In Shade and Shadow

Chapter 19

Chane stumbled into a narrow path between two buildings, fearing the crystal might flash at any moment. But the burning light never came.

He flattened against one shop's dingy side as shouts and the sound of pounding horses' hooves grew in the street. The sting like iced needles still filled his body, but shock overcame suffering when he peered into the street.

Shade was on her feet, rumbling instead of howling, and she limped sideways toward Wynn.

Wynn stood in confusion, holding the crystal's staff out. But she turned her widening eyes, behind the strange spectacles, toward the first horseman.

The man she called Captain Rodian—the same one who had set the trap at the scriptorium—sat on a fidgeting white mare, his sword in hand. And the Suman lay in a limp mass, clearly unconscious.

Amid all this, the wraith remained still, turning only its hood toward the captain, as two other city guards kicked their mounts, charging at it.

Everything had turned to a fool's chaos. There was nothing left but to get Wynn out of the middle.

Chane willed down pain, letting hunger rise to eat it, and he ducked out, bolting straight at Wynn.

Rodian looked up from il'Sänke's crumpled form as Garrogh charged with Lúcan flanking him. The two raced toward the black-robed man.

"Hold!" Garrogh shouted. "Keep your hands where I can see them!"

"Keep away!" Wynn shouted back.

Rodian wasn't certain whom she shouted at. The wolf hobbled quickly in front of her, but the black-robed figure slid straight into the path of Garrogh's bay gelding.

Garrogh's horse reared with a sudden scream, and the figure thrust out his hand.

His fingers pierced the gelding's chest, and then he slipped aside. As the gelding's foreleg came down, the horse collapsed.

"Garrogh!" Rodian yelled.

His lieutenant was tossed forward, slamming against the cobble and skidding along the street. Lúcan swerved his mount around the downed horse and charged at the black figure.

"Lúcan, no!" Rodian called.

The robed man swung with his hand, striking the head of the guardsman's horse.

The animal never made a sound as it skidded on its folded forelegs. Rodian jumped off Snowbird as Lúcan fought to pull his mount up. But the horse collapsed sideways, and the young guard cried out as his left leg was pinned.

Rodian ran for his men. The black-robed man closed on Lúcan, struggling beneath his mount.

Lúcan tried to pull his sword. The dark man slapped his face—and the guardsman screamed. Garrogh rolled over on the street and lunged up, drawing his blade as he turned on the robed one's back.

"Get away from him!" he shouted.

Rodian's mind went numb. He'd thought il'Sänke was the cause of all this, and that the black-robed man would surrender once his accomplice was put down. Wynn's earlier words echoed in his head as he ran to aid his men.

You're not hunting a living man! And you'll never stop it through your usual means.

Garrogh swung as Rodian tried to get in front of the black mage.

The figure reached back and caught Garrogh's blade. The sword halted instantly, as if no more than a child's stick. Garrogh's eyes widened as Rodian swung at the figure's front.

His longsword passed straight through the cloak and robe. Meeting no resistance at all, Rodian almost lost his balance.

In that brief instant the black one twisted. His other hand struck Garrogh's face... and passed straight through.

Horror closed Rodian's throat.

Garrogh's grip released his sword's hilt, and he crumpled.

The lieutenant's face turned ashen in the pattern of a hand overlying his slack features. When his knees hit the cobblestones his legs folded, and he fell backward with his eyes locked open.

The black figure finished its full turn back to Rodian with Garrogh's blade still in its grip.

Rodian backed up a step.

"Don't let it touch you!" Wynn cried, but her voice now came from behind him.

He retreated another step as the figure opened its hand. The blade didn't slide along the cloth-wrapped palm. Garrogh's sword dropped straight down, right through the hand, and clanged upon the street.

Rodian heard a loud snort and hammering hooves. Snowbird was coming. She would kill—or die—for him, but he couldn't afford to look back for her.

"No!" he shouted. "Snowbird, stay!"

Still he heard her hooves.

"Shade, go!" Wynn cried.

Rodian quickly glanced sideways.

Wynn's wolf bolted past him at the black mage, still limping on one foreleg, and began snarling and snapping. Rodian snatched Snowbird's reins as she tried to follow the wolf. He jerked her away and turned around. Wasted moments were foolish, but he couldn't let her be hurt.

Wynn's wolf harried the black-robed man, yet seemed hesitant to stay close for too long. It hopped about, staying out of reach, but in turn the black figure flinched each time the wolf made a lunge.

Rodian jerked Snowbird's head aside and shoved on her neck.

"Back!" he commanded. Then he turned and closed behind the wolf.

He had no idea how to fight this man if his sword couldn't connect. Instead of swinging, he feinted and jabbed. His blade tip slipped through the figure's whipping cloak, and whoever hid within the cowl never took notice. When the blade came out, there wasn't even a tear in the fabric.

The figure lashed out at him.

Rodian saw the hand of wrapped black cloth coming for his face and jerked his head aside.

Searing cold spread instantly through his shoulder.

He cried out as if frostbite had erupted inside his muscles. Searing cold strangled a cry in his throat as pain ran down his arm and up his neck. Fear struck him as hard as the cobblestones when he toppled.

Rodian vaguely heard the wolf's snarl, its claws scrabbling on the street, but he couldn't lift his head. He was going to die, and all he could do was lie there, waiting to see the empty cowl appear above him.

Someone leaped over him from behind. He caught only the sight of a whipping brown cloak.

"Shade, hold!" someone rasped, as if too hoarse to speak clearly.

Rodian struggled, curling up to pull his knees under himself. A tall man with jagged red-brown hair, wielding a longsword, held out his free hand toward the snarling wolf. He and the wolf shifted about, keeping the black figure between them. Of all strange things, the figure remained stuck there, hesitant to turn its back on either of them.

Something about the pale-faced man was familiar, and he appeared to have no fear of getting near the robed one.

What was happening here?

Rodian's pale protector lifted his booted foot and kicked Rodian in the chest. As he tumbled across the street, he heard someone whispering, and then...

"Chane, run!" Wynn shouted.

The man in the brown cloak glanced once to wherever Wynn called from. His face filled with alarm. With effort Rodian rolled the other way, lifting his head.

Wynn was supporting il'Sänke with her shoulder and gripped the staff in her other hand. A trickle of blood ran out of the Suman's hair and down his forehead, but he stayed on his feet.

The Suman sage was chanting in a breathy whisper.

Rodian heard an angry snort. Despair took him as Snowbird began to charge again.

From Spirit to Fire... for the Light of Life!

The wraith jerked to a halt, as a spark filled the crystal's heart.

The long six-sided prism flashed like an instant sunrise.

Wynn forgot to shut her eyes as the world was smothered in blinding light.

She heard Shade's sharp yelp as everything turned black in her sight.

A screech filled the street, nearly deafening her, and she took a few steps backward.

Even in the dark she held on to the pattern needed to keep the crystal ignited. Then she noticed that the darkness was only ahead of her, like a circle of black. At its center she saw the long crystal, aglow but muted. Everything at the sides of her vision was as brilliant as daylight, or even brighter.

Wynn remembered she was wearing the spectacles.

They'd darkened so suddenly, shielding her sight, and slowly they lightened only a bit—until she made out a wavering black form.

Il'Sänke was somehow holding it in place! Keeping it from vanishing again.

Wynn had never taken pleasure in the death of anything. But for the first time she might have felt what Magiere had when a murdering undead's body burned to ash.

The shadow shape in her spectacles' dark circle began to fragment. Pieces of it spread like smoke in a whirlwind. Its illusory body began to break up as its scream continued to tear at her ears.

A black flash erupted before Wynn. The wraith appeared to burst apart in the night.

All sound ceased, and the sudden silence made her flinch.

It was gone. All she saw through her shielded sight was the crystal, almost too bright to look upon, even wearing the spectacles.

Wynn wiped the pattern from her mind—and the crystal winked out.

Pure blackness came. She couldn't wait for the spectacles to readjust, and she clawed them off her face, keeping her gaze fixed ahead.

There was nothing where the wraith had stood.

Farther out, Shade groveled on the cobblestones, rubbing her eyes with her forepaws. Rodian's horse backed away, thrashing her head, and her rump hit a shop's porch post. She was snorting in panic, her eyes blinking and wild.

Wynn turned around in time to see il'Sänke collapse.

Rodian gasped for air and couldn't see clearly. His sight was washed with colored blotches left by the sudden light from the crystal atop Wynn's staff. When his vision began to clear, he saw her.

But the black-robed mage was gone.

Rodian began to remember what Wynn and Nikolas had spoken of. That the murderer was...

What—some malignant ghost? How could he accept that?

He gasped for air again and could only watch as Wynn ran for the scriptorium. The wolf limped after her, weaving as it shook its head.

Rodian's shoulder burned and yet felt icy within. The figure had barely touched him, but he felt so weak he couldn't even try to stand. A scraping sound caught his attention.

Il'Sänke dragged himself up. The Suman looked terrible, pale even for his dark skin, and he glistened with sweat in the street's dim light.

"It is all right, Captain," il'Sänke said weakly. "It is over."

The sage had been working with Wynn—not with the black figure—but it didn't matter.

Nothing was all right.

Garrogh was dead, and Rodian didn't know if Lúcan had survived. And he still had to explain everything to the city minister and the royals of Malourné.

He had to explain it to himself—and he didn't want to.

What could he possibly say?

Something solid bumped his shoulder with a snort. Rodian was still looking at the haggard Suman as he gripped Snowbird's halter, needing something solid and real to hang on to.

Wynn rushed the scriptorium window, staff in hand, and grabbed the sill. She stood on tiptoe to see through the broken shutters.

"Chane!" she called.

The scriptorium's front room was too dark, or perhaps her eyes had suffered too many sudden changes of light. Either way, she barely made out the counter's dull shape and the darker hollow of the workroom's open door.

Had Chane taken cover in time—or had she burned him again?

A whine made her look down.

Shade hopped closer, limping as if her right shoulder hurt. Wynn dropped down, holding on to the dog. For such a young majay-hì, Shade had done so well—like her father, Chap.

"Here," a hoarse voice rasped.

At the sound of Chane's voice, Wynn ran for the shop's front door. It was unlocked, but as she stepped in with Shade hobbling behind, Chane had already retreated to the counter and slumped against it to the floor.

Wynn hurried over and knelt beside him. Only a bit of light from the street reached through the open door, and his face wasn't clear to see.

"Are you hurt?" she asked. "Were you burned?"

Chane groaned as he pushed back the cloak's hood. "No, not burned."

The earlier burns on his face were almost healed, but he didn't seem well at all—weaker than she'd ever seen him.

"The wraith?" he asked.

"Gone. Domin il'Sänke held it somehow. Its form broke apart... dissipating in the light. It was fully gone when I put the sun crystal out."

He only nodded with effort.

"The guild is safe," she added, expecting some response. "And so are the texts."

Chane said nothing to this.

Wynn guessed the pain in his eyes had little to do with his injuries, visible or otherwise. His hand with the ring was braced flat on the floor no more than an inch from hers, but she didn't reach for it.

What would become of him now?

He was a killer, a monster—aside from a wishful, would-be scholar—and one of the few here whom she could trust with her life.

"Chane, I've been thinking... about the scroll's poem... and about—"

"Journeyor Hygeorht..."

Wynn raised her head at a masculine, hollow voice beyond the counter.

"Move away from him!" the voice added in a slow, even demand.

She scrambled to her feet, disoriented, and Shade began to growl.

Someone stood in the doorway to the scriptorium's back workroom.

His head was covered by a large round object that seemed darker than the room, and his form was draped in black cloth.

"No!" Wynn breathed, pointing the staff's dormant crystal at it. "You... you're gone! You were burned to nothing!"

The dark figure stepped forward. Heavy boots clomped against the shop's wood floor.

A ribbon of dim street light slipped sideways across his head as he neared the countertop's flipped-open section.

Master Pawl a'Seatt gazed at Wynn from beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

Shade's growl was tinged with a pealing tone, as if she might howl again, but wasn't certain whether she should. It was the same confused tone Wynn had heard in the guild hospice as she sat with Nikolas—as Pawl a'Seatt had appeared there with Imaret.

The scribe master pushed aside his cloak's edge and braced his left hand on the counter's edge. The wood creaked under his grip.

Chane struggled up, dragging his sword in one hand. As he stumbled back toward the open door, he grabbed Wynn's shoulder and jerked her along.

"Get out!" he rasped.

Pawl a'Seatt flipped the cloak's other side.

Wynn glimpsed a sword hilt protruding above his right hip.

It was too long, too narrow for any sword she'd ever seen, as if the blade's tang had been directly leather-wrapped instead of first fitted with wood for a proper hilt. The pommel was too dark for steel, even in the room's night shadows.

"What's happening?" she asked, about to look to either Chane or Shade.

Pawl a'Seatt lifted his hand from the counter and pulled on his blade's hilt. "I said get away from that thing... journeyor."

The strange blade slipped free.

"Undead!" Chane rasped. "Wynn, get out!"

She glanced at him, but what little light crept in only silhouetted him from behind. She couldn't see his face.

"Listen to Shade!" he urged. "Listen to her!"

"Move away," Pawl a'Seatt repeated coldly, and stepped through the counter's opened top.

At first Wynn thought she saw a long war dagger in his hand, like the one given to Magiere by the Chein'âs, the Burning Ones.

But no, this blade was larger, longer, almost the size of a short sword. Where Magiere's was made of the silvery white metal of Anmaglâhk weapons, the one in Pawl a'Seatt's hand was nearly black, as if made from aged iron.

It was well more than a handbreadth wide above the plain bar of its crossguard. Each of its edges tapered straight to the point. But those edges were strangely rough in an even pattern.

Wynn squinted and saw that it was serrated.

Shade's noise remained constant, like mewling beneath a continuous shuddering snarl, but she didn't rush at the scribe master. Wynn put a hand on the dog's back as she stared at Pawl a'Seatt's face.

Black hair hung straight around his features from beneath the wide-brimmed hat. The faint ribbon of light exposed skin not even close to Chane's pallor. His eyes were brown, though too sharp and bright for the color. They were not the crystalline of an undead.

"No," she whispered. "No, he can't be."

He'd been present when the guild had chosen his scribes as the ones to come work inside the guild. Pawl a'Seatt had come to the gathering before noon, in daylight.

"I will not ask again," he said, but looked briefly out the broken window toward the street, where the conflict with the wraith had played out. "I will not allow even one of these things, let alone two... in my city."

My city? As much as that utterance puzzled her, Wynn was caught by something else.

Pawl a'Seatt knew what Chane was—knew what the wraith was, or had been.

"I tell you, he is an undead!" Chane hissed at Wynn. "Believe me!"

Shade began to physically shudder under Wynn's hand. Wynn side-stepped in front of Chane and pointed the crystal out like a spear's head.

"We were just leaving," she said.

Master a'Seatt shook his head.

"You go alone." He turned his gaze on Chane. "I watched you throw yourself through that black thing. The guards died quickly, yet here you stand. And you fled from the light that drove off another undead. I do not know how you mask your nature... your presence... Only one other has ever done this. And he left here long ago."

Chane's hand tightened on Wynn's shoulder as he whispered, "Welstiel?"

Only the barest change registered in Pawl a'Seatt's expression—but it was there, that slight widening of his eyes in intensity, and Wynn caught it. The scribe master knew Magiere's half brother.

Welstiel Massing had been in Calm Seatt at one time? Did Chane know of this and hadn't told her? The ring was the only connection she could think of.

Magiere and Chap could sense an undead, but Welstiel had always eluded them. And he had often hidden Chane as well.

Pawl a'Seatt spoke as if he too could feel an undead's presence but had been baffled by the lack of such in Chane. But he never looked at Shade, as if she didn't matter. Even an armed man, like Rodian, had reacted a little at Shade's distress in the hospice ward. Shade's noise kept eating through Wynn's uncertainty.

She could remember one other time she'd heard this, but not from Shade.

Chap had reacted differently to Li'kän than to any other undead. He had told Wynn later that the ancient white female was not like other Noble Dead or vampires. Li'kän had left Chap cold and frightened instead of heated for a hunt.

Wynn found it hard to breathe.

Was Pawl a'Seatt another ancient one? Was she standing before another of il'Samar's «Children»? And still, he had been out in daylight.

He looked alive enough to her. Even Li'kän couldn't conceal the telltale physical signs of an undead—though Wynn had once seen her walk straight through a shaft of daylight.

Chane, still young for a vampire, also had to be wary of close scrutiny by anyone.

"You will not touch him," Wynn managed to get out. "If you saw him in the street, then you saw what he did. He was protecting the city, protecting the guild!"

"He... you... simply accomplished what I would have done myself," Pawl a'Seatt countered, his tone hardening, "once I finally found it. Move aside now!"

Wynn thought she saw those brilliant brown eyes of his turn suddenly pale and glassy.

They glinted, but that wasn't possible. It was only faint street light catching in his irises, the brief spark seeming too much in a dark room.

If Pawl a'Seatt was what Chane claimed, he wouldn't hesitate to toss her aside. She could think of only one reason he hadn't done so already: She was one of the sages.

"The wraith isn't an isolated incident in our world!" she nearly shouted. "Chane and I are among the few who believe something from the Forgotten History is returning. We may be among the few who can hinder or stop it! I will take him out of the city, far from here. You will never see him again."

Pawl a'Seatt turned his head toward her. A hint of disbelief—or disdain—wrinkled his smooth brow.

"I have too much to learn... too much to do," Wynn rushed on. "If you saw us out there, you know I need him if I'm to stay alive long enough to uncover the truth. You are not taking that from me."

She slid her hand over Shade's face and shoved.

Shade backed toward the door, and Wynn retreated, backing Chane along until she'd gotten him onto the outer steps. Only then did she withdraw the staff and its crystal.

Master a'Seatt followed slowly, his hard gaze still fixed on her. He didn't close or strike, only maintained the same distance between them.

Wynn stumbled as she retreated down the shop's steps. She wasn't about to turn her back on this man—whatever he was.

Pawl a'Seatt stopped in the doorway.

Even as Wynn went to retrieve il'Sänke and Rodian, the scribe master never took his cold gaze off of her.