“These interlopers are a danger,” Aupsha insisted.
Everyone else appeared to ignore her.
Wynn dropped—almost fell—to her knees beside Shade and rested her hand on the dog’s back. For all the talking going on in this room, few people seemed to be speaking to one another.
“You asked me your questions, Jausiff,” Wynn said clearly. “May I do the same?”
His eyes glittered. “By all means.”
“You called Nikolas here to help with the duke, but you didn’t want him to see the texts you’d requested. Why?”
Jausiff’s eyes narrowed once again. “How do you know that I ...” He trailed off, perhaps realizing the answer before he finished the question. “Hawes showed you my letter. Who are you that a premin of Metaology would trust you this much ... send you here?”
“Someone she felt was qualified to understand whatever is happening.”
Jausiff walked to a nearby cabinet and opened it quickly to remove something from inside. He returned holding a little cork-capped glass jar smaller than his palm. This he handed to Osha, who just stared at it.
“Put some on her throat,” Jausiff instructed, gesturing quickly to Wynn.
As Osha knelt by Wynn and fiddled to open the jar, the old sage glanced at the duchess and nodded, though he still ignored Aupsha, who watched everything warily. Wynn flinched when Osha applied the salve to her cut, but she felt a rush of hope. Would Jausiff finally be candid?
Nikolas could no longer contain himself. “Father? You called me home, telling me you were ill! Then you said you wished me to ‘help’ with Karl, but except for Sherie, I don’t see anyone trying to help him.”
“Maybe your father is trying to help in his own way,” Wynn interjected, and apparently having gained some cooperation, she turned to her own questions. “Why those specific texts? I know it has something to do with the duke’s behavior or with what’s happening in the villages and the surrounding land.”
Jausiff folded his hands behind his back. “Yes, in the villages, I saw things ... unnatural. Not a simple sickness among the people, but ... other things in the land around the keep.”
“Many dead, dying trees,” Osha interrupted. “Hare ... with five leg.”
“When did you first notice?” Wynn asked Jausiff.
“About a moon ago.”
“And when did you first see changes in the duke?”
“Half a moon before ... perhaps earlier,” Sherie answered this time, her noble sternness fading. “He went out one night, claiming to settle a fence line dispute in an outlying village and that he’d spend the night there. I thought nothing of it, but when he returned late the following day ... the Suman guards came with him. He wouldn’t say why or from where, but it was eight more days—nights—when he took to wearing gloves. He looked exhausted, if and when he was up at all during the day. Later, when I went to his room past supper for some issue, I found it empty. I checked every night after that, and he was never there. I would guess that had begun long before I noticed.”
“Where he go?” Osha asked.
The duchess slowly shook her head. “Somewhere in the lower levels. All the stores below were moved to the main floor, though he never gave a reason. After the Suman guards appeared, no one was allowed down there but Karl and them.”
Jausiff took over from there. “Both the duke and the effects in the surrounding land are worsening.”
Wynn knew that the time frame between changes in the duke and the land was too close for coincidence. Obviously the others here shared this conclusion. Something else too disturbing for coincidence struck Wynn.
Last night Shade had gone berserk in claiming that a Fay had manifested somewhere near or inside the keep. Wynn looked to Jausiff, and without warning ...
“What were you doing in the back passage last night?” she asked. “What was that device you were carrying?”
She knew this might cause confusion and worse, and she wasn’t wrong. Sherie and Nikolas both started in surprise and asked at the same time, “What is she talking about?”
Aupsha hissed and stepped in on Jausiff.
A string of words erupted from her in that unknown language, and Jausiff snapped back at her in kind.
Wynn didn’t know what they quarreled about and only guessed that Aupsha did not want the questions answered. However, Wynn knew enough to let the initial outburst pass, and even as Osha rose tensely, she placed her hand on Shade’s back.
“Shade,” Wynn whispered, and an image rose in her mind.
It was so intense that she clenched her eyes shut.
Wynn found herself running through a dim cave more swiftly than she could have. And her hands—the hands—pumping in rhythm with her strides had long, slender fingers with dark skin.
The memory Shade had caught was from Aupsha.
An agonized sound of pain escaped Wynn’s—Aupsha’s—mouth.
Dark-skinned, similarly dressed people—bodies—were strewn about the floor. Some had their throats torn open or their heads at severe angles from broken necks. All of their eyes stared blankly out between limp eyelids.
Wynn—Aupsha—cried out in pain again.
She slowed, looking to the cave’s rear, where a heavy door appeared to have been shattered outward from within. Just inside that smaller space was an empty pedestal with a round hole in the center.
Inside the memory, Aupsha screamed as she rushed through the door.
Someone lay beyond the pedestal inside the small chamber. At the elderly man’s moan, she rushed over, falling to her knees. His abdomen and light cotton shift had been torn open. He was covered in his own blood and would not live much longer.
Wynn—Aupsha—scooted closer to cradle the old man’s head. His features were Suman, as was his hair, but he was darker than any Suman she had seen. Perhaps he was of mixed heritage. His long and curly chin beard was fully gray. When he whispered in his own tongue, Wynn picked out meanings in the words through Aupsha’s remembrance ... or perhaps it was something in the way Shade passed this memory.
“Father,” Aupsha sobbed.
“It is gone,” he whispered, looking up at her in panic, though he struggled to keep his dark eyes open. “After so many hundreds of years, the artifact has been taken from us.... We have failed our sect’s sacred duty to safeguard it.” When he coughed, blood seeped over his thick lips. “Get a compass piece and find it.... You must find it ... and bring it back!”
“Who took it?” she asked, weeping openly. “Father, who did this?”
The old man went still in her arms.
Wynn jerked her hand from Shade.
All of Aupsha’s grief and anger threatened to overwhelm her ... and then came her own fears, her suspicions, and she grew sick inside.
“What was stolen from your people?” Wynn asked before she even opened her eyes. “What is this ... compass ... you used?”
The chamber had gone silent, and when Wynn’s eyes opened, everyone was looking at her.
The curved knife reappeared suddenly in Aupsha’s hand as she charged. Wynn cringed back as Shade lunged outward and Osha stepped in with his own dagger somehow in hand.
“Hold your place!” the duchess shouted.
Aupsha barely hesitated, but it was enough for Jausiff to step in and grab her arm.
“Stop this!” he shouted. “Remember that you came to me for help ... not I to you!”
Aupsha turned on him, and Wynn reached out for Shade, but the dog wouldn’t retreat. Neither would Osha.
“You will keep your place,” Sherie ordered Aupsha. “Or you are gone! Now, what is happening here?”
Jausiff remained fixed on his tall, dark attendant, though he raised a hand to the duchess to hold her off. “I promised to help you,” he said to Aupsha, “and you trusted me once you learned who and what I was ... a sage, a preserver of knowledge.” He pointed at Wynn. “So is this young woman. Though I had reason to doubt her at first, I believe she might be able to assist. Enough nonsense!”