Barb Hendee: Through Stone and Sea

Wynn had not seen these. Considering what Welstiel had done to the monks who had first possessed them, Chane was uncertain whether he would ever show them to her. But it had seemed wrong to abandon them in high, barren mountains.

Most of the works were written in old Stravinan, which he could read somewhat. One often stuck in his mind. It was the thinnest one, an accordion-style volume of thick parchment folded back and forth four times between grayed leather cover plates. The title read, The Seven Leaves of … something. The final word was obscured by age and wear.

Though Chane had taken these texts from others, he saw himself as their keeper now. There was no one else left to care for them. This sentiment did not carry to the second pack's contents, which had once belonged to Welstiel.

Chane had stolen it the night in the ice-bound castle when he had betrayed Welstiel to Magiere. He crouched to flip open its canvas flap and look inside. The pack contained an array of arcane and perhaps mundane creations. Though technically they were now his, Chane never stopped thinking of those items as belonging to his old companion. Perhaps he never would.

Hunger flushed through him, and he began digging into Welstiel's pack. Aside from two arcane journals, with scant Numanese writings scattered amid pages of indecipherable symbols and diagrams, there were odd objects and boxes.

Chane eyed three unmarked rods, each a forearm's length and as thick as his thumb. One was red brass or copper, the second gray like pewter but harder, and the last looked obsidian, though it clinked like metal. Lying against them was a thick, polished steel hoop the diameter of a plate, with hair-thin etchings that smelled of char.

Two boxes lay in the pack's bottom.

He ignored the long and shallow one bound in black leather and wrapped in indigo felt. Instead, he pulled out the other walnut box. Inside of it, resting in burgundy padding, were three hand-length iron rods with center loops, a teacup-size brass bowl, and a stout bottle of white ceramic with an obsidian stopper.

Chane had partially fathomed the steel hoop, but he had not learned its full power. Welstiel had been able to pick it up while it was still searing hot, and Chane could not. He understood the brass cup as well, though he could not use it. Welstiel used it to drain and trap a mortal's life energy in thrice-purified water from the ceramic bottle. This had allowed him to go for long periods without feeding otherwise.

Chane had drunk that burning, bitter fluid more than once. The draft was revolting, devoid of the hunt's joy and feeding's euphoria. But as he was Wynn's companion among the living, feeding had greater risks. Foremost that she would learn how he continued to survive—to exist.

So far, the cup's actual usage remained unfathomable. But his intellect and knowledge of minor conjury made him long to learn the secrets of Welstiel's creations, including that filthy little cup. If he could feed only once per moon, it would be one less obstacle to remaining at Wynn's side. But he would still have to keep such an act from her awareness, for the victim still died in the process.

A knock sounded at the door.

"Are you awake?" Wynn called from the other side.

"One moment," Chane rasped loudly.

He hurriedly returned the cup's box to Welstiel's pack, went to open the door, and then froze.

Wynn carried a glazed clay urn. She looked visibly queasy, a thin sweat leaving a sheen on her face.

"Are you ill?" he asked.

When she did not answer, his gaze dropped to the urn. A familiar scent began to reach his nostrils.

"What is that?" he asked.

Wynn swallowed audibly and pushed past him into his room. Before Shade could follow, she kicked the door, slamming it shut. Shade began barking and scratching outside, but Wynn ignored her.

"It is … is …" But she never quite finished, and Chane already caught the coppery, salty scent.

"Blood?" he whispered.

"Goat's blood," she blurted out, nearly squeaking. "I went to a butcher … so it's … it's fresh."

Wynn swallowed again, or rather gagged. Chane quickly snatched the urn out of her grip, horrified at what she had done.

"I told the butcher it was for … blood sausage," she whispered, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I'll come back in a while," she mumbled. "I have things to gather before we set out tonight."

She quickly turned for the door and slipped out. Shade finally ceased barking.

Chane just stared at the urn.

Wynn must have realized his hunger had grown each night of their journey here, though he thought he had kept that much from her. He had come as her protector—or that was what they both professed. In truth, he would have sworn anything to remain close to her. Now she had requested—perhaps watched—a goat be slaughtered, so she could purchase its blood as fresh as possible.

It had sickened her, and worse … it was a wasted effort.

Blood was sweet and salty all at once, but it was not what fed him. Blood was good, but only for what laced it as it rushed from a thrashing victim's flesh in the last moments.

It was only a medium of transference.

Chane had learned this too from Welstiel, another truth of the Noble Dead: Bloodletting was a method by which a victim's life was released furiously enough to be consumed by a vampire's inner hunger and close proximity. Aside from Welstiel's cup, there was only one source of this to sustain Chane—the living.

This blood was as dead as the goat it had come from.

The urn grew heavy in Chane's hands. Wynn's naïve sacrifice, her attempt to "feed" him, left him only humiliated. He never felt self-loathing, but it now stretched between his need for her and what his true nature desired.

He could never tell her why her effort was useless. Better to let her think she had helped and be certain she never did so again. He would see to his own needs.

Chane placed the urn beyond the bed, out of sight, and left his room. He found Wynn's door across the way cracked open. Her back was turned as she checked her belongings.

"Best pack up," she whispered.

Only Shade watched him steadily from where she lay curled upon the bed.

"Where are we going?" Chane asked.

"Through the mountain."

Wynn trudged by tall pylons. Large raw crystals steamed in the night, casting pools of fuzzy orange radiance upon the street. She was silent the whole way, not saying a word to either Chane or Shade. As she approached Cheku'ûn "Bay-Side" way station, a cluster of fishmongers with emptied carts boarded the cargo lift headed back down the mountain. But that wasn't the way she was taking.

Her thoughts churned over Mallet's vague directions for finding the Iron-Braids. She'd always pictured Domin High-Tower coming from a family of rank, perhaps even with an elder clan relation in the conclave of the five tribes. Why had she imagined this—because of his pride, his arrogant demeanor? But High-Tower's closest kin lived "underside," well beneath the settlement's surface community, or even its upper tunnels and halls. Wynn knew so little of her old teacher.

She quickened her pace.

Just behind the way station, she saw the cavernous archway in the mountainside. A dull glow flooded from that place over the round crank house's backside along with a thrumming murmur, like a massive furnace mouth yawning in the dark.

"That's the main entrance to Bay-Side's underground," she said.

Chane walked close on her right, but Shade trotted a little ahead, as if knowing where they headed.

"Have you been inside before?" he asked.

"No, but Domin Tilswith told me about the trams. They're the quickest way between settlements, besides the lifts to the mountaintop and Seattâsh—Old-Seatt. But we're going all the way through the mountain to reach Chemarré … Sea-Side."