Wynn rushed along the bookcase row. “No, stop—no fighting!”
The instant she stepped into the open, Osha appeared on her left. He flipped one stiletto into his other hand and grabbed her wrist, dragging her left along the row of casements.
Off the other way, Wynn saw Li’kän’s back.
Beyond the white undead, Leesil half-crouched and slid in next to Magiere.
Magiere cocked up her falchion in a doubled grip. Li’kän charged, and Magiere took a lunging step, bringing her sword down—and then stumbled.
The blade never passed Magiere’s shoulder. It wavered heavily in her grip as Li’kän lurched to a halt, teetering on her small feet.
Wynn saw only Li’kän’s bare back as the woman buckled and hunched.
Magiere blinked twice, opening her eyes more slowly each time. She was breathing hard.
Chap circled around both women, and his admonishment lashed sharply in Wynn’s head.
Do not move—do nothing, unless you tell us first!
Li’kän spun about. Fury melted from her petite features when her gaze found Wynn.
Osha jerked hard on Wynn’s wrist, pulling her behind himself. Wynn did not resist, but peered around his side.
Li’kän grew almost manic. Her colorless eyes widened over her slack mouth, her lips trembling. She began to shake as if caught in overwhelming anxiety, and then she thrust out the scroll case toward Wynn.
Even in fright, a part of Wynn wanted to know what was in that scroll. She reached out to—
Do not even think of it!
Then Chap’s ears pricked up as Li’kän’s small mouth began to work and twist.
More words . . . more words . . . ,
he projected, and his multitongued voice in Wynn’s head matched the movement of Li’kän’s lips.
She wants you to read to her.
Wynn took a deep breath and pulled from Osha’s grasp. But when she echoed Chap’s thoughts to the others, Magiere growled back.
“What do you think you’re doing with this thing?”
Leesil held his place with one blade still raised, and Wynn jumped slightly as Sgäile appeared out of the very row she had run from. The garrote was stretched between his hands.
“Spoken words,” Wynn said and quickly tried to explain how she had kept Li’kän occupied while waiting for them to come. She’d barely got out Chap’s accounting of how long Li’kän might have been here alone, when Magiere cut her off.
“You . . . your sages . . . your damn Forgotten History! Or don’t you remember what Chap found in Most Aged Father’s memories? Undead by the hundreds—or thousands—slaughtering every living thing in their path. And where do you think they came from?”
Magiere pointed her blade at Li’kän.
“Look at this thing! One of those who brought everything to an end . . . and you want to read to it!”
An uneasy truce had emerged, and Magiere watched Li’kän crouch beside the passage’s exit. Beyond, down the row of bookcases, Wynn sat with Osha. Sgäile stood over the pair as the sage ate sparingly from their rations. Sitting beside her, Chap snapped up a piece of dried fish.
Li’kän stayed put but never took her eyes off the sage. Wynn watched her in turn between eager glances at the shelves.
A vibrancy had grown inside Magiere, shuddering through her bones.
At the courtyard gates, when Leesil had told her to get control, she had pressed her dhampir nature down—and that shiver had emerged in her awareness. Or had it been there all along as they approached the castle, only masked by hunger, fury, and the longing that drove her to this place?
She tried to suppress the tremors, as she had within elven tree homes, with their forest’s life threading into her. But here, only the castle’s cold stone and the ice-capped mountains surrounded them. So what was it that . . . fed her?
Magiere studied Li’kän, one of Welstiel’s “old ones.” What fed this monster, alone for so long in this dead place?
“That circlet around her neck,” Leesil whispered, “it looks like yours. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
Magiere wanted to rend this white monster and leave nothing but ashes in its place. Sgäile approached, slowing with care as he passed wide around Li’kän.
“There is more writing on these walls,” he said. “Wynn believes it was all written by this creature, who does not remember that the words are hers . . . and more of her kind once existed here, at least two others.”
“What is she feeding on?” Magiere asked.
“Nothing could live up . . .” Sgäile began, then lifted his eyes angrily. “
Is
feeding?”
Leesil tucked in close to Magiere. “I doubt she fed on those anmaglâhk we found—by the way she mangled them. But we’ve never encountered a physical undead that didn’t need to feed, somehow, on the living.”
Magiere caught Leesil’s worried glance. Had he noticed her shaking again or some other sign? She wasn’t about to let Sgäile know what she’d suffered in his land, so she had no way to tell Leesil what she felt now. Yes, something in this place was sustaining Li’kän.
“Perhaps the same thing Welstiel hoped to find,” Magiere said.
“Are we near it?” Leesil asked.
“Maybe,” she replied. “I’ll take the lead with Chap. Leesil, you and Sgäile keep that creature ahead of—”
“Not yet,” Sgäile cut in. “I have questions.”
“You?” Leesil hissed. “You have questions!”
Sgäile’s eyes stayed fixed upon Magiere. “That creature is not the only one who stalled amid bloodlust. You halted in midswing . . . why?”
Magiere didn’t know. She had felt suddenly weak, as if her strength had drained away for an instant.
She shook her head. “I just felt heavy, tired, and then it passed.”
“That was not the only response you shared with the white woman,” Sgäile said.
Magiere instinctively warmed with anger. Before Leesil could snap again, Sgäile went on.
“She echoed your fury. What connection lies between you?”
“What else would you expect?” Magiere spit back. “It’s undead. I was born to kill it. And it’s not going to just stand there waiting for me to take its head. There’s nothing between her and—”
“No,” Sgäile snapped, his voice barely above a whisper. "When she stopped and slipped into delirium . . . even then her expression echoed yours.”
Leesil lurched forward, but Sgäile raised one finger at him.
“I know what I saw,” he warned; then he walked away with a last hard glance at Magiere as he called out, “Osha, prepare to move on.”
Magiere didn’t know what to think about Sgäile’s veiled accusation. Any denial of her strange reaction to Li’kän, or the other way around, would be a lie.
“Come on,” Leesil whispered. “Let’s finish this and get out of here.”
Li’kän curled her lips back as Magiere walked past.
“Move!” Magiere hissed back.
She headed off along the bookcases, trying to clear her head. Her hunger had waned, and it was barely enough to keep her night sight widened. But the longing was still strong, and it pulled her onward.
Magiere did not get far. They all stopped short at the chamber’s far end, facing nothing but a wall of ancient stone blocks. Or that was how it seemed.
A long and rusted iron beam stretched across the wall’s length, resting in stone cradles, like a door’s bar. And while the stone blocks overlapped in construction, Magiere spotted one seam at the wall’s center that ran straight from top to bottom.
Leesil traced the seam with his fingers, from the floor up to the beam as thick as a man’s thigh. Twin doors built of mortared stone blocked their way, and Magiere couldn’t imagine what hinged mechanism might possibly support them.
The pull inside Magiere told her to pass through these stone doors, to hurry beyond them. But why were they barred from the outside? And how could she and her companions lift the enormous beam, let alone open this massive portal?
Leesil slid sharply away along the wall, his hands dropping to his sheathed blades, and Magiere half-turned, reaching for her falchion.
Li’kän stepped silently up to the doors.
The undead pressed her smooth cheek to the beam’s metal, as if listening for something beyond. Then her eyes rolled up. Her small mouth began working again, mumbling mutely.
Chap watched Li’kän slip into another semiconscious state. He reached out again to catch memories surfacing in the undead’s mind.
He saw only darkness—but he heard the low, distant hiss again, like a whisper—or was it more like a fire’s crackle? The sound sped up, buzzing furiously like leaves or insect wings. Chap lost his concentration as Magiere whispered.
“It’s here . . . behind the wall . . . these doors. I can feel it.”
Something shifted in the dark within Li’kän.
Chap almost missed it. Not a memory, but an
awareness
. Did Li’kän feel him inside her mind? He panicked and began to pull out—too late.
Something cold struck at him from the dark of Li’kän’s mind. It thrashed about inside his thoughts, trying to find him and coil about him . . . and it took hold.
Chap’s yelp echoed in his own ears.
“Stop it!” Leesil growled. “Stay out of that thing’s head.”
“Wynn, what’s wrong?” Magiere shouted.
Chap thrashed wildly, struggling to get free.
The chamber and door walls cleared before his eyes. The only thing holding him was Leesil’s hands about his shoulders. Chap settled, still shivering within.
Magiere crouched behind Wynn. The sage sat crumpled upon the floor, one hand over her mouth. She shook uncontrollably as she stared wide-eyed at Chap.
“What . . . was that?” Wynn whispered. “That buzz from Li’kän’s thoughts?”
She had heard it as well—but that should not be possible.
Chap could not think of a reason. She only heard him because a taint of wild magic let her hear when he communed with his kin, the Fay. He had learned to use this to speak to and through her. But somehow, as he was rooting about in the undead’s mind, she had heard the same sound as he had. It made no sense.
“What happened?” Magiere demanded.
Chap blinked twice, jowls twitching.
It . . . something . . . sensed me,
he said to Wynn, and she echoed his words with effort.
Something inside Li’kän knew I was there . . . and wanted me out.
“You all right?” Leesil asked.
No, he was not. Chap remembered an unfamiliar voice in the dark that had whispered to Welstiel and to Ubâd. He had little doubt it was the same voice in Magiere’s dreams. Now Li’kän was mumbling voicelessly to herself—or to something only she could hear.
And Wynn had heard it as well.
Somewhere in this old fortification—among the centuries of records or buried in Li’kän’s fragmented mind—might lie an answer. But all Chap could think of now was a “presence” that toyed with undead, manipulated Magiere’s dreams, and perhaps held sway over ancient Li’kän.
The “night voice,” that ancient enemy of many names, Ubâd’s sacred il’Samar . . .
It wanted Magiere to have the artifact her half-brother desired.
Chap did not want Magiere to go any further—but he did not realize that the feeling was more than just anxiety for Magiere. Not until she rose, jerked out her falchion, and glared back the way they had come.
Magiere’s black irises expanded. She bolted back toward the passage entrance as Chap cut loose with a rolling howl.
“Undeads!” Leesil shouted, pulling both silvery winged blades.
A white flash passed Chap before he overtook Leesil and Sgäile.
Li’kän left everyone behind as she raced after Magiere.
Chap heard Osha and Wynn scrambling to follow as he ran after the white woman. If other undead had come here, and Magiere found them first, on which side would Li’kän stand?
Chane followed Welstiel along the castle’s pillared wide corridor and the feral monks clambered in behind him, anxiously sniffing about. He followed suit and caught a thin scent, barely noticeable. It reminded him of old, rancid seed oil, but where had he smelled this before?
Welstiel’s eyes glittered with anticipation. He kept onward in silence, until they all passed through a tall archway shaped like the outer gates and front doors. Straight ahead, a wide stone stairway led to upper floors, and to the left and right, narrower passages stretched into the dark.
One feral screamed.
Chane whirled, backing away as he pulled his longsword. A shadow shot out between the hunkering monk’s shoulder blades and arced into the chamber’s upper air.
“Spread out!” Welstiel shouted, pulling his own blade.