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Chapter 8:
A Shadow in the Chamber
of the Lost

When the Revenants led Hanuvar inside the prison’s main building they searched him carefully in the entryway, removing even his personal knife. That didn’t surprise him, but it didn’t please him. The slim, pale revenant considered him at length from behind the counter, employing the glassy stare Hanuvar had seen in the look of sorcerers. The older man who’d searched Hanuvar retreated behind the counter, watching with only mild interest, and brushed a brown hair from his black tunic. Neither man was armored, though the skull-faced emblem of the Revenant Order gleamed upon their rings.

Finally the mage blinked his glassy look away and pointed to the gold pendant at Hanuvar’s neck. “What is that?” The mage’s voice was as cold as his black eyes.

“A gift from Enarius, the emperor’s nephew.” Hanuvar lied, but his examiner couldn’t know that.

His questioner was unimpressed. His tone was accusatory. “It possesses a dweomer.”

Hanuvar touched it protectively. “I was told to always keep it on my person. The emperor wished it to be used by Enarius’ chief agents.”

The revenant’s frown deepened, and he looked to his older companion for orders.

“Confiscate it,” the older one said. Weathered and wrinkled, he possessed the tired eyes of a serious drinker.

Hanuvar stood straight, as though he were a prim patrician used to being obeyed. “Enarius will not be pleased.”

The older one shrugged. “You can have it back when you leave.”

Hanuvar frowned but slowly removed the pendant. As he lifted it with his right hand, he twisted its back free with his left, concealing it in his palm as he passed the front on to the younger revenant.

“I will keep it here, with your weapon.”

“Be careful with them both.” Hanuvar played the role of an aggrieved, upper ranking servant, hands balled on his hips. “Both were gifts.”

The weathered revenant grunted without any great interest.

“If you will come with me?” The ashen younger one almost managed to sound welcoming, though there was something funereal in his delivery.

Hanuvar’s black clad escort led him through a bland atrium with clean red tiles and a circle of plants dying about a scummy pool and took a doorway toward the four-story tower jutting above the wall. Hanuvar could not view the sea, but he smelled salt in the air, and heard the slap of the waves against the nearby cliffs. The sky was bright blue graced by lacy clouds.

Beyond the doorway lay an arch to what looked like a mess room or meeting hall, but his escort diverted left and up past the closed door on the first landing. While they climbed Hanuvar slipped the back of the talisman into a hidden pocket in his tunic. His guide halted before the closed door at the second landing and knocked loudly, then drew himself to attention and announced: “Centurion, I have brought the visitor.”

“You may enter,” came the answer. It was a woman’s voice. Hanuvar’s sources had informed him about what little was known of the woman temporarily in command in this remote outpost, and when the door opened, the consort led Hanuvar in to meet her.

Dania stood up from behind a camp table, a small woman with a receding chin and auburn hair pulled back in a loose bun. She wore a black stola and a silver circlet. Both the circlet and the pendant about her neck showed skull’s heads. She was a fiend with pretty teeth and pretty brown eyes flecked with spots of gold. “I do not normally receive guests, much less on such short notice,” she said.

With her was a thick-necked brute of a revenant with heavy sideburns, and red hair. He sat the papers he’d been examining on the centurion’s desk and Hanuvar saw at a glance that they were the carefully forged identity documents he’d been separated from at the dockside entrance. They identified him as Minucius, a highly placed intermediary within the government bureaucracy.

Dania vacated her black cushioned stool and advanced around her desk to stop in front of him.

“Centurion Dania,” Hanuvar said with a nod of greeting. “I’ve heard that you are a fascinating and capable woman.”

“Now who says that?” she asked. “I have many detractors, Minucius.”

“I have heard the hatred spewed by jealous critics,” Hanuvar explained, “perhaps amplified by the guilty who have reasons to fear the revenants. Or the foolish, who lift a blade by its edge rather than its hilt. But your corps has many admirers among upright citizens.”

Dania looked past Hanuvar to his escort. “You may go. Marcus, you as well.”

The brute gave Hanuvar a sour look, then turned it to Dania before following the young revenant out the door, just managing not to slam it behind him.

Dania waited to speak until their steps retreated. “Our superior is in Derva this week and Marcus feels he should have been placed in charge rather than me. I don’t know what infuriates him more—that a woman commands him, or that he sees I’m better at the job. Please, sit. I seldom have interesting visitors.”

“Thank you.” Hanuvar moved toward the bench facing the desk.

“Shall I offer you wine, or food?”

Hanuvar held up his hand. “Kind as you are, this isn’t a social call.”

“I hardly thought it was.” Dania returned to her desk and sat.

Through the window behind her Hanuvar saw the docks, where his small swift ship, known by the Dervans as a catascopus, sat at anchor. So far the revenants had left it alone. He took his seat.

“You’re here on some sort of government errand,” Dania said, “but one without a truly official stamp of approval, unless I miss my guess.”

“Wisely reasoned. Rumors have spread of an Eltyr killer, but my employer is tired of rumors.”

“He wants action?”

“He wants information.”

A pleased smile ticked up the corners of her lips. “You haven’t come from the emperor, or you’d already be throwing his name around. And you’re not one of Ciprion’s representatives. Or Aminius’.”

“I’m from Enarius.”

She nodded as if she had guessed that from the first. “Then you know you have no true power to command me.”

“Yes. Just as you know that Enarius is heir apparent.”

She agreed with a small bob of her head. “The emperor requested information about the Eltyr killings be kept strictly confidential.”

“Who’s to say that the emperor didn’t tell Enarius to seek this information?”

She weighed the information without expression. “Are you telling me that’s what’s happened?”

“I’m merely advising you about what questions you might consider asking me.”

“You are being circumspect. Enarius wants information, and the emperor may or may not have authorized him to seek it.”

“I honestly have no idea what the emperor told him. But the emperor’s health is failing. Enarius looks forward to a long and fruitful partnership with the revenants.”

Her small chin lifted slightly; her eyebrows arched.

Hanuvar paused a beat before explaining. “Enarius has little lust for the throne. He wants to ensure the emperor’s survival for as long as possible.”

“—and so he wants to know about the threat posed by Eltyr to the emperor himself,” she finished.

“Yes.”

“I don’t suppose it would do me any good to explain to you we have matters well in hand.”

“Those are words. I must verify.”

Her gaze had softened; there appeared to be an actual human expression in those light-colored eyes. “Very well. Ask away.”

Hanuvar inclined his head in polite affirmation. “Do you have the killer?”

“Alas, no.”

“How many deaths have their truly been?”

“Seven.”

Hanuvar pretended surprise. “That many?” As the centurion nodded yes, he asked: “Is the murderer truly an Eltyr?”

“She is a skilled killer. She may be Herrene, or Cerdian, or a criminal element pretending to be Volani. But I think it’s the Volani. I’m sure you know that three Eltyr remain at large. Along with Hanuvar himself.”

He scoffed. “You believe Hanuvar is in command of the Eltyr?”

“He may be.”

“And you’re sure he’s alive?”

“He lives,” she declared with caustic certainty. “Witnesses have confirmed it.”

“One of them was Indar, Enarius’ friend,” Hanuvar said.

“I’m well aware of the report.”

“Then you’re also aware that Indar was a drunk. Enarius honors him, for the man perished protecting him, but Enarius has reasons to doubt his judgment.”

“Others claim they saw him as well. Caiax.”

“Who managed to get himself killed in some kind of strange personal venture against the Ceori tribes.”

Dania didn’t seem to like the line of argument. “Are you here to ask about Hanuvar, or the Eltyr?”

“The Eltyr. It’s you who brought up Hanuvar. Enarius isn’t concerned about him. The Eltyr, though . . . he wants a full briefing. Enarius heard that you have retained more than twenty Volani prisoners. No one’s told him a word about them. Were any of them working with the Eltyr?”

She placed both elbows on her desk and tapped her fingertips together. And she changed the subject. “You’re far less nervous than most visitors to this office.”

The centurion was testing him, so he boldly met her eyes. “Do you like that?”

She drew back and lowered her hands. “Are you flirting with me, Minucius? You do realize how many men have assumed I am weak willed and malleable? Are you another?”

“On the contrary. I was told you could be frightening.”

Her teeth flashed. “Do I disappoint?”

“Not in the least. Perhaps you are more appealing because you are a little frightening.”

She laughed. “You are flirting with me. You waste your time.”

“I’m just being honest.” He sat back. “I’d like that drink now, if it’s still available.” He nodded to the wine bottle on the sparsely decorated shelf behind Dania and she started to rise.

“Allow me,” Hanuvar said with a smile.

“I am self-sufficient.”

“Even those of us who are self-sufficient don’t mind being attended to sometimes.” The bottle sat on a shelf with a row of red goblets. He retrieved two by their stems, set them on the desk, and poured out a half measure for them both.

Dania stood, and they raised their goblets together. “To what shall we drink?” she asked. “The emperor?”

“To the identification of the Eltyr.”

They saluted each other with their goblets and then drank. It was light and dry, undiluted by water.

She returned the goblet to the table. “Do you know, my adjutant Marcus was suspicious of you.”

“Me?”

“He’s suspicious of everyone,” Dania said dismissively. “There have been some peculiar impersonations of late, and Marcus is sure some of them have been Hanuvar.”

Hanuvar chuckled.

“I think he’s out there but ascribing every strange event to him is credulous. As for you—”

“Me?” Hanuvar asked.

“It would be immensely foolish to attempt to impersonate someone in the heart of our fortress. And you do not strike me as foolish.” She eyed him speculatively.

“I try not to be.”

“You wish to see the files on the Eltyr? I will have them brought to you. But I think I’ll give you a tour first.”

“I’d hoped to see your domain.”

“Did you? The cells aren’t a pretty place.”

“I’ve seen ugly things before. And I’m curious.”

“You’re curious about the Volani,” she guessed.

Hanuvar offered his palms. “Not so much me as Enarius.”

“You do know that he is sweet upon a Volani doxy, don’t you?”

It should not have astonished him that Dania disparaged the elegant and accomplished Izivar Lenereva. It wouldn’t have bothered the man Hanuvar pretended to be, so he shrugged it off. “I’ve heard rumors.”

“Only rumors? Don’t you think she’s the reason you’re here, looking in on these prisoners? I can guarantee that she has him wrapped about her wrinkly finger. She’s much older than he, you know.”

“I haven’t met her.”

“And you don’t wish to speak ill of her. Especially to a revenant. I understand. We do gather information for the emperor, after all.” She took another sip, then shrugged, as if casting off an unpleasant garment. “We can select our underlings, but never our officers. But we can choose our friends. Let us be friends, Minucius.” She set the goblet aside. “When we get back you can pore over the papers as you wish, although there’s little there. The first few victims were vocal allies of Catius. Warhawks, you might say. The last two have been children.”

“Children?” Hanuvar had reconciled himself to the idea his daughter might be murdering enemy civilians, but the notion some of them were children startled him.

“You think the enemy has any moral qualms, Minucius? You’ve led a more sheltered life than I’d have guessed. Yes, children. The Eltyr knows she has power only through fear, and brave Dervans do not fear so much for themselves as they do seeing their own progeny die before them.”

Hanuvar shook his head. “That’s low. Even for Volani.”

“Volani,” Dania said with a sneer. “Come, I’ll show you those we have in custody. I had twenty, but we were down to four.” She laughed shortly. “I am down to three, as of last night.”

“Oh?” That the revenant’s tone was dismissive, as though the lives of Hanuvar’s people were of no more concern than children’s toys, stretched his acting ability to its utmost.

Fortunately, the centurion was moving toward the door, and Hanuvar was able to master his expression. “We had an old Eltyr,” Dania continued. “A retired officer with some knowledge of magics.” She started down the stairwell.

He wished he could ask her name. Hanuvar left the goblet on his desk and followed. He had to take a breath to keep his voice level. “What happened?”

“She refused to discuss how the Volani dragons were controlled.”

That was likely because the asalda had never been controlled. From the start the great serpents had been guests of the city, grateful for the shelter and aid they had been granted when very young.

Dania continued: “The punishments we inflicted upon her finally took their toll. Do you want to know what they were?”

“I don’t believe I do,” Hanuvar said, and his revulsion was genuine. The truest measure of his acting was the mastery of his compulsion to slay Dania with his bare hands. “Who are the others?”

“No one of real consequence. An old priestess who may know some secrets. An apprentice sorcerer.” They reached the first landing and passed it. “And our newest, the husband to Melgar Cabera’s former wife. He’s a physician. I’m hoping he can help keep other prisoners alive after some of our more intense sessions. He does seem quite talented.”

Hanuvar affected approval. “The wise use all the tools available.”

“Exactly.”

They passed through the courtyard and into the office building, where the red-haired brute and the dark-skinned revenant were looking over a letter delivered by a soldier in standard legionary’s uniform.

Hanuvar glanced at the soldier with indifference, despite the fact he was Carthalo.

“Is this man anyone I should be concerned with?” Dania asked his underlings.

The older one answered, his voice a low growl. “It’s just a letter from a senator who thinks he’s found some Volani witchcraft artifacts.”

“That sounds important,” Hanuvar said.

Dania laughed. “Every other week someone thinks to impress us with a gewgaw or slander or secret information. Most of the time it’s crap.” She faced Carthalo, looking taciturn and grim in his legionary’s armor. “It’s crap, isn’t it? Just some old clay pots or something?”

“I’m afraid so, Centurion,” Carthalo said.

“How much of it did the senator have you send?”

“A wagon load of it,” the older revenant reported.

“I’ll have the boys give it a going over, just to be sure,” the revenant mage said.

She shrugged. “Come, Minucius.” Dania pointed him to a lantern, took one for herself, and headed for a sturdy door set into the wall behind her underlings.

She opened the way, moved onto the landing beyond, then shut the door behind them. He heard the click of a lock.

“You were so dismissive of the possibilities there,” Hanuvar said conversationally. He pretended no concern that he was trapped underground with a murderess.

Dania paused to open the lantern and hand over the candle so Hanuvar could use it to light his own. “Don’t you find the same uselessness when you have to talk with politicians? People desperate to impress, wasting your time and energy? You may think we’re on this lonely coast because of security, but it’s in part so we’re further away from the petty place seekers. The most determined find us anyway, but if this stronghold remained in Derva they’d be pestering us every day.”

Showing her light down a dark, winding stone stair, Dania gestured for Hanuvar to precede.

Hanuvar pretended nonchalance as he started down, lantern in his off hand. He spoke with his head half turned. “I’d think you’d want to humor these requests. Enarius says that the emperor has grown frustrated with the revenants. He wants more results.”

“Some of my superiors are too eager to report success, or its proximity, so that when they fail it appears a setback rather than slower than expected progress.”

Hanuvar had known true fear and did not project it upon places owing to expectations. Its smell here was real, as certain as the scent of wet earth and old stone. People had suffered and died in this place, and their experiences had left an imprint.

Dania apparently felt it as well, though she found it amusing. “Still eager to see my domain?”

Hanuvar chuckled like a man trying to hide his nervousness.

They arrived at last at a solid floored chamber, fifty steps below the surface. To right and left were stone archways. Through a single left one Hanuvar observed barrels and crates and the red wink of rat eyes. The little creatures chittered alarm and scattered into the darkness. From further ahead someone coughed weakly.

To the right were additional open archways. Through one he glimpsed a rack, and a row of chains and pointed implements. The stone floor was dark and stained, and a pair of cockroaches scurried along the edge of the light, fleeing their sudden exposure.

“Hang your lantern in that niche, there, beside the locked door.”

This he did. Dania, though, did not advance toward the door. It had no bars, nor a window. Someone on its other side coughed again.

She advanced another step. “Have you observed my shadow, Minucius?”

He had. That it was larger than Hanuvar’s own had nothing to do with the angle of light. The blackness of the sorcerer’s shadow was more pronounced, as though it were an oily body of water fed by tributaries of lamentation and pain.

“You say that you have heard of me. There are sorcerous centurions in the revenants, but I am the only one who truly commands. Do you know why?” Dania was too eager to wait for an answer and continued: “It is because I am their most powerful sorcerer. I don’t just sense magics, I build them.”

She cast two shadows now. One was no more remarkable than Hanuvar’s own, and the other flowered behind her, a thick, winged ogre’s shape from a light source that wasn’t there.

“Finally you look worried, Minucius. Here is where you tell me why you waited until my superior was absent before you came to visit.”

She did not wait for a response, continuing: “Here is where you tell me why you dared to sneak a magical shield into my fortress. Yes, I sensed it. If you had heard about me, surely you knew I could sense such things.”

“The most powerful mages always can.”

“But only when they’re obviously working? Is that what you were told? That’s true of weaker mages. But then you’ve had a spell cast on you, too. And now your stance shifts, as if you think to fight. It won’t do any good against my shadow, but I understand your impulse.”

“Do you? What’s this about?”

“I don’t yet understand. It may be that you’re just who you say, and that Enarius gifted you with a tool because he did not trust the revenants.”

“Or?” Hanuvar offered.

“Or you may be something else. In which case, no one will have to drag you down the stairs and into the cell behind you. My shadow will do it.”

The thing flowed to the revenant’s side, casting darkness and cold as it oozed forward into an upright bipedal shape. In the place where the suggestion of its head rose, Hanuvar saw a face.

Months ago, the first time he had glimpsed the shadow, he had seen no features, though the scholar Varahan had. This time Hanuvar perceived a succession of them. The first was a young woman with mad, rolling eyes. A breath later she had receded like mist and a groaning, bearded man stared at him; Hanuvar’s breath caught in his throat for he recognized the face, and he swore it recognized him as well. The mouth opened and the shadow started to turn.

“Steady,” Dania said, her hand outstretched toward the thing. It halted its progress. “Your shield? It might protect you from spells I throw. But the shadow is not a spell. Do you understand? It is something I have created and command. Your magic will not protect you.”

“You think I’m defenseless.”

“I want you to understand your position, Minucius, so that we can start speaking truth. You are an enigma to me. In your place, anyone else would be quaking. There is fear on you, but there is something more, and I think it must be related to an odd aura you cast. What is it? Are you a sorcerer yourself?”

“I have my secrets.”

“I will learn them, one way or another.”

“Perhaps we can trade a secret for a secret, then,” Hanuvar suggested.

A laugh of disbelief escaped her. “You still think you can bargain?”

“You risk Enarius’ displeasure if you act against me.”

“If you do work for him. But I will humor you. A secret for a secret if you go first.”

“I am far older than I seem. I’ve taken stolen lives to regain my youth.”

She studied him for a long moment and then her mouth dropped open. “Gods! It is true—I do not believe it! How did you do it? And why keep the lines unsealed? Is that so you can shift your age as you like?”

He didn’t know what Dania meant by unsealed lines, but despite the question worrying him Hanuvar managed to smile and shake his head, as though he possessed more information than he let on. “Now tell me what this shadow is. My power is useful only to me. Your shadow seems like a weapon fashioned for the empire.”

“It is—and my power over it grows. I’ve a few more experiments to perform,” she said eagerly, then stopped. “But that is more than you asked. You wanted to know what it is. This is the death of nearly two dozen Volani left in my charge. One of the Seven. Some girls. A dragon keeper. One of Hanuvar’s cousins. None of them could tell me much that was useful, not now that Volanus is leveled. But I’ve made them useful. At night, and in the darkness, their power is unstoppable. And I’m almost ready to show the emperor what I can do with it. Shall I show you?”

She pointed and the thing flowed toward Hanuvar, who felt rather than heard a moan of its pain. As it advanced he saw Dania through it as though it were a dark gauzy drapery. He backed toward the wall.

The revenant’s voice was stark and certain. “Now you will tell me why I have not yet received clearance about your ship. I sent a message by sun telegraph the moment you pulled up beside the dock and it’s gone flashing across the countryside all the way to Derva. If you were authorized, I should have received a response by now.”

“Maybe Enarius is occupied and can’t respond.”

“Or maybe you are not who you claim.”

“That might be.”

“Might it? Then who are you, really?” Dania was enjoying herself, and at her gesture the arms of the shadow thing lifted and moved toward an embrace of Hanuvar. A second back step brought him beside the locked door.

“Now you fear! Oh, I shall wrest the secrets from you, Minucius.” Dania was all but breathless with excitement. “Or whomever you really are. A Cerdian sorcerer, I think. A powerful but limited one. Who’s not quite as clever as he thinks.”

The shadowy hands stretched for Hanuvar’s neck and the face of a sad young boy stared out at him.

“I’ll tell you a final pair of things,” Hanuvar said.

“You’ll tell me everything.” Dania’s voice was shrill with joy. The hands of the shadow came to Hanuvar’s neck. They were cold and cloying. He felt the pressure of an ice-like thumb against his trachea.

He placed the stone that he’d palmed against the shadowy hands upon his throat.

Dania laughed at him. “I told you! Your stone can only shield you against my spells, not against my creature!”

“I’m not shielding me from your spells.” Hanuvar forced the back of the medallion into the inherent wrongness and its glacierlike cold.

Over the monster’s left shoulder, he saw her expression shift as Hanuvar’s meaning dawned upon her.

“Throttle him,” she cried. “Throttle him now!”

But the creature’s fingers had closed upon the stone, and the hand upon his neck drew no tighter. Hanuvar met the spot where its eyes shifted and addressed the dead in the language of his people.

“I am Hanuvar Cabera,” he said. “And that stone shall set you free.”

The faces flashed one by one past him and there was dawning awareness in those horrified eyes. The hand dropped from his throat and then the thing turned on its heel, advancing for Dania.

Hanuvar followed in its wake. Dania shrieked command after command that it was no longer compelled to obey. Though he had no sorcerous sense, even Hanuvar felt the revenant’s magic stir the air. She began to mutter an incantation, but it was cut short by a gurgle as icy hands closed upon her slim throat. The revenant fumbled with her lantern and shone it at the thing.

The proximity to the light burned a hole in the shadow but did not stop it. The monster’s hands tightened on her, and she dropped the lantern. It rattled when it hit and the candle slammed against the side, sputtered briefly, then went out. She scrabbled at the shadowy arms she couldn’t fully grasp, and her eyes rolled pleadingly at Hanuvar.

“There’s been no response from the sun telegraph because my men captured the next station,” Hanuvar said. “And by now my men have won through your walls and past the soldiers of your garrison, for my officer came through to open the way. When I give the word, your fortress will be rubble, with your bones at their very bottom.”

The revenant’s eyes bulged and her lips worked, though no sound came.

Hanuvar watched the woman’s eyes roll back, watched her go limp, watched the thing let her slip lifeless to the floor. His expression did not change until the shadow turned once more to him.

“You are free,” Hanuvar said sorrowfully. “Would that you were free always in life.”

A girl’s face appeared to him, pleading, mouthing words he could not hear. And then he saw Tanilia, one of the seven high councilors of Volanus. His name was on her lips, and her eyes shifted toward the lantern hung beside him, and then back to him, with longing.

“You wish destruction?”

She confirmed this with the solemn closing of her eyes.

“Because you are trapped,” he said. “In an abomination. Trapped as a monstrous tool in the space between life and death.”

Her mouth firmed. She even reached for the lantern but the hands withdrew and the faces fluttered. Perhaps the creature could not seek its destruction, or it might be that not all of the individuals that comprised it were in agreement. Or sane.

He lifted his lantern from the rung and pushed it into the dark body as the face of a frightened boy looked out at him. The boy closed his eyes and bit his lips as the bright light ate into the thick shadow body. A bearded man with rolling eyes seized control of the form and drove a shadowy arm at him.

The cold seared through his shoulder and left him gasping but he held to the lantern and opened the glass plate, thinking more direct heat might aid the process.

The man’s face blinked away and then Tanilia returned, her features strained. She lowered the arm.

The little boy’s face replaced hers and he smiled sadly at Hanuvar. And then he faded, and with him the shadow lightened.

The remaining souls appeared, one after the other, the shadow growing less substantial as each departed. A trio of little girls. A young woman with a sweet smile. The old man who had looked so wild eyed, then another calmer one so similar in appearance they must have been brothers. Tanilia bowed her head to him, and then, as she disappeared the body of the shadow faded to just a wisp supporting the face and extremities.

A few others acknowledged him and left. Finally, when nothing remained but the faintest of outlines, his cousin Olmares took command and tried to speak. Hanuvar couldn’t hear him, but thought he understood the words. He was asking if he would free the others.

“I will free them all,” he vowed, his voice shaking.

“I know,” his cousin mouthed. And then he was gone, and the only shadows in the room were his own and that of the dead revenant slumped on the floor.

He wiped tears from his face, bent to retrieve the stone left by the shadow, then tore the keys from Dania’s corpse. With them he opened the door to the round room beyond, more a pit than a cell, where eight prisoners were crowded, their hands manacled. They were grimy and smelly and malnourished and had been bedding down in filthy hay.

Adherval the physician came forth first, weeks of beard on his cheeks. Though his eyes were slitted even to the feeble lantern light, they were bright with wonder.

“We heard,” Adherval said to him in Volani. “We heard everything.” His eyes found the dead revenant, and he spit toward her.

Hanuvar took the keys to his manacles. “Not all of them can walk well,” Adherval said, looking back over his shoulder. “And not all of us are Volani. But all are victims of the revenants.”

“I will leave no one in this place but revenants,” Hanuvar promised.

And he kept his word. His men had already overpowered the little garrison. They helped transport the weakest of the prisoners up the inner stairs, and then carried them down to the dock and onto to the ship. All were blinded by the sun and half were weeping.

Though weak himself, Adherval followed, urging one of Carthalo’s followers to be careful of a prisoner’s arms, and reassuring the others there would soon be food and water. Seeing that they were in good hands, Adherval came and stood near him along the prow, smiling and shaking his head in disbelief. “You are really Hanuvar?”

“I am,” he said gently. Soon, he would have to tell the man that his wife was dead. That, though, might wait a little longer. “You are free. And you will remain that way.”

Horace hurried past with a large wicker basket stuffed full of scrolls. Carthalo descended from the tower height to report the barrels had been placed, and the final signal had been sent.

“That,” Hanuvar explained to Adherval, “means that the signal tower my men captured, next up the chain, has just relayed a message to Derva. The last message ever received from this tower will be that they were under attack from a Cerdian warship.”

Carthalo clapped Hanuvar on the shoulder. “Time to be going.”

As the rest of their force boarded, Hanuvar’s final orders were carried out. Only a few months before, the Dervans had hoped to learn the secrets of the so-called Volani fire, but Hanuvar had freed Varahan, the man behind its creation, as well as his companion, a talented Nuvaran sorcerer. The latter had devised a spell breaking amulet, and the former had refined the weapon he had never divulged to the Dervans. Carthalo’s men had placed barrels of the incendiary in key spots within the small fortress and its tower.

At Hanuvar’s signal, runners lit tinder beside the barrels. The last of them had reached the docks when they heard a muffled blast. Before long, red and blue flame raced along the fortress’s exterior wall, and as the ship weighed anchor, the tower height collapsed, taking its sun telegraph with it, shining until it fell into the stone. Hanuvar watched with unaccustomed satisfaction as the outer wall tumbled into the sea. Red flame and black smoke soared into the heavens and Carthalo, at Hanuvar’s side, cackled with joy. The destruction was even more complete than they had hoped.

They were at full sail very quickly. When Hanuvar looked back he beheld a further surprise. Weakened by the internal collapse, the cliff upon which the fortress had stood crumbled at its edge and then much of the supporting escarpment crashed into the water at its base, sending up an immense fountain of water. Hanuvar grinned with savage pleasure.

Carthalo, divested now of his legionary’s armor, laughed in delight. “Oh, that went even better than I dreamed! And look at that.” He pointed out to sea. “No sign of other ships. That’s what the Dervans get for wanting their secret revenant prison far from prying eyes.”

“Every strength can be a weakness, if you know how to find the chink.”

“The mission was a complete success,” the spy master continued. “We didn’t lose a single man. And that physician we rescued thinks everyone we brought out has a fair chance.”

“That is good to hear.”

“It should be. I know you were hoping to find more of our people.”

Hanuvar nodded slowly, his gaze still upon the distance.

“But we freed many who had no other chance. And we found all the papers they had on the Eltyr.”

“I don’t know that they’ll help us much. I don’t think the revenants had many leads.”

“I know that look. Something else is troubling you.”

Many things were bothering him, including the intimation that there was something wrong with the spell that had restored him. It was probably past time to look more closely at its effect. But chiefly his thoughts were turned upon those long-suffering faces.

“Did you have to deal with the revenant’s sorcery?” Carthalo asked.

“I did.”

“And was Norok right? There were people inside the monster? Our people?”

“Yes. They set me free and I returned the favor,” he said. “And they killed the monster.”

***

It was not that Hanuvar had assumed too much about the aging spell’s effects, but that those gifted with sorcerous sight who were members of our network did not understand its magic. Skilled though he was, Norok had no knowledge about life magics or auras.

Carthalo had reached out to other contacts and one had been called to our little naval yard just south of Selanto. Hanuvar expected her to be waiting for him when he returned from his mission against the revenants. Dania’s comments about his lifelines left him uneasy, but the matter was beyond his control, so he spent most of the short journey going over the records stolen from the revenant stores.

Eventually I had time to study them myself, and they were dire in the mundane way in which they cataloged evils. I will not trouble your minds with the matters they recorded, though I will share that Hanuvar’s suspicions were correct. The revenants had scant information about the Eltyr apart from the names and ages of the victims and when and where they had been found. Nor had they any more information on the whereabouts of his daughter Narisia or her companions than we had learned already.

At some point during the journey Hanuvar shared news of Adherval’s wife’s death with him, and I know only that the story left him partly broken, for he was somber long weeks. I came to know him well in the ensuing months and understood then how deeply the death touched him, for he was by nature an optimistic man, even in the face of the adversity he had experienced.

The voyage to our base was not a long one, and fairly soon it was explained to the recovered prisoners that, for their own safety, they would need to leave the ship in packing crates padded with blankets and pillows, and, naturally, air holes. Two of them were terribly frightened by this, but there was nothing to be done, for it was not as though our little enclave in Selanto was completely secret. Someone might well be suspicious of the influx of pale, malnourished travelers turning up within a day of the destruction of the revenant coastal prison.

As it happened, no one caught wind of their arrival, but other, more dangerous developments loomed.

For the emperor, concerned about the future of his bloodline, had ventured north on a fact-finding mission that would take him to Selanto itself.

—Sosilos, Book Ten


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Framed