Barb Hendee - In Shade and Shadow

Her cold lamp crystal had waned to half strength. How long had she been down here? She took the crystal out, rubbed it back to brilliance, and replaced it.

Wynn lowered her chin on her hands folded atop the open book. She closed her tired eyes for a moment. Her head ached and she'd made no true discoveries. She took a weary breath, straightened up, and read…

…that blâch-cheargéa gripped the young minstrel by the throat…

Wynn pulled her hands back and read onward.

Try as he might, the minstrel's fists passed through his tormentor as through smoke. He turned pale and dangled dead before the entire village in the grip of Âthkyensmyotnes…

Wynn's thoughts grew still.

Two words in the short tale were unclear, and not part of the narrative's dialect. Blâch-cheargéa meant something like "black terror-spirit," but how could a spirit be black, let alone hold up a man in its grip? And the other term didn't make sense.

Âthkyen was a compound word no longer used in Numanese, one that she'd read in accounts of the pre-nation clans that had inhabited this land. It meant ruler by divine or innate right, rather than by bloodline or selection, but the term's latter half wasn't Numanese—not by any dialect that Wynn knew of. She did know a word that sounded similar.

The elven root word smiot'an referred to "spirit," as in that of a person and not the element. The Lhoin'na, the elves of her continent, were the longest-standing culture here—long enough that some of their root words, classified by the guild under the grouping of New Elvish, had been absorbed and transformed in human tongues as pure nouns.

She pulled the book closer, rushing through the text in search of more, but the tale was only half a page long.

A black terror-ghost… sovereign of spirits?

It could touch—physically touch. This had to be another superstition. Even if this tale was an account of a true undead, it wouldn't be the first bit of nonsense concerning such.

Leesil and Magiere had tracked and impaled a vampire named Sapphire, only to have the creature vanish when they turned their backs for an instant. Staking a vampire through the heart turned out to be superstition, one that even some vampires believed in. But the tale in the book still left her wondering about Master Shilwise's scribe shop.

Someone had gotten in, without forcing entry, but then had to break out.

Perhaps the creature in this tale was a mage—like Chane or Welstiel—maybe a thaumaturge, working magic of the physical realm. Yes, a vampire mage would have many years to become highly skilled. At a guess, it might learn how to transmute its solid form into a gaseous state at will, and slip through the cracks of a door.

All right, so it was a silly notion for children's ghost tales, but she'd seen stranger things in the last two years. And there was still the puzzle of why whoever had slipped in had to break out.

Wynn took up her quill and turned a fresh page in her journal. She recorded the entire short tale in the Begaine script. For now, her best path was to search Numanese writings for any further mention of the blâch-cheargéa and Âthkyensmyotnes . Second, she should search any elven works in the archives, considering the strange hybrid title. She stood up, ready to seek out whatever she could.

"Young Hygeorht!"

Wynn jumped in surprise. Domin Tärpodious stood at the antechamber's entrance, his milky eyes wide in horror. At first she wasn't certain why. He shuffled in, disapproval coloring his pale face.

"Surely you didn't need all of these at once for Tilswith's research?"

Wynn glanced about.

Disheveled piles covered the whole table, and a few sheets had slipped off to scatter about the floor.

"Oh… oops," she said. "I must've… I didn't realize…"

With the old master archivist already displeased, she knew better than to offer help in straightening up. She quickly shut the old book.

"Off with you," he huffed, almost to himself. "I should've come sooner and rousted you for supper."

Wynn stared back. "Supper?"

"Cooked, consumed, and cleaned up," he replied gruffly. "An apprentice just brought down my meal. Best get upstairs and find some leftovers."

Wynn hesitated. Now that she had a lead, there was still so much to do.

"Be off!" Tärpodious snapped, already gathering sheets into sheaves.

"Thank you for the help," she said, and retrieved her belongings. "And again, I apologize. I'll be more discerning next time."

Wynn slipped out, turning right down the corridor, her cold lamp lighting the way between the laden shelves and the catacombs' old stone columns and walls.

"Wynn!"

Tärpodious's sharp call made her whole back cinch tightly. She couldn't help a groan, thinking he'd found some blot of ink she'd missed. She reversed course and peered hesitantly around the edge of the antechamber's opening.

Domin Tärpodious scowled silently at her, and Wynn's stomach sank into her boots.

The old archivist raised a hand, pointing one bony finger toward the passage's other direction.

Wynn flushed, nodded quickly, and hurried off the correct way.

Chane waited in the shadows across the street from the Inkwell scriptorium as two young sages emerged with a folio.

He recognized the pudgy girl in gray. She had occasionally been sent out before. But he had never seen the tall young man in a deep blue robe—too old to be an apprentice but perhaps not old enough for a master or domin. It seemed strange that the guild sent a journeyor of metaology to help retrieve tonight's folio.

Chane pulled farther back out of sight.

As the pair passed by, continuing down the street, the girl clutched the folio to her chest and peered nervously about. When they reached the next intersection, Chane pulled up his cloak's hood and followed from a distance. He had no wish to be seen and remembered.

He kept himself in check rather than close too quickly. But he longed to open the folio and read its contents, and driving desire pressed him forward.

The tall journeyor stopped and turned around.

Other city dwellers moved about in the early evening, and Chane continued walking casually. The blue-robed sage scanned the street, noting a man lighting street lamps, two merchants engaged in conversation, and a flower girl closing her stand… and Chane.

"What is it, Dâgmund?" the pudgy girl asked.

"Nothing," the young man answered. He moved on, tugging his shorter companion along.

Chane kept his gait even.

In his time in Bela with Wynn, he had learned enough of the orders to know each branch's general emphasis. To his best knowledge, those in metaology studied metaphysics and lore and related fields. Few if any became practitioners of magic, and those were mostly thaumaturges, working in pragmatic practices of artificing, such as alchemy. Even if this one had gone further, there was still no way he could detect Chane for what he was by spell or device.

Not while Chane wore Welstiel's old "ring of nothing."

This one possession masked his undead presence from anyone with extraordinary awareness or arcane skills of detection. But still, he had been seen, and he could not allow them to realize they were followed.

Chane turned down a side street.

Once beyond sight, he ran for the next intersection. He turned up a street parallel to the sages' route and slowed a bit. He tried to keep a pace even with the messengers'—or just a little ahead of them. And he knew where they would have to turn.

Three cross streets up, he slowed to hover near the corner.

The pair appeared in the intersection down the way, still following their course. As they passed beyond sight, Chane slipped down the side street to follow them directly.