before he sank into full dormancy was nagging hunger.
Like a beast with hands, chained in the dark, it whined and rumbled inside of Chane.
Wynn would not stand for his killing a sentient being in order to survive, and he would not risk doing anything that might cause her to send him away. Yet how else was he to feed in this place, under these new circumstances?
Dormancy smothered hunger and the rumbling discontent of the beast within him.
CHAPTER 2
Wynn awoke in late afternoon with a stiff neck and aches, remembering they were in the temple. She hadn’t slept on a dwarven bed in many years. Its mattress was little more than layered wool blankets upon a stone platform. The design might be comfortable support for a heavy dwarven physique, but it was hard as packed dirt to anyone else.
Shade stirred on the bed’s end and hopped off as Wynn sat up, rubbing her throbbing shoulder. A pewter water pitcher and plain ceramic cup rested on the stone table near the door, and she realized her throat was dry.
“Thirsty?” she asked Shade.
She got up and filled the cup for Shade, taking a sip for herself straight from the pitcher. She was glad to be away from the guild, her superiors, and other sages, though that thought brought regret. Answerable to no one but her chosen companions, she was journeying once more.
As a girl, she’d loved life at the guild. Then she’d traveled with Domin Tilswith and others across the continent and the eastern ocean to what the sages called the Farlands. Their purpose had been the beginning of a new guild branch. But in Bela, the coastal capital of Chane’s homeland, Wynn’s life became entangled with two rough strangers and a dog.
Magiere, Leesil, and Chap had come hunting an upír—vampire—one of the highest of the undead they called Vneshené Zomrelé—the Noble Dead. When this trio finally left, in search of an artifact sought by a vampire named Welstiel, Domin Tilswith had sent Wynn along on her first solo assignment—and not a typical one for a freshly titled journeyor sage.
Their travels took them through Droevinka’s dank lands, Stravina’s foot-hills, and into the Warlands, then on to the Elven Territories of the an’Cróan. The journey ended far south from where they started, in the high frozen range of the Pock Peaks. There they finally uncovered the artifact—the “orb”—and the ancient texts Wynn had brought back to her guild.
But when she got home to Calm Seatt, nothing turned out as she’d expected. Nobody believed her stories of dhampirs, undead, and necromancers guarded by ghosts. Her superiors took over the texts and ordered her into silence, and “Witless” Wynn Hygeorht became the shunned madwoman of her cherished guild branch.
Then, less than half a moon past, four sages had been murdered in Calm Seatt, drained of life by what she labeled a “wraith.” This previously unknown spiritual form of Noble Dead had been hunting translations from the texts penned by vampires who’d long ago served the Ancient Enemy of many names. And this enemy once used hordes of the undead like weapons in battle against the humans, dwarves, and elves.
In Wynn’s journeys, she’d been exposed to fearful portents that this enemy might be returning. The appearance of the wraith, more terrifying and powerful than any vampire known, had driven her into her current search. She had to learn more of the history lost a thousand years ago, what signs to look for should war come again . . . or how to stop it from happening at all.
She had to find the texts, for there must be something in them. She had to believe this, for she had nothing else in which to place her hope.
Wynn donned her gray robe over her shift, and then stroked Shade’s head.
“At least finding supper will be easy,” she whispered.
By answer, Shade whined, and Wynn’s head filled with sudden sights and sounds of a bustling city street. She knelt beside the dog, though Shade was much more than that in both breed and heritage.
Shade’s father, Chap, had once been one with what the sages called the Fay, eternal spirits or beings behind all of Existence. He’d chosen to be “born” into the body of a majay- hì, one of the elven dogs descended from Fay- inhabited wolves during ancient times. His dual- layered nature, Fay spirit in Fay-descended body, gave him the ability to see rising memories in anyone within his sight line. He’d met Shade’s mother, a true majay- hì