Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

His body began to burn from within.

Too much life taken in pure form burst inside him and rushed through his dead flesh, welling into his head. Curled up, he waited with his jaws and eyes clenched until the worst passed and the convulsions finally eased.

Had he used a mortal human in this fashion, he could have gone a half-moon without feeding again. He did not know how long the life energy of a cow would last.

Sitting up, Chane stared at the shriveled husk until his false fever subsided, and then he carefully packed away his equipment. Strong and sated, in control of his senses, he prepared to drag the carcass into the distant stand of trees. It would be a few days before it was found. He and Wynn would be gone by then, and any talk of its condition would never be connected to him.

He paused once upon opening the barn door and glanced toward the quiet cottage. Then he dragged the husk across the fallow field.

Sau’ilahk lingered well beyond a copse of barren maples, watching in fascination as Chane dragged a desiccated carcass toward the trees. What had Wynn’s guardian been doing in that barn? Then he felt the tingle of a living presence and heard dead grass crackle in another direction. He froze in place, a still, black shadow barely more than a deeper darkness amid the night.

Something else moved along the copse’s left. Only a dark hulk at first, it circled around the outside of a leafless tree into sight.

Ore-Locks stood hidden at the copse’s backside, watching Chane, as well.

Sau’ilahk was certain the dwarf had not been there an instant before; he would have sensed a life in this empty place. So where had the dwarf come from so suddenly? His attention shifted as Chane walked out the copse’s far side, becoming more obscured by the small stand of trees.

His pale face had a hint of color. Had he been feeding on the cow? No, that could not be. The animal was shriveled to the bones. Bloodletting would not have had this effect.

The puzzle of Wynn’s companion only grew.

Once again, slight movement pulled Sau’ilahk’s attention.

Ore-Locks watched Chane leave and then turned about, placing one great hand on a tree as if bracing himself. Unlike Sau’ilahk’s fascination, the dwarf was scowling. Perhaps the errant stonewalker did not know Chane’s true nature. Had Ore-Locks seen anything that happened inside the barn?

The dwarf straightened, arms slack at his sides beneath his cloak, and appeared to sink—drop—straight down.

Sau’ilahk quickly drifted to the side of the corpse. Few things surprised him after a thousand years of wandering in the nights. He found heavy footprints where the dwarf had stood, but none coming in or out. Ore-Locks had appeared from nowhere and vanished the same way. This matched what Sau’ilahk had seen in the dwarven underworld.

Stonewalkers had leaped out of the walls at him. Now it appeared Ore-Locks and his caste could pass through earth as well as solid rock.

Two more things became clear as Sau’ilahk circled back to watch Chane striding the inland road toward Chathburh. First, mystery though Chane might be, he required life energy like any other undead, and second, he had taken effort to slip off and do this in secret.

Mulling this over, Sau’ilahk blinked out of sight.

After a late supper, Wynn delivered her sealed message to Domin Yand, head of the annex. A jolly elderly man in the Order of Naturology, he had eaten a few too many honey cakes in his life. He was quite puzzled but in no hurry to open the message so late in the evening. Ore-Locks had finished his own supper quickly, not bothering even to sit, and then vanished to find a room. He never reappeared.

From what Wynn observed in the Stonewalkers’ underworld, she guessed he’d spent much time in dim light, in the Chamber of the Fallen. Sailing under the open sky, constantly surrounded by other people, must feel quite foreign to him. Perhaps he longed to be alone.

She didn’t miss his company, and lingered downstairs in the annex’s library. At least until Shade required her nightly trip outside before bed.

When they finally headed up the central staircase, all the way to the top floor, Wynn found Domin Tamira true to her word. Most of the rooms were empty, and those available had their doors fully open. Wynn picked a large room with a window overlooking the front street. She could just make out the lights of the port between the high rooftops. The faded, four-poster bed was draped with a soft, thick quilt, and old velvet curtains graced the windows. Shade immediately turned a full circle before settling on a washed-out braided rug at the bed’s foot, and then she gazed watchfully at the closed door.

Wynn pulled out one of her three cold lamp crystals. Once it was glowing, she shut the curtains, stripped off her boots, and sank to the floor before the scrollwork dresser.

“Come,” she said. “Time for more words.”

Shade simply wrinkled her nose and remained watching the door.

“Come on,” Wynn repeated, holding out her hand.

Shade rumbled and began to squirm. She fidgeted all the way around, until she faced fully away from Wynn.

“You have to learn, Shade. It’ll make things easier.”

So far, lessons had focused on simple terms for common objects and actions, as well as basic commands. The last were certainly demeaning, considering the intelligence of the majay-hì.

“Shade,” Wynn said, clearing her mind, so as not to give any clues by memory, “show me ... High-Tower.”

She reached out and touched Shade’s haunch, hoping the dog understood enough to call up or send an image of the stout dwarven domin.

Nothing came. Wynn tried to think of other ways to describe High-Tower, from his gray-shot red hair and braid-tipped beard to his—

Suddenly, the domin’s image rose in her head. A brief moment of elation came, followed by disappointment.

“No cheating!” she said, taking her hand away. “You must get it from the words, not my memories.”

Shade had to use words as cues and understand which one of Wynn’s memories to call up to answer back when they weren’t touching.

“Show me ... my room.”

Clearing her head, Wynn waited, but again nothing came. She slumped where she knelt. A simpler exercise might be better, something that didn’t have to do with Shade calling back a previously seen memory of Wynn’s. Perhaps something could be used to check Shade’s growing vocabulary.

“Shade, look at ... the window.”

The dog just lay there like a pouting adolescent. How Wynn wished Shade could simply speak words in thought like her father.

Suddenly, Shade’s ear twitched, and a vivid memory rose in Wynn’s mind.

She was sitting on the hearth’s ledge in the Sea Lion tavern on the night of Magiere and Leesil’s wedding feast. Chap lay beside her, silent and pensive. They both knew his kin, the Fay, were now aware of Wynn’s ability to know of them, hear them. He was deeply concerned about her safety.

“What am I to do without you?” she’d whispered to him.

Remembering that moment from more than a year past made tears well in Wynn’s eyes. No mortal should’ve been able to hear Chap’s communion with his kin, and as a result, they wanted Wynn dead. They’d tried to kill her once, because the taint inside her allowed her to hear them, just as she heard Chap in her head. If it hadn’t been for him, turning on them ...

Once you arrive, stay where many are around you , Chap had warned that night on the hearth. They will shy from approaching where they might be noticed.

“You know something dark is coming,” she’d replied. “Is it your kin ... from what you sensed in the orb’s cavern? Are they behind all of this?”

No ... something more, beyond them. And I have made other ... arrangements, which I hope will come through for your well-being.