And the specter could be within anyone—could be anyone while hiding in flesh, even someone within the guild or the imperial court.
Despite the sect’s precautions to protect the prince, until he replaced his withering and corrupt father, Ounyal’am was in more than just mortal danger.
Ghassan had come to the guild’s grounds tonight hoping to attempt infiltration, but how could he enter without anyone knowing? A compound full of sages, including metaologers, was well beyond blanking the mind of one beggar or a handful of patrolling guards.
City guards stood watch at the grounds’ main entrance and all smaller locked ones. They patrolled the short wall’s inner side at random intervals. They could be managed in small groups with enough foresight, but Ghassan feared conjured protections had also been set in place.
He would not discover those until too late.
The majority of metaologers in the branch had not been part of his sect; this did not mean they lacked skills or power. He could not afford to be caught, especially by them, and a hint of despair took him. Would he truly learn anything of use here, or had he simply grown this desperate?
And again, for the second time this night, a noise disturbed him.
At the sound of running feet and distant shouts, he cared little for a fleeing pickpocket running from a city patrol. Still, he peeked out of the cutway and around the corner of a shoddy tenement ... and froze. He had seen many astonishing things in his life, but none had stunned him as much as what he now saw.
Wynn Hygeorht, in a midnight blue short-robe, rounded the compound’s far corner in a headlong run behind her big black wolf, the majay-hì called Shade. The crystal atop her staff that Ghassan had created for her was fully exposed. She barely hung on to the packs flopping against her shoulders, and their bouncing, swinging weight kept making her swerve and right herself.
Chane Andraso shot around the far corner next, carrying a chest in his arms.
Ghassan almost stepped out and then hesitated. Why were they in flight?
A tall white-blond Lhoin’na appeared next, running after the other three.
Ghassan fixed on that one with a bow in hand and an arrow held to the string. Before he could tear into the elf’s mind, four city guards rounded the corner in pursuit.
Ghassan could not stop a hissing groan.
Who else but Wynn Hygeorht could cause this much chaos any time in any place? But by what, why, and how was she here in his city and homeland? Before he regained composure, both Wynn and Shade flew past. As Chane and the Lhoin’na archer followed, Ghassan quickly looked behind into the cutway for anything of use. He grabbed up a scrap of broken pottery and flung the shard across the street at the guild grounds’ wall.
There was little time for a proper incantation, even in thought. Glowing symbols, shapes, and signs flashed quickly across his sight as his gaze flickered from the tumbling shard to the top of the wall. The pottery shard struck there, and its fragments scattered over the wall in the grounds.
The lead guard skidded to a stop and turned toward the noise.
Ghassan ducked back, barely peeking around the corner with one eye.
“What?” a second guard snapped, stalling near the first.
“Noise ... over the wall,” answered the first as the final two guards slowed.
“Could one of them have gotten over and inside?” asked a third guard.
And the first began cursing as he glanced up the street.
Ghassan waited no longer to see how they might split up. His own quarry was running wild in the streets and would likely lose him in trying to lose the guards. He crept down the cutway and ran north along the back alley, heading in the general direction that Wynn had to have led the others. He could not help cursing as well.
Wherever Wynn went, there came trouble as well. Better to have her under his watch than arrested or loose to get in his way. And why was she even here? By the time he reached the silent marketplace, he heard running feet, and too many to be only guards. He veered across the market into a cutway on its far side, hoping to get ahead of his quarry.
Wynn and Shade shot past the cutway’s far end, and he sped up to lean out just as Chane rushed by.
“Wynn!” Ghassan whispered, loud and sharp.
The Lhoin’na spotted him, dropped the pack he was carrying, and drew the arrow held fitted in the bow.
Ghassan stepped a little farther out, holding both hands in plain sight. He carefully brushed back his hood as he repeated as softly as possible, “Wynn!”
By then, she had stopped, as had her black wolf, and her eyes widened at the sight of him. She did not hesitate and ran to him. Slowing as she approached, her eyes were still wide.
“Domin?” she said on a breath.
Shade rounded in front of her with a quiver of jowls as the Lhoin’na lowered his bow in puzzlement. Chane’s expression was beyond cautious, bordering on dangerous, as he stepped in, but Ghassan could not be bothered about some overprotective vampire.
The sounds of shouts and pounding feet echoed from the direction they had come.
“In here, quickly,” Ghassan whispered, backing into the cutway.
The instant Wynn hurried in past him, the others had no choice but to follow her.
Ghassan remained near the cutway’s mouth as he whispered, “Be still and silent.” When he peeked around the corner, only two guards came running up the street.
“Look in all cutways and alley mouths,” one said to the other.
Ghassan blinked as the first guard neared. In the dark behind his eyelids, strokes of light spread into shapes, sigils, and symbols. Words sounded with greater speed in his thoughts than by voice as ...
He finished that brief blink. The glowing pattern overlaid his sight of one guard drawing near, who looked directly at him. The guard blinked as well, slowed, looked more carefully, and then sighed in disgust.
“Nothing here,” he called to the other, and then he was gone, rushing on in his hunt.
Ghassan waited, shifting his envisioned pattern to the other guard. That one passed by even more quickly than the first. And everyone within the cutway remained silent until all sounds of pursuit faded up the street.
Turning slowly, Ghassan cast another small ensorcellment, this time upon himself. As the darkness in the alley grew brighter in his sight, he took in the small group he had just rescued, finishing upon Wynn.
“Well,” he whispered, “this is unexpected.”
Wynn had no idea what to think. Moments before, she’d been desperate to find Ghassan il’Sänke, and now here he was. Had she somehow conjured him with whispered words during flight? Ridiculous. She had simply been living in desperation and uncertainty for too long.
“Domin,” she began softly, still wary that roaming guards might hear her. “Where did you ... How did you ... ?”
He flipped a hand and shook his head, as if such a thing mattered little. “A better question would be, what are you doing here?” He ignored Chane but fixed his gaze on Osha. “And who is this? Not a Lhoin’na, now that I have a closer look.”
Wynn glanced back and up at Osha. Most people would never recognize that he wasn’t from this continent. Ghassan il’Sänke was not most people.
“This is Osha. He’s from the eastern continent,” she explained, and then rushed on, putting aside a couple of odd things that had just happened. “We’ve come to find Magiere, Leesil, and Chap, who I sent to find you, but ... Why are you dressed like that? Why are there guards on the guild? Where are the people I sent to you?”
She might have gone on, but the domin halted her with a raised hand. “Who?”
Wynn held her breath and then exhaled sharply. The domin had never met Magiere, Leesil, or Chap, but there was no doubt they would’ve found him. Magiere was nothing if not ... well, “determined” was the polite word for it. Something had gone wrong.