Barb Hendee: In Shade and Shadow

"She's not in her room," the boy said. "I'll see if she's at the common hall… or if anyone knows her whereabouts."

Rodian nodded and waited again. More time passed, and his patience was all but gone. Finally the apprentice came trotting back down the passage.

"I am sorry, sir, but Journeyor Hygeorht cannot be found. Domin High-Tower was just informed, but—"

"Not again!" Rodian hissed.

He brushed past the boy, striding toward the common hall, and as he rounded through the main archway, he nearly collided with High-Tower. The hall was filled with sages eating, talking, or just milling about.

"Where is she?" Rodian demanded.

High-Tower's red hair and beard looked huge, strands rising in the hall's warmth, but his features seemed even redder, and his dark pellet eyes were wild.

"You have no jurisdiction here!" the domin snarled back. "I thought that much was clear by now!"

But the dwarf looked around nervously, as if Rodian's arrival were an unwanted interruption of something else.

"Where is she?" Rodian repeated more calmly. "And where is il'Sänke?"

High-Tower huffed loudly, but indignation faded from his face. "I do not know… nor do I see your point."

Rodian forced himself to calm again and called out loudly, "Has anyone here seen Journeyor Hygeorht or Domin il'Sänke since this afternoon?"

The buzz in the hall diminished, and someone "d, ilwith a nasally voice called out, "I have."

A young woman in a brown stood up. She was thin to the point of being bony, and even from a distance her nose was too long for her face.

High-Tower grumbled through gritted teeth and hurried toward her. His wide girth and vibrating steps sent apprentices and initiates shuffling out of his way. Rodian followed on the domin's heels.

"Regina," High-Tower puffed. "Who did you see?"

"All three of them," she answered, her lip curling into a sneer. "Wynn, the domin… and that supposed majay-hì. I was helping in the kitchen when they came through from the storage building. They went straight to the other side, to the rear hallway leading to the north tower. But when I peeked out…"

High-Tower rumbled as he glared at the girl.

"When I peeked out," Regina repeated, "they weren't there. They were gone, and too quickly to be heading into the keep or even the tower… for whatever reason."

Rodian knew of only one destination in the tower—High-Tower's study.

"Where were you about that time?" he asked the dwarf.

"In my study, of course," High-Tower replied. "The door was open, since I was available to students and apprentices. I saw or heard no one."

"There's always the back door," Regina piped up. "It opens on the back of the keep… right across from the kitchen."

This spiteful pole of a girl glanced up at Rodian, adding, "None of us are supposed to go out at night."

Rodian ignored this thinly veiled accusation, and turned on High-Tower. "If they're here, I want them found. Either you do it, or my men will, and I'm not waiting for permission from your premin."

What followed, after the seething dwarf headed off, were long moments of Rodian pacing before the hall's main arch. Too many curious glances turned his way, not to mention a pack of whispering young sages who gathered around Regina as she smugly returned to her table. And when High-Tower reappeared dourly at the hall's narrow side arch, Rodian knew the domin had found nothing.

Right then he thought of putting Lúcan and Ulwald on night patrol, walking the Graylands Empire for the next moon.

High-Tower waded through the hall, his hands folded behind his back. But Rodian wasn't thinking of Wynn at that moment. There was only one possible way the errant trio had gotten out: Someone had somehow tricked Lúcan and Ulwald.

Ghassan il'Sänke.

Rodian almost demanded whether High-Tower knew how the Suman had done this. But if il'Sänke had such tricks, whatever they were, it seemed unlikely that a murderer would share such with anyone.

"Where would they have gone?" he asked instead.

The dwarf appeared lost for what to say. "I do not know why they would leave, let alone to where. Il'Sänke isn't fool enough to do this without telling someone what he was up to."

Once again, High-Tower provided a less than worthless answer.

"Thank you for your help," Rodian said coldly.

He strode out of the keep and ran down the gatehouse tunnel. Garrogh was waiting there with the horses.

"She's gone again!" Rodian spit, losing hold of his anger. "And so is that Suman sage! No one knows how or why, but they are out in the city somewhere."

He swung up on Snowbird and urged her out, but where could he even begin looking?

"She's alone with the killer," he said, wiping a hand across his face. "Where would she go?"

He wasn't really speaking to Garrogh, but his lieutenant replied, "Both times she's disappeared, she ended up at a'Seatt's shop."

Rodian's eyes flew to Garrogh's face. The first night, when he'd caught Wynn inside the shop, she'd been quite friendly with Imaret. And Rodian still believed that Pawl a'Seatt was hiding something.

"Yes," he agreed, for at least it was somewhere to start.

But what would il'Sänke do if Rodian found them and tried to take Wynn away? The mage had some motive for taking her off alone—and so recently after she'd gained access to the translations.

Rodian pulled up outside the bailey gate. Garrogh's horse skidded to a stop beside him. There was no time to send for more men, regardless that he was about to countermand his own snarling outburst. He needed at least one more of his guards.

"Lúcan! Where's your horse?"

The guardsman looked confused and pointed off along the bailey. "We tied ours off in there, sir."

"Get yours! And come with us."

Wynn strolled up the street past the Upright Quill as if engaged in some halfhearted errand. She kept a lethargic pace, fearing to get too far, too fast. If she traveled more than a block past the scriptorium, then Chane and Shade might grow anxious and try to shadow her through the alley behind the shops. She would be out of their sight line for too long.

The street was still empty as she passed the silversmith's fine establishment and then the perfumery. When she finally reached the far intersection, she stopped near the candle maker's shop.

"Bother!" she whispered loudly, feigning forgetfulness, and turned to head back the other way.

In spite of an outward semblance of being put upon in her late task, Wynn was tense inside. Domin il'Sänke had her sun crystal, and she was completely defenseless. In her mind's eye she couldn't stop picturing the wraith as it had appeared in her room last night. Wraps of black shroud cloth—its burial raiment—covered its shriveled form beneath the robe and cloak.

An undead, but far different from those she'd come to think of as the Noble Dead. It could kill with a touch—could feed upon her with great speed—and nothing seemed able to harm it but another undead or a majay-hì. In comparison, a vampire seemed far less of a threat.

Some of them had unique abilities, aside from knowledge and skills carried over from life. But Leesil, Chap, and Magiere had destroyed such, and Wynn had even helped a few times. Decapitation and incineration were effective in finishing them off, but these were worthless upon a creature with no true physical form. What powers did it possess aside from mimicking physical presence at need? Worse, what if it was still a mage as well?

Forcing calm, Wynn hummed a low tune she'd learned from Leesil on the voyage from the Farlands. A terrifying truth had been forming in the back of her mind.

The wraith seemed to know too many things about the guild's project and the comings and goings of the folios. Tonight's ploy to lure it out depended upon its somehow learning where she was. And no one at the guild knew of this plan.