Barb Hendee: Through Stone and Sea

"Time again, Princess … to return to the underworld."

The racing lift rolled over a shelf lip on the sheer mountainside and lurched to a halt at the way station. Wynn Hygeorht stepped off the lift's platform, arriving at Cheku'ûn—Bay-Side—one of four main settlements for Dhredze Seatt, the nation of the dwarves, overlooking Beranlômr Bay. Even at this dizzying height, the bay below looked wide and vast. Calm Seatt's pinprick lights marked its far shore as the glow of encroaching dawn rose in the east.

Wynn pushed back her hood and brushed away wisps of light brown hair that the breeze pulled across her oval face. Beneath her cloak, she wore the light gray robe of the Order of Cathology in the Guild of Sagecraft.

"We're finally here," she said.

When she turned back, glancing up the stone loading ramp, any matching relief on her companions' faces had nothing to do with reaching their destination.

Shade, taller than a wolf and with a shimmering coat of charcoal black, whined sharply as she wobbled out of the lift's railing gate. The dog swallowed hard, as if her last meal of mutton might come up, and drool ran from her mouth.

Chane Andraso was little better. Tall and lanky but muscular, with solid shoulders, he didn't release the railing until he stepped onto the stone ramp. His raggedly cut red-brown hair ruffled in the wind as he followed Shade down to join Wynn.

He was shivering.

He couldn't have been cold, not as an undead, and she'd never seen him frightened of anything. The barest relief spread through Chane's narrow features. Then he glared back at the lift's massive wheels resting level at the station.

Wynn sighed. "Oh, for goodness' sake—it wasn't that bad."

Chane looked down at her, dumbstruck and aghast. Shade tried to growl, but only gagged, and shook herself all over as if trying to shed the entire experience.

Wynn headed off, shaking her head.

"After all we've been through," she muttered, "such fuss over a simple ride up a mountain!"

A chain of extraordinary events had brought the three of them here.

Two years before, she'd found an ancient castle atop the highest mountains of the eastern continent. An immense decaying library within it held texts written by ancient Noble Dead, perhaps the oldest of vampires. One vampire was still there after a thousand or more years. Wynn had taken away a pittance of that treasure, only what she and her companions could carry. She'd hoped her selections, written in lost dialects and dead languages, might illuminate theories on the Forgotten History … and the great war that some believed had never happened.

When she returned to the small beginning of a new guild branch on the eastern continent, she'd been given the task of carrying those priceless tomes home to Calm Seatt, Malourné, and the founding origin for the Guild of Sagecraft. She'd boarded a ship and crossed the eastern ocean and the central continent, eager to finish a long, arduous journey and begin translation with her fellow sages.

But nothing in Wynn's recent years had ever turned out as she'd hoped.

Upon her arrival, the texts and her own travel journals had been confiscated and locked away. Only a chosen few of her superiors ever saw them. At least until sages began to be murdered in the night over bits of translation work sent out to local scribe shops for transcription. She came to realize she had to regain those texts and solve whatever mysteries they held.

At first, she'd believed they were stored somewhere on guild grounds. Later she suspected they were hidden elsewhere. She'd spotted dark-clad dwarves at the guild, but they vanished without a trace of how they came or went. She learned what they called themselves only by chance.

Hassäg'kreigi—the Stonewalkers.

And now, here she was with Chane and Shade in Dhredze Seatt, a place close to home and yet she hadn't seen it in years.

A pair of humans bundled in winter attire, perhaps merchants from Calm Seatt, waited with crates of goods at the larger cargo lift. But no one was waiting to take the smaller passenger lift that had brought Wynn up. More people bustled about the main street here than in any of the lower way-station settlements.

Wynn gazed about the small stone city built into the mountain's sheer side.

She'd been so young the last time she'd come here. Just shy of apprenticeship, she'd been overjoyed that Domin Tilswith had chosen her to assist him. Well, that and trying to keep up with her old master and not get lost amid a foreign place and its people.

She stepped around the way-station's crank house into the narrow stone street, and everything before her seemed to stretch upward .

The main road snaked back and forth up the mountain between buildings of stone and scant timber. Only short and steep side streets aimed directly upward, and most were built of wide stone steps and multiple landings. All of it was behemothlike—rather like the dwarves themselves. Dying moonlight barely revealed roofs of slate tiles, stone blocks, and shakes and planks of oak on smaller structures. Everything else was carved from granite so precisely that little mortar was ever used.

Something bumped Wynn's leg. Shade whined and pressed closer. Young and wild, Shade didn't like crowds. Her blue eyes—flecked with yellow—grew wide as she looked around. Wynn reached down to stroke her ears.

"Daunting," Chane rasped from behind.

Wynn was accustomed to his maimed voice, but it still startled her in the dark predawn.

"It can be a little disorienting at first," she replied.

And it was. Dwellings and inns, smithies, tanneries, and shops all spread out, around, and above them in a melded maze.

She shifted her pack to relieve pressure on her shoulder. Chane seemed oblivious to the weight of his own two packs. Gripping her tall staff, a leather sheath covering its top end, Wynn led the way farther up the main street. When she glanced back, she paused, spotting a great open archway in the mountain's side behind the crank house.

The entire lift station could have fit through it with room to spare. The orange light of the dwarves' heated crystals spilled from its interior over people coming and going. But she had no time for a closer peek and instead looked eastward.

The star-speckled night had lightened farther along the distant horizon, and urgency took hold.

"We must find the temple," she said.

Any visitor in a foreign place had to find lodging, but in Chane's case, it was foremost. She needed to get him inside before the sun rose.

"Find?" he echoed. "You do not know where it is?"

"Of course I know. It's just … been … a long time."

Wynn hurried up the street's gradual slant, deeper into Bay-Side, and quickened her pace. In spite of her assurance to Chane, she wasn't certain of the temple's location. It was still the best place to take shelter, away from other travelers at an inn. It was also a place where a visiting sage would be welcomed.

Dwarves practiced a unique form of ancestor worship. They revered those of their own who attained notable status in life, akin to the human concept of a hero or saint, or rather both. Any who became known for virtuous accomplishments, by feat and/or service to the people, might one day become a thänæ—one of the honored. Though similar to human knighthood or noble entitlement, it wasn't a position of rulership or authority. After death, any thänæ who'd achieved renown among the people over decades and centuries, through the continued retelling of their exploits, might one day be elevated to Bäynæ—one of the dwarven Eternals. These were the dwarves' spiritual immortals, held as the honored ancestors of their people as a whole.

Wynn sought lodgings at the temple of just such a one.