The line of fire in the forest ... the strange, tiny emptiness he had felt ... Shade halting, poised in the road upon first spotting the overturned wagon ...
It all nagged him again with what was not possible and yet had to be.
There was no duke anymore; the only thing that could have caused all of this was the wraith.
Somehow, Sau’ilahk had taken a man’s flesh.
The wraith had maimed Nikolas, murdered and fed upon young sages, and now killed Shade—and it kept coming for Wynn.
Panic and pain died. Hunger took their place. The beast inside consumed Chane whole, and the night grew brilliant in his eyes.
He snarled his fingers into the duke’s—Sau’ilahk’s—hair and wrenched his prey’s head aside. Diving down hard, he sank his teeth into the exposed side of the neck and throat. Blood welled and leaked from his mouth as his prey went into a frenzy. Chane clamped down until his teeth hit bone.
No euphoria came this time as life filled him. He drank until the thrashing beneath him grew weak. He kept on and on until he heard a beating heart begin to slow.
Chane tore his teeth out before that heart stopped.
He wanted that black spirit to know—feel—its last moment. After a thousand years or more, it would die in horror, knowing that it had failed and would never touch Wynn.
The beast within Chane settled into sated contentment.
But there was no such contentment for him as he stared at Shade’s still form. Why did he feel such sorrow, such loss, over one born as a natural enemy to his kind? They had tolerated each other only for Wynn’s sake.
Slow, shallow wheezing reached Chane’s hunger-sharpened ears. He barely noticed it at first beneath the breeze in the forest. Then it caught and rolled, as if the next breath came before the last one could finish—two different, barely audible breaths overlapping each other.
Chane looked down at the torn mess of Sau’ilahk’s throat and then back at Shade. Without thinking, he clamped his hand over the duke’s mouth and smothered any further breaths until the duke’s heart stopped.
Still he heard a weak, slow set of halting breaths.
Chane lunged from his crouch and cleared the distance to drop on all fours beside Shade’s limp form. It was painfully long before he heard another shallow breath from her.
Osha jumped from atop the wagon and ran up the road before Wynn could even call to him. The light behind him winked out: she had likely let the staff’s crystal fade. It did not matter—he knew exactly where he would find Aupsha lying hobbled.
He kept his eyes on that spot in the dark and drew another arrow with a Chein’âs head as he ran, until he actually saw and closed on her.
Aupsha lay curled on her side and clutching the shaft of the arrow deep in the back of her thigh. She watched him from within her leather mask, and he heard pained panting. Beyond and to the right of her lay the trunk, toppled over on its front.
Osha’s relief came at that sight, for the orb that Wynn sought was safe. Almost looking at Aupsha again, he took a step.
A handful of mucky dirt and pebbles struck his face and chest.
He retreated instinctively, swiping the back of his hand across his face. His sight cleared as Aupsha came out of a roll and grabbed one handle of the trunk. He drew back the next arrow, and then she and the trunk came apart.
Aupsha and the trunk blew away in the dark—and the orb was gone again.
Osha stood wide-eyed for an instant. He rushed along the road, keeping the breeze directly against his back, and he followed where it pushed him slightly toward the northern side.
He was not beaten yet. He would not be beaten at all.
From what he had seen when she had first taken the trunk, she could not go far with it.
Osha halted shy of the roadside trees and raised the bow outward while drawing back the arrow set in its string. He waited, feeling for the piece of white metal beneath the bow handle’s leather wrap to grow warm and begin to pull in his grip.
He waited for the handle to track the Chein’âs arrowhead embedded in Aupsha’s thigh. The bow handle did not move in his hand.
Osha panicked.
On his way to Wynn’s homeland, every time he lost an arrow during practice and then sought it out, he had felt the bow try to turn in his grip and lead him when he went astray. Why did it not do so now? He calmed himself and began listening, just as the tainted greimasg’äh had taught him.
Brot’ân’duivé had been merciless, forcing Osha to find every movement of air along any path an arrow could fly. What could not be seen of the air’s movement often left something to be heard in its passing. There were also sounds that distinguished anything not caused by even the slightest breeze.
It was dark now without Wynn’s light. In his thoughts he noted the position of every form he knew only by the way the air’s movement changed its sound.
He heard underbrush rustle softly, and not from the wind.
The bow’s handle tried to torque that way in his grip. He let it turn him as he dashed off the road, and only a few steps into the trees a glint ahead caught his eye. He ran for it only to look down upon a black-feathered arrow lying upon the forest floor. Its white metal head was obscured with blood; this sight filled him with alarm and two thoughts.
The bow handle could not track an arrow while the thief rode the wind.
Aupsha had pulled it out, and now he had no way to find the orb in her possession.
He snatched up the arrow and held it in his grip upon the bow, and he turned, aiming the other notched arrow among the trees. His panic only grew at having failed Wynn, and he had left her alone, unguarded, in trying to do as she had asked.
Osha went still and listened again.
Either of the guards left unconscious upon the road might soon recover, and there was still one keep guard unaccounted for. More troubling, the one remaining Suman, though wounded twice, remained near her. Osha was torn between continuing here or running back to Wynn.
But she placed the orb’s retrieval above all else, including herself.
Leaves rustled in the forest as a branch crackled.
At that sound not made by the air, Osha took off through the trees.
He traversed across the wind until it blew straight at him, always keeping his eyes fixed toward the position of that sound. When he found a clear line of sight, he halted, raised and drew his bow, and turned slightly as he peered through the forest.
It was a dangerous place to stop, but if she tried to come on the wind, she would have to appear right in front of him ... or behind him.
A dark shape passed behind one far tree trunk.
“Stop!” he ordered in Numanese.
The form halted as it hobbled beyond the tree’s other side while it dragged the trunk. Its hooded head turned toward him. He could not see the masked face inside the hood and did not need to.
“Drop trunk,” he shouted. “Step way.”
“You think ... you do what is right,” she called back, her words broken by labored pants. “It belongs with ... my people! You cannot keep it safe ... more than we can.”
“Drop!” he commanded again, inching forward, blindly feeling each step before weighting a foot.
He did not want to kill. He had never done so, even after being given his place among the Anmaglâhk. He had seen enough death since then or knew of too many who had died suddenly in the night after Brot’ân’duivé and Most Aged Father declared war among the caste.
Osha did not have to kill to stop Aupsha, but he would not let her take to the wind again. His gaze dropped along the black shadow-filled split of her cloak to her unwounded thigh. She could not see his face—his eyes—inside his own hood any more than he could see hers.
Aupsha threw herself backward.