Barb Hendee - In Shade and Shadow

"Agreed," she said, and turned for the door.

"What has happened to you, Wynn?"

She froze with her hand on the latch. He sounded sad, almost defeated. She jerked the door open, stepping out into the tower's spiral stairway.

"I grew up," she answered.

She didn't look back as she shut the door.

Just past dusk, Chane paced about his shabby attic room.

Wynn had seen him—and knew he had broken into a scriptorium to steal a folio.

He stopped and settled slowly on the bed's edge, looking around at the faded four walls and slanted ceiling. Events seemed to be hurtling forward without direction, without his control. How had he come to this state?

He pushed his red-brown hair from his forehead, thinking back, remembering what had driven him from Bela all the way to this continent…

After learning that Wynn had returned to the Numan Lands, he seemed merely to exist, passing from night to night in Bela with little purpose and no future.

In desperation he often worked on furthering his grasp of Welstiel's arcane objects or deciphering bits from the man's two journals. Little came from great effort, but he uncovered one mystery, seemingly unrelated to Welstiel's conjury.

The oldest of the journals had a parchment covering folded over it. The covering was annoying in handling the book, so Chane took it off. And there on the left of its inner surface was a list. Though most were common herbs, one was written in Belaskian among the other Numanese terms.

Dyvjàka Svonchek —"Boar's Bell."

Chane knew it, also called by other folk names such as Flooding Dusk, Nightmare's Breath, and Blackbane. Its yellow bell-shaped flowers faded to dark plum at the edges. Toxic and deadly to the living, its mere odor could also cause delirium. He knew its fishy scent in two ways. One from dried petals left on a table in the back room of the healer-monks' hidden mountain monastery. And the other…

Chane fished deep in Welstiel's belongings.

He pulled out a long and shallow box, bound in black leather and wrapped in indigo felt. Inside were six vials in felt padding, each with a silver screw-top cap. But only one and a half held any of the strange liquid. The unwary might have thought it watery violet ink.

Chane carefully sniffed at the full one without even opening it. His head filled with its fishy sweet odor, and he quickly pulled the vial from his face.

He looked back to the parchment cover's inner surface. On the right half was a diagram with symbols, most of which he didn't know. Perhaps it was a formula of some kind.

All the vials had been full when he and Welstiel had left the monastery—in company with six monks raised as feral undeads. Somewhere along the journey to the Pock Peaks and the castle of that ancient white female vampire, the rest of the vials had been used. What purpose had Welstiel's concoction served? And how was it made, let alone used?

All Chane knew was that during the journey, Welstiel continued to grow more agitated and more obsessed with getting his "orb." That and when Chane slipped into dormancy each night, Welstiel was still up and alert. When Chane arose the next dawn, Welstiel was already up and about, perhaps for a long while.

Chane had no doubt the list of ingredients was for this deadly liquid, and only the flower would be difficult to find. Some claimed it had healing properties, but he did not think so. Chane rewrapped the vial case, stored it in the pack, and refitted the parchment cover on the journal.

On a few nights his frustration at too little progress began to mount, and he would return to Bela's great docks. Or he would wander to the city's southern edge and stand upon the shore, staring out over the Inner Bay and ocean beyond. He did take the time to seek an apothecary, who reluctantly admitted that he carried Boar's Bell in secret, for sale to select customers. Chane paid heavily for a small amount, not having the time or opportunity to search for the flower in the wilderness.

Sometimes he hunted, turning more often to the lowly districts.

His existence became more and more pointless, until one night he caught a flash of dark fur near a loading platform on the southernmost pier.

He ignored it at first. Dogs often roamed the city's quarters, scavenging for a quick meal. But the animal's movement pulled his attention back.

The dog hung its head over the dock's upper level and watched the men below.

On the lower level of that nearest dock, three men busily loaded cargo into a wide, flat-bottomed skiff. Even under the dock's hanging lanterns, they couldn't see as well as Chane in darkness. He stepped close to the dock's landbound end, having nothing better to occupy him.

The dog was taller than he had first thought, perhaps the height of a timber wolf, but with long legs and muzzle, and taller ears. Charcoal-colored, its coat seemed to shimmer faintly in the lantern's light.

"I'm sick of all the rush," said one sailor below. "When are we going to take time for some eats?"

"Get on with it!" another snapped. "We're outbound by dawn, and we're short on cargo for the crossing. So much for profit shares at the journey's end."

"We'll fix that once we hit the far coast," the third replied.

The dog lifted its head and looked out toward a three-masted vessel in the harbor, almost as if it knew what the men spoke of.

Chane saw its blue crystalline eyes catch the lantern light.

The animal slunk silently to a side-hanging walkway and padded softly down the ramp to the dock's lower level. For a moment, Chane thought he was looking at Chap.

But this dog was much darker, more slender in build, and a younger animal, perhaps not yet having gained its full weight. Chap was unique, a hunter of undead, yet the animal was certainly of the same breed. Chane moved quietly out to peer over the dock k ovs u's side.

The dog crept around a massive, slightly dented trunk waiting to be loaded. The sailors were busy grumbling and wrestling with cargo and never noticed as the dog parted the trunk's lid with its nose. It squirmed inside amid piles of folded cloth.

Chane watched in fascination before he called out, "You, there… where is that ship headed?"

One sailor straightened up, wiping his sweating brow with a sleeve.

"Langinied, at first light," he replied, "if we can get her loaded in time. We've cargo going straight across; then we're south for the long haul to the eastern Suman coast."

Chane lifted his eyes to the vessel out in the bay. He knew of Langinied, a large island off the coast across the ocean. It was supposed to be one of the few civilized places this side of that continent—Wynn's continent. There was a long land journey beyond that to reach the far west coast and her homeland.

Two sailors picked up the old trunk and hefted it atop the crates already overburdening the skiff.

A strange dog stowed away on a ship bound for Wynn's continent. The only other of its breed that Chane had ever seen was a close companion to Wynn.

"Is it still possible to buy passage?" he asked.

"What?" the third sailor called back, steadying the skiff as his mates loaded a rope-bound bale. Perhaps he could not catch Chane's words in his voiceless rasp.

"Passage!" he called again.

The man huffed at him. "All passengers are supposed to be onboard already. You'll have to speak to the purser… over there."

The sailor pointed along the pier's lower level. Chane spotted a gaunt man directing others in loading water casks onto another skiff.

Before long Chane had arranged passage, and the price took nearly all the money he possessed. He ran inland, and was well beyond the port before finding a coach to hurry him the rest of the way out of the city to his inn. By the time the coach returned him to the docks, the eastern skyline was just barely lightening. The purser was waiting impatiently by an empty skiff.