Sau’ilahk panicked. How much more downfall could come atop a missed opportunity? He had heard Wynn call out Chane’s name, so what had the undead been doing out here? He could not afford to have Wynn delayed—or arrested. Perhaps she and hers were finally prepared to move on, out of that cursed forest to where he could track her once again.
The very thought that he would have to save her burned Sau’ilahk within as he skimmed the grass and blinked once more through dormancy.
Wynn looked out across the night plain as Ore-Locks hefted Chane over his shoulder. The dwarf headed toward the tree line, but she didn’t follow him yet. Shade was still out there on the plain.
“The dog knows where to find you,” Ore-Locks whispered.
He was right, and she couldn’t afford to call out for Shade.
Another shriek broke the quiet, and Wynn stiffened.
Even Ore-Locks spun about, staring along the tree line, as the sound of something heavy hit the earth in the distance. The rhythm of hoofbeats broke amid the frightened whinny of horses. Thrashing in the grass followed as someone shouted and cursed in Elvish.
The riders had stalled, run afoul of something, but what? That thought had barely finished when Wynn heard Ore-Locks snarl under his breath.
“Be still!”
Chane was struggling, clawing at the dwarf’s back.
Wynn rushed toward them, but before she reached out, Ore-Locks dropped his staff again. He latched both hands on Chane’s torso and heaved. Chane hit the nearest tree trunk, and the impact twisted him midfall.
His shoulder struck the earth first, and his arms and legs whipped down across the base of large tree roots. Almost immediately, he began clawing the earth, as if he hadn’t felt the impact. He couldn’t seem to get up, and he started crawling toward Wynn.
Ore-Locks closed on Chane, cocking one clenched fist. Wynn threw herself onto the dwarf’s back, wrapping her small hands over his face to obscure his sight.
“Enough,” she said directly into his ear.
When Ore-Locks froze, Wynn slid off his back and ducked around him to drop beside Chane.
Chane wasn’t lying at the dwarf’s feet. He was still trying to crawl off and kept whispering something as Wynn grabbed him, trying to pin him down.
“Flowers ... my flowers.”
Wynn looked to the grass plain. Chane hadn’t been trying to crawl to her. A memory of white petals came to her.
“What have you done?” she breathed.
Magiere had once been seized by the an’Cróan while in their land and taken before their council of elders to be tried as an undead. Fréthfâre, who had acted as prosecutor, had pulled a vicious trick in front of everyone. She’d held up the white flowers and proclaimed ...
“Anasgiah—the Life Shield. Prepared by a healer in tea or food, it sustains the dying, so they might yet be saved from death. It is vibrant with life itself, and feeds the life of those who need it most.”
Wynn remembered every word like it was yesterday, for then Fréthfâre had slapped those flowers across Magiere’s face. Magiere was not an undead, but her father had been one, and she shared some of their nature through him. When the flowers struck her, their effect was so damaging that she’d nearly collapsed.
Chane was a true undead, and he’d touched the same white petals. Why?
His hand clamped down on Wynn’s thigh. She felt its icy chill through her pants, and though he tried to squeeze, his fingers convulsed too much.
“Flowers ... for you,” was all he said.
His eyes closed, and he stopped moving.
“Chane?” Wynn whispered as she shook him. “Chane!”
She looked wildly over his body lying facedown in the dirt. Was he gone? Had the anasgiah finished him? How was she to know with no way to check for ... someone who wasn’t alive?
“Move aside,” Ore-Locks said, stepping in over Chane. “I will bring him, but we must leave—now!”
Chane’s body flinched at the sound of Ore-Locks’s voice. Wynn gasped, not realizing she’d been holding her breath.
“Get him deeper into the trees,” she whispered to Ore-Locks. “I’ll come in a moment.”
“No, you will—”
“Go! Now!”
Wynn ran onto the field, crouching low. All of this was mixed up in Chane’s obsession with her. Whatever purpose he had for those flowers might’ve cost him even more in his ignorance. When she reached the place where he’d fallen, she barely spotted the dropped flowers in the dark. They were crushed by his fall.
She spun on her haunches, spreading the grass as she crept about, looking for more. As she saw another dome of white and grabbed hold of its roots, a rumble from behind pulled her around.
Shade stood there, jowls still quivering.
“Where have you been?” Wynn whispered.
She immediately wondered if Shade had been scouting for the patrollers. There was no time to ask as another notion came to her. She took Shade’s snout in her hand and tried to remember useful images to pass as she spoke.
“Riders are coming. Lead them away. Then find me.” She released Shade. “Go!”
Shade rumbled once and took off through the dark.
Wynn ripped out the dome of flowers, roots and all, and ran for the trees.
Sau’ilahk remained far off, uncertain if his ploy had worked. As much as he had wanted to take the chance to feed, he had not. He had only slipped through the dark and nestled in the grass along the riders’ path. When the horses cantered nearer, moving too quick to see or sense him, he lashed his arms through the lead one’s legs.
It had screamed and fallen instantly, and he had blinked away before its rider hit the earth. When he rematerialized, he could see the three elves moving about in confusion. It was not long before they regained their wits and the horse recovered, but it was longer still until they gathered themselves and continued on.
They reined in short of the place where he had first spotted Chane. He thought he saw one of them point back the way they had come. They remained there, their horses stamping the grass, and Sau’ilahk finally risked rising to look.
Back along the way the riders had come, something raced away that left a trail of whipping grass. Not one of the riders took chase, though neither did they race on toward where Wynn had vanished.
For the second night in a row, Wynn stood in a room while Chane lay worse than broken and unconscious. Shade had barely caught up before they reached the inn, and now sat poised near the door.
It hadn’t taken much for Wynn to get Ore-Locks to leave the room. Perhaps he thought Chane was finished and no longer a concern to his own goals. But Wynn saw the occasional shift of Chane’s closed eyes, and the intermittent twitch of his one unmarred hand.
From what little Wynn knew of the ways of the Noble Dead, Chane didn’t appear to be in true dormancy. She couldn’t stop staring at his face.
Dull black squiggling lines like veins ran through his other hand, up his arm, and into the same side of his throat and face. She’d found more across his chest on the same side, as if something had wormed through him just beneath his pale skin. He was so cold all over, and she couldn’t think of any way to help him.
She carefully wrapped the flowers and stowed them in her own pack. She thought again of Fréthfâre’s words that anasgiah could hold off death. Had Chane inferred this from scant notes in her journals and made the connection when he saw the flowers?
Wynn realized why he’d wanted the flowers so badly ... for her.
Chane suddenly gagged and rolled onto his side. She pushed back several strands of hair sticking to his eyelids. She let out an exhausted breath, sick with worry. This all had to stop, one way or another.