Chane rushed down the alley, dragging his prey along the wall. When he reached the end, he pinned the man against the short wall above the cliff, and clamped his other hand around the merchant's throat. He glanced back for an instant.
The night watch passed up the main street beyond sight.
Chane wrenched the merchant's head back. His jaws widened at the sight of a distended throat. The beast within him went still, panting in anticipation—until Chane paused, frozen as well.
Reason crept in—he had to think.
This moment promised ecstasy … and consequences. Among Numans, the humans of these lands, and perhaps dwarves as well, undead were nearly unknown. If Wynn heard of a corpse with its throat torn, who else would she think of but him?
Could he cut the man's throat, not even kill him, and make it look like a common assault? He could still drink, and the blood as a conduit would carry a bit of life into him—just enough to sustain him for a while.
The beast snarled, howling denial.
Chane wanted … needed this moment … this kill. He could do this and simply heave the body over the precipice. Days, or even a moon, would pass before it was found, if at all. No other hope of bliss was his in this existence… .
Except a small place in Wynn's world.
A howl vibrated deep inside Chane.
He released the merchant's throat, still gripping the man's jaw, and reached for his sword. It would take a deep but careful slice, enough to be life-threatening but not fatal.
The merchant awoke, and his hands latched onto Chane's wrist.
Even muffled beneath Chane's palm, the man's shriek rang in his ears.
Panic—or a rush of delight—smothered all reason.
Chane jerked the merchant's head aside and clamped his jaws onto the man's throat. Fatted flesh tore in his teeth and he swallowed blood as starvation took over. Life filled him, coppery and salt-laden and vibrant with a prey's horror. It had been so long since he had given in. Even in feeding in Calm Seatt, he kept himself distanced from the pleasure.
There was no beast. There was no Chane. There was only painful hunger to smother and drown. He remained fastened to his prey's throat until the man's thrashing weakened beneath him. He heard—felt—the final heartbeat.
Chane raised his head, swallowing blood that welled back up his throat into his mouth. He languished, wavering slightly in regained strength and release from hunger. When he finally opened his eyes, he gazed up at one string of stars barely shining through a cloud-coated sky.
To him, those points of light were as brilliant as full moons. The stars, like a writhing path in the blackness, reminded him of …
Something he thought he had glimpsed once in dark dormancy … and a question.
Do Noble Dead dream?
Memory of Wynn's voice made every muscle tighten, and Chane heard a muffled crackle.
Bone shifted beneath the flesh clenched in his left hand. His gaze dropped instantly from the night sky.
The merchant's jaw had shifted sideways in his grip, broken and disfigured. Even then, the beast settled in glutted contentment, and Chane dared not close his eyes or he might see Wynn staring at him.
Do Noble Dead dream when they sleep … I mean, go dormant?
Chane shuddered, suddenly cold inside.
Perhaps they did—or he did—but not always. When had that first started? At times, as his limbs and eyelids grew heavy and he slipped into that vacant darkness, he had been thinking of her.
He would remember her in the library of the old converted barracks in Bela. Or he imagined her in a castle far away, searching through a great library of books, tomes, and scrolls that stretched beyond sight's reach. In this last day's dormancy, he had been remembering her small room back in the guild at Calm Seatt—a place he had seen only once.
Wherever he imagined, always at night while he lay dormant for the day, she was there with him. But there was someone … something … else?
Now and then, something had moved in a dark corner or under a table beyond the reach of a dreamtime Wynn's cold lamp. Something like stars—or glints upon a black reflective surface—that coiled and rolled. But whenever he looked, nothing was there.
Always just before he rose at dusk, or when he roused too early for the tram back to Bay-Side. Wynn had been pulling at him and …
The beast's eager rumble made Chane convulse and then turn rigid.
Had he lunged at her? Pinned her beneath himself? No, that could never happen.
Chane jerked his hand from the corpse's dislocated jaw and let it drop. None of this mattered. It was just the power of his desire, like that of the hunt. He needed her so much that it breached the vacant time of his dormancy. That was all.
He remembered the sight of her standing in his doorway, an urn of goat's blood in her arms. What she must have endured to get it for him. He would never let her suffer that again. Now he was strong, his thoughts clear and sharp, and she need never know how.
Chane crouched to seize the body, pausing long enough to wipe his face off on the man's cloak. He heaved the corpse up and out. It cleared the wall and fell down the mountainside.
One prey among many meant nothing.
But vampires each developed different and differing degrees of abilities. In the past year, he had started to feel the difference between truth and deceit. Not often, and only when he was not expecting it. The beast inside of him snarled in warning, as if sensing a threat.
If Wynn found him gone, later asking where he had been …
Would Chane hear—feel—his own lie to her?
Sau'ilahk waited in a Sea-Side side tunnel just beyond a common dwarven tavern called Maksûin Bití—the Baited Bear. He had risen from dormancy feeling strong and alert, vital with the life of three victims. On this second night beneath the mountain, he was beginning to appreciate its many shadowy places.
Wynn had gone back to the temple at Bay-Side, but this did not matter for now. Within moments of awakening, he had conjured two servitors of Air and sent them in search of a word: "thänæ." Any such mention would trigger his elemental constructs to record all utterances until conversation ended. And one had proven useful, returning to echoing dwarven voices chattering in excitement.
"… thänæ will come tonight!"
"Where did you hear this? No one's seen him in nearly a season."
"Well's Bottom and Gatherer were at the People's Place last—"
"Oh, mirth of the Eternals! Do not believe what you hear in that place!"
"He is back—Hammer-Stag has returned! And tonight he comes to the Baited Bear!"
"Why? That is no greeting house, and even so—"
Sau'ilahk banished his servitors, not needing to hear more. It took time to find this basic house of ale and an opportune place to lie in wait. He knew a dwarven "telling" could last late into the night. It was not necessary to see the thänæ's arrival, only his departure.
The thänæ in question, like all such, had already achieved a place among the dwarves' honored dead. Ultimately, all such hoped one day to become Bäynæ, one of the Eternals, the spiritual immortals and ancestral patrons of their people. To do so, one had to accomplish great feats that exalted their virtues or served the people—and in the "telling" to be judged worthy by all. Only when the people began to demand the marking of a new thänæ would a tribe's leaders sit in conclave. A unanimous vote was required before shirvêsh of the appropriate temple were called to bless a new thôrhk for the recipient. Only the Thänæ had their names engraved upon the temple's walls, but even then, decades or centuries would pass before even one of them, one day, might be ranked among the Eternals … if any ever did.