Dull pieces of wooden branches rained down harmlessly to the ground around both sages, neither dressed as they should be. Rage returned, and he charged, closing the distance in an instant.
He did not bother drawing a sword and tore the young sage out of the elder one’s arms.
Sau’ilahk latched his right hand around the elder one’s throat. That renegade sage might be able to nullify conjury, but his skills would save him from a physical assault.
And again, Chuillyon did not move. Sau’ilahk would not hesitate to feed on the aging sage, as troublesome as Wynn Hygeorht, and then he could finish her at his leisure.
Something struck his right shoulder, and he lost his grip in agony. Stumbling and tripping in a back step, he saw a black-feathered arrow protruding from his shoulder.
The wound began to burn within.
Bow still in hand, and its string still thrumming, Osha reached over his shoulder to his quiver for another arrow as he gripped the horse with his knees. Even with Wayfarer clutching his waist, and Shade charging ahead, he knew his target for what it was.
It was not the young duke.
Chane had claimed he destroyed the duke’s body and the foul spirit within it. While Chane might be a dark thing, he was no liar. Somehow, Sau’ilahk had survived in that body seized through the use of an orb.
“Get to Wynn and light the staff,” Osha shouted, not looking back to Wayfarer.
His fingers touched the arrows in his quiver. He quickly found one without threaded ridges, pulled it, and drew it in one motion, not even looking to its white metal tip. He squeezed his knees twice, and the horse slowed. As he felt Wayfarer release his waist and slide off, he saw Chuillyon.
How had that one beaten him here? Wayfarer had said she left the elder sage behind with the priestess.
Sau’ilahk then saw him, and quickly gripped the first arrow to rip it out.
Osha released the bow’s string.
This time, he did not need to tilt the bow’s hidden white metal handle to direct the arrow’s flight. It struck below the half-undead’s right cheekbone.
Sau’ilahk’s head whipped back as he spun off balance. His enraged shriek came late after Osha’s own angry hiss that the arrow had not finished him. Shade charged straight at Sau’ilahk and sprang at a full run. An instant later, Wayfarer reached Wynn’s side, and Chuillyon rushed out after Shade.
Osha’s mount closed on and rounded the two women as he drew and fitted his second-to-last white-metal-tipped arrow.
Shade hit Sau’ilahk in the chest with both forepaws, and he went tumbling over backward. After a rebound, she whirled to go at him again.
“No,” Chuillyon shouted. “Hold, Shade.”
Osha stalled in shock.
Sau’ilahk rose, his eyes widening, and as if on instinct, he turned and ran.
Osha did not care what became of Sau’ilahk as he swung off his mount. He ran straight to Wynn, sitting on the ground and supported by Wayfarer, and he ignored everything else as he dropped to one knee.
“Are you injured?” he asked.
Almost instantly, Shade pushed in beside him, dropped one of his arrows from her jaws, and pressed her nose into Wynn’s neck. Wynn appeared to fumble in an attempt to grip the dog’s neck but did not look at anyone. She was staring downward at ... nothing.
Chuillyon neared to stand above all of them.
“Osha, is that you?” Wynn asked, a tremor in her voice.
“Yes, certainly, I am ...”
He could not finish. Wynn still looked at no one, not even Shade, though both her hands were clutching the majay-hì’s thick fur.
Osha turned cold inside, looking first into Wynn’s wandering eyes. In the dark, he could just make out the wet cheeks of her oval olive-toned face.
He looked to Wayfarer. Why was she crying as well? Then he felt sick. Still trying to deny what he saw, he waved a hand only a palm’s breadth before Wynn’s face.
She did not blink or flinch.
Her glasses lay on the ground not far from the staff, its crystal now dark. Without thinking, Osha grasped Wynn away from Shade and Wayfarer and pulled her into his chest. She felt so small in his arms.
“Help Magiere,” Wynn said, clutching the front of his jerkin. “When I last ... saw her, she had become lost to herself again and ran into the horde.”
Osha’s chest hurt as if something had broken inside him.
“No more time for grief,” Chuillyon said. “Get her up! Wynn, you must light the staff again and keep it lit.”
Osha was about to lash out at Chuillyon when Wayfarer grabbed his arm with both hands. He glared between them both. How could they be so cold, so heartless? But some of Wynn’s warning slipped through.
Magiere was now a danger to them all, one way or another. He remembered why Chane had sent him and ran his hand all over Wynn, searching her clothing.
“Where is it?” he demanded. “Where is the bottle Chane gave you? You must drink it quickly to heal your eyes.”
Wynn went still in his arms. “No.”
Osha froze. “You must drink it!”
“No.”
Chuillyon spun away and in three steps picked up the staff—and the glasses. What good would the latter do anymore?
“Get her up, now!” he commanded, closing on them again.
“I—I can’t,” Wynn gasped out, dropping her head against Osha’s chest. “I’m too weak.”
“The potion will heal you,” Osha insisted. “Perhaps give you strength again.”
“No!” Wynn cried, pushing away from him. “This isn’t a wound of flesh, blood, or bone. It may not be a wound that can be healed, and I won’t waste the potion on myself.”
“It is the only way,” he insisted.
“Use it to stop Magiere,” she pressed.
To stop Magiere? What was she saying?
Everyone fell silent in confusion, and before Osha could ask, Wynn began digging into her short-robe.
“Please, Osha,” she begged. “We did this to her, or Chap and I did. Magiere must be stopped, any way that we can.”
Still he hesitated, though he then remembered Chane’s words.
The liquid is also a poison to the undead.
Wynn finally withdrew a small bottle from her short-robe. Did she know what else that fluid might do?
“Please!” Wynn insisted, blindly holding out the bottle. “Dip your arrows in this. Stop her any way you have to.”
“I can help Wynn here,” Wayfarer whispered, and looked up to Chuillyon. “Perhaps ... to keep the staff lit.”
Osha’s bow lay on the ground beside him. He glanced at it and back to Wynn.
How could she of anyone ask him to kill again? Even if he took great care, if that fluid killed whatever undead nature lay within Magiere, would it not kill her as well? Was that nature not part of the way she had been born—what she was?
And what if the potion did not stop Magiere?
“You have to do this,” Wynn said. “No one else—perhaps not even Chap—might survive getting too close to her. You have to use your bow.”
Looking around at all of them, Osha stalled in meeting Wayfarer’s intense eyes. There was no one else who could do this—and he took the bottle from Wynn. Hefting his bow, he silently turned away.
“If you fail,” he said, walking away, “take the horse and flee.”
Only Shade tried to follow him.
“No,” he said without looking back.
Their task now was to reignite the staff, and his might be to kill a friend.
Osha ran toward the battle.
Wayfarer watched the one man she both loved and blamed run off in the dark. Osha had not come for her but for Wynn. How many times would she be only an afterthought to him?
There was no more time for selfish thoughts as she looked to the young woman still sitting beside her.