Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Ore-Locks had his own agenda, unknown as it was, but the wayward stonewalker was the closest thing they had to an ally with necessary skills. Any help should not be so quickly dismissed.

“Show me where the guards are,” Chane said. “Perhaps we—”

A quick, triple knock sound at the door.

Chane heard Wynn’s breath catch, and she rose and hurried over, not yet opening it.

“Yes?”

“Journeyor Hygeorht?” called a light voice outside. “A message for you.”

Wynn pulled the door open as Chane approached behind her.

A metaologer in a midnight blue robe stood outside. Chane had seen few elves in his life before coming to this continent. Even he was a bit startled at the sight of her .

Stunning, even for an elf, she was like something out of his land’s fables and folklore. She was so slight she might break under a strong breeze, and so beautiful she couldn’t be real. She smiled and held out a folded and wax-sealed sheet of paper.

“Who is it from?” Wynn asked as she took the message.

The young woman simply shook her head, as if she did not know, then turned and walked away. Wynn closed the door, flipping the message in her hand.

The cream paper was thick and of fine quality, its folded edge locked down with a green wax seal impressed with the shape of an ivy leaf. Wynn broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and revealed a sharply stroked script. Chane assumed it was Elvish.

Wynn dropped her hand so fast the paper crackled, and she jerked the door open, rushing out to look down the passage.

Chane leaned out, looking both ways. “What is it?”

Wynn pushed him back, stepped inside, and shut the door. She stood staring blankly at the sheet of paper.

“It’s a pass ... into the archives,” she answered without the slightest relief or joy.

“Who would send you this?”

Wynn shook her head and studied the letter again. “It’s unsigned, but the council seal makes it official. I just show it to the guards and ... and I’m in.”

Chane distrusted sudden changes of fortune, and it was clear Wynn had equal doubts.

“I don’t care who sent it,” she said firmly. “We go now, before someone finds out and takes it back. Shade, come!”

This time Shade growled more sharply.

If the dog truly understood what had happened, Chane could not disagree with her warning. But what choice did they have?

Sau’ilahk rose from dormancy and materialized after dusk on the plain bordering the Lhoin’na forest. He had sated himself after finding the caravan before the previous dawn, and now brimmed with consumed lives. He would need that power tonight.

Drifting nearer the tree line, he kept to the road, shying from those little domes of velvety white flowers and whatever lay beneath in the earth that had filled him with painful cold. He stopped when he felt the slight tingle of the forest’s presence reaching out to find him.

Sau’ilahk looked down on the road’s stone-packed bare earth at a spot that would serve his need. There he crouched. This time, he would use the externalized trappings of ritual to aid his conjury.

Solidifying one hand, he scraped a double circle in the hard earth with one black, cloth-wrapped finger. Once he had filled that border ring with sigils, he rose and shut out the world to focus his thoughts on that pattern.

The lines in the earth began glowing with pale chartreuse in his sight.

Sau’ilahk drew upon his stores of life. He formed a clear image of a small creature in his mind. In a long existence, he had learned of many things, even of creatures that lived in places from which he was barred. He shaped that image, seeing that creature as if it stood there in the circle. Lost in the summoning, he did not notice it leave the forest until grass along the tree line rippled in its passing.

It broke from the plain’s grass and bounded up the road.

Sau’ilahk immediately shifted focus, and the luring image in his sight vanished. He looked on the animal as it halted within the circle. No common beast would serve his purpose as well as this one.

About the size of a common barn cat, it had a ferretlike body as well as some of that animal’s coloring. A stubby tail, darker than its bark-colored fur, quivered once before it rose on its hindquarters. Large, round brown eyes peered around a pug muzzle in a face masked with black fur. Twitching, wide ears made the tufts of white hairs on their points blur in vibration. But most useful of all were those tiny forepaws.

Almost like small hands, their stubby digits ended in little claws. A tâshgâlh—“finder of lost things”—stood mesmerized before Sau’ilahk.

A natural-born thief, the tâshgâlh possessed dexterous paws that exceeded a raccoon’s for getting at whatever it became obsessed with. A trilling coo vibrated from its throat, for it was still entranced by the summoning; it did not actually see him yet. Tâshgâlh were found only in elven lands. Wherever he sent it, no one would give it notice other than to hide any shiny baubles that might catch its attention.

In a smooth flash, Sau’ilahk solidified one hand and snatched the tâshgâlh by the back of its long neck. Its trance broke, and its pigeonlike purr became a squealing, screeching chatter. He let it thrash, its tiny rear claws hooking nothing as it tried to tear at his incorporeal forearm.

It was the most perfect selection for a familiar.

With this beast Sau’ilahk could hunt for Wynn Hygeorht within a land forbidden to him.

Wynn paused at the courtyard door and looked back into the meal hall.

Ore-Locks’s reddish hair badly needed brushing, as it was looking wild and tangled even when pulled back with a leather thong. As he gulped large spoonfuls of stew, nearby initiates stood dumbfounded, eyeing the other plates they’d brought him moments ago, which he’d emptied. They obviously had no idea how dwarves could feast at a moment’s notice, though why Ore-Locks did so now was puzzling. Dwarves could store up food and go without for three times as long as a human.

“We should bring him,” Chane whispered.

Wynn shook her head. This small venture was best kept from Ore-Locks; she’d told him nothing about the mysterious letter. Instead, she told him that she would look into how else she might gain access to the archives. He’d been too hungry to argue.

She might not be able to get rid of Ore-Locks, but she would keep the upper hand in whatever they did—by what she learned and he did not. The more dependent on her that he was, the better. For whatever he wanted at Bäalâle Seatt, she couldn’t have him leaving her behind and getting there first.

Wynn turned to hurry out, shivering once in the cold air as they emerged in the courtyard.

“Which way?” Chane asked.

“North.”

She trotted ahead, still gripping the unsigned letter and wondering who had sent it. Was someone here actually trying to help her? Or was the letter merely bait to trap her, complete with grounds for her expulsion? If the latter, it wasn’t very effective. She would still have the pass with which to implicate whoever had sent it.

“Do you have any plan?” Chane asked. “Besides showing the pass to the guards and waiting to see what happens?”

She shook her head. “They’ll let us through, and then it’s a matter of time. Whoever arranged this is at odds with Premin Gyâr. We can only hope this comes out too late for him to stop us.”

Wynn was even more uncertain than she sounded. They headed along the courtyard’s paths, reaching a spot beneath the northernmost spire. Upon reentering the great redwood ring, her uncertainty turned to dread.

What if Gyâr had sent the pass? He was acting high premin and could simply claim it was forgery, no matter how legitimate it looked. He could’ve even used the council’s official seal. She’d be trapped, and he would simply misdirect all others in a hunt for whoever had illicitly used the council’s seal.