Barb Hendee - In Shade and Shadow

"Isn't no fee to enter," the man said. "And we bet what we please—no holds barred."

The instant he reached the alley's mouth, Chane dropped the pouch.

The man's gaze flicked downward in reflex.

Chane's hand shot out and latched across his mouth and jaw. Spinning, he wrenched the man into the alley's deeper darkness. The man was as strong as he looked and struggled like a bull, and he suddenly rammed an elbow into Chane's ribs.

Chane didn't even flinch. He slammed his victim against the wall and drove his distended fangs into the man's stubble-coated throat. The smell of stale ale and sweat filled his nose, but the beast trapped inside of Chane lunged against its bonds.

Once, he would have played with his victim until fear permeated the air. He loved that sweet, musky smell—or was it the beast within who savored it more?

He bit deeper, gulping like a glutton. Salt warmth flowed into his mouth, and the beast inside grew wild with joy. He drank so fast that the man went into convulsions. The would-be gambler's blood slowed to a trickle before his heart could even stop.

Death was a blink away.

Chane wrenched his head back and released his grip on the man's jaw. He stepped away and watched the body slide down the alley wall, until the corpse sat propped up with throat torn and eyes still wide.

It was over so quickly—too quickly. Even the rush of life making Chane's head swim and his cold flesh tingle with heat brought no pleasure. And the beast inside him whimpered like a dog pulled back before finishing its meal.

Chane had seen his own maker, Toret, and then Welstiel, raise new minions from selected victims. Not all rose from death, which was why careful selection was necessary. But there was still a slim chance that a victim taken too quickly might rise the following night. Toret had believed that for a Noble Dead to make one of its own, it had to feed a victim its own fluids. That was another superstition.

All it took was devouring a life—suddenly, quickly, all at once—and the close contact of a Noble Dead in the instant between life's end and death's coming. Chane had been lucky in the past not to have any of his prey rise.

Or had they? In recollection, aside from his time in Bela with Toret, he had always been on the move with Welstiel. He had never stayed long enough in one place to be certain.

Chane wanted no minions. And certainly not this side of beef sitting limp in the alley. The last trickles of blood ran down the corpse's neck, staining his filthy shirt like black ink in the alley's darkness.

Chane closed his eyes and saw Wynn's pained face staring back at him in accusation.

He opened his eyes, pulled out a fish knife stolen off the docks, and cut the man's throat deeply. When the corpse was found, his death would seem a common murder by some desperate cutpurse. Kneeling down, he searched the man and took every coin he found for his own needs.

Chane stepped from the alley and retrieved his own pouch, adding new coins to old. He began walking «home» toward the inn and never looked back.

Wynn spent the next day in the catacombs with two terms stuck in her head— Âthkyensmyotnes and blâch-cheargéa .

She searched deep through the archives, even trying to find possible variations on the term “vampire.” But her continent's earliest peoples had no such words in any language. The varied ones she'd learned in the Farlands wouldn't be found in this branch of the guild. Several times she got lost in the maze of stone chambers and rooms. All she could do was follow the elemental symbols upon the edges of bookshelves.

Spirit, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.

Circle, triangle, square, hexagon, and octagon.

The fewer the symbols in a column, the closer she was to the catacomb's front below the keep's rear wall. The most primary and general texts for each field of knowledge, indicated by one lone geometric shape, were closest to Domin Tärpodious's main chamber. Soon enough she found her way back and headed into other reaches of the archives.

Whenever she found a tome, sheaf, book, or scroll of interest, she backtracked to the nearest alcove. There she settled to read, never certain of how long she sat alone in the light of her cold lamp. Again, Wynn gained little more than a headache and tired eyes—until sometime close to supper.

…Master Geidelmon stared at the warth, though he could not make out its face within the cowl. The dark harbinger drifted into the kitchen's dim candlelight, appearing like a tall figure clad in a wafting shroud of black…

That one word—“warth”—wasn't familiar to Wynn, but she quickly turned the page of the old ghost tale.

…Tall and trim, its stature was much like Geidelmon once had, before he had sunk into years of gluttony. Rapture in food and wine had left him so rotund he could not even rise and flee. And following the portentous visitation, the next morning he was found slumped dead upon the table, a joint of mutton still lodged between his teeth.

The term, and even the whole tale, sounded like something Wynn had read before. But everything was beginning to sound like something she'd read before. She propped her elbows on the table, resting her head in her hands. She'd finally had enough of it.

Just the same, she recorded the term in her journal and then left for the comfort of her own room. But as she emerged into the castle's main floor, she paused.

The new library wasn't far off.

Wynn wove through the passages to its nearest entrance. It had no door, only a tall double-wide archway of finely crafted frame stones. The topmost four were engraved with Begaine symbols, one after the other, for the sages' creed.

TRUTH THROUGH KNOWLEDGE… KNOWLEDGE THROUGH UNDERSTANDING… UNDERSTANDING THROUGH TRUTH… WISDOM'S ETERNAL CYCLE.

Hurrying in, she fingered along a tall bookcase on the main floor, passing over a dozen lexicons, until she found the one she sought on the bottom shelf. Groaning at its bulk, she hefted it up and dropped it on a table. It took time to find any similar term.

waerth, n. [Origin unknown; found in early southern regional dialects, prenationalization of the Numan Lands.] One of several possible alternate spellings for the obscure modern Numanese term wraith [râth].

Wynn flipped pages to find the referenced entry for “wraith”: a dark or black apparition, sometimes similar to, or in the likeness of, a particular person. Found in folklore as an omen of immediate impending demise, though sometimes said to be seen shortly after an individual's death.

Wynn slammed the thick book shut—portents indeed!

More superstitious nonsense, which brought her no closer to the truth concerning what hunted her people and the folios. She jotted down the new term and definition next to her entry for the warth and left the library, hurrying all the way to her room.

Once inside, with the door tightly shut, Wynn flopped onto her bed. After a while she crawled over to peer out her narrow window. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the keep's walls, she heard eight bells ring out softly.

The last eighth of day, called Geuréleâ—“day's winter”—in the dwarven time system used throughout the Numan Lands. Dusk was coming, and the day's work hardly seemed useful.

Every time she thought of how she'd carried back a wealth of texts written by ancient undead but wasn't even allowed to see them, it left her so angry that her stomach burned. If she could only find some common thread within the folios' contents, she might provide Premin Sykion with a possible motive.

But for this to happen, the premin council had to acknowledge that the folios—and the entire project—were connected to the deaths and thefts. Otherwise, even a sound theory of motive would be disdainfully dismissed, like her tales of dhampirs, vampires, ghosts, and…