Барб Хенди - A Wind in the Night

Chane stepped out of the shadows behind Captain Martelle; the tip of his long dwarven sword still rested on the captain’s shoulder. Wynn sagged in relief for an instant and then hurried in to jerk her staff out of the captain’s grip. Up close, she stalled at the sight of Chane.

He wasn’t wearing his cloak, and his hair was wet. A dark smear showed on one side of his jaw, as if something had been wiped away in careless haste.

And a thôrhk —an orb key—of ruddy metal hung around his neck.

About to ask, Wynn looked him straight in the eyes. Chane shook his head once and quickly looked away, leaving her at a loss. Obviously he didn’t want her saying anything as yet, but where was Shade?

Chane looked over her head toward the wagon’s front. His eyes narrowed as his features hardened, and his gaze remained fixed as his head jerked once toward the wagon. Wynn backed away from the captain before she turned to see the one guard near the wagon’s front retreating slowly.

“Osha?” Chane shouted, though it was only a strained rasp.

“Have them all!” Osha shouted back.

He swung the bow slightly as he tracked the retreating guard, and Wynn quickly threw the lit cold-lamp crystal out to give him more light. It bounced to a stop a few yards from the trunk.

“Please join your men,” Chane said as he nudged the captain to follow the one guard. “We have no intention of harming any of you. You need only listen to what I will tell you.”

Wynn glanced at the orb key still around Chane’s neck, though he kept his eyes on the captain.

Wynn and her companions had not only recovered an orb but its key as well this time. They had all survived, but ...

Wynn grabbed Chane’s arm as he passed, but he wouldn’t look down at her.

“Back the way I came,” he whispered. “A short way into the trees. She is ... injured. Hurry ... and I will come for both of you.”

Wynn swallowed so hard that it hurt. She didn’t even question her safety in knowing Sau’ilahk could be near, and she took off into the dark forest.

“Shade!” she shouted, trying to get out her spare cold-lamp crystal as she ran.

She heard nothing but her own clumsy footfalls and her own fast breaths. She didn’t get the other crystal out until she spotted a dark heap in the open between three tall trees.

Wynn recklessly dropped the staff and fell to her knees as she swiped the crystal twice across her thigh. All but Shade’s head was covered with Chane’s damp cloak, and the tip of her tongue hung from between her front teeth.

“Shade?” Wynn whispered, leaning close.

The dog didn’t even twitch, though her eyes appeared open in the barest slits.

Wynn carefully peeled away the cloak. A careful touch revealed that blood was still wet in Shade’s neck fur and along one foreleg, but there wasn’t much, not enough to leave her in this state. Wynn carefully felt everywhere, though she feared causing more injury. Her fingers lightly passed over the back of Shade’s head.

Her fingers stained red, and her breath caught.

“Please open your eyes.... Look at me.... Say something.”

Not one memory-word came to Wynn.

Her bloodstained fingers trembled in hovering less than a finger’s length above Shade’s body. Her sight warped and blurred as the tears began to fall.

“Don’t you leave me, sister,” she whispered. “Not like this.”

Almost holding her breath as she watched Shade, Wynn still sat there in the dark. Even when Chane and Osha came, she couldn’t move.

Chane quickly rounded her and crouched on Shade’s far side, and still Wynn watched only Shade.

“We must leave,” he whispered. “I have given the keep guards the treasury chest and as much of a story as I could concerning the duke taking flight. We need to go before they question anything and turn back.”

Chane lifted Shade, and Osha had to pull Wynn to her feet.

In a forest clearing, a corpse lying facedown in the wet dirt twitched in the predawn.

Sau’ilahk opened his eyes but saw—heard—nothing at first. Everything was so quiet—too quiet—now that all of the wind had died. He lay still, not even blinking, as he tried to understand where he was. Then he remembered Chane Andraso and the black majay-hì. At that he panicked and tried to lift his head, but it barely rolled over the wet earth.

The sound of that movement was all he heard. Not a footfall, a paw’s claws upon the ground, or even a breath.

Sau’ilahk grew frantic. Why could he not even hear his own breaths?

And he remembered ... dying ... after Chane tore out half his throat and then suffocated him with one hand.

Sau’ilahk sucked in air and choked on blood congealed in his throat. He struggled to push himself up and put a hand to his neck. He felt the mess of his own flesh, and his hand came away coated in a sticky black-red mess.

Shock numbed his mind, and when he could actually think again, there was something missing ... something he had not felt in that one touch to himself.

The thôrhk— the orb key — was gone.

And he could feel no heartbeat within his chest.

Sau’ilahk.

At the hissing whisper from Beloved, his god, Sau’ilahk tried to scream and only choked.

You have what you always desired ... a body immortal and immune to death. Does this not please you?

And the only way he could answer was within his own thoughts. No! Not flesh like I was ... not undead still. What have you done—allowed to happen?

You blame me?

Sau’ilahk faltered. Beloved had not led Chane Andraso here, had not instigated the fight that led to this. Still, had his god somehow known? Once again Beloved had deceived him, tricked him with a half-truth as fulfillment of a promise from a thousand years ago.

Something more occurred to him....

He had lost both the orb and the key to which Beloved had guided him.

It is of no matter. That orb ... that anchor of Existence ... served its first purpose and will serve again where it now travels. It shall serve, as you will, until I am free at last.

Sau’ilahk went colder inside than the chill of his dead flesh.

He—his desire, his anguish—had been nothing more than a tactic for some purpose known only to his god. He was left with a corpse, not as a body but as a prison.

Be content ... servant.

This time the hiss carried a threat, like the scales of a great serpent grinding grains of sand in the dark place of dreams where it slept.

Sau’ilahk felt a faint, uncomfortable tingle on his skin.

Light grew over the forest to the east, and he waited for it to turn him to ash ... and he waited. To see a dawn after a thousand years would have once been a joy. To face it now would at least be freedom from the cruelty of his Beloved.

Sau’ilahk watched as the sun did rise, and he began to moan and sob. But the dead could not weep, for a corpse could not shed tears.

Magiere leaned over the rail of the Djinn and anxiously looked out at the enormous, seething port of il’Dha’ab Najuum. She didn’t care how large or daunting it was. All that mattered was getting herself and her companions off this floating coffin of a ship.

The only other stop they’d made along the way was at a small place the name of which she couldn’t pronounce. It had been little more than a coastal trading post south of the desert’s southern reaches with no docks or piers. The ship had anchored well offshore, and only the captain and one of the crew took to a skiff that came out to retrieve them.

That one crewman had eyed her a bit long as they left. Stranger than that, the captain came back alone. Magiere hadn’t cared and still didn’t. She could easily imagine that none of the crew would stick to this vessel longer than necessary.