First and Last Sorcerer Page 17

  Yes, they had all done terrible things, some worse than killing and some worse than what he had done to that innocent guide. In the moon of Magiere’s screams, he had done worse in doing nothing.

  He would have let her die rather than reveal the location of any orb.

  Chap’s sins had grown until he now shrank from weighing them as a whole, and this was no time to do so. Someone else in this place was linked to everything since that day on the docks. When he, Magiere, Leesil, and Wayfarer had been mysteriously released, he had recognized the stranger with Wynn.

  When Chap and his companions had been brought to judgment, the one called Domin Ghassan il’Sänke had been present in the high glass-dome chamber. And in the streets this night, Chap had been unable to dip a single surfacing memory in that man.

  It was as if this domin, no longer dressed as a sage, was not truly present . . . just like Chane . . . just like the gray-robed figure who had come to their prison cell.

  * * *

  By the time Wynn finished with Magiere and had tended Leesil, Chap, and Leanâlhâm—no, Wayfarer—they were all too exhausted to eat much. She had to stop Wayfarer from drinking too much water and making herself ill. Osha helped settle them in the two beds, but Wayfarer panicked at being left to sleep alone in the second bed. Chap jumped up and settled beside the girl, and Wynn dropped on the floor at the foot of Magiere and Leesil’s bed. Osha stood by the room’s entrance, facing outward.

  It wasn’t long before Wayfarer drifted off. In the silence, Wynn realized that since her arrival at the sanctuary Osha hadn’t said a word to anyone, at least as far as she’d heard. He hadn’t even looked at her unless he had to, and she wanted to ask . . .

  Leave him alone.

  Wynn looked over at Chap lying on the second bed’s edge with Wayfarer fast asleep behind him. Before she could speak . . .

  No . . . not until he wishes to speak of it, if he does.

  That was even less help, and what was . . . it? She grew more worried as she peered at Osha.

  There were other important things to discuss, though not in here, so she got up as quietly as possible, but not quietly enough. Osha glanced over his shoulder at her.

  His long face lacked any expression, and that troubled her even more. With a quick wave to Chap, Wynn slipped out of the bedchamber, and both Chap and Osha followed. Rounding the partition, she found Ghassan at the table speaking in a low voice to Brot’an. Chane was listening to them from nearby.

  There was too much here that Wynn didn’t know, from whatever numbed Osha to the core to what had happened to Shade while she and Chane led the guards on a wild chase. Wynn stepped in beside the table and, without greeting Brot’an, faced Ghassan.

  “How long will the imperial guards keep searching for us?”

  The domin settled back in his chair. “It will escalate, as your companions drew intense interest. At the moment, this does not matter, for while we are in here we are beyond finding.”

  “Guards not only hunt us.”

  At Osha’s sudden broken Numanese, Wynn swiveled enough to spot him standing beside the folding partition. Before she asked what he meant, his gaze shifted away from her, and his expression filled with anger.

  Wynn followed that gaze to the back of Brot’an’s chair.

  * * *

  Osha fought a wince as Wynn looked back at him, but he remained focused on that closest chair. It was hard to remain still while so smothered in his self-loathing and loathing for the greimasg’äh.

  “What?” Wynn asked quietly.

  Osha slipped into his own tongue. “Ask him,” he rasped, sounding almost like Chane.

  Wynn turned toward that nearest chair, but before she could ask anything . . .

  “The loyalists followed Magiere,” Brot’ân’duivé answered without leaning out into Osha’s sight.

  Osha looked to Wynn and saw anxiety beneath her calm olive-toned expression.

  “So the anmaglâhk really are here in the capital?” she finally asked.

  “What is this about?” Ghassan cut in.

  It was too much for Osha, and he was not relieved when Brot’ân’duivé explained. After that, Ghassan turned on Wynn.

  “You omitted telling me that your friends are hunted by assassins,” he accused. “It makes sense now, but you have no concept of the risks taken tonight by others who—”

  “I did tell you!” Wynn interrupted. “That first night you brought us here. Or at least I wondered . . . after you told us you’d seen two people at the palace who looked like Osha. These loyalists—that team of assassins—should have been left behind up north.”

  “More happened along the way,” Brot’ân’duivé said. “But the loyalists may no longer be a concern. I eliminated Dänvârfij this night.”

  “And what or who is that?” Ghassan demanded.

  Osha’s stomach clenched as the greimasg’äh explained dispassionately. Osha had not known Dänvârfij well, but even as less than friends they had been connected by death and loss in their lives.

  “Fréthfâre is a cripple,” Brot’ân’duivé continued, “and Léshil severely wounded Én’nish. Rhysís is the only able one left among three, and he will have to tend to the other two.”

  That last name struck Osha hard; it gave him a face out of memory for the one he had murdered.

  “Two . . . not three,” he whispered.

  Wynn’s attention turned to him, as did the domin’s. Even the greimasg’äh leaned out around the back of his chair, but it was Chane’s reaction that fixed Osha for an instant.

  The undead straightened with narrowed eyes. He glanced once at Wynn. When he looked back again to Osha, he slowly nodded.

  That Chane guessed and approved of what Osha had done did not help. When Osha looked away, his gaze met that of the greimasg’äh. He felt the sudden urge to add more scars to that old face, if he could.

  “We are waiting for the rest,” Brot’ân’duivé said.

  Osha kept to his own tongue rather than struggle with another in relating the least of what had happened . . . and why it had happened. Wynn watched him as the greimasg’äh translated for the others, and she looked at him with something between sadness and sympathy. Perhaps she knew how sick he felt inside.

  However, Osha expected at least the greimasg’äh to question him.

  Brot’ân’duivé turned out of sight, settling to face the domin’s puzzled frown. “Then only two remain, and they are ineffectual, thus removing any concern.”

  Osha hoped Wynn saw what else this meant.

  If loyalists were no longer a threat to Magiere, Léshil, and Chap, then the greimasg’äh’s presence was pointless. Osha bore enough guilt and regret over having left Leanâlhâm in that traitor’s care, though the others had watched over her.

  Ridding themselves of Brot’ân’duivé might amend that, if not the taint of what Osha had done this night.

  “Wynn . . .” Brot’ân’duivé said slowly. “You remained in Calm Seatt to seek another orb. So ultimate success or failure are the only reasons for you to have come here.”

  Wynn froze at the sudden change of topic, and silence hung for too long. Chane inched a little toward her slightly, shaking his head. Osha knew that warning was pointless.

  The greimasg’äh had not asked a question, so he had already guessed the truth.

  “Yes, we found another orb,” Wynn answered.

  * * *

  Brot’ân’duivé betrayed no emotion at all; Wynn’s answer was half of the reasoned assumptions he had already calculated. There was another orb within this place rather than hidden away like all others, and by count, a final one yet to be found. He half listened as she summarized the finding of the orb of Spirit.

  She finished, “We have it with us in—”

  “Shut up, Wynn!”

  At Léshil’s command from somewhere off behind Osha, Wynn twisted to face that direction. What she would have said or not mattered little to Brot’ân’duivé.

  The
orb was here.

  What mattered more was that whoever took possession of it might partly control the acquisition and use of the other three and the finding of the fifth. That was the true point to consider, and Léshil had grown cunning enough to know this.

  Brot’ân’duivé ignored the predictable argument that ensued somewhere behind his chair. It would break the moment Wynn countered Léshil with her own needs and plans. Brot’ân’duivé had grown concerned that this group was now too large, but other factors now weighed against changing this.

  He required only Léshil, though to keep the half-blood compliant might require Magiere as well. Then there was Chap, the only one present who knew the resting place of two other orbs. Guiding and controlling Léshil was the way to coerce the majay-hì. And for the fourth orb hidden with the dwarves in their underworld, Brot’ân’duivé needed to reinforce Wynn’s trust.

  “Leesil, lower your voice!” Wynn finally broke in. “There’s no point arguing over who has what and where. Not until we know why all of you were imprisoned.”

  * * *

  Ghassan listened as Leesil, whose name the two elves pronounced strangely, grudgingly recounted being captured. The half-breed and the other prisoners had been dragged to the domed audience chamber before Prince Ounyal’am.

  They had been more fortunate than they knew, for Ghassan had been present as well.

  In that chamber, they had been accused of mass murder. He now reasoned that the assassins who had done the actual killing, disguised as two shé’ith, had been present as the prisoners’ accusers. Most of these details, including some that no one else knew, were of little use at present to Ghassan.

  “A few sages were there and one of them panicked at seeing us,” Leesil added. “There was also an aging man, dressed in the same colors as the guards, who told the prince to have us locked up.”

  “That would be Counselor a’Yamin,” Ghassan added bitterly. “The sage in gray was High Premin Aweli-Jama.”

  Wynn’s attention shifted to him. “Your high premin was there?”

  Ghassan nodded curtly. “But not my high premin anymore.”

  “No trial and not much talk after that,” Leesil finished. “We were dragged away and locked up until tonight.”

  Wynn hesitated and then, “Why is Magiere . . . worse off than the rest of you?”

  Ghassan wanted to hear this as well, but the half-breed fell silent and hung his head. The condition of the “dhampir” was a grave concern. The only reason for this night’s risks was to gain control over someone who could track an undead.

  Wynn blinked rapidly and looked away . . . and downward. Ghassan traced her gaze to the huge gray dog who had followed her out of the bedchamber. When Wynn cringed, clenched her jaw, and then shuddered, Ghassan eyed the one called Chap.

  He knew that Wynn had some hidden way to communicate with Shade. At a guess, and by the way Wynn locked gazes with the gray one, the same held true between them. So what had Chap passed to Wynn just then?

  “Only by her screams,” Leesil whispered as if in answer to a different question than the one Wynn had asked. “That was all I had to know she was still alive . . . for so many days and nights.”

  Ghassan grew anxious still watching the gray majay-hì. It took little effort to quickly raise glyphs, signs, and sigils in his mind’s eye. Try as he might, he could not catch a single thought in the dog’s mind. When he turned that incantation upon Wynn, she had no true memories to glimpse concerning what Chap might have related. And the last one Ghassan focused upon . . .

  Leesil’s mind was overwhelmed with one vivid moment.

  A figure in a gray robe that scintillated softly with signs, symbols, and sigils filled Ghassan’s awareness. That someone had found the dhampir to seek information from her—and her alone. By what had been said or implied, prolonged interrogation in only thought had another purpose beyond gaining that information.

  She and her torment could be used as a way to force something out of one of the others.

  Before Ghassan could attempt to read more, Wynn stepped into the table’s edge and fixed on him.

  “What are you up to?” she asked.

  For that instant, she startled him.

  “Who helped you get them out?” she went on. “You start answering or—”

  “Or what?” he shot back, for his patience had thinned.

  When she stalled, he quickly raised another set of symbols and shapes in his mind’s eye. As he fixed those onto her surface thoughts, Chane stepped in behind her and dropped a hand on her shoulder.

  Wynn’s mental presence vanished from Ghassan’s awareness, and every sigil and sign he had raised vanished amid his shock.

  Chane’s other hand settled on the hilt of one sheathed sword. Wynn did not even glance away, as if this were all something familiar to her.

  “What in seven hells is going on?” Leesil demanded.

  When he tried to step in, Osha raised an arm to block him and nodded to Wynn. The black majay-hì struggled up, shifted away from the table, and stood near Chane, watching.

  “Chap?” Leesil asked. “Wynn?”

  Ghassan watched her, and she kept her eyes on him as she waved off the half-blood.

  “Answer me!” she demanded. “What do you know about the one who tortured Magiere? Chap says it was somehow done without touching her.”

  The last part was the most telling. None of them greatly concerned him, though he needed to regain control and steer their focus. Only the elder elf concerned him. That one faced him across the table, apparently relaxed but unblinking with his hands in his lap and hidden from sight.

  “Ghassan?” Wynn asked.

  Perhaps he should have told her sooner. She might have been useful here and now, but nothing could be done about it. Keeping an academic tone, he looked her straight in the eyes.

  “Do you recall me telling you that my sect had been guarding a prisoner?”

  “Yes.”

  How should he do this—slowly in hints or quickly for shock? “This prisoner has no corporeal body but vast arcane knowledge. It . . . He survives by entering and taking control of the living. The closest word for it in your language might be a . . . ‘specter.’”

  No one reacted or said anything at first.

  “How long have you known this?” Chane asked.

  Again, the answer required more information than Ghassan wished to share. Perhaps the overprotective vampire would be a better foil than Wynn, but Ghassan continued to address her directly.

  “My sect held him imprisoned for many, many years. Khalidah once served what you call the Ancient Enemy as the leader of a trio known in records as the Sâ’yminfiäl . . . the Masters of Frenzy. Others such as the dwarves of ancient times called them the Eaters of Silence.”

  All of Wynn’s ire faded from her oval face as her mouth fell open. Obviously part of what he related was familiar to her; he knew this and used it. She had uncovered much in her blundering and stubbornness, including those infamous texts she brought back from across the world, which had been seized by her own guild branch.

  “Your sect had this thing imprisoned?” she finally got out. “Now it’s loose . . . and you didn’t tell us? It will be hunting you, anyone with you, and—”

  “You were never in danger while with me,” Ghassan interrupted. “And Khalidah now has more desirable prey.” His impatience and frustration took hold. “The arrival of your foolish friends, and their own ignorance, drew the specter to where it most wanted to be: the imperial grounds. Any safeguards that I and mine placed there may no longer be enough!”

  The gray majay-hì rumbled and looked up, and Leesil immediately lowered his eyes to meet its gaze. Chap’s head then swiveled toward Wynn, and she looked to him as well.

  Ghassan was at a loss for what any of this meant as Wynn turned back to him.

  “How?” she asked. “Chap wants to know how you could have protected us.”

  Ghassan blinked at this phrasing as well as her p
oint of focus. Behind her, the undead’s gaze shifted between the others, one by one. Worse still, the elder elf had neither spoken nor moved, and Ghassan could not help a quick glance at Brot’an.

  He realized his mistake too late as someone gripped the back of his hair.

  “What are you doing?” Wynn shouted.

  Ghassan’s head wrenched back harder than he thought possible—and then forward and down. His forehead struck the tabletop, and everything blackened before his eyes.

  “Chane, stop!” Wynn cried.

  Ghassan barely kept his feet as he was ripped out of the chair and whipped in an arch. Snarls erupted from both dogs amid shouts from others. Before he could place any voice, he crashed face-first into a bookcase. His cheekbone struck a shelf, stunning him again, and the grip on his hair shifted quickly to his neck as texts tumbled over his head.

  Something pointed, cold, and hard settled at the back of his neck.

  “Do not move,” Chane hissed, “or look at anyone . . . or I will ram this blade into your skull!”

  * * *

  Wynn turned frantic amid the chaos. She was about to rush at Chane when Leesil grabbed her arm, Shade ducked in her way, and Chap lunged around her.

  “What is that thing doing?” Leesil snarled.

  No doubt he was referring to Chane, and he’d already pulled the one winged blade still strapped on his thigh. Brot’an was on his feet, and then Chane’s voice pulled her attention.

  “So this undead, Khalidah, is inside whoever interrogated Magiere. How?”

  Chane had his older, shorter blade’s tip pressed against Ghassan’s neck, but the domin didn’t answer him.

  “Chane, that’s enough,” Wynn admonished. “Back away and—”

  Be silent and let him finish!

  Wynn shuddered and dropped her gaze, though Chap had already turned his head back to Chane and Ghassan. She choked back her anger and sense of betrayal.

  Even though Leesil had drawn a weapon, neither he nor Chap had attempted to stop Chane. And they hated him so much that either would have used any excuse to go at him.

  What was happening here?

  Listen to him . . . carefully.