Барб Хенди - First and Last Sorcerer

It felt strangely normal to walk in the city and head out only to buy food. After talking late into the night with Wynn, she had begun to feel more like herself or at least less like a traitor to herself. Wynn never saw the world in black and white, right and wrong, but in variations of gray to be constantly reexamined. Magiere had never fully understood that before.

The crowded market lay up ahead.

“What is our next step?” Wayfarer suddenly asked.

Magiere took a deep breath filled with the scents of fresh bread, roasted meats, people in the streets, and other simple things in the air.

“Restock the cheese ... again,” she answered. “Chap finished it off last night.”

Wayfarer stopped walking. “I meant with the orbs. Now that they have all been recovered ... now what?”

Magiere stopped as well. This was the last question she’d have expected from Wayfarer.

“We need to find places to hide them,” she answered carefully, “where they will never be found by anyone again, especially the Enemy’s ... servants.”

“Wynn told me ...” the girl began, “told the rest of us that the wraith went to great lengths to gain the orb of Spirit. He even abandoned the orb of Earth upon finding it, as he did not want it. Once he had the orb he sought, he used it to alter the body of a young duke.”

One of Magiere’s hands clenched nervously to hear Wayfarer speak of such things.

“So,” the girl continued, “it would be wise to move the orb of Spirit someplace where no undead can enter.”

“Well ... yes,” Magiere finally agreed.

“No undead can enter the lands of the an’Cróan,” Wayfarer added, looking up into Magiere’s eyes. “The same should follow true for the lands of the Lhoin’na. What if Osha—and I—took the orb of Spirit to them? It would be safe and beyond the reach of any undead.”

Magiere couldn’t help the fear, which always came in anger. “You and Osha, take an orb to—”

“He is more than he appears,” Wayfarer interrupted. “And once the orb is in that land, we would be safe there as well until ... whatever is next.”

Magiere stared down at her, unable to say anything.

Aside from such a dangerous notion, she knew something had gone wrong between Wayfarer and Osha, and Osha and Wynn, and even that linked to Wayfarer’s sudden eagerness to get involved.

Magiere grabbed Wayfarer’s hand, pulling her along. “We’ll talk about this later.”

That night, once again Leesil lay on a pile of cushions on the main room’s floor, holding Magiere against his chest. Ghassan and Brot’an had taken the bedchamber to get some rest. Chap lay curled up near one of the bookshelves on another of the large cushions.

Wynn and Chane had taken Shade out to do her nightly “business.” Osha and Wayfarer were engaged in some kind of board game with draughts that Osha had bought at the market.

In a sense, Leesil had Magiere to himself for a short while. Part of him almost couldn’t believe the final orb had been found. The exhausting, bloody, seemingly endless searches were at an end. Tilting his head down, he pressed his face into the top of Magiere’s hair.

“What are you thinking?”

“We may have a hiding place for the orb of Spirit,” she whispered.

He tensed, for that wasn’t the kind of answer he’d wanted. “Where?”

“Somewhere safe, though we need the same for the orb of Air. We shouldn’t hide two in the same spot. I know Chap did that, but only he knows where they are, and we shouldn’t try it again.”

None of this was what Leesil wanted to talk about. “Any ideas?”

“Not yet.” Magiere rolled onto her back, looking up at him. “I’ll think of someplace ... or Chap will ... or Wynn.” She touched his cheek. “And once it’s done, we’ll go home. Promise.”

He almost couldn’t believe they were this close to being done. He brushed the side of her face with his fingers as he whispered, “Home ... finally.”

Another large ship docked that night at the teeming port of the empire’s capital. Once the ramp was lowered, only one passenger disembarked. He was tall and well formed but with a face so pale that it glowed briefly within a deep hood as he neared a dock’s lantern.

Not a bit of other flesh was exposed. Beneath his cloak, he wore black gloves, a leather-laced tunic, dark pants, and high riding boots. A wide leather collar of triple small straps was buckled around his throat.

No one here would have recognized the man known as Duke Karl Beáumie, for that was who had once inhabited this flesh.

Sau’ilahk, first and highest of the Reverent, servant of il’Samar during the Great War, walked the pier now trapped within that dead flesh. He gazed upon the imperial city, which had not been here during his living days. It had also been many years since he had returned to this land in his centuries as a wraith. Now he could actually sniff its air.

It smelled as wretched as he felt.

Upon gaining this living flesh, which he had sought for so long, the body had been slaughtered by another undead on that same night. This was not the homecoming he’d long envisioned—immortal perhaps but still undead. It was not fair, and his god ... his Beloved ... had hissed at him in spite for the last time.

Stepping off the pier, Sau’ilahk had one purpose in mind: to find the one who had done this to him.

When he found Chane Andraso, he would make that undead watch as he finally took the life of Wynn Hygeorht. Even then, he would not finish Chane. That lowly vampire would be left to suffer such a loss for a thousand years ... or until his suffering grew too much, and he ended his own existence.

Sau’ilahk reached the port’s main archway and entered the city. There were few people out in the streets, and not one bowed a head to him, let alone prostrated themselves before him. How he longed to grab one at random and feed, for he had nearly starved for lack of life while on the vessel. Only once did he drain the life of a sailor during a night squall—after which he dumped the body overboard. Any more than that would have raised suspicions among the crew.

He was still learning about his new existence and how this body worked.

Though he had been killed—drained—by a mere vampire, he had awoken as something else. He had not burned in the dawn, as expected, nor did he thrive on blood. He could still feed by touch, though he did so in flesh instead of spirit. He no longer knew what he was.

Now he was loose in a large population that ranged between opulent wealth and desperate poverty. A few night wanderers passed by, from sailors to merchants to commoners. It had long been his intention to purchase fine clothing. What he now wore had been scavenged. Any coin he had procured had been needed for the journey itself, and he had not come all this way out of nostalgia.

It had taken more coin back at the port of Oléron on the southern, coastal end of Witeny to learn where Chane—and Wynn Hygeorht—had gone. They had stolen the orb of Spirit from him. It was hard to know in any given moment whether that mattered more to him than vengeance.

A soft shuffling caught his attention, and he turned.

A ragged beggar crouched at the mouth of a cutway between a tea shack and a lamp shop. At the sight of Sau’ilahk, the bony man raised a chipped pottery cup.

“Coins for mercy?” he asked.

“Of course,” Sau’ilahk answered quietly, stepping closer. “But I do not wish for my purse to be seen.”

He slipped into the cutway while stripping off his right glove. Turning to face the opening to the street, he backed deeper in as he dug into his pouch. He raised one silver coin into plain sight, and at the sight of that, the spindly man followed. And when the street’s lights no longer touched him ...