Barb Hendee - Child of a Dead God

Neither Magiere's nor Chap's awareness of undead, nor even Leesil's strange amulet would sense him, now that he wore Welstiel's ring of nothing. But the last thing he needed was someone locating him by sight. He quickly swung into the landing hollow and crept along the wall to the tunnel's entrance. Once deep enough into the tunnel's upward turn, he ran.

The heavy doors at the tunnel's end were still cracked open, and Chane carefully leaned through.

The younger elf, who had held Wynn amid the battle, lay unconscious upon the floor. But Wynn was not there.

Chane leaned out enough to peer around the doors' edge, and he saw her.

She stood at the back end of the last tall bookcase, but she was studying the library's stone wall rather than a text from the shelves. She traced faded dark writing on the stones with her small fingers, silently mouthing what she read.

"Wynn…," Chane rasped, and hated the sound of his voice.

She spun, backing against the wall.

Her liquid brown eyes went wide at the sight of him. Wispy brown hair tangled about her small, olive face-dirtier than in his nightly visions, but otherwise the same face he remembered. In place of gray robes, she wore loose, dusky-yellow pants and a long hide coat.

Wynn rushed toward him, or so he thought, but she stopped between him and the unconscious elf.

"I will not let you harm him," she said. "He is one of our protectors."

Chane went numb, not because she sought to protect this man from him, nor even at the way she looked at him in frightened suspicion. He could not blame her for either of these things. But it hurt that she was correct in both.

"I saw you die," she whispered.

"Did you mourn for me?"

The question came out before he could stop it. Even as he spoke, the words sounded so petty and self-centered compared to all they had not said to each other.

"Yes," she answered. "I wept that night… and many nights after."

He stood looking at her. No one in his lost life-not his mother or his companions of youth-had ever cared enough to cry for him.

"But I mourned the scholar I remembered," Wynn added. "Not the true Chane… the one who would help Welstiel murder… the Servants of Compassion and make them into mindless, savage beasts."

Beasts. Chane flinched, anger growing inside him. He wanted to shout at her, but she only spoke more truth.

He had deceived himself as much as her. When they first met, had he not tried to pass himself off as a young, gentle scholar seeking like-minded company? And later, had he not helped Welstiel destroy the scholars within that monastery of healing?

"I did not turn them," he rasped at her and then faltered. "But I did not stop him either… and have regretted it ever since."

Her gaze softened, but only briefly. "Are my companions safe?"

More suspicion-and still legitimate. Chane knew he did not have much time left.

"Magiere took Welstiel's head… and the orb he sought. I thought it would be a small thing, created by some forgotten undead who no longer wished to feed. But… it is much more. What is it, Wynn?"

Her small brows drew closer. "It was created in the time of the Forgotten. I have been trying to find pieces-hints and clues-written by one of its guardians on these walls. It may have been created by whatever made her and the other undead who first appeared in the war."

She was close enough for Chane to reach out and touch.

"The orb belongs with the sages," she added.

The sages. Once Chane had believed that he, too, belonged among them-and with her. She did not seem to fear him now, but she should.

What place was there in her world for such a beast?

One that would never stop hungering and straining at its bonds.

Chane stepped out, walking wide as he turned his eyes from Wynn's.

He tried to hide his expression by studying the texts upon the shelves. He should leave and get as far from her as possible. But he could not bring himself to go just yet and lowered his gaze to the unconscious elf.

Bitterness slipped out. "Who is that?"

"I told you. One of our guardians… an envoy of the elves. It is a long story." She glanced at stone doors. "You should go. If Magiere and Chap find you here…"

Chane shook his head at her wish to protect him.

Wynn Hygeorht the sage-and sweet, naive little guardian of monsters.

"So, you will take the orb to your guild?" he whispered.

"Yes."

Chane closed his eyes, seeing the Wynn he remembered, clothed in gray robes and drinking mint tea in a warm study full of scrolls and books.

He would never be part of that vision. He had been lying to himself for too long. If she ever saw that feral beast inside of him, he could not bear to exist any longer.

"I will not follow you anymore," he said with back turned. "You will not see me again."

He did not mean to turn and look, but he did.

Wynn stood with tears running down her olive-toned face.

It was last time he would cause her pain.

Chane strode along the dark row of bookshelves, and it was hard not to look back. He almost reached the side passage when his boot toe kicked something across the floor.

It rattled like hollow metal, and he glanced down. In the dark, he spotted an old tin scroll cylinder rocking slightly where it had come to rest by the wall.

Chane stepped into the passage, and then paused. He turned and stared back at the dark casements.

So much was here upon the shelves. Perhaps Wynn would salvage what she could before leaving, though likely she would not carry away much. It would have been good to be there when she returned with her finds to Domin Tilswith in Bela, especially after all she had been through to reach this lost place.

Chane stepped back out and looked down at that lone scroll case, now motionless where it lay. He stooped and picked it up, then turned back down the passage.

When he reached the stairway chamber, with its archway to the wide corridor of columns, the bodies of feral monks littered the floor, headless and still. He found his pack and tucked the scroll away with the books taken from the monastery. He slung both his pack and Welstiel's over his shoulders along with a piece of canvas and a length of rope. He left everything else behind.

Chane kept his mind empty all the way down the long corridor of columns. But it grew harder to stay numb inside as he left, passed through the iron gates, and stumbled out upon the snow.

Magiere carefully removed the circlet from the orb's spike and hung it back around her neck. Then she gripped the top of the spike and tried simply lifting the orb from its resting hole in the store stand. Now it felt heavy, like an anvil, and she used both hands to lift it out. With the spike intact, it did not illuminate again, and remained dormant.

Li'kan just stood there, eyes locked on the empty stand. She glanced once at Leesil, and her face wrinkled briefly.

Magiere was ready to drop the orb and step into the undead's path. Li'kan's world had changed for the first time in centuries. How would she react?

Confusion passed over the white undead's face. She turned back to staring at the orb's stone stand, as if she couldn't understand what the empty place meant.

"Start heading for the tunnel," Magiere whispered.

"What?" Leesil asked.

"Just do it."

Chap and Sgaile had already gone to the cavern landing, and Magiere waited until Leesil was well onto the bridge before she turned to follow. When she stepped off into the landing's hollow, she looked back.

Li'kan stood before the bridge's far end. Mist began to gather once more in the cavern as the chasm's heat rose to warm the wet walls.

Magiere could swear Li'kan was glaring at her, and that she tried to step upon the bridge. A wafting curl of mist blocked the ancient undead from sight and drifted into the cavern's upper air.