.

Osha had been given weapons made from the same metal as Anmaglâhk blades ... but one at least looked like the weapon of a shé’ith.

Wayfarer did not ask permission and reached down to close her fingers on the sword’s hilt. Perhaps Osha had a purpose—unlike her—that he did not know.

Chap noticed Wayfarer and then Osha slipping away into the bedchamber. He wondered whether their absences might not be for the best.

“It has to be me, alone,” Magiere insisted again.

Chap found it odd that she was now the rational one, and not Leesil.

“Stop saying it!” Leesil argued. “You’re more sensitive to the sun than anyone here ... so no!”

That was not precisely true, though Chap refrained from glancing at Chane.

“Have you ever seen me burn even slightly?” Magiere countered. “Does my skin even take on any color?”

“What about bringing shelters?” Leesil asked, turning to Ghassan. “Thick canvas we could set up when the sun rose?” He sounded more desperate than angry now, as Magiere had dismissed every suggestion he’d made.

“No,” Ghassan answered. “The closer we come to that long-dead sea, the more heat rises beyond what the body can withstand ... even beneath a makeshift shelter.”

Leesil opened his mouth again.

—Enough—

He spun at Chap’s memory-word command. Of course Leesil would not want Magiere going alone after the last orb. As much as Chap pitied the pain beneath Leesil’s anger, this had to end.

—Enough ... repeating— ... —It has not ... worked ... so stop it—

Wynn had been mostly quiet throughout the heated exchange. Like Leesil, she was equally concerned. Unlike Leesil, she knew better when not to go head-to-head with Magiere.

Chane had been silent as well, but he cared nothing for Magiere and never put forth an opinion unless Wynn was involved. Brot’an watched and listened, like a reptile waiting in stillness for something useful to come into range, and only then would he strike.

Chap eyed Leesil again, calling up more memory-words.

—Magiere is ... right— ... —Remember ... the wastes—

“Don’t try that with me!” Leesil shot back. “I may have been down through most of that, but I remember enough. That wasn’t the same as what she’s got in her head now.”

Chap noticed the others’ glances. It was still strange to most that anyone responded to him as if he had spoken to either Leesil or Magiere.

And worse when Wynn started, “What is Leesil—?”

Stay out of this.

Wynn’s eyes widened at him, but the last thing Chap needed was her getting in the middle.

I will explain what you do not know ... later.

After obtaining the orb of Fire, he, Magiere, and Leesil had suffered a grueling journey back across the frozen wastes of the far north. Both he and Leesil had nearly succumbed to the elements more than to their injuries. Magiere had somehow placed herself into a state in which her dhampir half did not—would not—recede.

She was nearly feral for most of that journey. She committed unspeakable acts. None of them would have survived if she had not, though in the end she might have perished or remained in that state if not for them.

Magiere had called up a power from within that Chap had feared for so long. Yes, she had saved them when no one else could have done so. She had survived many days that would have left anyone else dead.

She was the only one who could get to the final orb, but Chap was terrified of what might happen if he or Leesil were not there to bring her back to herself.

“What about the device?” Wynn asked quietly. “Magiere may not be able to reactivate it on her own ... and she will need to.”

Chap almost snarled at her for giving Leesil more to argue about.

“I will teach her, as long as it takes,” Ghassan said. “It will not be an issue.”

The domin was still an enigma—ever helpful, ever useful, and Chap had no idea why. His agenda was as opaque as Brot’an’s, but at least Wynn’s slip was undercut. And still, none of them truly knew the real risk.

Magiere alone, if she survived to return, might never come back to herself.

Chap would not tell the others, though she as well as Leesil knew this. That as much as anything else was why Leesil was so furious with her and Chap.

“We will travel with her as far as we are able,” Ghassan continued. “I know the desert, and I will know when the rest of us must stop. She will not have to travel the entire way on her own.”

“How many days?” Leesil asked. “How many after she leaves us behind?”

“Uncertain,” Ghassan answered. “I would guess at least three in and three out. She will need to carry water, light rations, and not much else.”

“Perhaps it won’t take her so long,” Wynn suggested. “The device should lead her directly to the orb.”

Leesil’s expression grew pained again. No one spoke, and this time Ghassan did not openly agree.

Chap thought on what Wynn had not added: everything after that depended upon what Magiere found at the end of her search. Twice now she had found an ancient undead guardian of great power wherever an orb was hidden. If this were the case again, she would be facing the next one alone, and with no one to reason for her.

A harsh rasp broke through his worries.

“The orb of Spirit should not be moved from this place. As secure and hidden as it is, even that is not enough. Someone must remain to guard it.”

The tall, arrogant vampire stood beside Wynn. Every time he spoke, his voice grated on Chap’s nerves, but he had a point.

“Why should we let that be you?” Magiere asked coldly.

“I cannot travel in daylight,” Chane answered, “and I would only slow you down.”

Magiere’s brow wrinkled as if she was unsure how to respond.

Over the past nights, Chane had made offers seemingly selfless and helpful. Chap knew this undead’s past and did not believe either, but there seemed to be no other option.

“Few of us need to go,” Chane continued. “Only those who wish to. Wynn should remain here with me.”

Wynn looked up at him in surprise, and then a flicker of anger crossed her oval face.

Chap hung his head with a lower rumble this time. The last thing he needed now was another spat. Perhaps Wynn had imagined herself trekking to finish the search with the others, for it was the last orb. Again, Chane had a point. Why risk anyone unnecessarily?

“Chap and I will go,” Leesil put in. “And Ghassan, as he knows the region. Everyone else stays here.”

An alarm bell rang in Chap’s mind, and he quickly focused on Leesil.

—No— ... —Brot’an ... comes ... with us— ... —I would sooner ... leave ... the orb ... with the vampire— ... —As Chane ... will protect ... it ... for Wynn—

Only Leesil’s eyes shifted Chap’s way, though he should not have done so with Brot’an watching.

—Chane will be ... dormant ... all day— ... —And neither Wynn ... nor Osha ... could stop ... Brot’an—

Leesil’s expression did not alter. “Brot’an comes too. If we run into trouble with brigands, we’ll need someone else to defend us.”

Brot’an raised the eyebrow with the scars running through it. Likely, he was not fooled by Leesil’s reason.

“Of course,” agreed the aging assassin.

“Then it’s settled,” Magiere said. “We leave as soon as we’re supplied.”

Late that night, Leesil lay on a pile of arranged cushions on the floor of the cluttered main room holding Magiere with her back into his chest. She was awake as well, and they shared a single pillow and blanket.

Ghassan had taken one of the beds in the bedchamber, and this seemed only fair as he had spent a number of nights sleeping on the floor or in a chair. Wayfarer and Chap were tucked away in the other bed. Osha slept in there on the floor beside them, and Brot’an had taken a space on the floor on the other side of Ghassan’s bed, actually lying down for once.

Wynn and Chane had remained out in the main room, sitting against a pillow pressed against the one bare wall. Shade lay curled up beside Wynn. Until a short while ago, Wynn and Chane had been studying a text together and quietly practicing their spoken Sumanese. At some point, Wynn fell asleep on his shoulder, and he did not attempt to move her. Instead, he sat leaning against the wall studying the text alone while she slept up against him.

The sight had unnerved Leesil, so he’d rolled over and put his arm around Magiere, pulling her closer.

“I don’t want you doing this alone,” he whispered.

“There’s no other way.”

With nothing more he could say, he lay there unable to sleep.

“It’s the last one,” she added after a while. “Then it’s all over.”

He wanted to believe that. “And we’ll go home to the Sea Lion?”

The two of them owned a cozy tavern with an upper-floor home in a small coastal town called Miiska. All Leesil wanted was to go back there, serve drinks and food to townsfolk he knew, and run card games and sleep with Magiere in their own bed upstairs.

“Yes,” she promised. “Once I have the orb of Air, as soon as we’ve found a place to hide it and the orb of Spirit—someplace where the Enemy can’t reach them—we’ll go home.”

She rolled toward him, and he propped up on one elbow, looking down into her face. He never stopped marveling at the beauty of her flawless pale skin, black hair, and dark eyes.

“Only one more,” she whispered.

Pulling the blanket up over their heads, she kissed him softly on the mouth.