Child of a Dead God (56 page)
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, naïve 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’kän 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’kän’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 Sgäile 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’kän 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’kän 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.
Li’kän stood still as ice on the platform before the bridge.
Magiere backed away toward the tunnel.
The orb had sustained Li’kän for centuries, and without it, that ancient thing would soon hunger again. Magiere remembered Li’kän lifting the iron bar from the wall doors, her frail body barely straining with the effort.
“We haven’t found Chane yet,” Leesil argued.
“It doesn’t matter—just go!”
Leesil headed into the tunnel. As Magiere followed, she saw blood matting the fur on Chap’s neck and the dark stain on Sgäile’s cowl and vestment.
“It is a clean cut,” he said without slowing. “I will dress it later.”
They couldn’t stop, not with Li’kän still free behind them. Whatever held the undead back, Magiere wasn’t about to wait and see if it lasted. She felt little relief when they passed the last skeleton-filled hollows of the tunnel and approached the parted stone doors. She desperately needed her strength to last for one more task. Magiere stepped out behind the others into the dark library.
Wynn was kneeling next to Osha but gazing blankly at the floor. Such sadness lingered on her face, but it vanished when she looked up at all of them. Her eyes locked on the orb as Magiere crouched to gently set it down.
Magiere turned immediately, throwing her weight into one of the stone doors.
“Leesil!” she grunted, and he came in beside her. Sgäile joined them as well.
The door barely moved at first, and Magiere wished she had her hunger again.
Finally, the bottom edge grated along the floor. It took longer to close the other one, and both Sgäile and Leesil’s faces glistened with sweat by the time it shut.
The iron beam still lay on the floor.
Realization passed across both Sgäile’s and Leesil’s faces, followed by doubt. Sgäile had only one good arm and couldn’t be doing well with his wounded shoulder.
“One end at a time,” he said. “And you must get it off the floor before we can assist you.”
Magiere took hold of the beam’s end. In place of hunger she tried to find fury, remembering her mother dying in bed. She thrust upward with her legs.
“Now!” Magiere grunted, as the beam’s end reached her waist.
“Where is Li’kän?” Wynn asked.
Leesil and Sgäile ducked in, bracing one shoulder each beneath the beam.
They all heaved, pushing up with their legs, and Magiere’s arms began to tremble. As Leesil and Sgäile pressed upward, she poured all the strength she could summon into one last thrust.
The beam grated over the stone bracket of the closest door. As it crested the bracket’s top, Magiere shouted, “Get back!”
Leesil and Sgäile ducked clear as she let go.
The beam dropped, and a dull clang echoed through the library as it settled. Leesil bent over, panting. Sgäile wavered on his feet and was breathing shallow and fast.
“Where is Li’kän?” Wynn repeated.
Magiere slumped against the stone door. When Li’kän’s hunger returned, it would grow into starvation, and they couldn’t let her loose into the world.
“She can’t leave this place,” Magiere panted. “Ever.”
Wynn stood up, but Leesil cut in before she could speak.
“Did Chane come out?”
Wynn swiveled toward him. Her mouth opened, then closed as she glanced toward the path around the ends of the bookcases.
“Yes,” she finally answered. “But he left. He is not in the castle.”
Leesil groaned in frustration. “You don’t know that. Chap, see if you can sense him.”
Chap growled, loping off along the row of bookcases.
Magiere glanced toward the iron beam’s other end still resting on the floor. Leesil and Sgäile were spent, and she didn’t feel any better. But they had to finish.
Li’kän must never leave this place.
“What was that thing?” Leesil suddenly panted out.
Magiere shook her head, not because she didn’t know, but rather that she didn’t want to think about it.
“An undead,” she sighed. “That’s all I felt, but worse than any other . . . I could barely stand it.”
“Not Li’kän,” Leesil said. “In the light . . . what was that misshapen serpent . . . horned snake . . . whatever tried to swallow us?”
Magiere stared at him, baffled by what he said. Chap loped back into sight, coming up beside Wynn. The dogged huffed once for “yes.”
Wynn’s mouth tightened. “As I told you, Chane is gone.”
Magiere turned back to Leesil in puzzlement.
“I didn’t see anything in the light,” she said.
Sgäile shook his head. “I saw nothing, just light too bright to look into.”
Leesil straightened, his sweating face gone blank.
“How you could miss it?” He glared at everyone in disbelief. “It could’ve swallowed the whole platform. It had teeth instead of fangs, and rows of horns taller than you, and scales all over its face and snout. Its coils were turning all over the cavern!”
“Coils?” Magiere whispered.
She hadn’t seen a serpent’s head—just the coils in her waking dream, and the sense of an undead all around her . . . within her.
“Don’t look at me like that!” Leesil snapped. “I know what I saw. Those coils were taller than two men . . . maybe three!”
“No,” Magiere said. “I didn’t see—”
“Fay?” Wynn whispered.
Magiere stared dumbly at the sage.
Wynn knelt beside Chap, looking into his eyes. “He says he sensed a Fay. Not all of them together, as when they come to him. Just one alone . . . cold . . . malicious.”
“It was an undead!” Magiere snapped.
Wynn ignored her and frowned at Leesil. “You couldn’t have seen . . . what you say. Maybe you heard or read something and the shadows played tricks on you.”
“No!” Leesil snapped. “We were practically blinded, there was so much light.”
Magiere was so tired, she didn’t care anymore what anyone had seen.
Wynn shook her head at Leesil. “I can only guess, but it is not real— only a myth. Even less, just a metaphysical emblem, a
wêurm
or—”
wêurm
or—”
“What are you babbling about now?” Leesil growled.
“It is Numanese, my language,” Wynn growled back, “for a type of dragon.”
Chap snarled and lunged between all of them.
Wynn flinched. “Stop shouting at me! We heard you the first time—a Fay!”
The sage’s anger vanished when she spotted blood-matted fur on his neck, and she reached for him.
Sgäile’s angry voice startled Magiere. “Enough talk! We must bar the doors!”
She turned wearily along the tilted beam to grab its other end. But Chap’s and Leesil’s claims of what they’d experienced below—what either had seen or felt—ate at her.
One had sensed a Fay, and the other had seen a dragon, while she had felt the presence of an undead.
It was nonsense, nothing but the madness of this place. Leesil and Chap were wrong.
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