Wynn grabbed her cloak and pulled the scroll case from its deep inner pocket. She still didn't know if the black figure had come after it or her last night. But leaving the scroll behind seemed a wiser choice. She stuffed the case deep under her mattress, bracing it against one of the bed's support boards, and then grabbed the staff from the corner beyond her desk.
She paused, staring at the leather sheath protecting the crystal.
If Domin il'Snke found out, after her renewed promise, she might never learn how to use it correctly. But what else could she do? She couldn't go out without some means of defense. Though she still didn't know for certain what the black figure was, it had vanished after the crystal flashed. Sunlight drove all vampires into hiding.
One more thought occurred to her.
She dashed to her trunk, pulling out a tiny jar of healing salve. Would it even work on Chane? Either way, it wouldn't hurt to try. Then she spotted Magiere's old dagger tucked in the chest's sidegiven to Wynn as a gift.
Wynn stared at it. She'd used it more than once, even against the undead, and sometimes with disastrous results. Still, she couldn't ignore anything that might help keep her alive, and she picked it up.
Shade slipped under Wynn's arm and clamped her jaws over the dagger's sheath. At the brush of the dog's muzzle against Wynn's hand, an image erupted in her head and consumed her.
She saw the black figure.
Like a cloth-draped column of solidified night, it slipped straight through a building's back wall.
Wynn was disoriented in fright, and had no idea where she was in that memory. She seemed to be looking down an alley behind that place, but from a lower height, as if she knelt upon the filthy cobblestones. The noise of wood cracking, glass breaking, and other racket erupted from within the building.
And then everything in the alley suddenly raced by. She bolted, swift and low, along the alley floor, charging by the building and out the alley's far end. Swerving through the empty street, she rounded the city block to its front side. There she slowed, creeping along the buildings, finally coming to a stop. Above the peeling door of a garish and weathered shop, Wynn saw a worn painted sign.
Shilwise's Gild and Inkthe scriptorium where a folio had been left overnight and stolen.
She was crouched two shops down from it, but the scribe shop was now silent.
Until the weathered front door exploded outward in the night.
Shattered wood shards scattered over the porch and street as Wynn cowered back. The black figure slid out through the opening, a leather folio clutched in its cloth-wrapped hand.
It didn't waver in Wynn's sight. This was Shade's own memory.
The figure looked as solid and real as anything along the street. But when it turned, gliding along the buildings, it passed straight through a lantern post, as if the stout iron pole wasn't even there.
The memory's intensity softened.
Wynn stared at Shade, eye-to-eye, with the sheathed blade still in the dog's jaws. Had Shade been hunting the black figure, as well as watching over her all this time?
And on the night Rodian had sprung his trap, the figure had slid out through the front wall of the Upright Quillbut pulled the folio through a window. Perhaps, by whatever magic, it couldn't pass the folio through something solid.
But why destroy the front door of the Gild and Ink? With no one about, it could've simply slipped through the wall and pulled the folio through an easily breakable window. Or better yet, it could've found some less telltale way to get out, with no one around to see it.
No one but Shade, that was.
Wynn was at a loss for what any of this meant, nor why Shade had shown her this now. It had been a clear image of the undead breaking out of a shop, appearing solid, yet it had walked through an iron pole.
This attempt to talk in memories was frustrating, but it was all Wynn had. Shade was trying to tell her something about the black figure. How many Noble Dead, or even other undead, had Wynn known of since she first met Magiere, Leesil, and Chap? She had to at least eliminate the obvious, and put her hand on the side of Shade's neck.
Wynn relaxed her mind, letting memories rise, but careful not to let any of Chane come clearly to mind. There was Vordana, Welstiel, and the memory of Magiere speaking of her undead father, Bryen Massing. The first two were mages as well as Noble Dead.
Shade growled and looked away with a huff.
Wynn exhaled sharply. Shade's reaction wasn't like Chap's clear usage of two barks for "no," but it was plain enough. So now what? The only other undead that Wynn had encountered were Ubd's animated corpses and enslaved spirits.
Shade dropped the blade and grabbed Wynn's wrist in her jaws. Rapidly alternating memories filled Wynn's headher own memories...
The ghost of a murdered girl who served the necromancer...
Then the black figure on the night Shade had come to Wynn's aid...
Black figure and ghost child alternated over and over.
Wynn didn't like what this implied.
"A spirit?" she whispered, remembering the ghost child who'd once spoken with that vile necromancer's own voice.
Shade gently tightened her grip on Wynn's wrist.
Wynn looked at the dog and suddenly wished she still had her doubts. It would've been far less unsettling to cling to her notion of an ancient Noble Dead mage grown powerful over a thousand years.
How could a spirit, as much as it might pass through a wall, pick up a folio in its hand, rip out a city guard's chest, and look as solid and real as a cloaked man? And why hadn't Shade simply shown her ghosts in the first place?
The latter answer came quickly. Because Shade had never seen a ghost, until that memory rose in Wynn's mind when she'd thought of other forms of undead.
Shade couldn't dig for memories but only recall ones she'd seen surface in someone else's thoughts. And she'd never seen a ghost herself, because the undead couldn't enter the an'Cran's elven homelandShade's homeland.
Wynn glanced at Magiere's useless dagger lying on the floor between her and Shade. And again she wished Shade was wrong.
This black spirit took lives, fed upon the living. Only Noble Dead did this to maintain their fully sentient existence, versus ghosts, mindless corpses, and such lesser undead.
Wynn felt even worse.
Was this thingspirita new form of a Noble Dead? Vampires were Noble Dead, the terms merely interchangeable.
With no more time to ponder the rest of what Shade had shown her, Wynn dropped Magiere's blade into the chest; then she hesitated again. Rodian still had men outside the portcullis. Could she be lucky enough to slip by them again, this time with a large wolf? And she saw her old clothingelven clothing, weathered and travel-wornin the bottom of the chest.
At the very least, it was better not to be spotted beyond the guild grounds in a sage's robe. She quickly changed clothing and pulled on her old cloak.
Wynn peeked into the passage outside her room. Spotting no one, she slipped out with Shade. She checked again before they stepped into the courtyard and then hurried acrossnot to the keep's main doors, but to the building on the northern side, where supplies and kitchen stores were kept.
She carefully opened a door there and, finding the storeroom dark, slipped out her cold lamp crystal. With one quick stroke along her tunic's front, the crystal glowed no more than a low candle. Rows of barrels, crates, and sacks of dried goods filled the space, but she urged Shade in and turned immediately to the right. Through another door she entered the back scullery behind the kitchen.
Stacked, emptied crates and bottles waited to be taken away. And there also, spare cloaks hung on wall pegs, for anyone who had to take milk bottles or refuse out. She grabbed the largest one and pulled it on over her own. Although it was too big for her, this was easier than carrying it, and the extra bulk might further disguise her. When she reached the courtyard again, still trying to think of some way to get Shade out through the library, another notion came to her.