Barb Hendee - Through Stone and Sea

"Why did he … bother coming," she got out between breaths, "if you're staying?"

"I cannot yet take another with me … as he can."

Wynn began to breathe normally and turned back, trying to make out her surroundings.

She found herself inside a large, slanted pocket of rough stone. The ceiling was low, but she could stand upright. And half blocked by Ore-Locks's bulk was a pool near the cave's left side.

There were no other openings besides the pool in the floor, its water likely held down by air pressure of the pocket itself. She had no indication of where or how far she might have come—only that she was still under the earth and near the ocean, by the smell of the water.

She froze upon seeing what waited at the cave's far end.

Three small chests were stored in a space below a set of short stone tiers. Something very familiar lay on the first deep shelf. It was a sheaf of stiff hide plates bound between two squares of thin, mottled iron. It was the first text that she and Chap had discovered, the night Li'kän had caught her amid the blizzard and dragged her to the ice-bound castle.

Wynn was still in too much shock to even feel relief. Digging in her pocket, she pulled out her crystal. It didn't even start to glimmer upon her chilled hand.

She rubbed it clumsily, until its light began to grow. When she bent slowly to retrieve her fallen items, Ore-Locks was quicker and picked them up. She took them, ignoring him, and stumbled across the cave. She was halfway to the shelves when she heard a soft splash.

Wynn teetered as she turned.

Rippling rings spread on the pool's surface as a white-tipped spearhead rose at the center of the water. It was quickly followed by a row of spikes upon a hairless, teal-tinged scalp.

Large, round black-orb eyes broke the surface, and Wynn stared eye-to-eye at one of the sea people.

In the crystal's light, she saw the slits for a nose and translucent membranes spread between the ridges of head spikes. He rose enough to expose webbing between clawed fingers, and between the spikes running along the outsides of his forearms. His stomach muscles appeared strange, different somehow, and he had no navel.

Then his lipless mouth parted slightly over interlocked needles of teeth. Without distinguishable irises, it was impossible to follow his gaze until he actually turned his head toward Ore-Locks.

Ore-Locks crouched and patted the floor, nodding. The sea man sank until the water covered the slits of his throat and his mouth—but not his eyes.

"Why is it … he … here?" Wynn asked.

"He is a guardian," Ore-Locks answered. "I cannot speak to him, but I reassured him that your presence is sanctioned."

"Who are they … and where are they from? Why did they come to the prince?"

Ore-Locks left her, heading to the shelves. "Where do you wish to begin?"

Wynn hesitated, still watching the hairless head of webbed tines and those round black eyes. She backed away toward the shelves.

"Bring all three chests out, so I can use one as a desk," she said, buying a few moments.

Until seeing this place, she'd entertained a few notions. Perhaps she could steal a few crucial pages or even one whole text. Or maybe she might spot another way in—or at least gain some sense where the texts were located, so she could find them on her own and retrieve them.

None of this would ever happen.

Only a Stonewalker could bring her and take her back out. She'd bought her way in here on a bluff, and now she needed to produce results. Her heart pounded in her rib cage.

"Haste is necessary," Ore-Locks said, sliding out the first chest. "We do not know when the … the spirit—"

"Wraith," Wynn corrected.

"Yes, as you say … and we do not know when or how it will return."

"I'm well aware of that. This isn't like looking up something in a library volume. Just get the other chests out. Search for freshly scribed folios of translations so far."

Ore-Locks dragged out the second chest.

"And the codex," she added. "It's a large volume laced together with waxed string. I need something to help decipher the originals, and their order, without my …"

Wynn went silent as she opened the first chest.

"What?" Ore-Locks asked. "Did you find it?"

Resting atop the piles therein were five volumes she hadn't seen in half a year. Their soft leather covers were lashed closed with wrapped leather laces. They looked rather worn and even travel-weary to her eyes.

"My journals," she whispered. "My stolen journals!"

Ore-Locks peered into the chest. "You wrote those?"

When she didn't answer, he turned away and hauled out the third chest.

For a moment all Wynn wanted was to gather those five leather-wrapped volumes, leave this place, and hide them where no one could take them from her again.

"Is this it?" Ore Locks asked.

Wynn looked up.

He held up the thick codex where he crouched. Inside the third chest were piles of bound sheaves, translations like the ones she'd seen at the guild. There were so many—but maybe she'd forgotten how much work had been done. It had taken her a whole day to just scan quickly through them.

"What about this other one?" Ore-Locks asked.

"What other one?"

He reached into the chest and held out a thinner volume than the first—but it had the same temporary wax stitching.

"Give it to me!"

Wynn snatched it from him and slapped it open upon the chest's edge. Inside were entries of completed or ongoing translation work, like the ones she'd seen in the first volume that day in the catacombs. She looked at all the sheaves, even a few folios, stacked inside the third chest.

"Valhachkasej'â! " she cursed.

Thoughts of Sykion—and especially High-Tower's resentments toward her—began to build until she stammered in anger.

"You … you two … !"

Wynn couldn't think of anything vile enough to call them. She was holding a second codex.

They hadn't shown her everything. Only what they thought she'd believed was all the work so far, just enough that she might lean their way, in their urgency to keep all of this a secret.

"What is wrong?" Ore-Locks demanded.

Wynn tried to regain her self-control. "Nothing," she hissed.

"Truly? You are this upset by nothing?"

She wasn't about to explain herself to him. He and Cinder-Shard had both expressed opposition to the translation project in High-Tower's study. She doubted he would empathize with her bitterness. But more important for now, she had more to work with—more translations—to help her fight her way through the original texts.

Wynn dug through the second chest to gain an idea what it held, as well as the first, which had contained her journals. She set those aside for use and looked up to the shelves filled with all the varied books, tomes, and sheaves she'd taken from Li'kän's library.

"What was it like," Ore-Locks asked, "the place where you found these?"

Her mind flashed back to that long, sleepless night. She and Chap had carefully chosen what seemed important, readable, or merely sound enough to take from among a wealth of decaying sources. Her friends had helped her carry away so little compared to what they left behind, now half a world away.

"Older than you can imagine," she answered. "So old the only guardian had forgotten the sound of speech … or her own voice."

Wynn shook off the memory of that naked, deceptively frail undead with slanted teardrop-shaped eyes like no breed of human she'd ever seen.

"Stop bothering me," she said. "I need to work."

Ore-Locks stepped back as she began pulling out translation sheaves and folios and made a quick mental account of the other two chests' contents. They contained the more frail volumes versus the ones on the shelves. Where should she start first?