Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Wynn looked at him for a long moment, realizing what he meant, and finally nodded. “All right.”

“Do not leave the guild,” he said firmly, and looked at Shade to make certain she understood. “Ore-Locks will arrange a schooner to return me across the bay. I should only be away two nights.”

He was surprised by the distress on her face. Did she fear he might not come back? He began digging into his pack until he felt a cylinder of old, worn tin.

“Here,” he said.

Chane held out the case containing the ancient scroll that had once led him to her. The same one that bore a poem as yet fully translated, its parts having led them this far together. Giving her this was the only thing he could think of to assure her.

“For safekeeping,” he told her, and he turned to head back to port.

Something grasped his hand.

He did not turn or even dare look down. He was too afraid, for there were still too many unanswered questions between them.

But he squeezed Wynn’s hand once before letting go.

The following night, Chane stood alone in the temple proper of Feather-Tongue.

He stared up at the massive statue of that Bäynæ—dwarven Eternal—who had been missing from the great hall of Bäalâle Seatt. The oil lanterns in their brackets cast upward shadows on its features, and Chane could not help feeling as if it watched him.

Ludicrous notion.

In one blind moment, he had stepped into a sacred space, not knowing what would happen. He had not even thought about it. Not as he had when Wynn first brought him to the temple’s outer doors. Not as he had when they had walked the outer hallway beyond this round chamber, and he had flinched, drawing himself back, at each opening into this chamber.

Now he stood, whole and unbroken, in a sacred space.

All around him, the walls were marked in engraved emblems he could not read, though he wished he could. Then he heard the heavy, booted footfalls approach the temple proper’s opening behind him.

“Is it safe?” he asked without turning.

When no answer came, Chane lowered his gaze and looked back.

Ore-Locks stood inside the archway, dressed in the black, scaled armor of his brethren. He looked up at the statue of Feather-Tongue, frowning in puzzlement. When he lowered his gaze to Chane, that same perplexed expression remained.

How strange it must appear to Ore-Locks that a monster with a mindless beast within should be found standing before a patron of knowledge in a place of faith.

“I brought what you asked for,” Ore-Locks said, stepping closer, “though I wonder why. Do not eat them raw, since they must ... be ...”

Ore-Locks faltered, for what would a Noble Dead, an undead, want with food of any kind?

“They are not for eating,” Chane replied. “Something else ... something for Wynn.”

Taking the cloth from the dwarf’s hand, he opened it and found a pile of strange little fungi, or mushrooms, grown only by the dwarves. Their caps were unusual, spreading in multiple branches that flattened at their ends, almost like tiny leaves. Muhkgean, they were called. Along with the white flowers of the Lhoin’na, they were one more component from the list in the Seven Leaves of Life to create a healing concoction.

He was careful not to touch the mushrooms with his bare hands. After what had happened with the anasgiah , he would take no chances.

“Thank you again,” he repeated. “How can I reach you, if necessary?”

Ore-Locks paused. “A head shirvêsh at any temple can contact Master Cinder-Shard. Send word here, and I will receive it by dawn or dusk.”

A moment’s silence passed between them. Ore-Locks looked up at Feather-Tongue once more and then glanced sidelong at Chane. A bit of old suspicion and hardness resurfaced in his broad features, though it faded after a perplexed shake of his head.

“The world I wanted is still buried,” he said. “Changed to something I do not want.”

“It has not changed,” Chane said quickly. “It has always been what it is. All that changes is what we know—or believe—though it might be other than what we wish.”

Ore-Locks nodded and hung his head, staring at the floor stones.

“A schooner waits below, as promised. Make sure you board and get below tonight. It leaves at dawn,” he muttered, then raised his eyes to Chane. “Safe journey ... and a little peace, while it can last.”

By the time Ore-Locks’s footsteps faded down the long hall to the temple door, Chane finally turned to leave.

Walking through this place of ... belief, he pondered everything he had been through in the past few moons, thinking on what he himself truly believed in.

He believed in Wynn.

The Wynn that he now knew was a far cry from the vision born on the first night they had met. In the guise of a minor young noble with scholarly interests, he had visited a small barracks refurbished for sages in the faraway capital of his homeland. That escape into the realm of the living had quickly died at Magiere’s appearance, that half-living, other “monster” who had taken so much from him.

Chane’s illusions of Wynn had taken longer to pass. From their first night over a rickety table strewn with ink bottles, quills, and parchments, the air laced with the scent of mint tea, she might have been all he would have wanted as a companion ... in life.

How much had changed since then—and how much had not. He had watched her fall bit by bit from his greater vision of all that her guild and she represented. Then she had struck him down with four words.

If you love me ...

That utterance did not confirm that she felt the same for him. This was not something he could yet risk believing—putting his faith in—in place of knowing. But that challenge had trapped him, forced him beyond all reason and knowing. Perhaps only instinct had led him through that crisis.

How could he love her and yet deny what she believed in?

The answer had been with him, in him, since the moment she had spoken those four words.

Whether he accepted the way Wynn saw the world or he believed any part of what she saw to come did not matter. If he ever wanted her, he had to want what mattered to her. It was necessary to believe in her.

If he were ever to mean anything more to her, she had to be the heart of his faith.

Dusk had passed by the time the schooner landed the next night. Chane disembarked and made his way back to the Guild of Sagecraft.

He walked right through the inner bailey gate, for not one city guard had been posted outside. Even the outer portcullis was left raised. No attendant came out to greet him.

It seemed a season without death had fostered some irrational notion among the sages that this place was once more safe. Or perhaps the sight of the city’s oldest castle, a bastion of knowledge, being locked up and guarded was no longer acceptable before the people’s eyes by the royals of Malourné.

Either way, it was a fool’s arrogance to Chane.

He grew angry as he strode out of the gatehouse tunnel into the inner courtyard beneath the light of the great torches above him. Where was Wynn, left so exposed here—in her room, in the common hall, or perhaps the library or archives? Uncertain, he turned toward the southern barracks, where all upper apprentices and journeyors were housed.

Without breaking stride, he slipped a hand into his pocket and drew out the cold lamp crystal Wynn had left with him. He rubbed it, quickly and briskly, across his thigh.

Entering the barracks, he made his way up to the door of Wynn’s room and opened it. Just as he was about to step inside, movement down the passage’s dead end caught his eye.

“Sir ... ?” a frightened, wavering voice asked.