Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Leave the fallen dead of the Earth where they lie.

Wynn tensed. Was this a reference to Bäalâle Seatt? Did the “dead of the Earth” mean the dwarves who had perished there?

Leave that of the Earth in hiding ... that of ours, no longer a slave to a slave.

Wynn turned sick with revulsion at more insistence for inaction. But there was something that didn’t match up. What was this nonsense about a “slave to a slave”?

The dwarves were slaves to no one. Their people would rather die than submit. But she glanced sidelong at Ore-Locks, wondering about the descendant of Thallûhearag, that so-titled “Lord of Slaughter”—Lord of Genocide.

Vreuvillä’s brow creased, but she uttered no reply to the Fay’s last demand. In the clearing’s silence, Wynn saw nothing more hidden beyond the trees as their branches settled.

Chane had remained silent, though Wynn could feel his shudders through his hand, as he was still gripping hers. Ore-Locks was watching Vreuvillä in confusion, and then he looked to Wynn.

“Whom was she speaking to?” he whispered.

No one answered him. Wynn didn’t even know how.

The Fay were gone. All that was left were limp roots among the branch fragments on broken earth as scattered leaves settled to the clearing’s floor.

Shade whined loudly, and Wynn looked down. The dog was still trembling against her leg.

Vreuvillä turned her head, one eye peering around her dangling, wind-whipped hair. “Who are you?”

Her voiced was strained with suspicion.

“Just a sage,” Wynn answered, “thrown into the middle of all this ... who does what her conscience tells her.”

She released Chane’s hand and took a step. Shade growled in warning and tried to cut her off. Ore-Locks lowered his staff in front of her. Wynn stepped around Shade and pushed aside the iron bar.

“What are you to them?” Vreuvillä whispered, an edge of anger returning to her voice. “They tried to take your life, to have me do so ... and they have tried before.”

“So have many others, and I’m still here.”

Shade remained tight at Wynn’s side, eyeing the pair of majay-hì framing the priestess.

“My purpose isn’t as far from theirs as you might think,” Wynn added. “Though they want you to believe otherwise.”

Vreuvillä studied her. Strong as the priestess was, it was not an easy thing to have what one believed suddenly transformed into something else.

“I’ve nowhere left to turn,” Wynn suddenly begged, and the fear and reality of the last few moments sank in. “Do you know anything of a place called Bäalâle Seatt, a forgotten dwarven city or stronghold in the mountains bordering the desert?”

Several of the pack tentatively closed around Shade, sniffing at her from a safe distance. Wynn ignored this, focusing only on Vreuvillä.

“There are some writings left by my forebears,” the priestess finally answered, taking a long, haggard breath. “Mentions of dwarves who once mingled freely among the people ... my people. They came from the south. If these are true, the surest path would have been what is now called the Slip-Tooth Pass.”

Something—perhaps hope—began growing in Wynn. “Yes, I’ve seen it on a map.”

Vreuvillä looked away, glancing toward the trees before she dropped her head.

“Where?” Ore-Locks asked, his voice too eager. “Where, exactly, did they come from?”

“I do not know,” Vreuvillä answered. “But if it was a seatt that fell in the war ...”

She trailed off.

“Anything might help,” Wynn urged.

“There is a place one of my forebears found in wandering and labeled it ‘the fallen mountain’,” Vreuvillä said quietly. “It was too odd to be called anything else, as if a peak amid the range had been sheared off, crushed, or collapsed. A flat, sunken plain one would never find amid such mountains. I have not seen it for myself. I cannot direct you more than this.”

Wynn’s mind was racing. She had a crude map of the region already in her possession. If they were to trust in Vreuvillä, they simply had to follow the Slip-Tooth Pass between the smaller, northbound ridges all the way to the Sky-Cutter Range. After that, finding this so-called “fallen mountain” was another matter, but it might be closer than she had ever hoped.

A thousand years had passed, even for mountains that ran across an entire continent. Who knew what changes to the landscape had come and gone since the time of war? But at least this was something to go on.

“Thank you,” Wynn said.

“Do not thank me. Chârmun gives me no guidance in this ... as I had wanted in calling up those who birthed it.”

Wynn had little guidance, either. But mention of the tree called Sanctuary raised so many questions as to what had happened here.

“What was that out there?” she asked. “What is this Pain Mother you spoke of?”

“Not pain .” Vreuvillä corrected, scowling again. “The Pained Mother ... though it is a weak meaning in your tongue. It is the manifestation of them —what your kind calls Fay—that represents what first made all of this .”

Vreuvillä swept her arm wide as she turned to the stilled trees all around her. At first Wynn wondered if the priestess meant the clearing or the whole forest surrounding it.

“It is all from them, from ‘she who suffers and mourns,’” the priestess went on. “Like a parent whose child grows, goes its own way, and forgets what birthed it. I am ... the Foirfeahkan were ... all that remain to hold that ever-thinning bond, reminding ‘mother’ and ‘child’ of each other.”

Wynn knew varied creation myths of some cultures, both living and dead. These, in turn, had contributed to the notion of the Fay and the Elements of Existence used metaphorically by her guild. Some sages had even taken on a foundationist’s perspective, combining the core pieces of long forgotten belief systems, believing there was some primary force that had initiated everything, Existence itself. It didn’t often sit well with current formal religions or the guild itself.

Wynn had her doubts about such things, preferring what could be reasoned. Of course, she had no doubt that the Fay were real, whatever they—it, the one and the many—ultimately were. Beyond all this, whatever the Fay or Vreuvillä thought or believed, the core of Wynn’s being told her that what she did was right. It had to be right, no matter the cost, because she couldn’t face the alternative.

She’d turned against the guild, deceived and lied, and even stolen revered cold lamp crystals and used them like currency. She had done—would continue to do—all these wrong things for the right reason.

“I do thank you,” she told Vreuvillä.

But she turned away to find Chane fixated upon Vreuvillä. He was shuddering, and his eyes seemed dead, their irises like circles of crystallized ice upon white marble orbs. He looked nothing like himself ... or perhaps as if there was nothing left of himself inside.

“Chane?”

Only then did Wynn realize something. Whenever questions had been asked of someone unknown or untrustworthy, Chane had stood right behind her. By a whisper or a squeeze upon her shoulder, he’d guided her through the truths or deceptions of those who gave answers.

Wynn had heard nothing from Chane through the entire exchange with Vreuvillä.

Now the priestess watched him alone, her grip tightening on the white, curved blade.

“Chane?” Wynn whispered.

Fear-fed hunger, the screeching beast within, the prodding forest upon him like an army of insects ...

This was all that Chane felt, all that filled his head, until he could do nothing but hold himself in as he stood behind Wynn.