In Shade and Shadow

'Enough,' he said. 'Whatever you have so far is enough!'

No, it wasn't. She had to get it all, or she might never learn to understand its hidden meaning.

'Wynn, look away!' Chane rasped. 'Now!'

She looked up.

He was the same as he had been before her sight came. No white mist or black void overlaid him, and her nausea weakened.

'Twenty and six steps… five corners,' she mumbled.

A low growl rose behind her, and Wynn glanced over her shoulder.

Shade's bright form stood upon the bed, but she now faced the other way, toward the wall and its one narrow window. Her snarls kept growing.

'What is wrong with her?' Chane asked.

Shade cut loose an eerie wail.

Wynn had heard that before. There was no other sound quite like it in the world. And it had poured from Chap's jaws—whenever he picked up the presence of an undead.

But Shade was wailing inside Wynn's room, inside the guild.

'No!' Wynn moaned.

Shade spun and leaped off the bed, straight over to Wynn.

The stone wall around the window blackened as it bulged inward.

Chane jerked on Wynn's arm, heaving her across the floor toward the door.

'Run!' he rasped.

Searing pain ignited in his hand as he jerked out his sword.

The majay-hì's yowling snarls battered at his ears as the animal spun about before him to face the bed.

The black figure—the wraith—slid through the wall.

It stood in the bed, as if it were not truly there. As if it were real and the bed was not. Chane looked into its voluminous cowl but saw no face within the black pit of cloth. Then the cowl turned downward, its opening fixing upon Wynn.

Chane raised and leveled his blade, knowing it would have little effect. All he wanted was to catch this thing's attention and distract it long enough for Wynn to get out.

The hood snapped up, and its black-filled opening turned on him. It remained where it stood, the lower half of its robe and cloak penetrating the narrow bed.

Perhaps after their last encounter, it did not wish to touch him again. He could use that. But the dog's noise must have awakened everyone in the building, if not elsewhere on guild grounds.

The figure hung there as if studying him. Beneath the dog's wailing and snarls, a low hiss rose, like whispers too hard to hear. It seemed to come from everywhere in the room.

Chane heard startled voices in the passage outside the room's door.

Short-lived relief at the wraith's hesitation washed away in panic. What would this thing do if startled sages came running in? Not only did he have to get Wynn out of its reach—he had to draw it away before more sages died.

Snarling and snapping, Shade wove across the floor before Chane. The wraith drew back and lashed down at the dog with one cloth-wrapped hand. Chane quickly swiped his blade at the hood.

The sword's tip passed through, not even ruffling fabric. Shade yelped as the wraith's fingers grazed her shoulder.

She stumbled away toward the desk, pulling up her left foreleg.

Wynn rose up onto her knees, scrambled to the corner by the door, and latched both hands around the staff.

Chane stiffened. Surely she wouldn't use it while he was still in the room?

A shout rose in the passage beyond the door.

'All of you, back to your rooms and stay there!'

Chane's panic grew. Someone of authority had been alerted and was already outside. At any moment that person would reach the door.

The wraith spun away from the dog at Wynn's movement and fixed upon her.

Chane shifted quickly into its way, but there was only one thing he could do.

And it was going to hurt—more than the burns on his hands.

Shade regained her feet and darted in, snapping at the shadow creature, trying to drive it back through the wall.

'Chane, get out!' Wynn shouted.

The wraith's hood twisted sharply toward the dog, and Chane lunged.

He thrust out with his empty hand.

At the scriptorium, he and the wraith had had a moment of contact, which neither of them had cared for. Chane heard Wynn whispering as his hand passed straight through the figure's forearm.

A shock of cold raced through his arm.

His burned hand felt as if he had thrust it into fire. When the frigid cold reached his shoulder, he could not help crying out. He let anger bring hunger to eat that pain, but he could not smother the fresh searing in his hand.

Chane snatched his hand back, curling it against his chest as the hissing whispers in the room rose to a screech. The wraith whipped its arm away, sliding rapidly back through the bed toward the wall. And Wynn's crystal atop the staff leaned out into the side of Chane's view.

He hated any thought of abandoning Wynn, and even so, he would never make it out of here in time. Not with whoever was outside the door.

'Get down!' Wynn whispered. 'Cover up!'

Chane wavered briefly. He crumpled and flattened upon the floor. But as he jerked his cloak's hood forward, pressing his face to the stone floor, the door burst open and bashed hard against the wall.

'Wynn, stop!' a deep voice ordered, and the door slammed shut.

But she didn't. She barely recognized il'Sänke's voice, and tried to keep her focus amid the sickening vertigo of mantic sight.

The wraith was inside the guild—inside the dormitory. There were too many apprentices and initiates close by. She held the crystal's triggering pattern in her mind but kept her eyes upon the wraith, hesitant and writhing before the window.

And for an instant she saw it—him—within the cloak and heavy robe.

Blue-white mists permeating the room began to shift, drifting slowly toward this thing. Wherever they touched the figure they were swallowed by it. The traces where they vanished formed outlines. Wynn saw shapes beneath the figure's black garments and the cloth strips wrapped about its body.

A skull faced her within the cowl.

Consumed mists marked its outline like glistening moisture upon bones as black as coal beneath the wraps of its skeleton form. Then a wisp of another image overlaid this as well.

She saw a face.

Not like Chane or any other undead she had seen, retaining their appearance from the moment they were killed. Aged, emaciated, and sunken features suddenly covered the skull in another layer. As if this thing—man— had died of old age before he rose again.

She couldn't be certain, with no complexion to gauge, but the prominent cheekbones, nose, and chin made him appear Suman, like il'Sänke. His eyebrows had grown long and unkempt, and the straggles of a remaining beard hung in wisps along his jawline.

His eyes weren't clear to her, as if the open sockets were only glaring wells of obsidian. She was nothing more than a small thing in his way.

A hand clamped over Wynn's eyes, blocking everything out.

Vertigo vanished, leaving only nausea in her gut. She lost the pattern in her mind as her head was jerked