“You see this before?” he asked.
At first she did not answer, and when she did so, she did not look at him.
“Once. Among my dead ... a few were not broken but left like this ... dead or dying.”
Osha waited no longer and ran from one door to the next. All were locked except the second one on the right. The only things he found in that small, dark room were a plain old table and a strange iron stand. The latter had a waist-high round hoop at the top, in place of any surface on which to set anything. When he left that room, Aupsha had not moved.
“Nothing here,” Osha said. “Other doors locked.”
Aupsha stared down at the body a moment longer and then turned back toward the passage out. “It does not matter. The artifact would have been guarded, always. It is gone.”
“We find it,” Osha said, quickly following. “We take it back.”
Again he slipped ahead to light the way, anxious to protect Wynn now that they knew the orb had been taken—or at least moved. He slowed as they reached the stairs and listened for anything above. No sound echoed to his ears as he crept up the stairs and through the opened door. He closed his hand over the crystal as he peered around the archway’s side.
There was no one in the back passage along the way they had come. He heard no sounds except the sea outside below the keep—and then a snap of cloth.
A sharp movement of air, like a brief breeze, tossed Osha’s hair. He looked back and then spun fully around. Wide-eyed, as he looked down the stairs, he opened his fist to release the crystal’s light.
Osha saw no one, even in the lower passage.
Aupsha was gone.
Chane reached the keep’s main hall at a run and raced on to the front doors. He halted to crack them open only a little.
He saw no one near the stable or the other, smaller structure on the courtyard’s left, but the rented wagon was still outside. To the right were the barracks and what might be another small storage building, and straight ahead two keep guards in gray tabards huddled together before the gate and peered out through its lattice ironwork. Another one atop the wall to the gate’s left faced the other way, looking down the road. That one held a heavy crossbow.
Chane had no difficulty in hearing them.
“Where could he have gone?” the shortest man on the ground called up to the one atop the wall. “And why did he take Lieutenant Martelle?”
Sharpening his sight, Chane recognized the man on the ground as Captain Holland.
The man on the wall did not even turn around as he answered. “Don’t know. He just ordered the lieutenant to gather a few others, and they headed off with the duke and those Sumans. Good riddance on the latter!”
“How long ago?” Holland called back up.
“Not long,” the guard above answered. “Going by the wagon’s lantern, they turned off below and headed inland instead of along the coastal road. But they had no provisions that I saw, not for what little bulk was in the wagon. And no instructions from the duke. He just ordered us to open the gate.”
Chane grew uncertain. Preparing their own wagon would not be so easy if the captain and his men were confused by the duke’s taking men out in the middle of the night. If Chane headed for the stable, he might be detained and questioned. Such an event could be better handled if the duchess was here to at least try to clear the way.
Lost in thought, he did not hear the fast footfalls until they grew close.
Chane turned and reached for his sword. Osha came at him at a run through the main hall, but he was alone.
“Where is Aupsha?” Chane whispered.
Osha shook his head. “The way below not locked. We found no orb. We return to back passage ... near door to outside ...” He shook his head again.
It did not make sense to Chane. “Why would she break us out, accept our help, and then vanish?”
Osha shook his head once more.
Chane turned back to peer through the cracked-open door. The situation was even more uncertain now, for it seemed they had two choices: risk going for the wagon and team without attracting attention or wait for Wynn to arrive with the duchess.
The former seemed an unlikely success, so he held his place a little longer.
Wynn trotted with Shade behind Nikolas toward Jausiff’s study, for that was where Nikolas suggested that his father would return once Sherie had been freed. The young sage, with his slightly longer legs, shot out ahead and reached the door first.
“Father?” Nikolas called, banging on the door. “Are you in there?”
When no one answered, he tried the handle and found it locked.
“Where else might they be?” Wynn asked.
“I don’t know,” Nikolas answered. “Maybe Sherie’s chambers.”
Before Wynn could say more, he strode back down the passage toward the stairs. Wynn trotted after, followed by Shade, and halfway there they heard voices carrying down the stairs.
Jausiff and Lady Sherie stepped down into the passage.
“Father,” Nikolas breathed in relief, and perhaps his first instinct had been right.
“Nikolas?” Sherie said, hurrying toward them. Her gaze shifted to Wynn and then Shade. “You are free.”
“Aupsha let us out,” Wynn answered. She quickly told them everything that had happened that she knew so far, and then focused on Jausiff. “Aupsha wants you to get her device to track the artifact’s direction.”
“One moment,” Jausiff said, unlocking his chamber with one key on a heavy ring. “I haven’t seen a single guard wherever I went in the keep. All I know is that Karl left with his Suman contingent. You say Aupsha went to the lower level?”
“Yes. Osha went with her to verify that the artifact had been taken.”
Jausiff hurried to his desk and this time pulled out a tiny brass key on a string around his neck. He unlocked the chest behind his desk table and began pulling out various things and setting them aside in meticulous stacks.
Wishing he would hurry, Wynn bit down on her impatience. He finally straightened up, turned about, and set a small case of thick, stiff leather on the desk. When he undid the lashings and opened it, there was the piece of ruddy metal to which he referred as a “compass.”
Shade pushed in close at Wynn’s side before the desk, and her ears pricked up. But Wynn barely glanced at the dog as she waited for Jausiff to do ... something.
Jausiff stretched out his arm, his hand open and palm up with the slightly curved piece of an orb key resting in it. Wynn was so fixed upon the object that she was startled as the old sage whispered something.
Jausiff’s eyes were on the “compass,” and when Wynn looked down, for an instant she thought she saw the ruddy metal quiver, or perhaps move or rotate just barely. The master sage closed his grip on it.
He stepped around the desk, with the device held out in his upturned fist. He kept turning slightly left and right as he walked all the way into the outer passage. Wynn rushed in behind him as everyone else present followed.
Jausiff went all the way down the passage to the stairs leading to below. He turned rightward once, and there was a scowl of confusion on his old face. The aging sage quickly turned to face up the passage again toward the keep’s rear.
Jausiff halted in only three more steps, and his hand holding the piece of an orb key dropped to dangle at his side.
“The artifact is no longer inside the keep,” he said.
Wynn turned on Sherie. “My lady, that artifact is dangerous. It’s what has been causing changes here in your brother, as well as in the surrounding land. Chane is trying to ready our wagon even now, but we need you to get us out of here past any remaining keep guards.”
Sherie appeared stricken, troubled, and doubtful as she looked from Wynn to the keep’s counselor. It was obvious that she had difficulty understanding anything that had happened here—that her own brother had ordered her locked into her room.