Wynn gasped and grabbed the back of his cloak. "Leesil!"
She pointed beyond him, and he froze.
"On the other side, too," Magiere said. "And behind us."
In the half-circle of a sparse clearing, glowing shapes surrounded them. Leesil heard their whispers but couldn't make out their words as they drifted in and out among the trees.
When Tomas said the villagers had left, and he couldn't follow, Leesil assumed they'd abandoned the village and the boy was left behind.
Floating near a tendril of moss was the translucent figure of an aged soldier. His hauberk was slashed open, exposing internal organs that bulged, ready to spill out. Beside him was a short and tattered young woman with a ring around the skin of her throat where a rope had strangled her. She opened her mouth, trying to speak but her tongue was missing.
A scarecrow-thin peasant boy glared in hatred at Magiere. He wore no shirt, and though his visage faded in and out, Leesil saw the ribs and telltale swollen paunch of starvation. Drifting out through a curtain of wet leaves came a pretty girl no older than Wynn, with dangling black curls. She reached out at Leesil, and he sidestepped quickly, though she couldn't possibly touch him. Her throat had been ripped open.
Leesil smelled the strong scent of damp earth and decay as the cold sank into him, feeding despair. He heard Magiere's quick breaths beside him, and he looked back to Wynn.
Her eyes were downcast, watching only the ground before her feet, and she held the cold lamp in front of her like a shield. Her free hand gripped the fur between Chap's shoulders, and the dog pulled her forward.
"Ignore them," Leesil whispered with effort. "Keep moving."
He kept his eyes on Vordana's cloak, trying not to focus upon the misty figures moving around them.
"They're just ghosts," Magiere said.
There was no fear on her pale features, but Leesil still heard the rapid rhythm of her breath. Vordana held up his hand. The topaz dangled in his grip upon the leather string, and its glimmer became a beacon they followed.
Leesil was shivering from the cold when they emerged in a large clearing and saw smoke rising from the chimney of a strange little stone house. It had been built onto the side of a massive granite knoll.
Vordana walked to an oval door in the cottage's front wall and opened it. He motioned them to follow as he stepped inside.
Leesil grasped Magiere's wrist. "Whatever we find here, it doesn't change who you are."
She gently pulled her wrist from his fingers and walked toward the open door.
Welstiel hid behind the stockade fence with Chane, watching through a space left by a missing post. Magiere emerged from the keep with the others. The young sage ran to their team of gray horses, one already collapsed upon the ground.
"Stay close," he told Chane. "If you step away from me, the dog will sense you clearly."
Chane did not argue or even speak, his eyes fixed upon Wynn.
Welstiel hoped he would not have to enter the keep. In this place, his father had come home one night transformed into a Noble Dead, accompanied by the loathsome and conniving Ubad. It was not long before the people here began dying. When the remainder fled, Welstiel's "family" moved on to offer service to the Antes. How Bryen and Ubad had managed to learn exactly where Magelia had lived was still a mystery to Welstiel.
A hollow presence pulled at Welstiel from nearby, and he caught the flutter of gray hair in the forest trees. The undead sorcerer stepped out into view before Magiere and her companions.
"I thought you destroyed that," Welstiel whispered.
"So did I," Chane replied.
The sorcerer held out his hand, and the topaz amulet the half-blood wore shot into his grip. The walking corpse grinned and turned into the forest. Magiere and the others followed. Chane was about to rise, and Welstiel clamped a hand on his shoulder, holding him down.
"Wait until they are in the trees."
A small part of Welstiel pitied Magiere for what was to come, as he had once pitied her mother.
Chapter 15
M agiere was numb with cold as she stepped through the doorway behind Vordana. The dwelling made her skin crawl as if she were covered with insects.
An iron staff leaned against the wall by the door, its surface stained and etched with wear. Rough-cut tables and shelves were loaded with jars and other vessels of ceramic, glass, and metal. In the nearest glass container, Magiere saw cloudy liquid in which fleshy shapes floated. A severed joint of cartilage and bone pressed against the side. She wasn't certain what kind of being it came from, and she didn't want to know. The fire in the hearth burned brightly, but its heat made the place feel tight and stifling.
Vordana walked to the room's back and opened another door leading into a passage.
She followed a few paces back, for the smell of the undead sorcerer made her gag in the enclosed space. The passage was crudely chiseled granite rather than mortared stone. To her amazement, she stepped out its far end and into an enormous cavern.
Torches blazed upon poles stuck in the bare earth, but their light couldn't reach into the dark expanse above.
Magiere stood within a cave inside the granite knoll. The vast area reached back at least a hundred paces. Directly ahead, in the cavern's center, was a thick granite slab resting upon two shorter blocks of stone. Its surface was partially covered by a rumpled white satin cloth. Before it stood a cast-iron vat hanging from a towering tripod over a stack of firewood. Leesil stepped up beside her, looking about the cavern.
"Dhampir…" a hollow voice said. The word wafted through the space up into the darkness overhead. "I had begun to doubt the reports."
Magiere peered into the darkness but could see nothing.
Then, from beyond the torches a figure took form out of the shadows. Its hooded robe was dark gray. Torchlight across the fabric's folds revealed faint markings, symbols that shimmered in and out of sight. Across the upper half of his face was a mask of aged leather ending above a bony jaw.
Vordana bowed to the new arrival.
As the robed figure glided nearer, Magiere saw there were no eye slits in the mask. She wondered if this aged creature could see her, and she held out the tip of her falchion in warning.
"That's close enough."
He stopped beyond the blade's reach. His head swiveled about as if he listened for something. When Chap circled around Leesil's side, the dog was quiet, but his jowls pulled back in a silent snarl. At that instant, the masked face turned directly toward the dog.
Magiere's dhampir half rose enough that her senses expanded. She saw the masked man's chest rise and fall beneath the robe and felt his slight heat. He was alive and mortal for all she could tell.
"You are Ubad?" she asked.
"One of my names," he answered, ending in a slur than made his voice hiss.
"I have questions," Magiere said coldly. "I'm told you have answers."
"Yes. And I've longed to tell them to you for many years. " Ubad faced his visitors and raised a leather-colored hand to point at Magiere. "Perfect. Your hair, flesh, power. Day combined with night, the living and the dead."
"Get to your answers, old man," Leesil snapped. "I think you know the questions already."
A cluster of ghosts appeared instantly around them. The soldier with the stomach wound hovered near Leesil.