Somehow, Wynn did not believe anything so easily explained had happened here. The silence of this place made the cold of the coming night more acute. Though she could not see the village, the moss-draped trees blocking her view carried their own telltale signs.
"Look," she said, pointing, and Magiere came to join her.
An ancient spruce close to the outer stockade was tainted with brown. A few limbs had broken away or rotted through, and the stumps showed the same color turned dark with dampness. Other trees were in a similar state, and tumbled stones inside the keep grounds showed patches of lichen that had faded, only to be plastered down to mere stains. Around the keep of Apudalsat, death nibbled at the world, leaving marks too recently familiar for Wynn's comfort.
Chap came to join her and growled once as he shoved his head under her hand. She stroked him absently, looking about at the creeping blemishes within the forest.
"We should go inside," she told Magiere. "Osceline said her master would know when you arrived. There is no one waiting for us, and we will learn nothing further out here."
Magiere looked into the forest, hand on sword hilt, and then turned and led the way as Wynn followed. Leesil stepped out ahead of them.
As with the stockade's gate, the keep's huge wooden door had crumbled to scraps that littered the ground and floor beneath the arched stone entrance. The pieces mulched to smears under Leesil's boots as he stepped close.
The light outside was fading, and Wynn unpacked the lamps, placing the crystals in the holders and settling their glass covers in place. Handing one to Magiere, she followed Leesil through the short entryway, and they found themselves in a center hall.
The interior was less decayed but not by much. It was an old-style keep, with a huge fire pit in the center instead of a hearth to one side. The walls held archways and doors that likely led to side rooms and antechambers. Those same walls reached up to the remnants of an upper floor. The hall's center was open all the way to the keep's top, where an iron grate would have let the fire pit's smoke escape. Now all Wynn saw was the dark sky above where the roof should have been and crumbled stone littering the fire pit and floor. There was no sign of the fallen roof grate.
Enormous tapestries hung on the walls, their images faded and streaked with grime and mold. Sections had decayed through, and some hung in folds by their tattered threads. One portrayed a battle between forces Wynn did not recognize. She stepped up to another, raising her lamp to illuminate the image of men in long cream robes and head wraps riding thin-legged, fierce horses.
"I think this is Suman," she said. "There are dunes in the distance behind the riders. It would cost a great amount to bring it all the way here. Why would a Droevinkan lord want such a thing?"
Magiere paced around the fire pit. "The place feels familiar, but I know I've never been here. I've never been this far east."
Wynn joined her. "You are certain?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
Leesil stopped examining the tapestries and circled the room to peer through archways and test old doors. Wynn was about to begin herself, hoping they might still find records or other information in this place. She spotted the first dead rat and stepped back.
"Leesil!"
"What?" He hurried over. "What is it?"
Rats did not frighten Wynn, and she had certainly seen dead ones before.
Instead of being bloated or rotten, the carcass was shriveled. The skin had shrunk around its rib cage and limbs, as if it had starved to death. In a place like this, where the forest grew wild and thick, that seemed impossible.
Chap sniffed it and growled.
"Another one," Magiere said from a few steps away.
They scanned the floor, kicking aside debris and checking the shadowed comers. There were at least a dozen tiny corpses about the hall, all in the same condition.
"All right," Leesil whispered. "Do I need to say how much I don't like this?"
Chap whirled about, and his growl rose to a snarl. He cut loose an angry wail.
The sound resonated from the stone walls, and Wynn tried to cover her ears. This was Chap's hunting wail.
Magiere set down her lamp beside Wynn and pulled her falchion. Chap circled them, doubling back now and again as he looked toward the archways and doors all around.
"Leesil, blades!" Magiere shouted, but Wynn barely heard her above Chap's noise.
Leesil's cloak was already dropped to the floor. He wore his studded hauberk and slipped the holding straps on his thigh sheaths to draw both winged blades.
"Chap, quiet!" he shouted, and the dog's voice dropped back to a growl. "Where is it?"
The dog bolted toward a small archway at the back of the round hall. Magiere and Leesil rushed after him.
Wynn carried both cold lamps. She ran behind her companions down a narrow passage, more frightened of being left alone than of what they might be hunting. She had seen Chane throw Vordana's brass urn into the smithy's coals, seen it melt, and watched as the sorcerer dissipated into smoke. But the dying trees and shriveled rodents fostered doubt in her mind.
She could not see much with the others ahead of her. Chap's growl abruptly shifted to a snarl, and Leesil pulled up short. Wynn caught sight of Magiere in the jostling lamplight as she turned left. Leesil followed, and Wynn hurried to catch up.
As they passed a side opening in a widening of the passage, Chap swerved and leaped through the doorway. Magiere and Leesil turned, as well. As Wynn stepped in behind them, she glimpsed a blur, little more than a moving shadow, racing away.
She faltered as fright took a sharp hold on her.
A creature like Vordana would never flee. He would not need to.
Someone screamed out, "No, no! Please no."
Leesil and Magiere were in front her, weapons out but poised where they stood. The broken shelves and scattered pots and implements on the floor told Wynn they were in some type of kitchen. Vordana, or any undead, would not plead in fear. She pushed past her companions with a shout.
"No, Chap! Stop it!"
Leesil grabbed her from behind. Both blades were in one hand as he wrapped his other arm around her waist. He lifted her out of the way as if she were a small cat. Wynn struggled to see what they had cornered. The cold lamps jangling in her grip made light waver across the walls, and she could not make out anything beyond Chap but the arch of the cooking hearth.
Leesil dropped Wynn to her feet and grabbed Chap by the scruff of his neck. "Enough, get back."
Chap snarled but obeyed, and Wynn steadied one lamp, holding it up so that its light spilled out beyond the dog.
Cowering inside the barren hearth's hollow was a boy dressed in tatters turned dark by dirt and grime. Gaunt, with filthy brown-black hair to his shoulders, he squirmed to the hearth's far side and pressed one shoulder tightly into the comer. He covered his face as he looked out in horror, only one eye peeking between stick-thin fingers. There were fresh slashes down his arm from Chap's claws.
"Chap, what have you done?" Wynn cried.
Magiere crept forward in a crouch, ready to lunge at the boy, and her voice sounded forced and slurred. "Leesil, let Chap go!"
Wynn turned to Leesil, about to argue, but Leesil stood wary and tense with his gaze locked upon the cowering little figure. Wynn's own anger faded.
The topaz amulet Magiere had given Leesil hung in plain view, and it glowed brightly.
"It is only a boy," she whispered, looking back to the hearth in disbelief.
The boy shuddered continuously as he tried to force himself deeper into the hearth's corner.
Magiere glared back at Wynn. "I don't care what it was. "