Wynn lay under the covers in the far bed of her guest room and no longer tried to sleep. Her mind was too filled with worries, self-recriminations, and mysteries. Huddled close for warmth, Shade lay beside her, and though she tried to sort out her tangled thoughts, Wynn’s eyelids finally drooped. Without warning a flash of dizziness and nausea welled inside of her.
It felt as if she’d mistakenly invoked her mantic sight. A yelp echoed in the room as something thrashed and pushed off the bed.
The straw mattress bucked, and Wynn lurched upright.
The sudden movement threatened to make her vomit potatoes and carrots all over the bedclothes. She clamped a hand over her mouth and reached out for Shade. The dog was gone, but a mewling growl rose in the pitch-black room. Wynn fumbled for the cold-lamp crystal left on the near table, and she rubbed it for friction.
Soft light from the crystal filled the room.
Shade stood in the room’s center, between the beds, with her hackles raised and her ears flattened as she faced away toward the door. But she quickly turned—and kept turning—and looking all ways.
“What?” Wynn barely got out before her dinner threatened to rise again.
Shade twisted her head to look directly at Wynn. —Fay!—
Wynn came fully awake, scooting back up the bed into the room’s corner. She groped for her staff nearby, not that it would do anything for her, but it was all that she had.
Sniffing and snarling, Shade raced around the room, and Wynn looked everywhere, not even knowing what to search for. From what she remembered of the two times she’d faced a Fay manifestation, and from what little Chap had told her of his communion with his kin, a Fay—the Fay—had to inhabit something physical in order to come at her.
And the dizziness and sickness would not stop.
—Wynn ... stay ... hide ... here—
Shade rushed the door, rose with her forepaws braced against it, and clamped her jaws on its handle. She tried to twist it by rotating her whole head.
“Wait!” Wynn choked out, and stumbled across the room to help.
Shade whirled off the door and charged. Both the dog’s forepaws hit Wynn’s chest and knocked her over the nearer bed’s foot, and Shade lunged in on her with a snarl.
—Stay—
The door suddenly opened.
“What’s all this—?”
Shade spun with a snap of jaws as Wynn spotted a guard peeking in through the open door; one hand was pressed against his stomach. His eyes widened at the sight of Shade, and his other hand released the door’s outer handle to reach for his sword.
Before Wynn could grab for Shade, the dog rammed the guard’s legs. The man toppled over Shade as she bolted through the door. Wynn struggled over the bed’s foot.
“Shade!” she cried as she stumbled for the door and then slowed as the world swam before her eyes. She stepped through the opening, and the whole passage seemed to suddenly burst with sight and sound in her head.
The second guard came weaving from the passage’s back end; his sword was drawn, but he hit the side wall with his shoulder. Chane and Osha burst out of their room, and then Osha gripped the door’s frame as if he needed to grab something to stay on his feet.
“What is happening?” Chane rasped, spotting Wynn.
She wasn’t certain, but all of the color had drained from Chane’s irises. Shade raced by, perhaps trying to reach the passage’s back end. Chane saw the approaching guard try to step in the dog’s way with his sword raised.
“Get away from her!”
Chane’s broken voice grated in Wynn’s ears as he lashed out, fingers curled like claws. The guard’s body lurched backward as his feet left the floor. Osha sank down against the next door’s frame as Shade darted up the passage.
Only Chane appeared unaffected ... except for his eyes.
Dizziness overwhelmed Wynn. She collapsed as the passage vanished from her sight.
Unbidden thoughts rose in her mind: memories of childhood, growing up at the guild ... sailing with Domin Tilswith to a new continent ... the first time she saw Chane ... the long trek homeward with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap ... Shade’s appearance in the night streets of Calm Seatt ...
Images kept coming, one dying under the next. This was nothing like Chap or Shade calling up memories. It felt as though pieces of her were being torn away. Terror made her try to scream out....
“Chane!”
Wynn never even heard her own voice as her mind went dark and silent.
Sau’ilahk slammed his solidified hand down on the duke’s grip and the raised key. The force drove the spike back into the orb. All of the scintillating and blinding light escaping the orb vanished from the chamber.
Karl Beáumie collapsed and lay still upon the floor, though his eyes had not fully closed.
Sau’ilahk felt emptied ... hungry ... starving ... and as if dark dormancy might swallow him whole in the night instead of at dawn. When he looked at his own hand, wrapped in shreds of black cloth, it flickered, with the stone below showing through from one moment to the next.
It took all that remained of him to crouch over the duke and not feed upon him right then. He did sense a spark of life still within Karl Beáumie’s limp form. Relief flooded through Sau’ilahk, followed by anger and sharpening hunger. What a fool, to risk everything out of impatience born of fear!
Sau’ilahk examined his prone subject more carefully. The duke’s right hand was further twisted, the talons longer, and misbegotten scales and wisps of fur and tiny feathers had spread farther up his forearm. Would the glove even fit anymore to hide such effects?
Sau’ilahk turned for the door and drew close so that his conjured voice might vibrate in the air beyond it.
“Hazh’thüm, assist me.”
No one entered.
Sau’ilahk tried to solidify his hand to grab the door’s handle. His effort failed. He had been drained when the orb had been fully opened, perhaps in the wrong way. And so he slipped straight through the door.
In the outer chamber of six doors, he found Hazh’thüm and another of his Suman guards trying to push themselves up off the floor. Hazh’thüm was gasping, and his eyelids fluttered.
Sau’ilahk wondered how far the orb’s effects had been felt.
“Get up!”
“Master,” Hazh’thüm choked. “Forgive me.”
“The duke requires care. Take him to his room and avoid being seen, if possible.”
Hazh’thüm shuffled to the door, fumbled as he unlocked it, and then entered. But Sau’ilahk remained, watching the second guard. That one still braced against a far door as he gained his feet, and then lowered his eyes before his master.
What was his name again? It did not matter.
Sau’ilahk struggled under intense hunger and tried not to fade from the world into dormancy. He needed life’s energies if he was to remain for the night.... He needed to feed.
Osha had seldom been truly frightened in his life. But waves of fear washed through him beneath dizziness, sickness, and unwanted memories of his entire life flooding his head. He had lost control of his body as everything darkened before his eyes and left only those flashes of his past rising into his awareness to then dissipate like smoke in the dark.
For anyone with his training as an anmaglâhk, to be this helpless was worse than anything imaginable.
As suddenly as it started, the horrifying sensation ceased.
Osha found himself lying on the passage’s cold stone floor as his head began to clear.
“Wynn!” someone rasped.
After that the passage was quiet.
Osha did not even hear the majay-hì snarling as he pushed himself up. There stood Chane with his back turned as he lifted Wynn’s limp form from the floor as if she weighed nothing.