Барб Хенди - First and Last Sorcerer

“Shade!” Osha shouted and released the bowstring.

The dog wheeled, racing away after Wynn, as the arrow hit. It struck directly into the sage’s dangling sleeve. Force jerked the man’s hand aside, and he stumbled back in fright and shock.

As the fallen guard struggled to get up, the other three, the other sage in dark blue, and Premin Aweli-Jama were all trying to clear their vision from the flash of Wynn’s crystal.

Osha spun as Shade raced by him. Only one of the packs he had dropped remained on the street stones. Grabbing its strap, he slung it over his shoulder and ran along the wall after the others. Then he heard the premin shouting in his people’s guttural tongue.

The only word Osha understood was “journeyor.” There was only one person the high premin wanted caught.

Wynn and Shade ran on ahead with Chane following, the chest in his arms. On his longer legs, Osha knew it would not take long to reach them—but even while carrying the heavy orb, Chane was just as fast.

Osha hated working with—fighting beside—Chane, as if it was acceptable for that undead thing to be in Wynn’s company. There was no other choice—he would always put her well-being above all else, no matter what it took.

Osha heard running feet coming behind him.

Wynn couldn’t believe—or understand—what had happened as she ran, panting, along the outside of the low wall. She carried her own pack and one of Chane’s. Hopefully Osha had been able to grab Chane’s other pack.

She’d clearly understood what the high premin had shouted to the guards.

“Get the journeyor! I do not care what happens to the others, but bring her back alive.”

The premin wanted her taken prisoner after she’d mentioned Ghassan il’Sänke.

What had happened here and what had the domin done?

Glancing back, she saw Osha and Chane closing rapidly on her as Shade sped out ahead. Back along the wall, the four guards were coming with swords drawn. Chane would kill any one of them if necessary. And then what?

She and her companions would be “wanted” by local authorities, if they weren’t already. All of Chane, Osha, and Shade’s overprotectiveness had pushed everything out of control. If they’d only given her another moment or two, she might have salvaged an opportunity for their greater needs—but no.

The “boys” and her “sister” had done it again.

Fright and fury pushed Wynn faster. When this was over—if they got out of trouble—she’d put all three back in their places ... again . And she couldn’t let herself be captured, not even to save one of them.

She had to find Magiere, Leesil, and Chap. To do so, she had to find Ghassan il’Sänke. He was the key to everything.

“Valhachkasej’â!” she swore as she ran. “Where are you, Domin?”

In truth, Ghassan was uncertain what kept drawing him back to survey the guild grounds. Still, he watched its inland wall and the street along it in both directions. This place was now a danger to him.

If a member of the guild or the city guards spotted him, he would be taken at any cost. Still, he could not rest idle. He returned here again and again, as all other avenues in his search had revealed little to nothing. And he had no choice but to keep out of sight.

A moon ago, he had been arrested, dragged before the imperial court, and faced the imperial presence of Prince Ounyal’am himself, the remaining heir to the empire’s throne. In that moment, Ghassan had not known how many of his secrets had been uncovered.

“Is your high premin correct?” the prince had demanded before all present. “What is this I hear of a hidden sect among the metaologers, including you ... Domin? Is it true that all involved but you are dead?”

The questions had shocked him more than being arrested. Too much was becoming openly known by too many, and it was all true.

Ghassan had been part of a secret sect—a subset within his own order.

It was also true that Prince Ounyal’am knew this long before he had asked.

Conjury was preferred among Suman metaologers versus thaumaturgy in the guild’s Numan and Lhoin’na branches. Ghassan was well versed in conjury and soundly knowledgeable in thaumaturgy; the opposite could also be said of metaologers elsewhere. But that did not account for what else he had learned, starting half a lifetime ago.

He had been taken in by a few secreted among his branch’s metaologers. Among them was a third ideology of magic resurrected for desperate reasons, though its practice was feared and reviled throughout the known world. This sect feared discovery to such a degree that it had no name, for to name it would make it something to be known, sought, and found.

As Ghassan had stood before the imperial prince, he’d known suspicion of “sorcery” was at the heart of everything, including why he had been arrested. For an instant, he wondered if the prince had betrayed him. No one else present knew that the imperial prince was an allied confidant of the sect.

Ghassan decided the prince’s question was not a betrayal.

Prince Ounyal’am was trapped as well, and in danger of discovery; his question was a warning.

All had been lost, and the prince himself could do nearly nothing to help. Further revelations and something more shocking had followed. By an amulet gifted to the prince for his protection, Ghassan heard the prince’s warning thoughts telling him to escape by any means necessary. And so he had.

Now alone in hiding and searching, he feared for the safety of his people ... and his prince.

Not long before his arrest, he had been away on a journey and had returned to learn that a “prisoner” of his sect had escaped. It was from this prisoner, long held for many decades, that the sect had recovered sorcery.

That had cost many lives and much sanity along the way.

And Khalidah had escaped his long captivity.

Once of the triad of the Sâ’yminfiäl—“Masters of Frenzy” during the Forgotten History and later known to a few as the “Eaters of Silence”—Khalidah was now as invisible as a thought. His own flesh had been lost in death centuries before. If one met him now, outside of the ensorcelled sarcophagus of his prison, it would be in one’s own thoughts.

It would be too late to escape him.

That “specter,” for lack of a better term, had killed almost everyone in Ghassan’s sect. A monster of a past age, what some would now call a “noble dead,” was loose among—and within —the people. The nights were the time to fear it most.

Khalidah could survive daylight only while within a living host, but so many days and nights had passed since his escape. Deaths in the capital attested to his continued survival, though there were not enough reports in the empire’s greatest city to raise suspicion. As the last of the sect, only Ghassan knew the signs—or lack of such—in a victim.

And the specter could be within anyone—could be anyone while hiding in flesh, even someone within the guild or the imperial court.

Despite the sect’s precautions to protect the prince, until he replaced his withering and corrupt father, Ounyal’am was in more than just mortal danger.

Ghassan had come to the guild’s grounds tonight hoping to attempt infiltration, but how could he enter without anyone knowing? A compound full of sages, including metaologers, was well beyond blanking the mind of one beggar or a handful of patrolling guards.

City guards stood watch at the grounds’ main entrance and all smaller locked ones. They patrolled the short wall’s inner side at random intervals. They could be managed in small groups with enough foresight, but Ghassan feared conjured protections had also been set in place.