Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Wynn had little to go on except for Magiere’s mistake with the first one, the orb of Water, when she’d blindly opened it in the cavern below the ice-bound castle. Did Magiere have the only way to open an orb, with that tool she’d been given?

The tool might look something like a dwarven thôrkh , but it wasn’t one. So what good was it, if all it did was unleash an orb’s effect without control? What purpose, if any, might there be in finding all of the orbs, beyond keeping them from falling into the hands of the Ancient Enemy?

More lies and deceits weighed Wynn down, more suffering for others because of it, and one more secret.

That last one, which held no discernable bearing upon any greater questions, was something she dared not tell to anyone, most especially Ore-Locks. It made her sick inside after what she’d already done to him—forbidding him from clearing Deep-Root’s name. Only Shade knew this additional secret by now, but Wynn couldn’t stop thinking about it.

One phrase she’d seen clawed into that cave wall had made her falter twice.

May only my brother ...

She looked down at the open book: an original lexicon of dwarven root words, compiled over centuries from archaeological recoveries. An abridged copy was available in the upper library. But what she sought here in the original wasn’t a confirmation of what she knew. Rather, she’d hoped it would prove her wrong and free her from another burden. Even when she’d asked Master Tärpodious where to find it, she had known it wouldn’t let her escape the truth or her deceit.

Beneath Bäalâle, she’d heard an ancient name. It had come as the dragon recited Deep-Root’s last words, damning himself to eternal death. That name had filled her head in every language she knew, by whatever translation she would’ve given it at first. She hadn’t grasped the ancient Dwarvish until she’d focused on the Numanese that came with it. It had choked off her voice.

May only my brother, Softly-Spoken, remember me....

Why the orb’s guardians hadn’t forced her to repeat it only confirmed why she hadn’t. Perhaps they’d known what she feared, should Ore-Locks hear it.

Wynn glanced at the last set of cryptic Begaine symbols in her new journal. The strokes were so tangled, so truncated that only she would be reminded of what they meant.

Bhedhägkangâva ... Softly-Spoken.

If Ore-Locks had heard it in the Numanese she’d spoken, perhaps he wouldn’t have caught the hidden connection. As a cathologer steeped in language, Wynn had missed it only for an instant. Pronunciation changes in the Dwarvish root words hadn’t hidden it from her. And suffixes, prefixes, and alterations for creating verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs had remained mostly stable over a thousand years.

Bhethäg was an adverb in the vocative for a proper name. Its root had to be something like vetheg . It was listed so in the lexicon.

Vetheg, vedhegh; see vedzagh in contemporary usage.

Its most accurate translation in Numanese was “softly,” but the more literal, if less meaningful, might’ve been “featherly.” Vedzagh — vetheg —was the root for “feather.”

Kangâva had been less clear, but she’d worked it out. The vocative of a past-tense verb, its root was something like changa or changasa .

Changasa, changaksa, chenghak; see chenghaksé in contemporary usage.

“Spoken” was the precise meaning in Numanese, but the more literal would be “tongued.” The root chenghaksé—changasa—meant “tongue.”

The name of Bhedhägkangâva—Softly-Spoken—would need to change only so slightly over so many centuries to ...

Bedzâ’kenge.

Feather-Tongue had been Deep-Root’s twin brother. The repercussions Wynn now hid with that name were overwhelming.

Ore-Locks had barely succumbed to her reasoning as to why he couldn’t speak of Deep-Root to anyone except Master Cinder-Shard. From the beginning, he’d been silently obsessed with one thing: to clear his ancestor’s forgotten name and restore his family’s heritage.

Wynn had denied him that right, to do what was right.

If he’d heard that brother’s name, desperation and a great heritage would’ve made him unstoppable. She’d seen fear, hatred, and revulsion evoked from Shirvêsh Mallet at her naive mention of Thallûhearag. Sliver and High-Tower were vehemently sickened by their elder brother’s passion for a long-dead ancestor that had called him into service among the Stonewalkers.

If Ore-Locks had proclaimed who Deep-Root was, what his ancestor had done and why, he would’ve been denounced by any who still remembered Thallûhearag. Without verifiable proof, at even a testament from Wynn, a mere “scribbler of words,” Ore-Locks would’ve turned to the name of Deep-Root’s brother as his last salvation.

What would happen if Ore-Locks publicly claimed that the forgotten worst of the Lhärgnæ, the Fallen Ones, was blood kin to a Bäynæ, an Eternal?

Feather-Tongue was revered as a paragon of knowledge and wisdom, but also for a cherished heritage. That meant everything to any dwarf with faith, as it did to Ore-Locks. Wynn had seen her own people let belief override reason to the point of denouncing fact ... or worse.

Ore-Locks would’ve been branded a heretic, at best. His family would’ve suffered more than they already had. And at the worst ...

Any head shirvêsh, even Mallet himself, could’ve incited righteous outrage. Neither Ore-Locks nor his family would’ve been safe—not even High-Tower. Any dwarven family, clan, or tribe coming after the domin would rouse the guild to his defense. And the royals would have used any means to defend the guild. They already had against Wynn’s efforts.

The people of Malourné and the dwarves of Dhredze Seatt had been neighbors, allies, even comrades for over four centuries. Those connections could not be destroyed simply because one stonewalker yearned to clear his family’s heritage by any means.

Wynn couldn’t face the chance that any of this might happen. She’d stolen Ore-Locks’s final hope of absolution and locked it away. She’d sacrificed his chance to be free of a hidden heritage to the Lord of the Slaughter.

Wynn had been raised, nurtured, trained to seek the truth for all to hear. Another choice like this crushed her down even more. Every muscle in her small body ached as if that growing weight were real. If anything more dropped upon her, she felt she might break. And there was more to come; she knew this.

Except for Shade, Wynn felt alone in this moment. There was no one far enough outside the guild for her to trust. There was no one here who knew enough and believed in what would come ... not even Chane.

Shade’s low rumble cut through Wynn’s growing anguish.

“All right, we’ll go,” she whispered.

Shade’s rumble grew to a snarl.

Wynn almost sighed. Was Chane coming? Maybe he hadn’t received her message—or he’d ignored it.

—not ... Chane—

Shade’s hackles stood on end. Her ears flattened as she bared her teeth and glared through the opening at the alcove’s rear.

Wynn snatched up the staff as she dug into her robe’s pocket for her glasses. Did she sense some other undead?

Shade suddenly twisted her head, looking to the opposite opening among the four ways into the alcove. Her head whipped twice both ways before she turned again toward the front opening.

—behind—

Wynn shoved on the glasses and ripped the sheath off the staff’s crystal. Shade’s snarl sharpened again as Wynn barely turned toward the rear arch, and she almost glanced back.