Some hint of pain filled his pale features beneath a gaze filled with awe. Or was it longing?

She couldn't help wondering what he'd been like in his living days. A scholar or just another spoiled, useless noble? Perhaps both. Few times had they ever spoken of his past—before or after she'd learned what he was.

"This way," she whispered.

He blinked as if waking from some dream, and the wonder faded from his eyes. But that hint of pain took an instant longer to follow. He nodded. They sneaked along the library's southern end and down the side staircase.

At every turn, archway, or door along the way, he waited behind as she stepped out to see if all was clear. Not that she wouldn't look suspicious in her old elven clothing, but everyone here already thought she was odd. The last path to the keep's double doors was the worst.

The entryway was empty, but she heard voices carry from the common hall. She cracked the left door and peered into the courtyard. It was empty as well, but this wasn't a welcome sight.

Where was Shade? Had she failed to get in?

Wynn began frantically trying to think of some way to find Shade and bring her in. Then a shadow moved at the courtyard's far left corner. Wynn tightened her grip on the crystal's staff.

The shadow shifted around the cistern beyond the dormitory's end. Two crystal blue eyes sparked in the light of the iron-bracketed torches burning upon the gatehouse's inner wall.

Shade stepped a little way out into sight. Her ears rose as she peered back across the courtyard, and Wynn started breathing again.

She stepped back to wave Chane forward, and they both ducked out, cloak hoods pulled up. They sneaked around the courtyard, rushing quickly as they passed the line of sight with the gatehouse tunnel. Shade was already waiting at the dormitory door. Once Wynn was certain the stairs and upper passage were clear, all three of them hurried to her room.

Closing the door tightly, Wynn leaned against it, took a deep breath, and dug for her cold lamp crystal. When she rubbed it hard, its light exposed Chane standing before her desk, glancing at her mess of quills, journals, and paper. She still couldn't believe that Shade and Chane had somehow traveled here together. He had a lot to explain.

"I must be mad," she said. "The premins and domins already think so… for all my warnings about undead. Now I've got one into my room."

Chane glanced over. He didn't even scowl at such a bad joke. He only shook his head.

"They are the mad ones… in discounting your greater experience in these matters. At least you think for yourself. I would have thought better of your elders here. Tilswith had a far more agile mind."

"I miss him," Wynn said.

Chane fingered a blank sheet on the desk. "So do I, at times."

She stood straighter, watching him roll a quill shaft with his pale fingertip. He was such a mass of confusing contradictions. Shade hopped up on the bed and settled. Everything else in Wynn's room looked the same.

Only a vampire and a majay-hì were new additions.

No, there was also the scroll.

Wynn stripped away her cloak as she leaned the staff in the corner. "My journal notes from today are on the desk. See what you make of them while I prepare."

"My grasp of the Begaine syllabary is not good," he said, picking up the journal.

"Some of it is in plain Numanese letters. Can you read those?"

"A little, from what Tilswith taught me. Welstiel tutored me in speaking while we traveled. I learned more from my time in this city."

Wynn's education in languages was more extensive, required by her vocation as a cathologer. But Chane's intellect was impressive. Domin Tilswith had commented on his natural gift for picking up bits and pieces so quickly. At that time her old master hadn't known Chane's true nature. Perhaps Chane's ability was more than natural, but it was impossible to say, since she'd never known him in his mortal life.

She knelt down and reached under her bed, pulling on the scroll case pinned against a support board. She popped its pewter cap and slid out the scroll, then her gaze fell on Shade's long charcoal-colored face peering over the bed's edge.

How nice to be so naturally camouflaged for night. Wynn leaned in and lightly stroked Shade's cheek.

"You clever girl."

Shade sprang up to all fours and snarled at her, sniffing wildly, and Wynn lurched back as she heard Chane rushing toward her.

Shade dropped her head low, her sniffing nose extended, and Wynn looked down at the scroll in her hand.

"What is wrong with her?" Chane rasped.

Wynn unrolled the scroll, studying its faded black coating. "It seems you're not the only one who can smell what's hidden here." Very slowly she touched the top of Shade's muzzle. "Enough… it's all right."

She spun about on her knees, facing the open floor of her small room. Chane dropped the journal on the bed.

"How does this work?" he asked.

She handed him the empty scroll case. He was no stranger to the arcane, but the taint of mantic sight wasn't something controlled just by learned skill. Since her first so-called successful attempt, traces of the sight had never left her, and summoning it had never worked out well.

"It's not like what you do," she said. "More just intent, wishing, and focus… It's hard to explain."

And she didn't care to, especially not with how she used the memory of Chap as a means to summon her sight. When she lifted her head, Chane stood over her, arms crossed.

"No more arguments," she warned.

He stepped back, giving her space to lay out the scroll upon the floor.

Wynn pushed all thoughts from her mind. Domin il'Sänke had taught her tricks as well—not true ritual or spellcraft but some of their trappings. But even that hadn't been any use in ending the sight once it came. With her right first finger, Wynn traced a sign for elemental Spirit on the floor and then encircled it.

At each gesture she envisioned the pattern in her mind, as if actually drawn upon the stone. She scooted forward, kneeling upon the imagined symbol and circle, and then traced a wider circumference around herself. A simple pattern, but it helped bring her into focus and shut out the world for a needed moment.

Remaining still, Wynn closed her eyes.

She focused upon letting the world fill her with its presence and tried to feel for a trace of Spirit in all things, starting first with herself. Then she imagined breathing it in from the air, feeling it flow upward from the floor's stone. In her darkened sight, she held on to the first simple pattern stroked upon the floor.

Wynn called up—constructed—an image of Chap, just as she'd once seen him in her mantic sight, his fur shimmering as if made of a million silk threads. His whole body was encased in white vapors that rose like flame from his form.

Moments stretched on tediously, one after another.

An ache in her knees threatened her concentration.

She tried hard to hold on to Chap's image… to hold him there behind the envisioned circle around the symbol of Spirit. Until vertigo came—and nausea—in the dark behind her closed eyes.

"Wynn?"

She felt as if she were falling and threw out her hands.

They slapped hard against cold stone, jarring her shoulders, but she stopped herself from slamming face-first into the floor. In fright, Wynn opened her eyes too quickly.

Nausea lurched up her throat, and she gagged.

A translucent mist of white, just shy of blue, permeated every dimly lit object in the room. It covered everything in a second view of the world overlaying her normal sight… smothering her normal sight.

"Wynn!"

She raised a hand, weakly waving Chane off, but she didn't dare look up at him. She didn't want to see him with mantic sight. Turning her head the other way, a beacon of bluish light atop the bed nearly blinded her.