She shouldn’t have wept anymore, but she did, clenching her fingers in Shade’s fur.
—Remember—
Wynn flinched. She didn’t want to think about one more orb to hide ... one more to find. All she wanted was for Shade to come back to her.
—Remember ... device—
Wynn flinched again, blinking the tears out of her eyes. She barely lifted her head, wondering ... what? One long breath with an awful smell ran warmly over her face.
Wynn slapped the tears off her cheeks and stared into half-opened crystal-blue eyes ... and they blinked once.
She almost lunged in as Shade groaned, the first real sound the dog had made since her injuries.
—Remember ... whispers—
“Don’t!” Wynn exhaled, quickly putting her hand over Shade’s eyes, and then she added more softly, “Don’t talk; don’t move. Just ... just rest.”
Shade tried weakly to move her head. Wynn was caught between stopping this and fearing she’d caused more harm to an unknown wound. One of Shade’s eyes peeked around her fingers to gain a line of sight. More memory-words rose in Wynn’s mind.
—Remember ... device ... whispers ... Jausiff—
Wynn tried to understand. Shade was obviously struggling to tell her something important, though she shouldn’t be straining herself this way.
The only thing that came to mind that matched up with those isolated words ...
Wynn thought back on the moment in Jausiff’s chambers when the elderly master sage had first displayed the device. He had whispered something over it, and she tried to remember anything more. Whatever he had said had been too soft for her to hear as he’d stood there behind his desk and ...
Suddenly the whole memory shifted dizzily in Wynn’s head. Her perspective changed, dropping low until she just barely saw over the desk. That angle of view blurred into and over her own as the one moment began again from its start.
The whispers suddenly magnified, more distinct, until she heard the old sage’s words. That second memory overlying the first vanished suddenly and left Wynn’s head spinning. As she clamped a hand over her mouth, she was thankful that she hadn’t even eaten yet this night.
“Don’t ... do that again ... please,” she barely got out.
Shade’s eyes were already closed again, and Wynn leaned in quickly in returned fright.
The dog snorted once in half sleep, and Wynn relaxed a little in quick, shaky breaths, as she hoped such effort hadn’t harmed Shade any further. But Shade had heard the words Jausiff had spoken and, between the two memories, somehow made them clear to Wynn.
The only problem was that she didn’t understand one word that she had heard.
She sat there, waiting and listening to Shade’s even breaths, and then finally reached inside her robe. She took out the center third of the orb key and stared at it. What she’d heard sounded something like Sumanese, but it wasn’t any dialect she recognized.
How old were those words? Likely they were from a lost time, when Aupsha’s ancestors had first cut up an orb key so that it couldn’t be used on an orb, but the pieces were still functional for something else. A part of Wynn already doubted too much, but she quickly repeated those exact sounds as Shade had heard them.
She closed her hand on the device and waited, for there was an orb already in the room—and nothing happened. She lifted the device and swung her arm in an arc, toward and away from the orb’s chest—and again nothing.
Wynn sagged where she knelt, closing her eyes.
Of course it didn’t work like some children’s fairy tale of strange words that could cause miraculous things to happen. Even when she’d learned key phrases to ignite the staff’s sun crystal, it wasn’t words that mattered.
It was the meaning that sparked her intention to make the sun crystal respond.
Wynn scrambled on all fours to her pack, then ripped out and tossed aside its contents until she found quill, ink, and journal. Using the symbols of the Begaine Syllabary, she quickly scrawled those words as best she could without knowing them. That was all she could do for now, but simply possessing the unknown phrase changed everything.
She needed someone like herself, who understood all that was at stake. She had to find someone who also knew of orbs, of a war to come, of the dangers of simple fragments of knowledge ... and of dead languages from another land. That wasn’t even Premin Hawes.
Wynn rose to her feet, quietly stepped close to Shade, and whispered, “I’ll be back right away. Don’t move.”
With that she hurried out to find Chane or Osha, for all of their plans had changed.
Osha returned down the road into Oléron. As in any stop made on the way to that little coastal town, he—or Chane—had always gone back along the road to watch and listen for any sign that they were followed. Tonight he had heard nothing as he stood listening to the wind for what it could tell him ... and for any other sound it did not cause.
Osha walked softly through the dark past the stable and on toward the inn where he had left Wynn.
A majay-hì—a sacred one—had fallen in battle against an undead. For that, he felt shamed in his relief that Wynn had not been harmed, though Shade was so different from her own kind, or at least from what he knew of them.
How different and dark was this world outside of his people’s lands. Perhaps no darker than what he had left behind, but all the more confusing, for he did not understand it.
An undead and a majay-hì, enemies by their natures, fought side by side. And they did so because of a precious little human woman and her purpose.
Osha knew little of the undead: he had seen them only once before, when he had gone with her, Magiere, Léshil, and the sacred one called Chap to search for an artifact in some frigid peaks. If he had known then what that would lead to, would he have stopped it if he could have?
No ... not if it had meant never knowing Wynn.
Even in the brightest light of day, darkness was not always seen until it revealed itself. He was well aware that she had considered killing that one Suman guard ... the one whom he had wounded twice and left helpless.
Darkness had taken part of Wynn, just as it had taken him. She did not see it as he did within himself. One could not fight an enemy if one did not know it was there. He had learned at least that much in his time among the Anmaglâhk. And knowing was worth even more than seeing.
In seeking Wynn Hygeorht, Osha had traversed half the world, only to find someone else.
Where was the woman he loved?
He had to find her and bring her back. For the present there seemed to be little hope of this, but he had learned to be patient, to watch ... and to listen.
He arrived at the inn’s front to find that the undead was not there.
Claiming concern that the keep might have a shoreside dock below the cliff, Chane had gone his own way to the docks. A boat might be used to reach the port by sea instead of by the road. It was a short walk from the landing to the inn, and he should have returned to the inn first.
Osha went for the inn’s door but stalled. He could do less than even Wynn could in helping Shade. That frustration, the helplessness, had led to his arguing with her undead companion. It only made her desperation, and his, that much worse.
So he stood in the dark outside the inn. He heard the footfalls even before he spotted Chane’s approach.
“Anything?” the undead asked.