Wynn sat on the end of Osha’s bed nearest the door. Her chin rested in her hands with her elbows propped on her knees. If there were more than two guards posted outside, the chance of injury to her—before Chane could clear a path—was too high.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“That I wish I could see out into the passage ... or into the next room to know if our weapons are truly there.” He thought he had heard them dropped in there, but he wanted to be certain.
“Weapons are there,” Osha stated flatly where he leaned against the wall. He had not moved since listening to the guards enter Wynn’s room.
Wynn looked up at Chane. “Do you want me to try?”
The question confused him at first and then he understood. “No! Even one use of your mantic sight has always left you incapacitated.”
“I’m better.”
“Twice is foolish!”
Shade rose from where she lay, sat before Wynn, and growled at her. Clearly the dog agreed with him.
“Only way,” Osha butted in. “She can do.”
Chane turned on him. “You do not know anything about it!”
“I know her,” Osha added, stepping away from the wall.
Before Chane could think of putting the elf down ...
“Stop it, all of you!” Wynn ordered, even grabbing Shade by the muzzle as she fixed on Chane. “I only need a moment, maybe two, to get the count and position of the guards, and maybe glimpse where our weapons and my staff are. If there are too many out in the passage, then nothing is lost anyway. And it’s better than just sitting here!”
Beyond the far bed—Chane’s bed—Nikolas silently eyed everyone, though his gaze flinched away when Chane looked over.
No one spoke for too long, and Wynn pushed her way around Shade to head for the door.
Both Chane and Osha started after her for differing reasons.
“No,” Osha said before Chane could, and the elf pointed to the room’s front corner at the foot of the first bed. “Best—short—to look from passage to room.”
That was not what Chane would have said, and he wanted to put Osha down right then. Wynn got in his way as she ducked back around the bed and crawled atop it to the corner.
Shade started growling again, but Chane knew it would not matter.
“Shade, enough!” Wynn snapped over her shoulder. “I don’t have a choice.” And she began tracing with a finger atop the bed.
“What are you doing?” Nikolas asked.
Chane found that the young sage had crept closer, not flinching now as he watched. No one answered Nikolas, and the sooner this was over, the better.
Wynn scooted forward over whatever she had traced upon the bed. At another pass of her finger around herself, she closed her eyes.
Nothing happened at first, and then she gagged.
Chane hated this, but he did not touch her yet. He only stepped around Shade for a better angle to see.
Wynn opened her eyes and shuddered as she peered at the wall between the room and the passage outside. Her head turned slowly, as if she followed something along the wall. Then she stopped, her sight line aimed roughly toward the passage’s back end.
“Two guards ... keep guards,” she whispered, and then swallowed hard as if choking something down. “Both outside our door ... with crossbows.”
She turned slowly the other way until Chane could no longer see her eyes. She stalled, then wobbled, and Chane almost rushed in. Wynn caught herself with one hand as her head turned further, and she faced the corner of the wall between their current room and hers.
“Bow ... quiver ... swords ... are ...”
Chane heard her gag, though she just sat there, facing the wall.
Then she began to topple back.
“Wynn?” Osha almost shouted, reaching for her.
Chane leaped onto the bed and dropped an instant before Wynn fell back across his knees and thighs. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth was slack.
“Wynn!” he rasped.
Her eyelids did not even flutter.
Sau’ilahk pushed Karl Beáumie longer and harder than ever before.
A quiver ran down the young duke’s arm to the deformed hand gripping the key, which held the spike out of the orb by the barest fraction. Lines of perspiration, all sparkling in the harsh, scintillating light escaping the orb, ran in rivulets down the man’s face and jaw.
“Must ... stop,” he whispered. “Enough.”
A moment more, my lord. Only another moment ... to gain eternity.
Sau’ilahk solidified his right hand and, without warning, gripped over the top of the duke’s deformed one.
Karl Beáumie lurched backward, slipping halfway through Sau’ilahk as he tried to pull free.
Sau’ilahk twisted his grip upon the duke’s hand and the key.
Chapter Eighteen
Osha knelt beside the bed and studied Wynn’s pallor and closed eyes for any sign that she might awaken. Chane had been right about one thing: Osha did not understand enough about Wynn’s mantic sight.
Whenever Chane was awake and involved, Osha felt as if he was secondary, and he had let this get to him. He should not have claimed certainty of Wynn’s success. He should not have let the undead’s interference push him to spite. Even worse, Wynn’s sacrifice had gained them little beyond what he had already determined by merely listening to the movements of the guards.
Osha adjusted the blanket over Wynn as the majay-hì hopped up and wriggled along the wall to lie beside her. Shade occasionally licked Wynn’s face with a rumbling whine, but it had no effect upon her.
“We need to get out,” Chane rasped as he paced. “We must overcome the guards and reach our weapons.”
Osha turned his head and scowled over his shoulder. Chane paused his pacing to return the look in kind.
“It is what she would want,” the undead added, “rather than waiting for her to awaken.”
This time Shade instead of Osha snarled at Chane.
“No!” Osha said for the majay-hì. “We wait.... Guards grow tired ... easy to surprise. Wynn sleep, so I need carry her and you fight only. Not wise.”
Chane stopped pacing, as if pondering these objections, but he turned quickly at another voice.
“I can carry her.”
Osha spotted Nikolas standing quietly in the far back corner. For most of their time locked in this room, the young sage had remained silent. Osha looked him over with some reservations, for Nikolas’s build was slight.
“I am stronger than I look,” Nikolas added, perhaps with a bit more force. “And Wynn ... well, she’s not very big.”
No, she was not, and, lying there on the bed, she appeared even smaller. There might be more to Nikolas than Osha had yet seen.
“Even so,” Chane said, his near-voiceless rasp now a hesitant whisper. “Perhaps Osha is ... Perhaps we should wait a little longer.”
Osha said nothing as he returned to watching Wynn.
Sau’ilahk opened his eyes.
That sensation alone made him shudder. He lay upon the floor and felt cold, hard stone beneath his back. He went numb in thought until the pain came. All his joints and muscles felt as though they had been torn loose ... but he did not have joints and muscles.
Everything rushed in on him as he fought to lift his left hand until he could see....
A perfectly fitted glove of black lambskin covered the duke’s left hand. When Sau’ilahk thought to close his hand ... the duke’s fingers curled. He cautiously tried to touch his face—and did so.
By the power of the orb, he had taken Karl Beáumie’s body.
As he tried to roll onto his side and push himself up, he grew suddenly concerned. How much damage had been done to the duke’s flesh in shaking loose the last vestiges of the man’s spirit? Sau’ilahk had had to claim that flesh in the precise instant.