Wynn’s gaze caught on the tips of metal around her neck. They peeked out through the separation of her hair.
“Chap, those knobs and the metal,” Wynn whispered. “It looks just like Magiere’s
thôrhk
.”
The woman lunged a step at these words, and Wynn ducked behind Chap as he rumbled in warning.
The deceptively frail undead stared at Wynn. She traced her own lips with narrow fingertips, never looking at Chap. Then her gaze dropped to the pile of hide sheets opened on the floor.
Her strangely shaped eyes narrowed, and her lips parted in a silent snarl over clenched teeth. She began to shake as her fingers hooked like claws.
Say the name!
Chap shouted into Wynn’s head.
Her name!
Wynn floundered in panic, not knowing what he meant.
From the column of words beside the door!
“Li . . . kun . . . ,” Wynn whispered.
The woman froze, and her feral expression softened.
Wynn tried to find her voice. “Li-kun!”
The woman’s eyes opened fully. Confusion washed anger from her face.
Her gaze flitted over the walls, wandering among patches of black scribbles, until she appeared to grow dizzy and stumbled. When she turned fully around, her back to Wynn, she stopped—and threw herself at the wall beside the door.
She crumpled, her delicate hands dragging down the column of a name written so many times. When she reached the floor, she twisted about to squat with her knees pulled up against her bare chest.
Do not move,
Chap warned.
Do nothing to disturb her for the moment.
Wynn flinched as the woman began weakly hammering at her head with limp fists, like someone trying to dislodge a forgotten memory. She sucked in air over and over. But undead did not need to breathe, and the corners of her mouth kept twisting, stretching.
Was she trying to speak? If so, her voice did not come.
“Volyno?” Wynn whispered. “Häs’saun?”
Enough!
Chap warned.
Strands of black hair tangled over the woman’s face as she lowered her head. Her crystal irises fixed upon Wynn.
In their frightening depths, Wynn saw anguished hunger for . . . something.
Chap remained poised before Wynn.
In this castle of Magiere’s dreams, he had hoped to learn more concerning what memories the Fay had stolen from him, and why they had done so. He also believed he might find answers to questions concerning Leesil and Magiere, and their future—and the forgotten conflict and an enemy of many names.
Now all he could do was watch this ancient monster crumple into her insanity.
This place was old—older perhaps than any stronghold in the world. He felt how devoid of life these walls had been for centuries or longer. And this white thing might be older still.
No longer trying to speak, the woman watched Wynn.
Your voice . . . spoken words shocked her,
he told Wynn.
Perhaps that is why she did not kill you.
Wynn looked down at him.
He was only guessing, and yet he loathed the notion of dipping into the crazed thing’s memories.
She has been alone for so long that she had forgotten the sound of words. It seems she knows only what is written.
Wynn’s face brushed his ear as she whispered, “What now?”
Talk to her . . . and I will try to catch any of her memories
.
“Are you sure?”
Do it . . . while she remains sedate.
Wynn inched forward on her knees and pointed to herself.
“Wynn,” she said. “And you are . . . Li-kun?”
The woman tilted her head like a crow, or perhaps more like a hawk.
Chap cautiously slipped into her mind. He saw nothing, as if she had no memories at all to rise in her thoughts.
Try the other names again.
“Who is Volyno . . . or Häs’saun?”
At the second name, a wild barrage of broken images erupted in the woman’s head.
Flickering white faces passed among other sights—cold peaks, an endless desert, a cowering goblin hammering at stone, massive iron doors, a pale headless corpse on a stone floor . . . the maelstrom made Chap sick.
Her name . . . again!
Wynn pointed to the woman. “Li-kun . . . is this your name?”
The woman’s mouth gaped. She lunged forward onto all fours, and her black hair dangled with stray ends brushing the floor. A hoarse rasp issued from her throat. Something in the sound mimicked the way Wynn had pronounced the name.
“Li’kän?” Wynn tried, altering her pronunciation.
The undead studied the sage in fascination and crept forward across the floor.
Chap shifted, ready to lunge into the woman’s face, but she slowed, hesitating. She lifted one hand and reached out to Wynn. Chap trembled.
The undead stretched out one narrow finger, the digit slipping through the side of Wynn’s wispy brown hair.
To the sage’s credit, she did not flinch, remaining frozen in place— even as the finger pulled down over her lips. When it passed her chin and retracted, Wynn swallowed hard and turned toward the wall beside the shelves.
“Are these your writings?”
Calm sanity vanished once more from Li’kän’s face.
She clutched her own arms, scratching herself with hardened white nails. The wounds closed so quickly that barely any black fluids seeped out. Harsh, rapid hisses poured from her throat. But no matter how fast her small mouth moved, her voice would not come. Chap could not make out what she tried to say.
Li’kän thrashed in frustration, turning circles on all fours like a dog.
Wynn shrank back, but Chap stood his ground.
He feared the undead no longer possessed real memories, or that after so long alone, they had faded beyond her mind’s reach.
Chap steeled himself and slipped again into Li’kän’s mind.
Wild blurs of images, lacking any sound, passed through a mind that was no longer rational. Then a flash of something massive, with coils of black scales, rolled and slid in a dark place. Behind it, he saw a brief glimpse of natural stone, as in an underground space. Then the image vanished, replaced by one of Chap himself.
No, a large wolf—but it had the strange crystal sky-blue eyes of a majay-hì.
An ancestor of the breed from long ago, exactly like those Chap had seen in Most Aged Father’s memory. Li’kän remembered one of the original born-Fay, who had come into the world during the forgotten war.
“Il . . . sa . . . mar . . . ,” she rasped, and then her grating hiss trailed on.
Il’Samar
—the only word of her voiceless gibberish that Chap could catch.
Why would she think of born-Fay—or any Fay—and then the enemy of many names?
Chap recoiled, pulling from the undead’s mind, but he still wondered that she had no memory of anyone speaking—until Wynn.
Li’kän, this walking shell of death, could write, though not coherently. But spoken language had been lost to her for so long that she had forgotten even the sound of her own name.
Magiere felt an undead’s presence all around her, but not like ever before. It seeped from the rocks and snow and air, with no origin she could fix upon—and the pull within her pressed her to go on, upward.
She smelled blood in the cold air’s light breeze.
Osha leaned into the black space in the cliff’s wall and cried out, “Sgäilsheilleache!”
Sgäile ran past Magiere. She took off on his heels with Leesil close behind. Before they reached Osha, he collapsed, his knees sinking in the snow.
A rocky chute rose up through the gully’s stone wall, and at its bottom lay a still form slumped against one side.
“Kurhkâge!” Sgäile whispered.
The corpse of the tall elf had only scar tissue for one eye, and the other was still open wide. A light scattering of snow had collected on his tan face, and a white cloth partially covered his open green-gray cloak. But the chest of his tunic was dark with frozen blood around a gaping hole where the ends of shattered ribs protruded.
Leesil hissed something under his breath, and Magiere spun about.
He’d stopped short on the gully’s open floor, and the trail he’d broken in the snow ended where he stood. But something more had rolled ahead of his feet, something that he’d accidentally kicked from under the snowfall.
Blood on the head’s ragged neck stump had frozen into red ice crust from the clinging snow.
“A’harhk’nis!” Sgäile exhaled the name and shook his head in disbelief.
“How?” Osha moaned, and then slipped into Elvish.
Sgäile weakly waved him into silence.
Magiere barely noted their shock and grief. She was too focused on keeping her dhampir half from rising. If she went near Sgäile, she’d try to force answers from him. Why were other anmaglâhk in these mountains, so close to her destination?
Leesil joined Sgäile, and his expression was hard to read. “You knew them?”
“Yes,” Sgäile whispered. “Kurhkâge spoke for Osha when he first requested acceptance to our caste.”
Osha stared at the corpse’s one eye and didn’t blink until his own eyes began to water.
“What were they doing up here?” Leesil demanded.
The low threat in his voice made Magiere’s own anger quicken. Shock faded from Sgäile’s face, replaced by wariness.
“I do not know.”
“Then guess!” Leesil snapped. “How is this connected to us?”
Sgäile turned on him. “What are you suggesting?”
Leesil didn’t answer. He just stood there, glancing back at the head lying in the snow.
The scent of blood sharpened in Magiere’s nostrils.
“I swear, I do not know,” Sgäile insisted and looked away. “I know nothing of this. Kurhkâge’s hands . . . he did not even pull a weapon.”
Leesil pushed past Osha and crouched before the dead anmaglâhk.
Magiere’s eyes fixed on the head. Its face, half-covered in clinging snow, still held a frozen hint of outrage.
“Could there be more?” Leesil asked, though he sounded far away in Magiere’s ears.
“No,” Osha answered in Belaskian. “Our caste not leave them . . . perform rites for dead. We do it now.”
Leesil’s voice grew louder. “Not until we find Wynn and Chap!”
Magiere scanned the snow-filled gully. Not far back she spotted a long oblong mound.
She knew the headless body must lie there beneath the snow, and she crouched to pick up the head. Frozen hair crackled in her hands.
“Magiere?” Leesil called.
“What is she doing?” Sgäile asked, voice rising in alarm.
Something she had not done since Bela, and the hunt for an undead who had been murdering nobles. Holding a dead girl’s dress, she had accidentally stumbled into Welstiel’s footsteps, where he had torn open the girl’s throat upon her own doorstep.
Two dead anmaglâhk lay here, and she sensed a Noble Dead like no other she’d come across. Instinct and blood told her in part what had happened. And Chap and Wynn were still missing.
Magiere cringed at what she might learn—see—through the undead’s eyes by touching its victim. But she had to know. She had to—
“Magiere!” Leesil shouted. “Don’t!”
Darkness and the previous night’s blizzard swallowed Magiere’s world.
She looked down upon an anmaglâhk pinned in the snow between her narrow white thighs. Before he swung a long curved blade, she grabbed his face. Her white fingers slid up into his hair as she drove her teeth into his throat.
Skin, muscle, and tendons tore between her jaws. Blood flooded her mouth and seeped into her throat. She arched, whipping her torso back as she tore his head free, and stared at another bloody mass clutched in her other hand.
She felt no hunger to feed upon his life. She was already glutted, constantly fed by something she couldn’t see. And suddenly, claws bit into her bare back.
Magiere whirled to find Chap snarling, with hackles raised and teeth bared. He harried her until she backhanded him. Part of Magiere shriveled inside as his body hit the gully wall and slumped motionless into the deep snow.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to run to him.
The small white body she existed within turned toward a figure standing in the chute’s opening.
Magiere tried to stop herself, but her delicate white hand latched around Wynn’s throat. And then she cringed and shrank away at the sound of Wynn’s cry.