Sister of the Dead

Chapter 17

M agiere struggled to push aside what her mother's spirit had shown her. Of all the faces that passed through her mind, from Betina's, to that of the infant with its slit throat, and to Bryen's, one face wouldn't be suppressed.

Welstiel-her brother.

She pressed on through the forest, focused upon the child ghost leading her to Ubad. The undead of this place served his whims, assaulting anything he wished-except for herself, and perhaps Chap-and remained a danger to Leesil and to Wynn. The most certain way to end that threat was to find Ubad quickly and kill him.

With every step, Welstiel's face lingered in her thoughts.

Magiere looked back to check on Chap.

There was no one behind her. Even with her night sight open wide, she saw no sign of his silvery shape in the forest.

But she couldn't lose track of her guide, so she kept moving. Relief came when the dog burst from the brush to lope beside her.

As the ghost girl slipped around a tilting spruce, she hovered in the air, waiting for Magiere to catch up. The ghost shimmered and vanished as Magiere stepped into a clearing with Chap at her side.

Across the open space stood Ubad, an iron staff resting in his grip with one end upon the ground. His head turned toward her, and Magiere wondered how he was aware of her through the eyeless leather mask.

"Now we can speak alone," Ubad said.

"I didn't come to talk."

She headed straight for him without breaking stride, swinging for his head with the falchion.

Instead of gliding away, or fading out of reach as he'd done in the cavern, he leaned the staff forward to catch her blade. Steel and iron clanged sharply together, but Ubad's arm didn't give an inch under the force.

"Stop this!" he ordered. "I spent a lifetime, my lifetime, in your creation only to believe you murdered at birth. There wasn't time enough to begin again, and all was lost. But when rumors were heard of a hunter in the land, I regained hope. I have waited too long and suffered too much."

"Suffered?" Magiere drew back her sword. "You speak of your suffering, after all you've done? After what you did to my mother?"

"You have no venom for Welstiel? This is his doing. I searched for years… years, to take vengeance. Without his interference, you would be standing by my side… standing at our patron's side."

Magiere's hatred swelled, and her teeth hardened in her mouth. She struck downward, so he couldn't block without lifting the staff. Ubad shifted left, swinging the staff upon its grounded end, and deflected the blade.

Rage brought strength, and Magiere lunged, faking left. When Ubad shifted away, bringing the staff back around, she leveled her swing. The falchion's tip slipped in behind the staff's slant and sliced through his robe at the waist.

Ubad faded back, winking in and out like a ghost, and lifted the staff from the earth. Its top end dipped, sweeping her sword aside. He used both hands to bring the staff's bottom end around at her head. Magiere ducked away as it narrowly missed her jaw.

"Instead of conversation, you wish for instruction," he mocked.

She glanced to his stomach. The robe was too full to tell if she'd reached his flesh, and the fabric too dark to see if it was stained with blood. He didn't appear injured.

Magiere's self-control began to waver. Hunger burned up her throat and into her head. She swung again, pressing in on him.

"You feel the hunger, yes?" Ubad asked softly. "Like your great father, you've already learned to control it."

Chap lunged in behind Ubad. Magiere hadn't seen him circle around, and the dog snapped at the man. With the same spin of his staff, Ubad cracked her blade aside with one end while the other slammed into the dog's shoulder. Chap tumbled away but sprang to his feet again.

"You master it now, as your source of strength," Ubad continued, "instead of being driven before it like a slave."

Ubad blocked her repeatedly. One swing of his staff clipped her forearm so hard, it made her stumble, but she barely felt the pain and instinctively pushed it down. However Ubad managed such a heavy and unwieldy weapon, he easily kept pace with her. And his unnatural ability to shift places like a ghost left Chap's teeth closing upon empty air. Magiere's instinct warned that he was only toying with her.

He lashed at her with words harder than the iron rod. "You were born of life and death to be more than either. Both will bow before you… if you accept who you are. You cannot hide from yourself any longer."

Magiere shuddered as if his words were the cold sweat upon her skin.

As long as she clung to hunger and hatred-the same that this madman claimed were her birthright-she could keep at this all night and face exhaustion afterward. How long before Ubad would tire of this play and his preaching? How long before he turned to something more within his talents?

"You have no one else," he said more quietly. "No one but me who understands these things. There are so many more questions you have that only I can answer. To find your place, your family… I am all that is left to you."

Ubad's block was slower this time.

Magiere threw her weight behind the sword and into his staff. He was forced to exert more effort, and his attention fixed firmly upon her. In an instant, he screamed out and stumbled.

As Ubad twisted about, Chap jerked hard upon the man's ankle clenched in his teeth. Magiere grabbed the iron staff's end with her free hand and thrust with the falchion. The blade split through the robe and into Ubad chest.

He screeched, and the staff jerked from Magiere's hand. As she pulled on the falchion to free it, the staff cracked back across her temple, and she lost awareness of the world.

There was no pain at first, but it rushed into her skull as her sight returned.

She looked up into the dark sky above the clearing and felt wet earth beneath her. There came two sounds as if from a great distance-Chap's growl and strange whispered words of a twisted language she didn't know.

Ubad was chanting.

Magiere flopped over to her hands and knees.

Strange guttural words issued from Ubad mouth as he swept the staff's end at Chap. The dog whirled away, and Ubad rammed the staff's end into the ground.

"Khuruj," he shouted, "fe nafsi htalab!"

These words didn't match those of his chant. They rolled from his mouth in a familiar manner like a demand to someone Magiere couldn't see.

A shudder answered from the earth.

Magiere stood up as best she could, uncertain whether to assault Ubad once again or to back out of the clearing. Chap let out a snarl that mixed with a mournful yowl. He rushed at her, skidded to avoid crashing into her, and then began shoving at her legs with his head and shoulders. He was trying to drive her back toward the trees.

Ubad repeated his strange words in a commanding shout. "Khuruj, fi nafse htalab!"

The earth rolled beneath Magiere's feet. As she started to fall, Ught gathered all around her. Something lashed around her arms and legs, and she was lifted from the ground. Before she saw what held her, she spotted Chap running across the clearing's floor as a crack in the earth extended to race after him.

Blue-white light lanced upward from the split. It congealed and took shape in the air, forming into long tendrils that moved with a life of their own. They lashed out at Chap, winding around his body and neck. The dog was wrenched back from his flight and lifted in the air within their coils.

Tendrils curled up around Magiere's limbs, as well, like ropes of living light.

"The dead may be my preference," Ubad said. "But I can still conjure and summon other things, such as the collective spirit of this forest."

Magiere fought to move her arms. If she didn't kill Ubad, what would become of Leesil and Wynn?

"Are you prepared to be rational?" Ubad asked.

Anger faded from her into numb loss. When she spoke, her mouth moved freely, teeth receded to their normal state.

"My companions… Leave them be… and I'll listen to anything you wish to say."

"How generous," he answered mockingly. "I will be your father, your teacher, your only family. You have no other. Vordana has finished your half-blood by now, and my other servants have fed on the sage."

Leesil's face filled Magiere's thoughts, and she grew cold inside.

Ubad lied. It had to be a lie.

Anger and hunger swelled in her as Ubad turned toward Chap.

"As for this mongrel puppet of the enemy, his meddling ends now."

Welstiel sensed Magiere's presence and followed her. Around him, the trees were strangely empty of movement. It was not Magiere that he saw first, but a blue-white light filtering through the forest. As he drew closer, it moved and grew. Welstiel hurried on as quickly as silence allowed, and what he saw almost made him bolt into the clearing.

Tendrils of blue-white light sprouted from the cracked earth, snaring both Magiere and Chap. She hung in the air, tangled within them. The tendrils had to be shaped from summoned or conjured elemental material, but their nature was unknown to Welstiel. Ubad had never shown this ability in the years Welstiel had suffered the man's presence and tutelege. Urgency made him take another step forward before he could stop himself.

Welstiel had no prepared tool or artifice to deal with this. Conjuring elementals of this magnitude was beyond anyone he had ever known.

He clenched his fist, frustration and panic eroding his self-control. As Magiere and Chap struggled, the tendrils shifted to grip them, responding to their movements. Ubad turned his attention toward the majay-hl, and the tendrils tightened around the animal.

Welstiel took another step, moving close behind a tree at the clearing's edge.

These tendrils were a mass of elemental matter, but without any will of their own. They responded to commands from the necromancer.

Sightless Ubad had no natural vision that Welstiel knew of behind that leather mask. He relied upon some arcane method to see the world around him. Welstiel had one possession that could deceive all detection but physical senses. He had created it long ago to escape with Magiere when she was a child.

Welstiel sat upon the ground, his legs crossed, as he stared at his ring of nothing.

It had been created to work passively upon the wearer, without the need for willful activation. It was all he had, and in this moment, he needed its influence to grow.

He removed the brass band, holding it level between his fingertips like a conjuring circle engraved in the air. As he murmured softly, he focused within the circle to pass his consumed life force into it. Exhaustion crept through him, but he held his concentration until it felt as if he had lingered there far too long.

Ubad had to sense Magiere's presence in order to assault her. Welstiel would hide that presence.

Fatigue sharpened suddenly, and Welstiel felt a ripple of tension in the air expand outward from the circle of brass.

Anger built inside Magiere, along with fear of loss. Leesil couldn't be dead. It was a lie.

When Ubad turned upon Chap, she meant to shout, but the words came out hoarse and low. 'Touch him, and I'm finished with you."

Ubad paused, one hand in the air.

"I'll tolerate your words," she said, "but you'll do as I say-or you can go find one of your corpses to chat with."

Ubad turned back to her. "You do not care for helplessness. What if I told you that freedom is yours to take?"

Magiere had no wish to play any more of these games. She had hope in Leesil's arms, in his eyes. If she lost him, there was nothing left but death and blood-and both would be Ubad's.

"Get to the point," she answered.

"I gave you the answer, if you had listened," Ubad said. "All existence is composed of the five elements, and life itself is no different. These tendrils that bind you are made from the element of Spirit summoned from the forest, and life clings most to that element. You can feed upon life. Freedom is yours, and you have but to consume it."

He stepped close enough mat when Magiere looked down at him, she saw the creases in his leather mask.

'Take the life from the tendrils. Consume it like the Noble Dead you are. With its pure form pressed to your flesh, you need only will it so… and be free."

Magiere grimaced as she looked at the glowing blue-white tendrils curled about her arm. She felt their slick warm touch upon her as if they were solid. To her eyes, they appeared no more material that the ghosts of the forest and cavern.

What Ubad asked sickened her.

To give in to hunger? To feed like the undead mat she and Leesil hunted and burned to ash? Whether by touch or blood down her throat, it meant becoming one of them. It meant becoming all that Ubad claimed she was rather than what she wished to be.

Only once had she ever done this. Leesil had been her willing victim, though she'd been unaware of his sacrifice until it was nearly too late. But if Ubad lied and Leesil still lived, he would be alone against this madman and his minions if she didn't get free.

Leesil's life… or the life she wanted to live?

Magiere let her hunger rise.

It spread through her whole flesh instead of just her throat and head. She felt it move like the black ribbons Wynn had seen with her mantic sight. Hunger coiled through her limbs toward the tingling life touching her skin through the tendrils.

And nothing more happened.

Magiere stared wide-eyed along her arm, torn inside between anguish and relief. Her body wouldn't consume the life it felt there. Perhaps it couldn't do so at all.

And she couldn't free herself to help Leesil.

Whatever she might be, Ubad didn't know as much of her true nature as the twisted mage thought. She looked down into his leather mask, unable to speak. What could she possibly say to him that would gain her anything?

A sudden tension in the air passed over her-through her-like a wind pushing at a dangling leaf.

Ubad stumbled back, and Magiere saw that he'd felt this strange sensation, as well. The staff slipped from his grip to thump heavily on the ground, and he slapped both hands over his mask. As he slid backward, he stumbled and fell hard, his arms flailing.

Magiere didn't know what had just happened, but with Ubad down, she thrashed to pull her right arm free, the falchion still in her grip. The tendrils held, but they didn't clench tight at her struggle.

"Dhampir?" Ubad whispered, an edge of fear in his voice. He crawled upon the ground, feeling along it with his hands for something, perhaps his lost staff.

Magiere watched in astonishment. Ubad was now truly blind.

The glow to the far right of the clearing brightened, and Magiere looked up.

Chap still hung in the air, but he wasn't the same. His fur appeared whiter. The brighter he grew, the more the tendrils' glow softened. Those cords of blue-white sagged until Chap's paws touched the earth. As he scrambled free of their touch, the glimmer in his coat faded, flowing back into the earth from where it had come, and he ran to Magiere.

At Chap's movement, Ubad rose on his knees. His masked face turned sharply toward the dog, and he raised a hand in the air.

Chap froze, and Magiere feared the old man had regained his sight.

Ubad turned back and forth as if still blind. He was following the sounds of the dog's movement. Chap crept toward Magiere.

She took a deep breath and blew a shrill whistle through her lips.

Ubad flinched, spinning toward her on the ground, but his head turned erratically as his outstretched hand came back to his ear. The piercing sound masked Chap's movement from his hearing.

Magiere looked down and saw Chap brush against the tendrils holding her.

His coat glimmered to white wherever it made contact. He licked the tendrils, and they buckled more quickly than his own had done. Magiere dropped to her feet. At the sound, Ubad faced her directly, and his hands shot out like weapons.

Chap scurried away to the left while Magiere shifted right. Ubad froze in confusion and slowly withdrew his hands as he cocked his head, listening.

Magiere raised her hand, pointed to Chap then Ubad, and curled her fingers to motion the dog forward. She began to steal inward toward the kneeling old man as the dog closed in quietly from the other side.

Ubad's head twitched from side to side. Magiere saw his mouth open and heard his breathing quicken. He straightened himself, raised his hands in the air, and slapped them down against the ground as he shouted.

"il'Samar, li-yigdim eyak khadim fa-ta'zez ana alan!"

Magiere stopped, turning to both sides to catch whatever new trick Ubad tried. There were still the empty cracks in the earth, and nothing more rose from them. Chap was nearly within lunging distance, and Magiere moved in again.

"il'Samar!" Ubad shouted once again. "Come to your servant and aid me!"

Magiere abandoned silence and lifted the falchion high.

The night around her deepened, until even her night sight couldn't penetrate it. She blinked, thinking her eyes had somehow shut. She felt her eyelids open and close, and yet still everything remained black. Slowly the night shapes of the forest reappeared, and there was movement in the trees.

Magiere turned from one side to the other and saw it everywhere.

The dark in the spaces between the trees undulated. It circled the clearing.

In each turn it seemed to come nearer, passing through trunks, branches, brush, and moss strands like a turning ghost made from the night itself. At first it looked like the ground had risen up in moving waves of black earth. Then Magiere saw it slowly sharpen into clarity.

Those rolling mounds were coils, each one larger than the height of a man. They glinted from a strange dull light that came from nowhere, and she saw their surface. They were covered in scales like a mammoth serpent, writhing around her in the forest with no beginning or end and no space between.

"Great patron," Ubad continued with arms once more in the air. He leveled one hand out toward where he'd last heard Chap move. "I bring you the minion of your enemy to devour!"

His other hand reached out toward Magiere.

"And the child you desired, for when you awaken from your long slumber… May it come soon."

Chap turned about, running back and forth. The low cry issuing from his jaws sounded almost human in its anguish. He ran to Magiere's side of the clearing, scrambling back and forth between her and the coils in the forest.

The coils reached the clearing's edge, sliding within the trees, but they came no closer. When Magiere peered carefully, she could see trees beyond them. They were not wholly real, yet Chap was in a state of panic.

And Ubad supplicated himself.

Was this what he served… what he had made her to serve?

"il'Samar…?" Ubad said. "I feel you with me… Will you not take her, after all the many years of my labor?"

Chap ran around Magiere and charged for the necromancer.

Ubad's scream filled Magiere's ears even before she turned to see the dog strike. The animal atop Ubad was still the long-legged and silver-blue figure who'd been with her and Leesil for years, but all that she'd learned of him in recent months vanished in that moment.

Chap's jaws snapped closed on Ubad's throat, choking off the man's wail. The dog's victim thrashed at him as Chap began ripping and tearing flesh.

A voice filled Magiere's head as if it came from all around her.

High… in the cold and ice. Guarded by old ones… oldest of your predecessors.

The words slipped into her mind, deep and resonating, and suffocated all other thoughts. She felt their vibration in her whole body, and she looked out to the roiling coils in the forest.

Sister of the dead… lead on.

Chap's snarls halted to be replaced by rasping pants.

The voice faded from Magiere's mind as the coils faded from the forest. All that remained around her were the dark spaces between the trees. She looked down to where Ubad lay and cringed.

She had seen horrible things in her life. The mangled mess of the necromancer's throat was no worse an end than she herself would have given the man. It was the sight of Chap she found so unsettling.

He paced with his back to her and stared into the trees. His low rumble came out in gasps, and his sides rose and fell in rapid pants.

"Chap?" she called quietly.

The dog spun about with a snarl. The fur upon his muzzle, throat, and chest was soaked dark red, and with his jowls pulled back, his teeth were stained, as well. His brow furrowed around wide, wild eyes. He stood looking at her between glances toward the trees, as if he expected the coils of dark to return. And underneath his feral appearance, Magiere saw him quivering.

Chap was terrified.

Magiere had never seen this in him before, and it made her look warily into the forest and then back to Chap again. She wasn't even certain he recognized her, but she held out her hand, palm up, not trying to reach but waiting for him to catch her scent.

Chap's jowls pulled back slightly. He took a slow step toward her and stopped.

"That was what you've been keeping from us," she said softly. "Or what you have been keeping me from?"

After a stretched silence, he barked once.

There was no time for more questions.

"Leesil… and Wynn," she said. "Can you find them?"

Before he answered, Magiere felt a sudden tension in the air pass over her. It was the same sensation she'd experienced just before Ubad had gone blind.

Chap lifted his head, ears cocked as he stared steadily into the trees. The quiver of fear had left him, and he was poised. He gave her one look with wide clear eyes in his blood-spattered face and bolted into the forest.

For an instant, Magiere was at a loss as she ran after the dog, about to call out for Chap to stop. Then she heard his hunting wail ahead of her.

There was another Noble Dead somewhere in the forest.

Welstiel's strength was all but drained, but he kept whispering and watching, feeding the ring to keep Ubad blinded until the necromancer was finally dead. Exactly why the majay-hi had gone mad, he wasn't certain, but he had seen the coils of his dreams appear in the forest. The shock of that sight had almost broken his concentration.

All the long years, the black-scaled coils in his dreams had taunted him with hints to what he sought. Something that could change his sickening existence. It seemed the patron in Welstiel's slumber had been with Ubad for far longer. Perhaps it had even been this patron that his father had so often muttered to in the dark. When the voice came, not in dream but in the night itself, it had not spoken to Welstiel or even to Ubad. The necromancer's groveling was ignored, and he was abandoned.

Welstiel had heard the coil's words.

Sister of the dead… lead on.

The voice in the night had spoken to Magiere. And the words were similar to those it had whispered into Welstiel's dreams.

As he stopped chanting and slumped upon the forest floor, he slipped the ring back upon his finger before his shaking hands dropped it. A piercing wail issued from the dog, and it raced into the forest with Magiere following. With the ring's sphere of influence contracted to its wearer once again, there was nothing to limit the majay-hi's awareness. It had sensed something more out among the dark, wet trees.

Chane.

Welstiel was surprised by how much this thought disturbed him. He tried to rise but collapsed again upon the ground.

Magiere pushed herself to keep up and didn't call out to Chap.

A short distance into the trees, the dog ceased wailing but continued to run. Magiere trusted Chap's judgment in a fight against the undead. If he chose to run in silence, he had a reason.

With Ubad dead, perhaps Chap had picked up on Vordana or another of the necromancer's minions. If such still moved and searched in the forest, there was hope that this meant Leesil and Wynn were still alive.

She ran on and on behind Chap, using her blade to slash away anything in her path that she couldn't force her way through. When Chap stopped ahead of her, Magiere slowed as she approached him.

He was alert and tense, and stepped forward through the brush between two oaks. She followed, sword at the ready.

Chap paused as they entered a clearer area and stared at the base of a tree across the way. Magiere followed that gaze.

The sight was unreal, and it took her a moment to believe she was not seeing some vision like the coils in the forest.

The headless bodies of both undead mariners lay before her. The neck stump of the nearest one was ragged and torn, its head nowhere to be seen. The other lay farther off, a longsword impaled through its chest, pinning it to the earth. Its head had rolled away from its body.

A man with red-brown hair and a handsome face knelt upon the ground, holding someone in his arms. Magiere saw his profile and remembered the last time she'd seen him in the sewers of Bela.

Chane.

The person he held moved and sat up.

Magiere looked into Wynn's frightened eyes.

The sage's shoulder was bleeding badly beneath a makeshift wad of cloth Chane pressed against it. Magiere had no idea what was happening here, but she didn't care. She stepped forward with her falchion out.

"Get your hands off her!"

At the sight of Chap and Magiere, Chane scrambled out of the way, reaching for the longsword embedded in the headless corpse.

"No, Magiere," Wynn called. "He saved me. He came to help me."

"Came to help you?" Magiere's rage increased. "Wynn, get back!"

She charged toward Chane as he jerked out the longsword and turned to face her. Black fluids stained his shirt around a tear in the fabric. She thrust under and up, breaking inside his guard and slicing him across stomach with the falchion's tip.

Chane gasped at the touch of her blade and retreated. Magiere knew it would burn him as a mortal weapon would not.

"Stop it!" Wynn shouted.

Chap rushed by and launched into Chane with snapping teeth. Both dog and vampire toppled back across the wet ground. Magiere followed, waiting for an opening to pin the undead down by running him through. He saw her, kicked up, and caught her in the jaw, then pitched Chap away so hard that the dog roiled off into the brush.

Chane rose up, shifting his gaze between his two opponents. Magiere sidestepped, watching for an opening.

"Wynn is correct," he said. "I only wanted to save her from these walking dead."

"Liar!" Magiere snapped, and she felt her canines extend as she shook her head. "You're nothing but a killer… and you're getting tired."

Chap was on his feet again, but he limped upon his rear left leg. He growled again, watching Chane's every move, and hobbled closer. The calm in Chane's light brown eyes faded, and he looked at Magiere in anger.

"So are you," he replied.

Magiere charged Chane, swinging for his head. He dodged, spun, and swung back. When she blocked, he let his blade slide off hers.

He turned so fast, she could barely follow. Instead of slicing back with the sword, he slipped inside her guard and slammed his fist into her cheek. Only Rashed, the Suman undead of Miiska, had ever struck out with such force. Magiere went down.

A moment later, he was standing above her, sword gripped in both hands, its tip pointed down at the center of her chest.

"No!" Wynn shouted, and the sage threw herself over Magiere, kneeling with one palm raised toward Chane. "Please, do not hurt her."

Chane hesitated, lowering the blade as he stared at Wynn.

Magiere reached up and grabbed his wrist. He tried to jerk away, and his own effort pulled Magiere to her feet and Wynn tumbled away. Magiere thrust her sword up through the circle of Chane's arms.

The falchion's tip bit into the soft skin below Chane's jaw, tearing his neck open as it slid out over his right shoulder. Black fluid spat from the wound. He toppled back, and Magiere fell on top of him, flattening the longsword between them. She rolled left, blade up, and swung down on his exposed neck.

Chane's head shot off his body and rolled through the mulch.

She remembered Wynn shouting… Chap snarling… but all she could do in the moment was breathe until her self-control returned.

Wynn crouched by Chane's body, pulling at his shirt as she sobbed. The bandage had fallen from her wound, and she was bleeding again.

"No… oh, Magiere, no," she whispered.

"Stop it," Magiere told her.

Wynn looked up with wild eyes. "You murdered him, as if he were nothing! What are you, Magiere? You think you are better than him? You are worse."

Enough anger swelled in Magiere that she almost slapped the sage. The little fool had put her trust in a monster. Then she remembered Wynn's earlier words, and her anger became cold suspicion.

Chane had come to help her.

"How long has he been following us?" Magiere asked. "How long have you known?"

"Since Stefan's village," Wynn shouted, dirt smearing in tears upon her round face. "I did not banish Vordana-he did! He is the one who saved us from an undead you could not overcome. But I was afraid to tell you… because you might have killed him."

Wynn dropped her head upon Chane's chest.

Magiere stood up and backed away.

"You lied to us? Betrayed us? All those nights you curled up with Chap, you knew an undead was trailing us. You even knew who it was-and you didn't say a word?"

She trusted few people, and she had trusted Wynn with her life and Leesil's.

Chap ceased growling and stood watching them both. He looked to the south and whined as he trotted toward the heavy brush. When he barked once, Magiere joined him, peering out into the forest.

Leesil came toward them, at times leaning against or catching himself on a tree trunk or low branch. Relief washed everything else away for the moment, and Magiere hurried to him. As he grabbed for her, she pulled him close. He threw an arm over her shoulders for support.

"I'm so glad to see you," he said, half-breathless. "I lost Wynn."

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

"Just weak. Vordana caught up to me."

She looked back the way he'd come. "Where is he?"

Leesil lifted his other hand, waving off her concern. "He's back there somewhere… most of him, that is. We won't have to see that awful grin of his again."

Magiere pulled his face in close to hers without a word. Leesil, always so constant, who kept her in the light.

"We have to find Wynn," he said.

Magiere pulled him through the brush, and he took in the scene of the decapitated mariners, and Wynn with her face resting on the chest of a headless corpse. Leesil pulled away from Magiere, catching sight of the head beyond the body.

"What in? Wynn, you're bleeding. Is that Chane?"

The sage lifted her face, but she didn't look at him. She had ceased weeping and stared vacantly into the dark.

Magiere had no pity for her. She had betrayed them.

"We have to burn the bodies," Magiere said.

Wynn blinked once and grabbed Chane's sword. She could barely lift it, but she pointed the blade out, and her shoulder started bleeding harder. "You are not touching him!"

Leesil's eyes darted back and forth between the sage and Magiere, unsure what was happening. Chap whined loudly, and barked twice.

"No?" Leesil said, looking to the dog. "No to what?"

Magiere kept her angry eyes on the sage as she joined Chap once again.

She heard an eerie scream in the distance, and a hissing sound much closer. A glimmer flew through a tree only a stone's throw into the forest. It was the child ghost who had led her to Ubad.

"We don't have time to burn bodies," Magiere said. "Ubad is dead, but his servants are still out there. We need to go."

"They're coming back?" Leesil said. "There was wind earlier that seemed to drag them all away."

He stepped slowly, either in fatigue or in fear of startling Wynn as he neared the young sage.

'Time to leave," he said quietly.

Wynn's effort failed all at once as the sword tip dropped to the ground. Leesil picked up the blood-soaked bandage at her feet. He pressed it into her shoulder, closing the torn short robe over it.

Chap led the way, holding his rear left leg off the ground now and then as he loped ahead. Leesil was beside Wynn, and it was difficult to tell who held whom up as they hurried. Magiere followed last, watching both ahead and behind.

She spotted open space ahead out ahead. They were almost free of this marshland forest, filled with its apparitions of the dead and scaled coils of night. A wail rang out through the trees behind them, growing louder, closer, and Magiere looked back.

The grizzled soldier with the stomach wound rushed through the air toward her.

"Run!" she shouted. "The forest ends just ahead."

Leesil glanced back, caught sight of the ghost, and gripped Wynn's shoulders, propelling her forward. Magiere drew her falchion, flashing it in the air as she tried to catch the spirit's attention.

More illuminant shapes appeared among the trees. Spirits dived through her but caused her no pain. When she thought her companions neared the forest edge, she ran after them. She wished only to be away from this place and the discoveries of this night.

Leesil, Chap, and Wynn had broken through the tree line and waited in the open. She ran for them, and when she passed the last tree, the wails behind her grew. Leesil caught her in midstep to steady her, and they both turned to look back.

Angry spirits passed through high branches and back down again. They wailed and cried out, but none passed beyond the forest's edge.

Behind Magiere was the old ruined keep, and she saw their wagon and Port and Imp waiting outside the stockade. She wished for at least some dull relief, but she felt nothing at all.

"Wynn's shoulder needs attention," Leesil said.

Magiere couldn't look at the sage. "You see to it once we're under way."

As the others trudged toward the wagon, Magiere looked back to the spirit-laden forest. With all that had happened there, she'd forgotten one who hadn't been saved. Leesil was more worn than she was, Chap limped, and Wynn was wounded. There was no time to go back for one who'd been left behind.

Magiere turned away toward the wagon with sudden shame, her mother's bones left in a tomb of granite.

Welstiel did not know how long he'd been unconscious, but the night was fully dark, and he felt no approach of dawn. Ghosts wailed all around, and he tried to shut out their clamor. Weakened and tired, he climbed to his feet and remembered Ubad was dead. He stepped into the clearing for one last look.

There was blood on the ground-he could smell it-but there was no sign of the necromancer's corpse.

Welstiel gazed into the tree line all around him.

Perhaps one of the minions had retrieved the body, but he had no intention of investigating further. Not at the risk of being discovered while depleted and alone. His role here was done. He would find Chane, scry for Magiere, and leave this place for what he hoped would be the last time.

He walked slowly through the dank forest, opening his senses to the night. He wanted to avoid being seen by anything living, should Magiere and her companions still be nearby. Nothing living entered his awareness. What he did smell was the stench of decay and putrefaction.

The scent grew stronger as he walked, until he had to withdraw the willful expansion of his senses as he stepped into a small clearing.

There were the two bodies of animated dead he had seen earlier this night-and Chane.

Welstiel stood there for a long while.

Finally he stepped closer, looking down at Chane's fallen sword and at the black fluid soaked into the collar and front of his fine white shirt.