Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

A small form in a tan robe came out of the shadows. It was a little girl with freckles and pigtails. Chane remembered her as the one who had been arguing with her friends about Shade that night when Wynn first told him the council had approved their journey.

Eyes wide, head craned back to look up at him, she held out a piece of parchment, and her voice wavered.

“Journeyor Hygeorht said to give this to you if you returned this evening.”

Chane took the parchment, unfolded it, and read it.

Chane,

All is well. I’m down in the archives and will return soon. Wait for me in my room.

The words brought a mix of annoyance and relief. He had wanted her to stay out of sight, but at least the need to search onward may have pulled her from too much despair. He paused, looking again at the note’s script. He had not even thought about it in his distraction with the messenger.

It was written in the Begaine syllabary, though the symbols were purposefully simplified.

Why had Wynn done this? Why had she sent this child in pigtails to give it to him? Then he remembered the initiate telling her friends she was fluent in Begaine.

So many secrets, so much of importance was often written in the syllabary. Remaining with Wynn, believing in her—in her cause—would be more complicated than he had ever imagined. Until last night, he had never given it this much thought amid his fantasies. If he wanted her, and her world, more changes had to be made.

“Kyne ... is it not?” Chane asked, looking down at the girl.

Puzzlement began to outweigh the nervousness marring her small features. She nodded but did not speak.

“I have heard that ... Wynn says ...” he began, and faltered in the attempt. “She told me you grasp the Begaine syllabary better than most ... for your age.”

She cringed at the sound of his maimed voice. Her lips parted as if to speak, but she could not find her voice.

“You will teach ...” Chane started to demand, and then halted. It took effort to force a softer tone. “I would like ... be grateful, if you could assist—tutor—me ... when you are able.”

She blinked once and then twice more, but did not move.

“Please,” he added too sharply.

Chane’s patience thinned quickly in the waiting silence. Suddenly, she took a step closer. In her slow approach, her gaze kept flicking to the glowing crystal in his hand.

That lure had the effect he expected, as predictable as a dropped pouch of coins at an alley’s mouth when he hunted in the night streets of a city. Or at least it caused enough confusion to make her wonder against her fear of him.

She moved even closer and glanced into Wynn’s empty room.

No doubt she had seen him before with a journeyor who had wandered the world like no other and returned with wild tales, and with a dark majay-hì out of folklore. What the girl did not know—what no one here knew for certain—was of the monster who had followed Wynn across half a world.

Kyne looked up, her voice still lost, and only nodded again.

Chane held out his free hand, and she took it.

Her tiny palm felt overly warm and a bit sweaty. She jumped at his grip, likely too cold in her own. He led her down the stairs to where the parallel passage through the keep wall at the back of these barracks emptied into the initiates’ outer ones.

“Your message is delivered,” he said. “Go to bed.”

Chane watched as she scurried off, though she glanced back at him several times. When she finally vanished from sight, he made his way back to Wynn’s room. Closing his hand over the crystal as he entered, he peered out the window to the inner courtyard below.

No one was out there, and he stood waiting in the dark, watching for Wynn.

The beast inside him strained at its bonds, but he pushed it down, focusing on one truth. He would now viciously guard this place—as well as all who resided here, worthy or not.

And he would do so for as long as Wynn would allow him.

Wynn sat in an intersection alcove, deep in the guild’s catacombs, while Shade lay on the floor, watching her. Upon the night of her return, she’d sought out Domin High-Tower to give proper notice that she was back. She preferred to deal with him rather than Premin Sykion, but her effort hadn’t mattered.

The impassive way that High-Tower looked at her suggested he already knew. Some word must have reached him, and he’d merely dismissed her to her quarters. He hadn’t even told her to remain on grounds; he didn’t have to.

So much had happened over the course of a single winter.

Wynn had watched helplessly as her guild began to curl up on itself, one faction or branch turning against the others in distrust, suspicion, and secrecy. The Fay had come for her again, manifested in anguish and anger like some avatar of a divine force called by a wild priestess. In dead Bäalâle Seatt, the forgotten gí’uyllæ—the all-eaters, the dragons—whose generations went back to the first animate life that had walked in Existence, were found guarding a weapon and waiting for the blood of Deep-Root to come.

And in one desperate moment, Wynn had bent Chane to her will by his love for her.

In that, she’d revealed that she knew how he felt, though she couldn’t even consider how she felt about him. That was too much, yet too little a thing, in the face of everything else.

The light of a cold lamp exposed one open book upon the table before Wynn, and the sun crystal staff leaned beside her. Chane’s scroll lay nearby, as did her new journal of short, cryptic entries in convoluted Begaine symbols. This single, brief journal was all that she needed now that she had Shade.

The old journals that she’d burned weren’t truly gone. What they’d contained was now even farther beyond anyone’s reach than ashes. On the nights she’d sat alone with only Shade, preparing scant, cryptic notes in the new journal, she’d silently read every line in the old journals, over and over, until ...

Shade had echoed back every word.

Shade might never speak with Wynn as Chap had done, but Shade could do one thing perhaps even better than her father. Along with any memory Wynn recalled, once Shade understood something, she remembered it—perfectly.

What better place to hide secrets than with the one who would never forget the smallest detail? Who better to secure knowledge than such a companion, a majay-hì from whom no one could forcefully take it?

Shade understood why this was necessary. Perhaps she would finally come to understand the risks Wynn had taken—would continue to take.

A whining rumble made Wynn stiffen on her stool, and she looked up.

Shade stood before the alcove opening leading back toward the stairs up to the guild. She’d been fidgeting more and more as the night grew later.

“Stop!” Wynn said. “There’s no one else down here ... and I already took you outside after dinner.”

Just like with Shade’s father, Wynn sometimes slipped up when frustrated or exhausted. She forgot the powerful spirit and unique intelligence hidden in the guise of a young animal.

Others saw them as majay-hì, mere mythical beasts of awe. Even most Lhoin’na, who regarded them as sentient and free-willed, treasured them with too much reverence to understand them as individuals.

Wynn knew better, which added a spike of guilt to her burdens.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, expecting a petulant retort in broken memory-words.

But Shade merely returned to Wynn, not even grumbling. With a sigh, Wynn propped her elbows on the table and dropped her forehead into her palms.

Three of the five orbs were still missing, and what had finding the second one truly accomplished? Chane had kept it from Sau’ilahk, but still, Wynn knew next to nothing of the orbs’ creation or purpose other than that the one now with Ore-Locks had been used somehow in an attempt to breach Bäalâle Seatt. But how else were they used?