And there stood the young duke dressed all in black.
His pale face glistened as if from a cold sweat, but his ringed eyes fixed coldly on Wynn. He latched a hand on the doorframe as if to steady himself. There were others—three Suman guards and two keep guards with readied crossbows—standing close behind him.
Chane rose very slowly, waving Nikolas farther away from the door.
“My lord?” Wynn said.
Duke Beáumie ignored her as his glare roamed the small room: first to Osha, then to Chane, and lastly to Nikolas. Some of his anger wavered at the sight of the young sage, and he dropped his gaze for an instant before he returned it to Wynn, and his expression hardened again.
“I have been unwell,” he said, “and have just awoken to be informed of your invasion into a restricted area last night. You will relinquish all weapons and remain confined to this one room until further notice.”
It took a breath or two before Wynn answered. “The duchess lifted all limitations on us this morning and removed the guards. We would never do anything without—”
“My sister is not in charge here,” the duke interrupted, and he looked beyond her at Chane. “Turn over your weapons.”
Shade began to growl softly, and Osha slipped his right hand behind his back.
Chane’s dwarven-crafted longsword and his makeshift shortsword were sheathed and leaning against the wall beyond his bed’s foot. His first instinct was to lunge for them, but Wynn was too close to the door. As the duke shifted to one side in the doorway, one guard pointed his crossbow at Wynn.
“Don’t,” Nikolas whispered, stepping in behind her.
Chane did not know whether that was a warning for Wynn or someone else. He could not risk either of them being killed by his own attempt to charge the door. Raising both hands in plain sight, he carefully sidestepped to the bed’s end and reached for his swords.
“Give him your bow and quiver,” he told Osha.
Osha turned a scowl on him.
“The bow and the quiver,” Chane repeated with emphasis.
Osha’s expression turned briefly confused, and then it cleared as he nodded once. As long as none of the guards searched any of them, they would not find the dagger Osha kept hidden beneath the back of his tunic. That would leave one weapon in their possession. But after that brief hesitation, the guards with crossbows forced Wynn back and stepped inside. One aimed at Osha and the other at Chane himself. A third, a Suman, stepped in to collect all visible weapons.
“Am I to be confined as well?” Nikolas asked.
The young duke would not look at him. “Just for now ... Nik. I’ll ... I’ll come for you later.”
The guards retreated, and the duke himself closed the door. At the rattle of a heavy key ring outside, the door’s lock bolt clacked home in the stone frame.
Wynn spun around, fury and frustration on her oval olive face. As Chane was about to speak, Osha put a finger to his lips. The elf rushed to the wall shared with the next room, Wynn’s, and put his ear to the stone as he closed his eyes and listened.
Chane did not need to do the same as he let hunger rise to sharpen his senses. He heard the next door down the passage open, and then movement in Wynn’s room. There was a rough clatter of objects being dropped, and possibly the creak of the bed’s frame. Then the door was closed again, and footfalls faded down the passage to the stairs.
“They put our weapons,” Osha said, “in room for Wynn.”
Chane merely nodded.
“My sun-crystal staff is in there,” Wynn said quietly, as if no one else here was aware of that. “What are we going to do?”
At least she had looked to him and not that elf.
“We will think of something,” Chane answered.
Sau’ilahk rose from dormancy to manifest like a black shadow in the center of the small room that housed the orb. He was alone, and his normally forced patience was thin tonight.
He did not know whether Karl had recovered from having opened the orb fully for an instant. The last time he had seen the young duke, the man was being carried upstairs in a state of unconsciousness.
Sau’ilahk slid nearer the door and raised his conjured voice of twisted air to be heard outside of it.
“Hazh’thüm?”
No answer came, not even the sound of the door being unlocked. Three of his Suman servants were outside at all times. Perhaps those present were reluctant to answer after finding one of their own drained and dead following the duke’s impetuous mistake.
Sau’ilahk slipped straight through the wall into the outer chamber of six doors, three to each side. All three guards stiffened, one back-stepping, as all dropped their eyes in obeisance. Hazh’thüm was not among them.
“Where is your captain?”
“With the duke, my lord,” the closest answered. “There have been developments.”
“What has happened now?”
“We do not know.”
“Is the duke awake, recovered?”
“Yes, my lord.”
That brought some relief. Sau’ilahk would have despaired at needing another suitable candidate and having to begin all over again. He drifted back through the wall without a further word to his servants and waited in the orb’s room. His patience grew as thin as his incorporeal presence.
Finally the familiar sound of booted footsteps rose outside, and the door opened.
The young duke entered, pale to the point of being ashen, with shadows like faint bruises beneath his eyes. The glove on his misshapen right hand showed signs of strain along its seams as he closed the door with his other hand.
“This visiting sage and her guards are more than they pretend to be,” he announced with labored effort.
The last thing Sau’ilahk wanted to hear of was Wynn Hygeorht’s meddling, and he no longer needed his air-conjured voice to ask,
What has happened?
“Last night her swordsman was caught in the passage outside the upper door to this lower level. The Lhoin’na with him evaded capture ... and later returned to his quarters on his own.” The duke’s voice then edged with rage and panic. “How could they know where to go?”
Sau’ilahk’s anxiety sharpened. He had not expected Chane Andraso to get so close so quickly.
Where are they now?
“I’ve locked them all in a single room on the third floor. They have no weapons and are under guard.”
Sau’ilahk pondered for a moment and then drifted closer to the orb.
They no longer matter for the moment, my lord. We may proceed.
The duke stepped closer as doubt rose in his features. “They do not concern you?”
Not as they are.
At that, Karl Beáumie breathed heavily as if finishing a hard run. “Yes, you are right, and I will keep them locked away.” His voice took on a manic edge. “We are so close now that ... that I can feel it. Death drifts farther from me each night.”
Yes, my lord. We are close to the end.
But Sau’ilahk’s thoughts belied those soothing words. Wynn Hygeorht would not sit idle. Chane Andraso had already come much too close. And the majay-hì, that anathema to any undead, could not be allowed to sense anything.
The duke had shown himself to be unstable and unpredictable, although last night’s rush had not destroyed his body.
Sau’ilahk knew that he must act quickly, or what he desired most could yet be stolen from him.
Come, my lord. Take up the key and let us begin.
Chane grew more desperate as time crept by. But to escape this room, he would have to break the door. In doing so he would lose the element of surprise.