Barb Hendee: In Shade and Shadow

"Take this back!" he demanded, and thrust it out.

Wynn looked at her crystal and shook her head.

"I cannot," she said. "I won't be shut away, left to do nothing, while they do little more than that."

"Why let them?" he said. "You can choose not to."

There was something in il'Sänke's gaze that unsettled her, as if her next denial might make him more outraged or frightened or both. Thundering footsteps rolled down the passage outside, and Domin High-Tower barreled through the open door, his bushy red hair disheveled.

"Wynn," the dwarf exhaled. "Think, girl! You have pushed things to the limit, but do not throw away all you have—"

"She does not have to," il'Sänke snarled over his shoulder. "You… and your council gave her all she needs to see to that."

Wynn looked up, at il'Sänke. "Make some sense… please!" she said.

He shook his head, gritting his teeth. "Can you not see it for yourself? Any rope they try to bind you with can be pulled on both ways."

"The guild does not play at politics!" High-Tower snapped.

"Oh, spare me!" il'Sänke spit back. "This is all about politics, the politics of fear." And he fixed on Wynn. "You can choose your own assignment and still remain one of us. In the end, the council will have no choice but to accept this."

Wynn barely grasped what he was getting at. When she glanced at High-Tower, the dwarf's face was flushed, but he remained silent. That was strangest of all, that he didn't even try to cut il'Sänke off. As if he wanted her to hear this but dared not say it himself.

"They are afraid of you," il'Sänke added, "with all you know… stepping beyond their reach. They fear what you might reveal to others, once free of your oath to the guild. They need a hold on you, or at least that is what they want you to believe."

Il'Sänke shook his head, and the hint of a smile spread on his face. Somehow it wasn't comforting.

"You can do anything you want," he added.

"The council will never agree," High-Tower said, but it seemed weak and less than a true denial.

"Then do something, you dried-out mound of mud!" il'Sänke countered. "Or I will. I have no doubt I can procure her a place in my branch the moment I arrive there."

"I'm not going to the Suman Empire!" Wynn cut in.

High-Tower sighed. "She must present a proposal for approval… if she wishes to request her own assignment."

"Then write it yourself," il'Sänke returned. "And sign it! Tell the council she has changed her mind about resigning. They will agree to anything in that event."

"The specific assignment has to be outlined."

"No, it does not," il'Sänke answered.

High-Tower closed his eyes, and il'Sänke held out the crystal once more.

Wynn's head was spinning as if she stared at these two through her mantic sight. But the nausea in her stomach was now from fear that this small hope might not be real. She reached out and quickly snatched the crystal before it might vanish.

Il'Sänke slumped in exhaustion, bracing a hand on the desk.

Wynn still had no idea why the foreign domin was so frightened by the idea of her resignation, as if her action might force him to do something horrible.

"I will need funding," she said.

"You will get it," he assured her. "If not from them, then through my branch… and no, you will not have to go to the Suman Empire."

Wynn gazed down at the crystal in her palm.

She was still a sage.

Near midnight, Wynn sat on the second bench of a hired wagon with Chane. He carried the scroll in one of his packs, along with Wynn's brief translations, and she held on to the sun crystal's staff. The driver, paid double for the three-night journey, steered a course along the bay road as they headed for the far peninsula peak of Dhredze Seatt.

In truth, Wynn didn't care how they traveled, so long as this search led to answers—and the texts.

Glancing back at Shade stretched out in the wagon's bed, Wynn knew that someday, possibly soon, Shade would discover that Chane was undead. The ensuing scene would be unpredictable—probably ugly—but she would leave that until it came.

She glanced over at Chane. What would happen when he grew hungry?

But again… she would deal with that when the moment arrived.

Chane and Shade were the only ones available who believed in the reality of the Noble Dead—and possessed the ability to face them.

To her left, beyond dark trees obscuring the bay, she could hear small waves lapping at the rocky shore.

"It may be hard for you, traveling only at night," Chane said.

She jumped slightly, as he hadn't spoken for most of the night.

"I'll adjust," she answered.

But would she, to any of this? She traveled at night with a vampire and a majay-hì to Dhredze Seatt to learn… what?

To find the texts, and to learn of a forgotten place, another dwarven seatt, lost in a forgotten time. And why had the wraith, whoever it had once been, desired information from the scroll and folios?

She glanced up at Chane's clean profile in the darkness. No matter what he might be, she could count on him while she uncovered the truth.

"I'll adjust," she repeated.

The gaudy and worn painted sign above the scriptorium's front door read, THE GILD AND INK. But the night street was empty, and the only person inside was busy in the back workroom.

There, a portly bald man stood before a tall wooden table with his back turned to the open door leading to the shop's front room. He wore a rich velvet tunic over a linen shirt. The quill in his hand was poised above a stack of freshly scribed parchments.

Master Shilwise never noticed the darkness within his shop's front room intensify as something bulged inward through the front wall.

A figure in a black cloak and robe wavered and then vanished. Its transparent form reappeared, wavering yet again, as if struggling to become real. Once wholly solid, it slid silently along the floorboards, through a stand bearing a displayed book, and into the rear workroom.

And still Master Shilwise was poised unaware above the parchments—until he shivered. The air had turned suddenly chill. He spun around, and his eyes widened as a hiss filled the workroom to its rafters.

"Reverent One!" Shilwise whispered, and swallowed hard. "I'm relieved to see… I heard that you were…"

"Destroyed?"

With that one word, the hiss became a voice surrounding Shilwise. And the black figure went on.

"Or had you simply hoped so?"

The question seemed to coil about Shilwise, squeezing him with frigid cold.

"No!" he whispered, shaking his head. "I would never. You've been more than generous for what you've asked of me!"

"And still, no one suspects?"

"That I can read the sages' symbols?" Shilwise finished. "No, not even my own scribes. And with the way you ransacked my shop" — and a touch of bitterness leaked into his voice—"I'm the last person anyone would suspect to have ai®en ded you."

The black-robed figure floated closer. Shilwise quickly slipped out of its way.

It approached the table, and its large, sagging cowl tilted downward over the parchments. Hands and fingers wrapped in frayed black cloth extended from the robe's sleeves and gripped the table's edge.

For an instant Shilwise thought he saw the table's wood through one of those hands.

The black figure wavered, its whole form turning translucent.

"Are you… all right?" Shilwise asked.

The visitor ignored this question. "All of them are here?" it asked, still looking upon the parchments.

Shilwise nodded. "All the extra copies I made, in plain language… both from what my shop processed, and what you acquired from other scriptoriums."

"And what of the female journeyor?"