Wynn knew she couldn’t risk using her glasses with their near-black lenses. While holding the device and the staff, she wouldn’t have a chance to pull them off before she had to run. In her thoughts she replayed the Sumanese phrases that Domin il’Sänke had taught her to ignite the staff’s crystal.
From Spirit to Fire ... for the Light of Life.
“Go,” she whispered.
Shade ducked rightward around the tree and then veered left to weave around behind the underbrush. Wynn slipped the other way around the broad fir to hide from the guard ahead and the one deeper in the trees on the right.
All she heard at first was the infrequent soft rustling of brush in Shade’s passage.
“What’s that?” called the guard nearest the road. “Stay there, whoever—”
A snarl and clack of jaws was followed by a scream.
Wynn shuddered as shouts rose in the dark. She heard the other guards tearing through the brush toward the growls. She waited until the first of the footfalls was directly inland and east of her. She was already shouting in Sumanese as she rushed out.
“Mên Rúhk el-När ... mênajil il’Núr’u mên’Hkâ’ät!”
With the last word, Wynn clenched her eyes shut.
The burst of light from the staff’s crystal was still sharp through her eyelids. Light quickly faded, and she opened her eyes and ran for the last place she’d heard Shade. And there was Shade, facing away toward a downed guard, who rolled on the ground with his hands over his face.
Even as Wynn closed from behind, Shade didn’t move. About to urge the dog to run on, Wynn saw Shade’s hackles on end and her ears flattened.
Shade snarled, and Wynn followed the line of the dog’s muzzle.
A dozen paces ahead, someone else stood among the trees.
The shadowy figure held one forearm before the hood of its long cloak as if shielding its face. Even before that arm lowered, Wynn thought there was something strange about it. Why was the bracer on its forearm so darkly colored instead of shimmering like steel?
The arm lowered to chin level and exposed a masked face.
Wynn tensed at the sight of Aupsha in her way. The mask and the cloak’s hood made it too hard to see the woman’s eyes.
Then someone shouted, “Over there!”
Wynn glanced toward the sound of the voice, and when she looked back ahead, in place of Aupsha’s dark masked and cloaked form was a fading apparition. It vanished like dust—or sand—blown away on the wind.
All Wynn heard was the wind and the shouts of approaching guards as she leaned close to Shade.
“Run!” she whispered.
Sau’ilahk grew anxious even in certainty that he had made the right choices. All four horses stood before him, and two of his Sumans had lifted the trunk as Hazh’thüm prepared to tie it down.
The guard on the horse’s near side suddenly squealed.
A black-feathered arrow appeared to sprout from his right haunch.
Sau’ilahk flinched in a back step.
The man released his end of the orb’s trunk, and the trunk fell before the guard on the horse’s far side could get a better grip. Hazh’thüm drew his sword and ducked behind the horse and out of sight. The guard in pain spun wildly, crying out again and grabbing at the arrow in his buttock, and the orb’s trunk hit the ground and rolled down the roadside’s slant.
Sau’ilahk rushed the other way.
He slipped behind the low branches of a roadside pine tree and carefully inched out to peer into the woods. He tried to trace the arrow’s trajectory from what he remembered of its angle when it struck, but he could not be certain and saw nothing among the trees.
A flash of light erupted in the forest to the south.
Sau’ilahk spun about. The overturned wagon blocked his view across the road, and the light had already faded, but it had come from somewhere in the south-side trees.
What had caused it? And who had fired that arrow out of the forest now behind him?
Backing farther around the pine, he inched along to look around the wagon’s front and the downed horses.
A cloaked figure rushed at him around the pine’s inland side, but all he saw in that instant was a mask inside a hood.
Chane bit down in anger as Osha’s arrow hit home, for he had not been ready. He pulled his glasses up into place, drew both swords, and charged through the forest as the struck guard cried out again. Even with Chane’s sight widened by hunger, it was hard for him to see through the glasses.
A burst of light came as he passed directly south of the wagon.
Chane barely flinched in reflex, for the flash had already died out. It had not come from close enough to the road’s south side. But he had agreed that, no matter what, he would use that distraction to get to the orb, and Shade had not howled in warning.
Chane stalled for an instant this time, for he felt something.
That tiny sudden emptiness made the beast within him stir and rumble. Had this been what Shade had sensed from far up the road? It did not feel like any undead he had ever been near. He angled right and rushed out upon the roadside inland from the wagon.
There was Duke Beáumie, and the duke saw him in turn.
One Suman guard—the one with the close-cut beard—came running, and Chane charged with a sword in each hand.
Sau’ilahk spun away, stumbling and slapping through the pine’s branches. How had that windblown assailant gotten around him to attack from behind? Sword in hand, Hazh’thüm came rushing past him along the wagon.
“Kill him if you must!” Sau’ilahk shouted. “Pin him if you can.”
If possible, he wanted to know who this lurker was before taking his life, and why and how that one kept appearing suddenly on the wind.
As Hazh’thüm continued his charge, Sau’ilahk paused to follow with his eyes.
The attacker did not look like the one who had earlier killed two of his men.
This one was cloaked and masked but taller than the first and broader shouldered. Instead of a curved Suman dagger, he wielded two straight-bladed swords, one long and one short. With almost a lack of effort, he swung with the shortsword first.
The blade collided with Hazh’thüm’s first strike and blocked it. Instantly the assailant brought the longer blade up and across. Hazh’thüm tried to slip his curved sword’s hilt up to catch the second strike on his own blade. The masked one rammed his shorter blade forward along Hazh’thüm’s sword with a screech of steel.
The shortsword’s tip bit into Hazh’thüm’s abdomen. The longer one came across high and struck his neck. His head was gone in a spatter of blood.
Sau’ilahk spotted the head only when it struck the wagon’s upturned bench and then tumbled to the ground before ... Hazh’thüm’s body dropped, and the curved sword fell out of his limp hand. Sau’ilahk did not take his eyes off the newcomer.
The masked figure stalked toward him. Sau’ilahk retreated farther. Only then did he truly see inside the attacker’s hood.
Black-lensed glasses covered the eyeholes of a leather mask.
Sau’ilahk stalled in shock at the sight of Chane Andraso.
Wildly he looked around, but he had only two Sumans left—and only one of them was able-bodied. That one was running toward the trunk, and the wounded one dove out of sight behind the broken wagon.
Sau’ilahk needed to act.
He thrust out both hands and envisioned nested shapes, sigils, and symbols in his mind’s eye.
Chapter Twenty
Chane took in everything as one Suman ran toward the trunk—but he lost sight of the guard Osha had wounded. There were four saddled horses; a small chest lay beside one of them, and the slightly larger trunk had rolled off the roadside. The running Suman skidded to a stop behind the trunk with his sword drawn as the duke backed up to the right of the man.