First and Last Sorcerer

Chapter Two

Brot’ân’duivé—the Dog in the Dark—crouched upon a rooftop outside the great wall of the imperial grounds. He maintained this vigil out of little more than habit, as he had come to accept there was little else to do at present. And so it had been for the last moon.

Much of the time, he remained in hiding, for his physical appearance in this land and city attracted much attention. Even cloaked and with his hood up, his height brought curious glances. Up north in the Numan lands, he was half a head taller than most human males. Here he towered over everyone and was easily visible even in a crowd.

Coarse white-blond hair, with streaks of gray darkening some strands, hung over his peaked ears and down his back beneath his hood and cloak. He was deeply tanned, nearly as dark as the Sumans, with lines crinkling the corners of his mouth and his large amber-irised eyes. But the feature that stood out the most, if someone drew near enough to look into his hood, were four pale scars—as if from claws—upon his face. Those ran at an angle from the midpoint of his forehead and slanted down through one feathery eyebrow to skip over his right eye to his cheekbone.

He spent much of his time near the palace grounds, where he watched for anything that might be used to his advantage. Patience was a necessity more than a virtue among the Anmaglâhk, guardians of the an’Cróan people and their vast territory; it was even more so for him as a master among them, a greimasg’äh, or “shadow-gripper.”

During the waterfront arrest of Léshil, Magiere, and Chap—and Brot’ân’duivé’s own young ward, Wayfarer—he had made the instant assessment that he could not stop it. Instead, he vanished before it happened. This had seemed prudent at that time, for they had been so outnumbered that even he saw no way to extract all of the others alive. Within moments of their being taken away, he had managed to sweep back in and save their belongings left in the street. These he had later hidden well.

Now ... he had come to question his quick decision.

Among the Anmaglâhk—viewed only as assassins by any human who’d survived to recognize one—he was one of the few remaining masters. But he no longer wore his caste’s garb of hooded forest gray cloak, vestment, pants, and felt boots. Instead, he now dressed in simple breeches and a weatherworn jerkin beneath a marred and smudged hooded cloak. His change of attire was no simple disguise, for he was at war with his own caste.

Many of his brethren still served their too-long-lived leader, Most Aged Father, a paranoid madman who was utterly self-serving at the expense of his people. Brot’ân’duivé was determined to stop Most Aged Father and his loyalists at any cost. This was one reason he had traveled halfway across the world in protecting Magiere and Léshil from a team of loyalists sent after them.

Once again, Brot’ân’duivé studied the outer wall of the imperial grounds. He had seldom felt regret in a long life, as he did now over his choice to abandon his companions at the waterfront. He assumed he could soon rescue them, but he could not have known then that a human construction would be able to keep him out.

The wall was taller than any he had seen in his lifetime. It was also taller than any surrounding building, for he had set foot on every rooftop around its circumference. That had taken two days and half of the following night.

Sheer and smooth, as if impossibly made from solid sandstone, the wall offered little chance of purchase for a blade’s tip to climb it. And even if so, the broad space between it and the nearest structures was twice the width of the widest street in the capital. Regular patrols of city guards walked the wall’s outside and top, and imperial guards with gold sashes manned the interior grounds.

And he had only one lead to what had become of Léshil or Magiere.

On the day those two were arrested with Wayfarer and the errant majay-hì called Chap, he had followed them unseen to the imperial grounds. Among their captors of armed guards were two of Most Aged Father’s loyalists.

Dänvârfij and Rhysís were dressed in poorly cut human clothing; both wore swords of a strange make. The very idea was anathema, as by the caste’s creed they worked “in silence and in shadow.” But sight of them did not surprise him, for they had been hunting Magiere across the world.

He had waited outside all that first day, but only Dänvârfij and Rhysís had emerged. His initial instinct had been to follow and eliminate them, as he had done one by one with their team ever since leaving his homeland after being branded a traitor.

That urge was quickly abandoned. This pair was his only link to what had become of his lost companions. His second instinct had been to capture one of his enemies and extract information by any means. This was rejected as well. It was doubtful that even he could break a seasoned anmaglâhk.

And now his only way to know that Léshil and the others still lived was because three times Dänvârfij had gained access directly through the imperial grounds’ main gate. When she left, she looked close to angry and frustrated.

An unguarded emotion—let alone expression—was rare for a true anmaglâhk.

Given that Dänvârfij would have surveyed the grounds’ wall as well, the only reason that she continued diplomatic attempts was that her quarry still lived. By her expression, she had not gained access or learned where they were kept.

Eight days had passed since Dänvârfij last appeared at the main gate. What did her long period of inactivity mean?

Frustration, like regret, was another emotion Brot’ân’duivé rarely felt.

Movement at the gate drew his attention.

He watched as Dänvârfij exited between two dozen guards standing post at the gate.

She still wore her poorly cut human clothing and the sword on her hip, but over the distance it was too dark to see her expression. He had been on the rooftop since late afternoon but had not seen her enter, and he wondered how long she had been inside the grounds.

Brot’ân’duivé flattened upon the rooftop’s edge to watch her walk past below. He knew the route she would likely take, as he had tracked her twice before. Both times she had lost him before reaching her final destination. Somewhere in the capital hid the remainder of her team.

Counting her, only four of the eleven remained alive.

Slipping his right hand to his left wrist, he pulled the cord on the sheath up his sleeve and slightly tilted his left forearm. A stiletto slid out hilt first to settle in his left palm. He spun the blade outward as he rolled back from the rooftop’s edge and to his feet without a sound.

Brot’ân’duivé’s patience was gone.

He leaped silently to the next rooftop to get ahead of his prey before scaling down into an alley. At the mouth of that dark path, he watched the street less than seven strides to his right.

Dänvârfij appeared and headed onward at a quick and quiet pace.

The instant she slipped from sight along the street’s next block, Brot’ân’duivé stepped out to follow. When he rounded the corner closely, prepared to disable and capture her in the dark, another tall figure dropped from above to land beside her.

Brot’ân’duivé swerved silently in against a shop with its awning tied shut. Both figures headed onward without pause. When they passed beyond a lantern at the next intersection, he recognized the newcomer by his movement and the color of his clothing.

In the last season, Rhysís often wore a dark blue cloak with the hood up.

Two anmaglâhk—loyalists—walked apace in silent purpose.

Brot’ân’duivé shadowed them block after block and deeper into the city’s northern side. He had never tracked any of them this far before, and when they turned into a cutway beside a three-story inn, he turned up a side street to reach the alley that would run along the inn’s rear. There they were, and he watched as they scaled the inn’s back side and slipped into a window.

Brot’ân’duivé slipped his stiletto back up his sleeve and tied it in place with a single twirl of his fingers.

Dänvârfij and Rhysís had not come to this city alone, and he had now found the remainder of his enemies ... his targets. Two others inside the inn might make easier prey for interrogation, but now was not the time, with all his enemies together.

And if Dänvârfij had gone back to the imperial grounds, then Magiere and perhaps the others were likely still alive.

Brot’ân’duivé regained patience as he waited and watched.

Dänvârfij—“Fated Music”—slipped through the window of their current hiding place with Rhysís directly behind her. The single room they had paid for was small, with only two rickety beds, a bleached wooden table, a cracked washbasin, and two candle lanterns. It served its purpose.

The other two members of what remained of her team waited therein.

She waited before the window, but Rhysís quickly approached the two women sitting on the same bed. Like her, they were anmaglâhk in status, though not so in function anymore.

Én’nish, the youngest of the team, was nearly as tan and white-blond as all an’Cróan. She was also smaller and slighter of build than most. Her size was a deception she used to advantage in combat. She also was—had been—reckless. More than this, or perhaps the cause of it, she was poisoned by their people’s grief madness in having lost her mate-to-be to Léshil’s blade.

Dänvârfij had opposed Én’nish’s inclusion in their purpose from the start.

The young one had proven to be a survivor when others had not, but she had taken a wound in her abdomen during the last battle with their quarry. And again, it had been Léshil who had done this to her.

Én’nish had not healed well and was less than capable for combat. Rhysís stood towering over her, his hair even lighter than hers, which he always wore loose.

None of them now wore the forest gray clothing of anmaglâhk, as they traveled disguised in human attire. Dänvârfij still could not fathom Rhysís’s new affinity for blue clothing. In addition to his pants and shirt, even the cloak he wore was a dark shade of that color.

Her gaze shifted to the final surviving member of their team.

Fréthfâre—“Watcher of the Woods”—sat hunched forward on the bed’s edge. She could no longer sit straight without support at her back, and sometimes not even then.

“Well?” she demanded. “Did you learn anything new ... or useful?”

Fréthfâre held status as shared leader of the team, but she was fit in neither body nor mind and perhaps not even in spirit. Her wheat-gold hair, so uncommon for an an’Cróan, hung in waves instead of properly silky and straight. In youth, she had been viewed as supple and graceful. She was now brittle in approaching a mere fifty years—barely beyond half of what most anmaglâhk lived and notably less than half of any other an’Cróan. The human dress of vibrant red that she wore made her appear all the more fragile.

Once covârleasa—“trusted advisor”—to Most Aged Father, Fréthfâre was nearly useless now. More than two years before, the monster Magiere had run a sword through her abdomen. The wound should have killed her, but a great an’Cróan healer had tended to her. Even so, she had barely survived, and the damage would never be wholly undone.

Dänvârfij, ever respectful in dealing with the ex-covârleasa, had no new information to share this night. She shook her head once in answering another of Fréthfâre’s spiteful questions.

“The commander of the imperial guard made it clear that I should not return,” she added.

Fréthfâre said nothing and her thin lips pursed. What could she say? What could any of them say?

These three anmaglâhk were all that Dänvârfij had left with which to hunt the monster Magiere, her mate Léshil, the deviant called Chap ... and the traitor greimasg’äh, Brot’ân’duivé.

A year and a half before, when Most Aged Father had asked her to prepare a team and sail to this foreign continent, she had not hesitated. Their purpose had been direct and clear. They were to locate Magiere, her half-blood consort, and the tainted majay-hì who ran with the pair. Magiere and Léshil were to be captured, tortured if necessary concerning the “artifact” they had carried off from the Pock Peaks, and then eliminated—along with the majay-hì, if possible.

Fréthfâre had not blinked at the last of that, though her team, including bloody Én’nish, had balked. Killing a majay-hì—a “sacred one” of their land—even a deviant one, had never been asked, let alone done. And never before had so many of the Anmaglâhk jointly taken up the same purpose.

Most Aged Father feared any device of the Ancient Enemy remaining in human hands.

Eleven anmaglâhk had left together, but one more had shadowed them across the world.

After the first and second deaths among them and before they knew for certain, Dänvârfij could not believe who that one had to be. Only on a night when she had glimpsed his unmistakable shadow had she acknowledged the truth.

Brot’ân’duivé had been stealing their lives, one by one, ever since.

Out of eleven, four remained, yet they could not stop or turn back. Dänvârfij could not fail Most Aged Father, and in the last port, called Soráno, she had devised a new plan.

She had killed two of the Lhoin’na guardians called the Shé’ith and took their swords and emblems for Rhysís and her to assume their identities. Racing against time, they had beaten Magiere to the Suman capital and used their false authority to have her and the others arrested for murdering the crew of a Sumanese ship.

Dänvârfij had been certain her quarry would be locked away in some constabulary. In such an easily infiltrated location, they could be taken unarmed. Everything had gone terribly wrong.

Magiere and Léshil, along with the majay-hì and the mixed-blood girl, had been taken directly to the imperial castle. At the sight of Magiere, the reaction of the imperial prince, the leaders of the Suman sages, and the imperial counselor had been immediate. All of the prisoners were dragged off and locked away somewhere in the immense imperial grounds.

Dänvârfij had been denied access to or knowledge of their whereabouts.

She had gone back several times with various reasons for speaking to them, only to be denied. Worse, the traitor had escaped being arrested. Nothing had gone as planned, and Brot’ân’duivé now moved freely somewhere in this city.

“Do you think our quarry still lives?”

Dänvârfij regained awareness at Én’nish’s question. Not long in the past, the young one had questioned her every decision. Én’nish had become hesitant and too easily stalled by uncertainty.

“I do not know,” she answered flatly.

“That is the first thing we must learn,” Rhysís countered.

“How?” Fréthfâre asked.

He shook his head, almost impatiently. “If the Suman government will not assist us, and we are certain that path is barred, then we return to proven methods. Capture and extract information from someone who does know.”

Dänvârfij grew wary. “None of the local guards will possess such information.”

“The imperial guards took our quarry away,” he countered.

Dänvârfij stepped toward him. “That is a reckless tactic. Any of them missing will be noticed.”

“One of them may know,” he countered again, “or know who among their own has such knowledge. Recklessness is all we have left, and this will not be a one-step process.”

Dänvârfij fell silent rather than argue further.

With every death and failure among them, her authority had been strained or diminished. To take action against the imperial guards could endanger their own secrecy. If they failed, or succeeded but were uncovered, their current lack of options would not be the worst of their obstacles.

Dänvârfij could not think of anything better and looked to Fréthfâre, futile as that was.

Fréthfâre nodded as well. “As you are no longer welcome inside, stalk the patrols on the outside for a straggler to capture.”

Dänvârfij inhaled and exhaled slowly.

Standing in the cutway, Wynn watched Chane facing down Ghassan il’Sänke and decided to take matters into her own hands.

“Chane ... Ghassan is right. We need to get off the streets first.” When Chane’s brow furrowed, she turned to the domin. “Where will you take us? Some room at an inn?”

The domin hesitated long enough to set her on edge.

“I have a ... private residence which is little known,” he replied.

“So you are hiding,” Chane interrupted. “Why?”

“Chane!” Wynn said in exasperation. She looked back in time to see Osha step in and fix on the domin with an expression nearly as suspicious as Chane’s.

She didn’t trust the domin completely either, and with some embarrassment she remembered that only a few moments before, in her panic, she had blurted out that she’d not only found another orb, she’d brought it here.

If Chane had not interrupted her, she might have spilled out one more piece of information that she wasn’t yet ready to share with Ghassan.

In addition to the orb of Spirit, she’d also brought a small, strange device she had acquired that could be used to track an orb. The problem was that this device was currently dormant, she didn’t know how to reactivate it, and at some point she was going to need Ghassan’s help to make it work. How soon she decided to tell him of this object remained to be seen.

But he’d protected her more than once and made her sun-crystal staff. If he had a safe place, then that was good enough for now.

Without waiting for more arguments, she shifted the pack on her back, hefted her staff, and turned toward the cutway’s mouth with one glance at the domin.

“Lead on.”

Ghassan turned without a word and stepped ahead of her, looking both ways along the street.

Wynn followed, and at least this time Shade wasn’t arguing, but she heard nothing from behind for a moment. Then came Chane’s hissing exhale and two sets of soft footsteps. There had been no doubt. Neither Chane nor Osha would let her simply walk away with the domin, whether Shade was with her or not.

Occasionally, their overprotectiveness was useful.

Il’Sänke made his way inland, eventually turning southward, and along the way he stopped often, though he didn’t look about.

Wynn wondered whether he was listening, but she heard nothing herself. After a while, the walk began to feel quite long. The domin appeared to be taking them all the way across the city—or at least that was how it felt when they entered an area with more people out at night.

Fine shops and eateries of tan stone lined streets with plentiful lamps and colorfully dressed women scented with jasmine. After another long stretch, all of this gave way to smaller dwellings in disrepair and people in the streets dressed in rags and too often bare feet. They passed one building with shuttered windows. A few staggered out its broad front door, which was guarded by two slovenly but armed men, and they shuffled away in a daze.

Wynn passed close to one of the patrons and saw his eyes staring blankly ahead without looking at anything. He stank of sweet-smelling smoke strong enough to cut through the smells of the city.

“I do not like this,” Chane whispered from behind her. “This place is not fit for you.”

The domin didn’t look back, but Wynn did. “Snobbery won’t hide us any better. If the guild branch here is anything like my own, those guards notified the local constabularies about us.”

In spite of her bravado, the glassy-eyed people unnerved her. She’d read about places where something called hashish was smoked. What were they called, something that meant “dream haven” or the like? Had she just walked past one?

The domin turned down a darkened side street without a single lamp along the way. They continued past three shabby buildings and stopped in front of the fourth one. Its front door was crooked in its frame and covered in turquoise paint so peeled and full of cracks that Wynn could see the spidering lines in the dark. Broken tiles lay out front that might have fallen off the roof.

“This ... safe place?” Osha asked.

Shade started rumbling at the door of peeling, cracked paint.

Wynn couldn’t bring herself to shush them, for she grew reluctant as well.

Ghassan il’Sänke stepped forward and pulled the crooked front door open.

Wynn started after him, but Shade slipped in front of her. The dog planted herself with a growl and wouldn’t move. In frustration, Wynn nudged Shade’s rump with a knee—and again—until they both followed the domin inside.

It was so dark in the narrow hallway that Wynn pulled a cold-lamp crystal from her short-robe’s pocket and stroked it sharply across the fabric. When it glowed with light, she instantly wished she hadn’t bothered, and Chane and Osha came in behind her.

The place was filthy and dilapidated. Walls lined with warped wooden planks surrounded unpainted doors no better off than the front one. She heard someone coughing somewhere behind one of those doors, but Ghassan quickly headed for the stairs at the passage’s end. They climbed upward, though Wynn shuddered more than once at the sharp creaks of the steps beneath her feet.

When they reached the top floor, the domin headed down the only hallway. Raising her crystal, Wynn could see nothing more than old doors and one open, unshuttered window at the hallway’s end. And that was where the domin went. When he stopped before the window, perhaps reaching for its waist-high sill, Wynn looked back past Chane and Osha at all the doors along the way.

“Which one is for us?” she asked.

“None of them,” the domin answered.

Wynn was about to turn back when she heard Osha suck in a sharp breath.

She looked up to see his lips parted below wide eyes staring over the top of her head. At a clunk, as if a door had closed, Chane dropped the chest, grabbed her shoulder, and jerked her back behind him. She half fell into Osha, who caught her, as Shade’s growl erupted with a clack of teeth.

Even in Osha’s grip, Wynn regained her feet and spun about, though he held on when she tried to take a step.

Ghassan il’Sänke was gone.

Wynn lost her voice as she peered around Chane’s side. Shade inched back as Chane stepped in and ... strangely, hesitantly extended his hand through the open window, as if afraid to do so.

“Where is he? Where did he go?” Wynn managed to get out.

Chane swung his hand to the window frame’s side and began tracing and feeling, gripping and pushing, all around it. He did the same to the wall on both sides and below the window.

Much as Wynn couldn’t see how the domin had escaped, Chane’s actions were too bizarre. “What are you doing?”

“There was a door,” Osha whispered in Elvish. “He went in ... and then the door was gone.”

Wynn had no idea what that meant, but Shade’s hackles were up. The dog backed up another step with a mewling growl like a spooked cat.

“Ridiculous,” Wynn said. “He must have hopped out the window when I turned my back and the crystal’s light was blocked from—”

The wall around the window swung away.

Osha pulled Wynn close, Shade crouched with a snarl, and Chane hopped back in, pulling his shorter sword.

There in the opening shaped like a doorway stood Ghassan il’Sänke.

Chane leveled his sword at the domin.

With an exasperated sigh and a roll of his dark eyes, Ghassan hooked a boot’s toe around the open door’s bottom corner. Wynn finally noticed that the passage’s end wall had suddenly changed and ... looked like a door.

Solid and made of dark, stout wood beams, unlike all the others along the passage, it was also iron-banded and had a matching lever handle. From what Wynn could see there was no keyhole in the plate around that handle. She finally closed her mouth with a swallow.

“My apologies,” Ghassan said a bit tiredly, raising his hands in plain sight. “The door slipped from my grip. It is heavy and spring-loaded to shut if left open. Please come in.”

“What is this?” Chane demanded.

Ghassan took a slow breath with an extended exhale. “As I told you, this place is safe and clearly no one will find us here.”

And then he simply stood there waiting and glaring.

Chane inched in to tap the door’s frame with his sword’s tip. The frame still looked like part of the outer wall.

The domin scowled, then scoffed and leaned away when Chane inched his sword through the opening. Shade rumbled even louder, and when Wynn tried to take a step, Osha held her back.

Chane stood staring at whatever lay beyond the door and then turned his glare—and his blade—toward the domin.

“How?” he demanded.

After another extended sigh, Ghassan answered flatly, “That is a longer conversation than I care to have out here. Now, are you coming in or not?” He turned his annoyance on Wynn as if Chane’s sword meant nothing anymore.

Wynn pulled out of Osha’s grip and stepped closer as Chane back-stepped to reach down for the chest without taking his eyes off the domin. She pushed past both him and Shade for a closer look, and what lay beyond in that softly lit place was as shocking as the hidden door.

Shelves lined three walls and were filled with scrolls, books, and plank-bound sheaves, just like those of the archives below the guild branch in Calm Seatt. Unlike that place, everything here was pristine without a hint of dust, and all was made of dark but shimmering wood.

Several cold lamps with crystals provided light around the interior. One rested on a round table encompassed by three cushioned chairs. By the lamps’ ornate brass bases, they had to have alchemical fluids producing mild heat to keep the crystals lit. All chairs were high-backed, and their finely finished near-black wood was intricately carved in wild see-through patterns.

To one side stood like-carved folding partitions separating another area covered in large floor cushions of vibrant patterns with shimmering embroidery. At the back of the sitting area was an open door to another room, and in there were several beds as lavish as the cushioned sitting area. Clean, fringed carpets defined various sections of the floor.

Though impressive, it all struck Wynn as rather cluttered. The last fixture she noticed left her a bit dizzy and disoriented.

In the rear wall, between the cushioned area and the door to the bedroom, was a window exactly like the one she had faced in the passage moments before. Through it, she saw the same night-shrouded buildings across the same back alley, and she absently stepped in.

This was nothing like any hideaway that Wynn could’ve imagined. In fact, it looked too well prepared and furnished, aside from that disturbing duplicate window.

“H-how?” she stammered, turning around.

Osha entered with Shade, and Wynn saw that Chane had already dragged in the chest. He stood with sword still in hand as he faced the domin. Wynn wasn’t certain whether or not to call off Chane. Osha glanced about, but, unlike Wynn, he looked openly wary.

With a lift of one eyebrow, il’Sänke finally answered. “A mere glamour to hide this space.”

“What do you take me for?” Chane rasped as he eyed the duplicate window set directly inline with the door.

Wynn knew that Chane had learned his minor conjury the hard way—without any tutor or teaching and having to scavenge hard-won texts and knowledge delved alone in secret. Something here bothered him, and considering what she saw, she didn’t interfere with whatever he was after.

“This entire end of the upper floor has been hidden,” Chane went on, still holding up the tip of his shorter sword before the domin. “And yet the window in the passage’s end shows the same view outside. I touched that wall and window, and felt them.”

Ghassan acted as if the sword were not even there. “What would you have me say that you could possibly understand? It is beyond you. Accept that.”

These final two words put Wynn on edge. She wished she was the one asking questions and that Chane was behind her to warn her of lies with a squeeze upon her shoulder.

Then again, Ghassan hadn’t actually answered the question.

“Why did the mention of your name almost get us arrested?” Chane asked.

In the hesitation that followed, Wynn fixed only on the domin. “And why are city guards posted before the guild ... at all?”

Ghassan barely glanced at Wynn, wondering how much to say. Clearly Chane Andraso was the more immediate problem, though one that could be dealt with. Doing so might also undermine gaining answers—and cooperation—for his own needs. And he was still anxious over the revelation that Wynn had gained another orb.

He did not dare to look again at the heavy chest two steps behind Chane. Wynn’s appearance, the orb of Spirit, and her obvious accomplishments meant something more.

She and her companions could be useful to him.

Ghassan had been alone in his hunt for Khalidah since returning to his homeland. Wynn might attract trouble as easily as a melon draws flies, but she had skills and a weapon, which he had fashioned for her, that emitted sunlight. Chane could be unpredictable, but as a member of the undead, if properly motivated, he was a skilled fighter and almost impossible to kill. As for Shade, a majay-hì was a natural hunter of the undead. The elf’s usefulness ... well, that remained to be seen.

So how little could Ghassan say to gain more advantage than disadvantage?

“I was part of a hidden sect among the Suman metaologers,” he finally answered.

Wynn’s brown eyes never blinked, though she still stared at him, and so he continued.

“We studied certain practices which ... would not have met with the premin council’s approval.”

“What practice?” Osha asked.

Ghassan ignored everyone but Wynn. “We had kept a prisoner for a long time that we wished to study and safeguard in secret, since others would not be able to do so. Unfortunately, I was sent to your land because our branch wanted its share of the knowledge you brought back from the eastern continent.”

The last reference was awkward, considering he had also done his best to stop her from gaining the orb of Earth in the bowels of Bäalâle Seatt. He had failed and, though she had no knowledge of what had come next, he had hurried for home upon receiving a message that it had escaped.

“What sort of prisoner?” Wynn asked.

“A dangerous one who escaped while I was away and ... killed the rest of my sect.”

For an instant, his thoughts slipped back to the night he returned home. All of his comrades lay dead in their subterranean sanctuary, their eyes wide and blank, mouths gaping in final horror—even the best among them, those more skilled than Ghassan himself.

All dead but one ... and that one other than himself was still missing.

“Killed?” Wynn repeated.

“As I told you, this prisoner is dangerous. Upon its escape, my own peers were not the only ones who died, though the rest of the guild is unaware of the cause of those deaths. There was no hiding this or our sanctuary any longer from High Premin Aweli-Jama. As the last of my sect, I was wanted for questioning. I couldn’t allow this, as I am all that is left of those who can hunt the prisoner.” He hesitated. “Unfortunately, I was caught and taken before the imperial court. By happenstance, it was on the same day that your friends were arrested at the port.”

There was a pause then, with so much to take in.

“Why?” Wynn finally asked. “What were the charges against them?”

“Murder. Two foreigners sought the aid of both the city and imperial guard ... and they looked like him.” He tilted his head toward Osha.

Osha’s expression twisted in alarm. “What you mean?”

Ghassan kept his eyes on Wynn only.

“He means not Lhoin’na,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Anmaglâhk?”

Ghassan vaguely recognized that last term, though he couldn’t remember from where.

“You do not know that, Wynn,” Chane put in. “This continent has a large population of elves, and some are light-haired.”

“True ... but it is possible the anmaglâhk team picked up Magiere’s trail after she fled Calm Seatt,” Wynn said, closing her eyes and looking tired. She opened them again and looked to Ghassan. “We must get my friends out, and you are going to help us.”

Before Ghassan could raise an eyebrow—

“What of this prisoner he hunts?” Chane interrupted. “I want to know more.”

“Not now,” Wynn insisted, turning back to Ghassan. “Can you help us?”

Ghassan remained passive. Gods, fate, ancestral spirits, or something else entirely appeared to favor him this night. By all accounts in Wynn’s travel journals, Magiere, Leesil, and their majay-hì were skilled hunters of the undead. And from what he understood, they were devoted to Wynn.

“I will do what I can,” he assured her. “But it will not be easy.”