In Shade and Shadow

Chapter 16

Wynn turned the final corner, heading toward Old Bailey Road. She knew bringing Chane was wrong.

He was a killer, regardless that he had nothing to do with the deaths surrounding the lost folios. Turning him over to Captain Rodian would've been the rational choice, but she couldn't. Rodian would never solve the murders and thefts. Monster that he was, Chane at least tried to uncover the truth, to help her find out what this «wraith» wanted and why. Besides Shade, who else did she have?

Her whole world had shifted in two days, from her being nearly alone to having two companions, each carefully watching along the dimly lit streets. She felt almost as she had in company with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap—almost.

As she slipped across Old Bailey Road to the wall, she glanced both ways for any sign of patrolling city guards. The road was empty, so she urged Chane left along the wall toward the bailey gate, keeping herself between him and Shade.

At least bluffing her way out of the keep provided one advantage: The guards at the portcullis didn't know who was a real sage or not. A fictitious domin named Parisean sending a «wolf» to escort a delayed scribe meant Shade might get back in on her own. If the dog pestered the guards enough, they would simply open the portcullis and let her in. Once Wynn was inside—if Chane could get her inside—she could go to the courtyard and bring Shade into the dormitory.

Shaded trotted close, brushing against her leg, and a memory appeared in Wynn's thoughts.

She saw through Shade's eyes and found herself peering across a large dark room filled with barrels and bundles lashed to the floor and walls. No, not a room, but the belly of a ship. And she saw Chane on the hold's far side. He opened an old chest, glanced inside, then looked about as if something were missing therein.

Another memory came of Shade watching Chane from the shadows as he moved about the ship at night.

"You were both on the same ship?" Wynn whispered.

Chane glanced back at her.

"Shade says you were both on the same ship."

"How...?" And he glanced warily at the majay-hì. "I will tell you everything later. First we must get inside and out of sight."

But those flashes from Shade left Wynn wondering more about her disparate pair of companions.

"Why doesn't Shade sense what you are?" she whispered. "She is like Chap, and her kind hunts yours."

Chane didn't answer at first. It still struck Wynn as odd that Shade hadn't turned on him the night they both came to her aid against the wraith. Since taking Shade in, Wynn constantly monitored her own thoughts—or rather her memories. The majay-hì's dependence upon memory-speak meant there was no way of telling when or if Shade might dip into her mind for rising memories. Wynn didn't want Shade to learn the truth about Chane at the wrong moment.

Chane stopped and held up his left hand, spreading his fingers, but Wynn still didn't understand.

"The ring," he whispered. "Welstiel made it long ago... called it the 'ring of nothing. I took it before Magiere finished him. It seemed to protect him from Magiere's and Chap's awareness. He was also able to shield those he touched, perhaps expand its influence further through his skills."

Wynn swallowed hard and quickly suppressed rising images of Magiere speaking of Chane's actions within the orb's cavern. He'd used his sword to slice off several of Welstiel's fingers. In the aftermath, Wynn had wanted to believe Chane was trying to help Magiere. She hadn't truly believed it even then, and now...

Disgust must have surfaced in her expression.

"I could not have escaped the castle without it," he said defensively. "You asked, and I told you—far more than you have said concerning your staff and its crystal. I assume you went to great lengths to acquire it—yes?"

Wynn mutely pushed him onward.

They came within yards of the bailey gate, framed by its two small barbicans. It was shut tight, and Wynn flattened against the wall.

She couldn't step out and open it to let Shade through—not in plain sight of the portcullis guards. Shade would have to draw one of them down. Wynn couldn't think how to explain this with memories.

Then Shade ducked around her and headed out.

"What is that animal doing?" Chane hissed.

Shade paused before the gate, looking back, and a memory rose in Wynn's head... her own memory of running the other way along the inner bailey wall.

"Come on," Wynn whispered, and pulled on Chane's arm. "She knows what to do."

When Wynn reached the bailey wall's southern turn, Shade's first barks filled the quiet night. The dog was drawing attention to herself. Hopefully one of the guards would let her back inside.

Chane stalled and looked back along the wall. A strange, wary tension flooded his features at the dog's noise.

Wynn jerked him onward. Creeping around the wall's bend, she watched for city guards in the open road.

"So... what do you have in mind for us?" she asked.

"To scale the wall," he answered, and before she blurted out disbelief, he pointed along the wall's southeastern side. "Get to the corner where that jutting barbican joins the wall."

Wynn looked ahead. A shallow inward corner existed where the bailey wall bulged outward in a wide half-round shape, like a small tower. In older days, when the royals' ancestors lived here, soldiers and archers could've stood atop that open barbican and fired along the wall's outside. Should enemy forces have breached the original outer bailey wall, now broken into remnants, this would be the last line of defense against a direct assault upon the keep.

Wynn scurried along the wall's base and ducked in beside the barbican's outward surge. As Chane joined her, she tilted her head back and peered upward.

The tops of the wall and barbican were beyond the height of a footman's pike, as any sensible fortification should be. She could still hear Shade barking in the distance.

"Now we climb," Chane said, and unshouldered his pack. "You first."

Wynn glowered at him. "No one can climb this."

He withdrew a coil of narrow rope from his pack, but there was no weight or hook on either end. Obviously it was just something he still carried from his travels rather than part of any carefully considered plan. He began making a large loop in one end, and Wynn couldn't believe they were going to try this.

Chane collected rope coils with the loop. He glanced both ways along the road, stepped away from the wall, and flung the gathered rope upward.

The rope uncoiled, but its end barely cleared the barbican's wall through a space between two rising ramparts. Chane huffed in irritation. Wynn didn't know why until he pulled on the rope, and it all came tumbling down. She realized that he was trying to loop one of the ramparts.

"Did you even think this through?" she whispered.

"I do not recall you offering a plan of your own."

She wasn't sure what angered her more—his half-witted scheme, or that she couldn't think of a better one.

Chane crouched against the wall and drew his sword. Before she could berate him again, he pulled off his cloak. He wrapped it around the blade and cinched the material tight by knotting the rope around the sword's midpoint. Wynn watched as Chane flung his muffled makeshift anchor, and then flinched at the dull thump somewhere above.

And that was all she heard.

Wynn straightened, looking off toward the rounding of the wall's southern corner. Shade had stopped barking.

Chane stood with the rope's end in hand and looked off the same way. "Is she in?" he whispered.

"I don't know. Maybe," she answered, and Chane scowled at her. "I think she needs a line of sight to... Oh, never mind, just hurry up!"

Chane pulled on the rope, and it drew taut this time.

Wynn crept along the barbican curve but didn't make it far enough to peer around. The soft clomp of boots on cobblestone carried along the street. She quickly sidled back along the wall, waved at Chane, and jabbed a finger back the other way.

Chane glanced once and couched low. He hooked a thumb in the air over his shoulder, pointing toward his own back. Wynn went wide-eyed and glanced up the wall.

Get on... now! he mouthed.

It was one thing to be caught breaking curfew. It was entirely another to be found breaking in by the city guard.

Wynn gave Chane a scathing look, but she climbed upon him, trying to grip his shoulder with her right hand. She placed her staff crosswise between her chest and his back, and then wrapped her arms around his neck. Chane lurched to his feet, hoisting her off the ground.

With one boot braced against the wall stones, he pulled hard on the rope.

Wynn lost track of footfalls on the road as Chane hauled both of them up the wall as quickly as if he were walking on flat ground. He stopped just before a space between two barbican ramparts and whispered, "Climb over."

Wynn pulled one arm from his neck and grabbed her staff. She slid it over the wall's top, and then felt Chane's hand cup under her left foot. That he managed to hold them both up with his one-handed grip surprised her. She quickly clambered over him through the rampart's space.

His cloak-wrapped sword was anchored across the opening, but when she turned back to help him, he was already up. He pushed her down, crouched beside her, and began hauling up the rope as fast as he could.

Wynn heard the footsteps again.

They came from right below in the street as the rope's trailing end flopped onto the barbican's platform. She and Chane remained still, waiting for the steps to pass by.

Then silence—the footfalls stopped altogether.

Wynn's stomach knotted.

It was far too long before the footfalls resumed, moving onward until they grew faint somewhere off toward the bailey wall's southern corner. Chane rose just enough to peer through the rampart space. He nodded to her.

Wynn glanced down at his sword. "You need to do something about that. Sages do not carry such weapons."

He nodded. "I will hide it better once we are inside."

Wynn wanted to kick herself. No matter what Chane did, he would never pass for a sage. And even without current circumstances, visitors weren't commonly allowed after dusk. What would anyone say or do if they caught her sneaking an unknown man into the guild grounds? Especially one so burned.

Wynn frowned. They wouldn't say anything at first, because they'd be wondering how she'd sneaked out.

She led the way along the wall's ramparts and kept glancing up. But she never saw even a flicker of light in any of the tower windows.

When they reached the library on the northeastern side, Chane boosted her by one foot. She peeked through the nearest window, but by the light of wall-mounted cold lamps she saw no one along the nearest shelves facing the windows. When they climbed inside, Wynn peered around the casement's end. The next row and the cubby beyond it were empty as well. When she turned back for Chane, she found him scanning the texts upon the shelves.

Some hint of pain filled his pale features beneath a gaze filled with awe. Or was it longing?

She couldn't help wondering what he'd been like in his living days. A scholar or just another spoiled, useless noble? Perhaps both. Few times had they ever spoken of his past—before or after she'd learned what he was.

"This way," she whispered.

He blinked as if waking from some dream, and the wonder faded from his eyes. But that hint of pain took an instant longer to follow. He nodded. They sneaked along the library's southern end and down the side staircase.

At every turn, archway, or door along the way, he waited behind as she stepped out to see if all was clear. Not that she wouldn't look suspicious in her old elven clothing, but everyone here already thought she was odd. The last path to the keep's double doors was the worst.

The entryway was empty, but she heard voices carry from the common hall. She cracked the left door and peered into the courtyard. It was empty as well, but this wasn't a welcome sight.

Where was Shade? Had she failed to get in?

Wynn began frantically trying to think of some way to find Shade and bring her in. Then a shadow moved at the courtyard's far left corner. Wynn tightened her grip on the crystal's staff.

The shadow shifted around the cistern beyond the dormitory's end. Two crystal blue eyes sparked in the light of the iron-bracketed torches burning upon the gatehouse's inner wall.

Shade stepped a little way out into sight. Her ears rose as she peered back across the courtyard, and Wynn started breathing again.

She stepped back to wave Chane forward, and they both ducked out, cloak hoods pulled up. They sneaked around the courtyard, rushing quickly as they passed the line of sight with the gatehouse tunnel. Shade was already waiting at the dormitory door. Once Wynn was certain the stairs and upper passage were clear, all three of them hurried to her room.

Closing the door tightly, Wynn leaned against it, took a deep breath, and dug for her cold lamp crystal. When she rubbed it hard, its light exposed Chane standing before her desk, glancing at her mess of quills, journals, and paper. She still couldn't believe that Shade and Chane had somehow traveled here together. He had a lot to explain.

"I must be mad," she said. "The premins and domins already think so... for all my warnings about undead. Now I've got one into my room."

Chane glanced over. He didn't even scowl at such a bad joke. He only shook his head.

"They are the mad ones... in discounting your greater experience in these matters. At least you think for yourself. I would have thought better of your elders here. Tilswith had a far more agile mind."

"I miss him," Wynn said.

Chane fingered a blank sheet on the desk. "So do I, at times."

She stood straighter, watching him roll a quill shaft with his pale fingertip. He was such a mass of confusing contradictions. Shade hopped up on the bed and settled. Everything else in Wynn's room looked the same.

Only a vampire and a majay-hì were new additions.

No, there was also the scroll.

Wynn stripped away her cloak as she leaned the staff in the corner. "My journal notes from today are on the desk. See what you make of them while I prepare."

"My grasp of the Begaine syllabary is not good," he said, picking up the journal.

"Some of it is in plain Numanese letters. Can you read those?"

"A little, from what Tilswith taught me. Welstiel tutored me in speaking while we traveled. I learned more from my time in this city."

Wynn's education in languages was more extensive, required by her vocation as a cathologer. But Chane's intellect was impressive. Domin Tilswith had commented on his natural gift for picking up bits and pieces so quickly. At that time her old master hadn't known Chane's true nature. Perhaps Chane's ability was more than natural, but it was impossible to say, since she'd never known him in his mortal life.

She knelt down and reached under her bed, pulling on the scroll case pinned against a support board. She popped its pewter cap and slid out the scroll, then her gaze fell on Shade's long charcoal-colored face peering over the bed's edge.

How nice to be so naturally camouflaged for night. Wynn leaned in and lightly stroked Shade's cheek.

"You clever girl."

Shade sprang up to all fours and snarled at her, sniffing wildly, and Wynn lurched back as she heard Chane rushing toward her.

Shade dropped her head low, her sniffing nose extended, and Wynn looked down at the scroll in her hand.

"What is wrong with her?" Chane rasped.

Wynn unrolled the scroll, studying its faded black coating. "It seems you're not the only one who can smell what's hidden here." Very slowly she touched the top of Shade's muzzle. "Enough... it's all right."

She spun about on her knees, facing the open floor of her small room. Chane dropped the journal on the bed.

"How does this work?" he asked.

She handed him the empty scroll case. He was no stranger to the arcane, but the taint of mantic sight wasn't something controlled just by learned skill. Since her first so-called successful attempt, traces of the sight had never left her, and summoning it had never worked out well.

"It's not like what you do," she said. "More just intent, wishing, and focus... It's hard to explain."

And she didn't care to, especially not with how she used the memory of Chap as a means to summon her sight. When she lifted her head, Chane stood over her, arms crossed.

"No more arguments," she warned.

He stepped back, giving her space to lay out the scroll upon the floor.

Wynn pushed all thoughts from her mind. Domin il'Sänke had taught her tricks as well—not true ritual or spellcraft but some of their trappings. But even that hadn't been any use in ending the sight once it came. With her right first finger, Wynn traced a sign for elemental Spirit on the floor and then encircled it.

At each gesture she envisioned the pattern in her mind, as if actually drawn upon the stone. She scooted forward, kneeling upon the imagined symbol and circle, and then traced a wider circumference around herself. A simple pattern, but it helped bring her into focus and shut out the world for a needed moment.

Remaining still, Wynn closed her eyes.

She focused upon letting the world fill her with its presence and tried to feel for a trace of Spirit in all things, starting first with herself. Then she imagined breathing it in from the air, feeling it flow upward from the floor's stone. In her darkened sight, she held on to the first simple pattern stroked upon the floor.

Wynn called up—constructed—an image of Chap, just as she'd once seen him in her mantic sight, his fur shimmering as if made of a million silk threads. His whole body was encased in white vapors that rose like flame from his form.

Moments stretched on tediously, one after another.

An ache in her knees threatened her concentration.

She tried hard to hold on to Chap's image... to hold him there behind the envisioned circle around the symbol of Spirit. Until vertigo came—and nausea—in the dark behind her closed eyes.

"Wynn?"

She felt as if she were falling and threw out her hands.

They slapped hard against cold stone, jarring her shoulders, but she stopped herself from slamming face-first into the floor. In fright, Wynn opened her eyes too quickly.

Nausea lurched up her throat, and she gagged.

A translucent mist of white, just shy of blue, permeated every dimly lit object in the room. It covered everything in a second view of the world overlaying her normal sight... smothering her normal sight.

"Wynn!"

She raised a hand, weakly waving Chane off, but she didn't dare look up at him. She didn't want to see him with mantic sight. Turning her head the other way, a beacon of bluish light atop the bed nearly blinded her.

Beneath that brilliance was Shade's own shape and dark color. Her Fay-imbued body glowed more powerfully than anything around Wynn. But where Shade's father had been a blaze of fiery silken threads for fur, Shade was a wolf of night overlaid with a burning aura that hurt Wynn's eyes.

Shade lowered her head, her eyes like blue gemstones held before the sun, and her wet nose touched Wynn's cheek. So close to Wynn's face, Shade's light grew too intense, and Wynn flinched her head the other way.

Chane filled up her sight.

Wynn recoiled from him and then stared in shock.

Back when she'd first summoned mantic sight in Pudúrlatsat, she'd seen shadows. Small ribbons of black had flowed through Magiere's living flesh. And Vordana, the walking corpse of a sorcerer, had been pure blackness within. All the mists of Spirit had drifted toward him like an ebbing tide to be swallowed within his inner black silhouette.

And Chane...

He'd come for her when Vordana had cornered her in the town's smithy. She hadn't seen whether the mists were swallowed into him as well. But he'd been so black within, so devoid of elemental Spirit, that she could barely make him out in the forge's darkness.

But now he was just Chane.

There was no darkness, no shadow copy of his flesh—and no ghostly duplicate of blue-white mist permeating him, either. He looked exactly as he had before she began straining to call up mantic sight.

"Are you all right?" he demanded, crouching low to study her face, her eyes. "Did it work?"

His appearance, so untouched by Spirit, worried Wynn. She glanced at his left hand braced upon the floor.

The ring was gone.

She didn't remember seeing him take it off, and he wouldn't have, if it hid him from Shade's awareness. Nausea rolled through Wynn's stomach, and she clutched her mouth.

"Yes... it worked," she managed to get out.

Her doubled view of the world made her so dizzy and sickened. She wondered if she would be able to see anything in this state as she panned her gaze to the scroll.

It was not completely black anymore.

The coating of old ink, spread nearly to the scroll's edges, had lightened with a thin inner trace of blue-white. Whatever covered the words had been made from a natural substance, and even after ages it still retained a trace of elemental Spirit.

Within that space pure black marks appeared, devoid of any Spirit at all.

"I can see them," she whispered.

"What is there?" Chane asked.

"It's Sumanese," she breathed out, trying not to gag. "Old Sumanese... I think."

But those swirling, elaborately stroked characters weren't written as in the other texts. Short lines began evenly along a wide right-side margin. Written from right to left, they ended erratically shy of the page's left side. The lines of text appeared to be broken into stanzas of differing length.

"It looks like a poem," she whispered. "But the dialect... I can't make out what it says."

She tried, but only a few words seemed vaguely familiar compared to what little she knew of contemporary Sumanese.

"Children... twenty and six steps... to hide... five corners?" Wynn mumbled. "To anchor amid... the void."

She skimmed down the page, at a loss over how little she could translate. Those black characters blurred for an instant under her shifted gaze.

"Consumes its own... of the mountain under... the chair of a lord's song?"

The dark marks blurred again, though she hadn't moved her eyes. Wynn's stomach convulsed.

"My journal," she moaned, buckling forward. "Get me something to write on. Quickly!"

Three labored breaths passed before she felt Chane lift her hand and fit a quill between her fingers. She raised her head as he slid a blank sheet in next to the scroll. Wynn began to write, not even trying to read anymore, and Chane guided her hand each time she tried to re-ink the quill's head. She had to keep her sight clear and be certain of each blindly copied stroke.

The «Children» had to be the same as those she'd read of in the translations, but what of "twenty-six steps," "hide," and "five corners"? The only thing she remembered was that Beloved—il'Samar, the Night Voice—had sought refuge when its Children "divided." And she had no idea what "the chair of a lord's song" meant. And how could a «mountain» be under a chair?

Häs'saun was a Sumanese name, and as one of Li'kän's companions perhaps he had written this cryptic work. But why had he hidden it under the ink? Or had someone else done so later? Why hadn't it been destroyed instead of being painted over so that no one could read it?

Nausea sharpened again, and Wynn choked as Chane grabbed her arm.

"Enough," he said. "Whatever you have so far is enough!"

No, it wasn't. She had to get it all, or she might never learn to understand its hidden meaning.

"Wynn, look away!" Chane rasped. "Now!"

She looked up.

He was the same as he had been before her sight came. No white mist or black void overlaid him, and her nausea weakened.

"Twenty and six steps... five corners," she mumbled.

A low growl rose behind her, and Wynn glanced over her shoulder.

Shade's bright form stood upon the bed, but she now faced the other way, toward the wall and its one narrow window. Her snarls kept growing.

"What is wrong with her?" Chane asked.

Shade cut loose an eerie wail.

Wynn had heard that before. There was no other sound quite like it in the world. And it had poured from Chap's jaws—whenever he picked up the presence of an undead.

But Shade was wailing inside Wynn's room, inside the guild.

"No!" Wynn moaned.

Shade spun and leaped off the bed, straight over to Wynn.

The stone wall around the window blackened as it bulged inward.

Chane jerked on Wynn's arm, heaving her across the floor toward the door.

"Run!" he rasped.

Searing pain ignited in his hand as he jerked out his sword.

The majay-hì's yowling snarls battered at his ears as the animal spun about before him to face the bed.

The black figure—the wraith—slid through the wall.

It stood in the bed, as if it were not truly there. As if it were real and the bed was not. Chane looked into its voluminous cowl but saw no face within the black pit of cloth. Then the cowl turned downward, its opening fixing upon Wynn.

Chane raised and leveled his blade, knowing it would have little effect. All he wanted was to catch this thing's attention and distract it long enough for Wynn to get out.

The hood snapped up, and its black-filled opening turned on him. It remained where it stood, the lower half of its robe and cloak penetrating the narrow bed.

Perhaps after their last encounter, it did not wish to touch him again. He could use that. But the dog's noise must have awakened everyone in the building, if not elsewhere on guild grounds.

The figure hung there as if studying him. Beneath the dog's wailing and snarls, a low hiss rose, like whispers too hard to hear. It seemed to come from everywhere in the room.

Chane heard startled voices in the passage outside the room's door.

Short-lived relief at the wraith's hesitation washed away in panic. What would this thing do if startled sages came running in? Not only did he have to get Wynn out of its reach—he had to draw it away before more sages died.

Snarling and snapping, Shade wove across the floor before Chane. The wraith drew back and lashed down at the dog with one cloth-wrapped hand. Chane quickly swiped his blade at the hood.

The sword's tip passed through, not even ruffling fabric. Shade yelped as the wraith's fingers grazed her shoulder.

She stumbled away toward the desk, pulling up her left foreleg.

Wynn rose up onto her knees, scrambled to the corner by the door, and latched both hands around the staff.

Chane stiffened. Surely she wouldn't use it while he was still in the room?

A shout rose in the passage beyond the door.

"All of you, back to your rooms and stay there!"

Chane's panic grew. Someone of authority had been alerted and was already outside. At any moment that person would reach the door.

The wraith spun away from the dog at Wynn's movement and fixed upon her.

Chane shifted quickly into its way, but there was only one thing he could do.

And it was going to hurt—more than the burns on his hands.

Shade regained her feet and darted in, snapping at the shadow creature, trying to drive it back through the wall.

"Chane, get out!" Wynn shouted.

The wraith's hood twisted sharply toward the dog, and Chane lunged.

He thrust out with his empty hand.

At the scriptorium, he and the wraith had had a moment of contact, which neither of them had cared for. Chane heard Wynn whispering as his hand passed straight through the figure's forearm.

A shock of cold raced through his arm.

His burned hand felt as if he had thrust it into fire. When the frigid cold reached his shoulder, he could not help crying out. He let anger bring hunger to eat that pain, but he could not smother the fresh searing in his hand.

Chane snatched his hand back, curling it against his chest as the hissing whispers in the room rose to a screech. The wraith whipped its arm away, sliding rapidly back through the bed toward the wall. And Wynn's crystal atop the staff leaned out into the side of Chane's view.

He hated any thought of abandoning Wynn, and even so, he would never make it out of here in time. Not with whoever was outside the door.

"Get down!" Wynn whispered. "Cover up!"

Chane wavered briefly. He crumpled and flattened upon the floor. But as he jerked his cloak's hood forward, pressing his face to the stone floor, the door burst open and bashed hard against the wall.

"Wynn, stop!" a deep voice ordered, and the door slammed shut.

But she didn't. She barely recognized il'Sänke's voice, and tried to keep her focus amid the sickening vertigo of mantic sight.

The wraith was inside the guild—inside the dormitory. There were too many apprentices and initiates close by. She held the crystal's triggering pattern in her mind but kept her eyes upon the wraith, hesitant and writhing before the window.

And for an instant she saw it—him—within the cloak and heavy robe.

Blue-white mists permeating the room began to shift, drifting slowly toward this thing. Wherever they touched the figure they were swallowed by it. The traces where they vanished formed outlines. Wynn saw shapes beneath the figure's black garments and the cloth strips wrapped about its body.

A skull faced her within the cowl.

Consumed mists marked its outline like glistening moisture upon bones as black as coal beneath the wraps of its skeleton form. Then a wisp of another image overlaid this as well.

She saw a face.

Not like Chane or any other undead she had seen, retaining their appearance from the moment they were killed. Aged, emaciated, and sunken features suddenly covered the skull in another layer. As if this thing—man—had died of old age before he rose again.

She couldn't be certain, with no complexion to gauge, but the prominent cheekbones, nose, and chin made him appear Suman, like il'Sänke. His eyebrows had grown long and unkempt, and the straggles of a remaining beard hung in wisps along his jawline.

His eyes weren't clear to her, as if the open sockets were only glaring wells of obsidian. She was nothing more than a small thing in his way.

A hand clamped over Wynn's eyes, blocking everything out.

Vertigo vanished, leaving only nausea in her gut. She lost the pattern in her mind as her head was jerked back against someone's chest.

The staff bucked in her hands under someone's grip.

"No, not yet!" she shouted, and then she heard il'Sänke murmuring near her ear.

Chane was still in the room, but was he fully covered?

A last raging howl from Shade hit Wynn's ears. Then a burning flash of light filtered suddenly through il'Sänke's hand, turned red-orange by his flesh.

"No!" she screamed.

Il'Sänke's voice faded as darkness winked in behind Wynn's closed eyes. When his hand lifted from her face, she thrashed free, searching for Chane. The wraith was gone, and the room was no longer filled by the blue-white of Spirit. Il'Sänke had taken away her mantic sight again. Chane was hunched on the floor, cloak hood pulled over his head.

For an instant she thought she saw thin trails like morning mist rising from his hunkered form, and then they were gone. He glanced up around the edge of his hood.

"Do not move!" il'Sänke hissed.

Wynn whipped around in fright.

Domin il'Sänke stood with one hand latched around the staff, just above her own grip. She knew only by the downward tilt of his head that he watched Chane—because she couldn't see his eyes.

He was wearing spectacles with a heavy pewter frame.

In place of clear lenses, these were so dark they hid his eyes. The lenses began to change, growing clearer, finally revealing his unblinking gaze locked on Chane.

Wynn rarely saw Domin il'Sänke truly angry. Even through lingering nausea, she winced at the cold expression on his face. Pounding ceased at the door, and Premin Sykion's voice rose from the other side.

"Quickly! We must break it down."

Wynn tensed with dread at the thought of anyone else entering her room. Then puzzlement followed. The door didn't have a lock, so why would they need to break in? Il'Sänke had entered easily enough, so...

Wynn looked at the tall domin.

Il'Sänke quickly gestured for Chane to move up against the wall behind the door. Chane glanced once at Wynn.

She had to trust in whatever the domin was up to, or be left to explain Chane's presence.

"Do it!" she whispered.

Chane spun onto his knees and stood up, flattening against the wall.

Il'Sänke released the staff and pulled the strange spectacles from his face. As he tucked them in his robe, he passed his other hand in an arc before the door, never actually touching it. Then he opened it partway, holding it in place so that no one could step in.

"It is nothing," il'Sänke said through the door's space, shaking his head with a half smile. "A large cat got into the courtyard and began to mewl. It set the majay-hì off. In our efforts to quiet her, Wynn and I made quite a racket. I do apologize."

Wynn couldn't see Premin Sykion outside, but she heard the head of the guild let out an impatient exhale.

"We shall speak further of this tomorrow." Her tone was both annoyed and relieved.

"I will make certain everything is quiet," il'Sänke assured her. "You can send everyone back to bed, or we will all be useless in the morning."

Il'Sänke closed the door. His false smile vanished as he turned toward Chane.

Always before, in any conflict involving Chane, Wynn feared for the safety of others. Watching il'Sänke, she suddenly felt the opposite.

"Do not hurt him. I... we need him," she whispered to the domin, still fearing that anyone outside might hear.

"I assumed this was not some lovers' tryst," il'Sänke answered disdainfully. "And do not think I have forgotten him from your previous outing! I waited to see what you both might do... though this hardly meets my better expectations."

Chane just stood tense and silent.

"Toying with the staff—and your sight, at the same time!" il'Sänke snapped. "The growth of your stupidity is astounding."

He shook his head slowly, and then snatched the staff from Wynn's hand.

"What drew that thing in here?" he demanded. "Did you sneak any translations back to your room?"

"No," Wynn answered. Just what was he implying? Before she could stop herself, she glanced down without thinking.

Her open journal and quill had been kicked against the wall on the door's other side—and the scroll as well. Fortunately no one had stepped on it amid the conflict. She went cold at the sight of ink all over the floor stones, for her small bottle had been kicked under the bed. But the splash of black hadn't traveled to the other items.

By the time Wynn looked up, in no more than a blink, il'Sänke had already followed her gaze. He leaned down and picked up the scroll, frowning suspiciously at its blackened surface.

"Is this what it came for?" he whispered.

"It is mine," Chane rasped, reaching out. "I will take it and go."

"I do not recall dismissing you," il'Sänke replied, though he didn't even look at Wynn's secret guest.

Wynn silently shook her head at Chane, and he held his place. She glanced down at his hand. The ring was there again on his left hand—it hadn't been when she'd looked for it with mantic sight. And she couldn't remember seeing him put it back on, let alone having taken it off.

Il'Sänke's gaze shifted to the journal and quill. He picked up the former, holding it open atop the scroll, and then his scrutiny returned to Chane.

That intense gaze made Chane fidget, and Wynn almost lunged when his grip tightened on his sword.

Il'Sänke cocked his head and frowned.

A strange instant of wary uncertainty washed over his dark features, as if he'd tried to read something in Chane's face and couldn't.

"We need him," Wynn repeated. "That thing came inside the guild. Maybe it has done so before... since no one could've stopped it. The three of us are the only ones who even believe it exists. We can't afford to turn on one another if we're to seek the truth and a way to destroy it."

"You are leaping to conclusions," il'Sänke said. "After last night it could have simply been attacking you, as obviously this scroll is unreadable, except..."

He bent his head, peering down at the journal.

"What is this?" he asked—like a parent's accusation, who already knew what trouble a child had gotten into.

"A copy," Wynn answered. "But only what I could make out from the scroll—"

"— with your sight," he finished for her, and then he turned to Chane. "So... bearer, where did you get this scroll?"

Cold mistrust showed on Chane's burned features.

"From the same library where I found the ancient texts," Wynn answered.

"Wynn!" Chane hissed.

"We cannot solve this alone!" she hissed back. "He needs to know everything."

And she turned back to il'Sänke.

"There is a poem under the coating, penned by one of the ancient undead among the trio who wrote the texts I brought back. I haven't been sure who to trust in this—but we must protect the guild and the texts. If I tell you everything we have learned, will you help us?"

Il'Sänke remained expressionless, but he tilted the staff's crystal toward Chane.

Chane instinctively flinched away.

"Who is he?" the doman asked.

"I've known Chane for some time," she answered. "He often came to our little branch in Bela, studying with myself and Domin Tilswith. He reads several languages from his region and has an interest in history. He... he knows a good deal about the undead."

"I can imagine," il'Sänke said drily.

Wynn's heart began hammering. How much had Domin il'Sänke already guessed concerning Chane? And the way the domin had tilted that staff suggested much.

"I should not stay," Chane said. "There will be questions if I am discovered. I came only to ensure Wynn's safety."

Domin il'Sänke snorted once and spoke only to Wynn. "He is correct about questions—but you cannot stay here alone. Both of you will come with me—now. I will take him out the library window, atop the wall."

Wynn gaped. He knew how she'd been getting out. But they would be seen if il'Sänke took Chane through the keep.

"No one will see us," he said. "I'm shure I can be quite as sneaky as you. But I will keep the scroll for now."

"No!" Chane rasped, raising his sword.

As Shade snarled, Wynn rushed in and grabbed Chane's forearm. She didn't fully understand why, but it was clear how much the scroll meant to him. Yet il'Sänke might be the only one who could read the ancient Sumanese that she'd blindly copied from the scroll.

"Let him keep it," she told Chane. "He's not like the other domins here. He won't lay claim to it. And even you shouldn't walk alone tonight while carrying it."

"Especially since you already look rather a mess," il'Sänke added.

Chane glanced down at Wynn. With a glower he reluctantly let her pull his sword arm down.

"And you had best take these," il'Sänke said to Wynn, taking out the strange glasses he'd been wearing. "At least until you learn to control the crystal's intensity. Your mantic sight will be all you have left... if you stupidly blind yourself."

Wynn snatched the glasses from him, feeling less than grateful. "What was I supposed to do? You weren't here."

"I am not the one drawing so much attention to myself," he countered, and turned for the door.

With a quick glance in the outer passage, Domin il'Sänke ushered them all out. Wynn went last, with Shade beside her. They paused at the door to the courtyard. When il'Sänke nodded that all was clear, they slipped across to the main doors and back inside the keep, heading for the library. He led them the same way by which they'd come in, yet another disturbing coincidence that bothered Wynn.

When they reached the library's first floor, il'Sänke had them wait while he scouted ahead. By the glow of perpetual cold lamps, Chane turned to Wynn, and the burns on his cheek looked orange in the soft light.

"I will help," he said. "I want to protect... the guild."

"I know," she answered, but she wouldn't give him more encouragement than this. She could never let him hope for anything beyond ending the current crisis.

Domin il'Sänke reappeared and took Chane upstairs.

Wynn dropped on a bench near a study table, wondering how il'Sänke would get Chane out without being seen by Rodian's men. Or perhaps Chane would simply scale down the wall with his rope.

She badly wanted to pet Shade, seeking comfort in a companion still so new to her, but her thoughts kept turning to Chane. She had to be careful. Any memories picked up by Shade might make it impossible for the dog to fight alongside him again. And she needed them both for now.

After trotting some distance along the wall's top, Ghassan led the way down the stairs into the fallow orchard below the southern tower. He paused there, holding back a hand to keep Wynn's «savior» from stepping past him.

Chane was in no condition to be scaling walls or possibly calling attention to himself if he fell. It was simple enough to fill the guards' minds with the notion of something skulking near the keep's northern tower. Yet even as they took off on an erroneous search, Ghassan was still disturbed.

Not by the strange marred and burned appearance of this one called Chane. More than that, he had not caught the slightest conscious thought in the man's head. He had tried in Wynn's room.

Unlike during the duchess's visit with her entourage, when he had picked up only something akin to a voice muffled inside a closed room, he could not find Chane's thoughts at all. As if the man were not there.

When the guards were gone he waved Chane on. He received not a word in response as the man jogged off through the gate.

Il'Sänke returned to the library's first floor and found Wynn slouched upon a bench with the majay-hì at her feet. On spotting him, she straightened and stood up.

"Come, you will sleep in the northwest building," he said, "in the study outside my guest quarters. It is more... protected."

She frowned, then nodded, as perhaps the prospect of sleeping alone in her room did seem unappealing. He led the way back through to the main doors and, once outside, cut across the courtyard. Entering through the storage building, they headed along a hallway that passed through the keep's outer wall and into the newer building beyond. On the ground floor they passed the area where he spent time among this branch's metaologers. When he glanced over his shoulder, Wynn was peering through a wide archway on the left. He knew what she saw inside.

Dimly lit colored glass tubes, mortars and pestles, small burners, and tin plates covered tables made of stone resistant to dangerous substances. Aging books lined high shelves about the workbenches running along both side walls. Perhaps she spotted the stairs to the sublevels, where the alchemical furnace sat, built like a massive barrel of charred steel mounted to turn and spin as needed. Plates of thick crystal were embedded in its walls, allowing a view of the interior to monitor any work in progress.

"I haven't come this way in a long time," Wynn said.

Shade, on the other hand, drew nervously closer to Wynn as they traveled up a switchback staircase at the passage's end.

Il'Sänke stopped before a door on the second level. He preferred to keep this locked the old-fashioned way—to avoid questions—and took a key from around his neck.

"What's in the lenses of these glasses?" Wynn asked suddenly. "What makes them darken?"

"The glass was infused with a thaumaturgical ink while still molten," he replied. "Nothing complicated, and not the best lenses to look through. I later discovered that they react to sharp changes in heat as well as light. Keep aware of this unexpected side effect."

He opened the door and let Wynn and Shade inside.

Only once they were alone in his study did he feel at ease. A faded wooden couch with cushions was pushed against one wall. On the other side, his desk was a mess of parchments and quills and charcoal sticks. The floor was dusty around the edges where no one walked, and two walls were lined with half-filled shelves. He had brought only a few of the texts from home. The rest were either there when he arrived or had been borrowed from the library. Another door at the back led into the guest bedchamber he used during his stay.

Wynn glanced over the desk, the spectacles still in her hand. Her expression filled with disappointment. "It's so—"

"Ordinary?" he finished for her.

He was in no mood to discuss the state of his quarters. Anything he did not wish others to see was always kept locked away—one way or another.

"Many things that appear ordinary are not," he added. "Your tall friend, for instance, is one of your walking dead."

Wynn stiffened, and Ghassan tried not to smile or laugh.

He could count off the notions running through her head—without even trying to touch her thoughts. First denial, then came reticence to confirm his statement, to be followed finally by resignation.

Wynn flinched, but Ghassan felt no pity. He had picked up nothing, not even stray thoughts in Chane, which seemed impossible. Then again, he had never had a chance before to try such on an undead.

"Yes," she finally answered. "A Noble Dead... a vampire... but he would never harm a sage."

"And why is that?"

He already guessed, but the longer he prodded her guilt, making her feel as if she had betrayed his confidence, the better it served him.

"I just know," she said tiredly. "What else do you wish me to tell you?"

"My interest lies most in what you might tell others. Much in the texts implies warnings, maybe even predictions, though I have seen little of the material. Knowledge of their content can never leave these protected walls—not in any form. Can you grasp that much?"

Her young eyes seemed so weary as she nodded. "Yes, I think I can."

"Then sit," he commanded, pointing to the old couch, "and start from the beginning. Tell me everything concerning this lost library of an ancient undead. Tell me what you found today in the translations... and in the scroll."

As a last emphasis, he held up her journal, taken from the floor of her room, and slapped it down upon his desk as he sat.

Shade hopped up beside Wynn, curling up on the couch and taking most of its space.

Wynn's tired brown eyes fixed on the journal, as if it were the end of a long tale unto itself. She began, softly and slowly at first, telling him what she'd learned in the Elven Territories concerning Most Aged Father, the Anmaglâhk, and fear of a returning Ancient Enemy.

She told him of the long sea journey down the elven coast, and another by land into the rugged Pock Peaks. And then of the nearly mute white undead called Li'kän, who could no longer remember the sound of any voice or her own name. Wynn had found no clues to whatever became of the white one's missing companions, Volyno and Häs'saun.

She told him of events in a cavern below the castle, either ones she had witnessed or those later learned from her companions. He heard of the hundreds of calcified remains of servants, not all human, like statues kneeling with heads bowed for eternity in their burial pockets of stone. And he learned of something called an "orb," and the chaos in a hot and humid cavern when it had been accidentally "opened." She told him how she and Chap, a Fay-born canine like Shade, had chosen the texts she brought back.

But when she came to the translations seen this day, there was little he did not know already. At her mention of the Eaters of Silence, as opposed to the Children or the Reverent ones, he kept silent, though at that mention, his grip tightened on the chair's arm.

Much of what she had read contained passages he had worked on. She had few conclusions that he had not guessed at as well. When she wound down, all her words spent, they sat in silence for a while. She glanced at him now and then, expecting him to say something—anything—though not about a "wraith."

Yes, he had caught that term from her very thoughts. Along with her deep fear that it would be far worse to deal with than the vampires, the ones she had thought were the only Noble Dead. Now one of them, Chane, and a wayward majay-hì had come to her.

Ghassan had his own concerns about this black-robed undead mage. He was uncertain that even he could deal with it on his own. And for this alone, he could not harm Wynn just yet. Not because of growing fondness for her; that was irrelevant.

She knew much of what he had already suspected was the truth—too much. And he knew she had to be silenced for the safety of the world.

One life for thousands—tens of thousands—was a sacrifice he could live with.

Except for this thing she called a "wraith."

Wynn finally yawned, shyly covering her mouth, as if she worried about disturbing his silence. He got up, taking a heavy cloak from a hook near the door.

"Lie down," he told her. "Sleep. You are safe here."

"We can't let the wraith get more folios," she whispered, but her eyelids were already closing. "And tonight it came inside the guild."

"I know."

"Rodian tried to set a trap for it, but he failed," she murmured.

"I know."

Ghassan glanced at Shade, snapped his fingers, and pointed at the floor. The majay-hì leered at him but jumped down, and Ghassan pushed Wynn sideways by the shoulder. She flopped upon the couch, and he pulled the cloak over her.

"Tomorrow night," he said, "we will set a trap of our own."

Until then, he still saw a need for her.

As she settled into sleep, Ghassan slipped into his bedchamber and closed the door.