Magiere reached around and pulled it out for her. She removed her gloves and rubbed the crystal in her hands, but the responding light was weak.
"Too cold..." Wynn added weakly. "Put it in your mouth... for a moment."
Magiere was too exhausted to even scowl. She slipped the crystal between her cracked lips and closed her mouth.
In the cave's darkness, her face slowly lit up. Pale features burned from within and her face became a glowing skeletal mask, too much like the skulls of Leesil's father and grandmother. The ghastly sight made him rise and reach for her.
"Take it out!" he snapped.
Magiere spit the crystal into her hand. Its light sprang up so strong that they all flinched. With the crystal in one hand, she prepared to lead the way after Chap.
"Wait," Leesil warned.
He pulled one of Magiere's extra shirts from the horse pack to fashion a sling for Wynn's arm. Then he saw the dark stains around the mitten cuff of the sage's left hand. He carefully peeled the mitten off.
Wynn's wrist wasn't bleeding anymore, but blood had smeared across her hand and up her forearm around where Chap's teeth had torn through her skin. Leesil hoped it looked worse than it truly was, but he wouldn't know until there was time to clean her up. He ripped off the shirttail for a quick bandage.
Wynn didn't flinch until he tried to tie the shirt's sleeves around her for a sling. He worried that her shoulder had been pulled from its socket, and he needed to keep her arm secured. She yelped, cringing away, and Leesil finished quickly.
"Follow Chap," he told Magiere. "We need to get away from the opening to someplace more sheltered."
Magiere scowled, as if all this were his fault, and glanced at Wynn slumped against the stone, breathing weakly. She carefully took Wynn by the waist and led the way with the crystal in her free hand.
Leesil heard Chap scrabbling ahead over the uneven floor, so he hoisted their few belongings. The deeper they went, the quieter it became, until the wind outside sounded far off. Along the way, Leesil noticed pockmarks of darkness high above that the crystal's light couldn't erase. There were smaller openings-cubbies, holes, and other natural cracks, perhaps even channels and smaller tunnels connected into the larger passage. But always at a height impossible to see into.
What at first seemed a cave at the passage's end, made from ancient shifting rock inside the mountain, became a series of subterranean pockets. One led to the next, ever inward below a connecting tangle of smaller cracks and fissures overhead. The air felt slightly warmer, or maybe it was just that they were out of the wind. The way narrowed, then widened, shortened then opened, over and over, until inside one tall cavern the crystal's light barely reached the stone ceiling overhead.
"It's so high," Leesil whispered, and then thought he heard something.
Cloth or some other soft substance dragged quickly across rough stone.
Every move they made echoed and warped off the walls, and Leesil couldn't be sure it wasn't just a trick of fatigue. He quick-stepped to catch Magiere's shoulder and called out to Chap.
"Here... we stop. Over by that wall there's a smooth slant of stone."
Magiere looked where he pointed and guided Wynn to their resting place. Leesil dropped their belongings beside them, but Chap remained poised at the cave's center.
The dog let out a low rumble, turning his head slowly. He scanned all around the chamber.
Something made Chap wary, and that was enough for Leesil to hesitate. He took a few steps out toward Chap, turning his own eyes upward to the hidden high places above.
"What is it?" he asked.
A long silence followed. Chap huffed three times to say he didn't know.
Leesil backed up to Magiere and Wynn, still watching all around.
Magiere had settled Wynn to lean against the horse pack. She stripped off the sage's blanket, shook away clinging snow, and laid it across the woman's legs. Leesil knelt down on Wynn's left.
"I have to look... feel your shoulder and upper arm," he said quietly, and pulled off his gloves.
Wynn didn't even nod. Perhaps she hadn't heard him.
Magiere sidled closer on Wynn's right, waiting tensely as Leesil unfastened the sage's cloak and short robe. He rubbed his hands together before his mouth, trying to warm them. As he pulled Wynn's shift open and slipped one hand in, Magiere slid her arm behind Wynn's back and held the sage tight against herself.
"Squeeze hard," she whispered, gripping Wynn's good hand. "Hard as you have to."
Leesil held Wynn's left arm with his free hand as he closed his fingers around the soft skin of her small shoulder. Wynn sagged and buried her face into Magiere with a soft whimper.
For all he could tell, Wynn's shoulder was sound. She had not winced when he'd first gripped her upper arm, so it was unlikely any bones had broken or cracked. He closed up Wynn's clothing and grabbed the crystal Magiere had left atop the skulls' chest. Setting it down before his knees, he unwrapped Wynn's wrist.
Once he'd rinsed away the blood with a bit of chilled water, the teeth marks in her skin didn't look so bad. He rewrapped the bandage, put the crystal back, and shook out his cloak and Magiere's.
Leesil reclined against the pack as Wynn settled and closed her eyes. With the sage between himself and Magiere, he covered all three of them with the cloaks and blanket.
Magiere watched him with something akin to a frown on her wind-burned face. Or was it disappointment? She finally closed her eyes.
"Go to sleep," she said, and a dull flush of shame washed through Leesil.
They were all in a desperate way, and Wynn had been injured yet again.
Leesil couldn't count the times he'd cursed at Chap for every blocked passage or dead end they'd run into. But his guilt was always outmatched by what drove him.
Somewhere beyond reach, his mother waited. As he laid his head back, his gaze fell upon the small snow-dusted chest.
Dusk fell as Chane huddled in his cloak within a makeshift tent, listening to Welstiel's incessant murmurs.
"Iced stronghold... show me... where..."
Chane cocked his head.
Dark hair marked with white-patched temples gave Welstiel the distinguished look of a gentleman in his forties. But over passing moons since leaving the city of Bela in Magiere's wake, the once fastidious and immaculate Welstiel had fallen into disarray.
Disheveled locks, mud-stained boots, and a cloak beginning to tatter made it hard for Chane to see the well-traveled noble he had first met.
Chane sneered. He knew that he looked no better.
"Orb..." Welstiel muttered.
Chane tried to focus upon Welstiel's scattered words. He pulled the threadbare cloak tighter around his own shoulders.
Cold was a mortal concern to which he gave no thought, but he was starving. He longed for the heat of blood filling him up with life. Hunger grinding inside him made his thoughts wander.
Well past a moon ago, he and Welstiel had pursued Magiere and her companions through the Warlands and into the city of Venjetz. None of them knew Welstiel followed, and they believed Chane was gone, after Magiere had beheaded him in the dank forests of eastern Droevinka. Welstiel remained undetected, but Chane was not so certain that Magiere was unaware of his return to the world.
Welstiel purchased sturdy horses, grain for feed, and a well-worn cloak for Chane from a merchant caravan they happened upon. He also procured canvas, several daggers, and a lantern. From a distance, they followed Magiere, Leesil, Chap, and Wynn through the foothills and into the base of the Broken Range where it met with the Crown Range. On the twelfth dusk within those heights, Chane was preparing for the night's travel when Welstiel mounted and turned his horse east by southeast. Away from Magiere's path.
"We follow our own way-into the Crown Range. Magiere will find us when she has finished chasing Leesil's past among the elves."
His voice had been calm, but Chane knew better. He sensed resignation in his companion. No undead could enter the forests of the elves, or so Welstiel had once claimed.
Chane heard something that made him pause, and he urged his horse up next to Welstiel's.
Voices carried down the mountainside, not quite clear enough to understand. But his vision expanded to full range, and he caught movement far above. Magiere and her companions had set up camp below a granite spire jutting up from the mountainside. As their campfire sprang to life, Chane's grip tightened on the reins.
Wynn crouched near the sputtering flames.
Now Welstiel would have him just turn away?
Anger burned against Chane's hunger at this last glimpse of Wynn, still wearing his cloak. As far as Chane knew, Welstiel had never noticed this one telltale sign.
On the last night in Venjetz, Chane had carried Wynn from Darmouth's keep to safety. Welstiel knew as much, and Chane never denied it. Wynn remained unconscious the whole time, never seeing who carried her. But the others with her-one frail but sharp-eyed noblewoman and a strange girl child-would surely have told Wynn that he had been there.
And he had covered Wynn with his cloak.
The thought of her so far from reach, beyond his protection-especially among those bigoted elves-was unbearable. But Chane did not blame Welstiel.
He blamed Magiere.
Wynn would follow that white-skinned bitch down into every netherworld of every long-forgotten religion. Chane had once tried to dissuade her and failed. Nothing he did or said would stop Wynn. Now he had no home, nothing he truly desired, and little future other than to follow Welstiel in search of the man's fantasy-this... orb.
Welstiel believed some ancient artifact would free him from feeding on blood, though he was not forthcoming about how. From pieces Chane gathered, it would somehow sustain the man without "debasing" himself. But while Welstiel had once believed he could not procure the object without Magiere, he now planned to locate it himself and lure her to it, once she emerged... if she emerged... if Wynn ever left the elven Territories.
The "orb" of Welstiel's obsession pulled Chane from the one thing that mattered most to him. Whatever source of information Welstiel found in his slumber, it had begun doling out tidbits again, like a trail of bread crumbs leading a starving bird into a cage. Yet the trail was incomplete. Perhaps purposefully so?
All Chane wanted was to find his way into the world of the sages, his last connection to Wynn. For that he needed Welstiel's promised letter of introduction. The man had more than once implied a past connection to that guild. So Chane followed him like a servile retainer. And then Welstiel turned irrationally away from Magiere... away from Wynn.
It made no sense, if Welstiel expected to pick up Magiere's trail later, for she would surely return-if at all-through the Broken Range. Something in Welstiel's dreams now pushed the man towards the Crown Range.
Now, Chane was starving, huddled in a makeshift tent and wrapped in a thin secondhand cloak, with no people living up this high to feed upon.
Welstiel's head rolled to the side, exposing his thick neck and throat.
The grinding hunger grew inside Chane.
Could one undead feed upon another? Steal what little life it hoarded from its own feeding?
It had been twelve days since Chane had last tasted blood. His cold skin felt like dried parchment. He could not take his eyes off Welstiel's neck.
"Wake up," he rasped.
The words grated out of his maimed throat. He slipped his hand into his cowl to rub at the scar left by Magiere's falchion.
Welstiel's eyes opened. He sat up slowly and looked about. The man always awoke disoriented.
"We are in the tent... again," Chane said.
Welstiel's lost expression drained away. "Pack the horses."
Chane did not move. "I must feed... tonight!"
He waited almost eagerly for an angry rebuke. Welstiel looked him over with something akin to concern.
"Yes, I know. We will drop into the lower elevations to find sustenance."
Chane's anger caught in his throat. Welstiel had agreed too easily. His surprise must have shown, for Welstiel's voice hardened.
"You are no good to me if you become incapacitated."
Welstiel's self-interest did not matter, so long as the prospect of human blood-and the life it carried-was real. Chane slapped open the tent's canvas and stood up beneath spindly branches of mountain fir trees. Welstiel followed him out.
Half a head taller than his companion, Chane appeared over a decade younger. Jaggedly cut red-brown hair hung just long enough to tuck behind his ears.
Snow drifted around him in light flurries across a landscape barren and rocky except for the scattered trees leaning slightly north from relentless winds. Chane hated this monotonous, hungry existence. For a moment he closed his eyes, submerging in a waking dream of nights in Bela at the sages' guild.
Warmly lit rooms were filled with books and scrolls. Simple stools and tables were the only furniture, though often covered in so many curiosities it was hard to know where to begin the night's journey into unknown pasts and places far away or long lost. The scent of mint tea suddenly filled the room, and Wynn appeared, greeting him with a welcoming smile.
Chane surfaced from memory and turned dumbly to saddling the horses.
Both were sturdy mountain stock but showed signs of exhaustion and the lack of food. Chane had begun rationing their grain as the supply dwindled.
Georn-metade...
Wynn's Numanese greeting stuck in Chane's thoughts. She spoke many languages, and this was the tongue of her homeland. Chane glanced sidelong at Welstiel with a strange thought.
He knew next to nothing of Welstiel's past, but several times the man had said things... comments that implied the places Welstiel had traveled. How could the man have a connection to the Guild of Sagecraft abroad without the ability to converse with them?
"Georn-metade," Chane said.
"Well met? What do you mean?" Welstiel stepped closer. "Where did you hear that greeting?"
Chane ignored the question. "You've traveled in the Numan lands?"
Welstiel lost interest and reached for his horse's bridle. "You are well aware that I have."
"You speak the language."
"Of course."
"Fluently?"
Welstiel held the bridle in midair as he turned on Chane. "What is brewing in that head of yours?"
Chane hefted the saddle onto his horse. "You will teach me Numanese while we travel. If I'm to seek out the sages' guild in that land, I'll need to communicate with its people."
Snowflakes grew larger, and the wind picked up. Welstiel stared into the growing darkness, but he finally nodded.