Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

“It’s not serious,” she said, pulling part of Chane’s cloak from under him to cover the evidence.

“Truly?” Ore-Locks returned. “No serious blood loss ... or any crippling bone breaks?”

Wynn stiffened and then turned slowly about.

Had Ore-Locks tried to kill Chane in the clearing? Was this some test to confirm the dwarf’s suspicions? Regardless that a living man might have died under the dwarf’s iron staff, did he now think he had been wrong?

Shade sat on the bed ledge nearer the door, her eyes fixed upon Ore-Locks’s back. Twice she glanced toward Wynn.

“You saw what happened to him out there,” Ore-Locks insisted. “What is he?”

And there it was. Ore-Locks could no longer pretend to look the other way, and Wynn could no longer hide that Chane wasn’t a living being.

“Why should I answer, if you think you already know?”

“That black thing, that ... wraith , as you called it,” he went on, “came among our honored dead. You brought it, as well.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“How many of these creatures do you—”

“You were there in the tunnel when I destroyed Sau’ilahk,” Wynn cut in. “And you know Chane was just as desperate to kill that wraith. Don’t you ever compare Chane to Sau’ilahk.” She paused. “He protects me. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

Ore-Locks didn’t answer.

“He’s the same man you knew yesterday,” Wynn continued quietly. “The same you’ve sailed with, who has slept across the wagon bed, who has fought beside us. Nothing has changed.”

“Yes, it has,” he returned. “Everything has changed ... except our destination. What else did you learn in the clearing?”

The shift of topic caught Wynn off guard. “Nothing,” she answered.

“I could see it in your face! You heard more out there than I did.”

Ore-Locks took a step toward her.

Shade hopped off the bed ledge and growled at him, but he didn’t acknowledge her presence. Ore-Locks seldom made open demands. This night’s events had clearly shaken him.

“You tell me, or—”

“Or what?” Wynn challenged, but she wasn’t as unafraid as she sounded.

Only the monumentally naive wouldn’t shake to their bones in facing the threat of a dwarven warrior, especially one as tainted as Ore-Locks. But Wynn knew she had the upper hand, and certainly he knew it. He simply thought he could scare her, which was equally true.

“I’m the one who uncovered your lost seatt,” she said. “I’m the one who can find it—not you. Even if I told you more, you wouldn’t understand it. You need me, but I don’t need you ... and I never did.”

Looking into his face, for an instant Wynn saw the dark figure of Ore-Locks in his sister’s smithy. As she tried to pick herself up after being thrown out of his family’s home, literally, Ore-Locks had closed on her. He loomed over her now as then, like a massive granite statue caught in a forge’s red light.

Still, whatever Ore-Locks hadn’t figured out about Chane, or the unfathomed hints Wynn gained from the Fay, she wasn’t giving these to him. He would do nothing to her as long as she was his only way to find the burial place of his traitorous ancestor.

Ore-Locks hadn’t moved. Wynn kept her eyes on him but waved Shade off.

“Get out of the way,” she said.

“Where do you think you are going?”

“Water, food, bandages—”

“Bandages for what?” He jutted his chin toward Chane. “He is not even alive.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

He hesitated, caught in indecision, as his gaze shifted between her and Chane. A gravelly exhale escaped him.

“I will get them,” he said, though he paused again before turning away. “You will not leave this room until I return ... shortly.”

Again, he seemed worried about leaving her unguarded, even here at the guild. Or perhaps he didn’t wish to let her out of his sight. She didn’t care either way, as long as she had breathing space to gather herself. As Ore-Locks left and the door closed, this night brought one thing to clarity.

Each of Wynn’s companions tried too hard to keep her safe for their individual reasons. At the moment, Shade seemed the only one with whom Wynn could reason fairly—and that in itself was ironic because of their difficulties in communication. Ore-Locks was no longer the one who worried her most, and his harsh words were not unwarranted.

Something had happened to Chane out there in the forest.

Whatever ... however that tainted toy of Welstiel’s, the brass ring, allowed him to walk into elven lands, it wasn’t enough. He’d lost himself in that last moment, when he’d tried to assault Vreuvillä, nearly shattering a tense truce. Even that worry wasn’t the worst of it.

Wynn had tried to put aside what Chane was for so long. It was easier, more convenient, and even a relief to have him at her side. Some might have thought it flattering, perhaps enamoring, akin to a dark-natured stranger who always appeared to save her. Chane was more dangerous than that, and Wynn was no juvenile girl with her head clogged by myths and legends coated in misguided romanticism.

Her purpose put her at great risk. Despite the harm she’d caused along the way, in the end the price of failure—or success—could be her life, but the alternative for so many others was too great. The path ahead terrified her compared to the life she’d known and wished she could take back.

Wynn accepted this, but Chane didn’t.

Not even the whys and wherefores entered into it for him. He didn’t believe in the absolute necessity of her mission, not on any level that mattered beyond his own desire. All that mattered in this world to Chane, beyond himself or his vision of the guild, was her .

Something had to be done.

Chane opened his eyes. At first the ceiling above looked unfamiliar. Anxiety rushed in, followed by pain. He could not remember where he was or how he had gotten there.

Apprehension increased as his sight cleared. The entire ceiling was covered in bark that flowed down the wall on his right. He rolled his head to the side.

Wynn sat cross-legged on the floor, writing in a journal—or perhaps she was crossing something out. Shade lay on the bed ledge across the room, watching him, as usual.

Chane realized that he lay upon a bed ledge in their room at the guild. This did not take the edge off his discomfort. His head throbbed, as did his side and left shoulder, but worse were the scattered and disconnected fragments of memories as they began to return.

What had happened in the clearing around that barkless tree?

“Wynn?” he rasped.

She looked up, dropped the journal and quill, and crawled toward him.

“Are you ... are you all right?”

He swung his legs over the bedside. The room swam before his eyes, and the pain in his skull and side sharpened. He had been badly damaged somehow. Hunger followed too quickly, and he forced it down.

“What happened?” he whispered.

“I had to ... had to have Ore-Locks stop you. We brought you back, and you’ve been dormant all the way to this evening.”

Chane glanced toward the curtained window and then stared at her. “It is the next night?”

“Yes. But I think I know where to start searching ... sort of.”

Her words barely registered.

Chane tried to stand up, and winced as something tightened around his stomach. His shirttail hung out, the left side stained with his own fluids. When he lifted the edge, a linen bandage was wrapped around his midriff. When had he been cut?

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Wynn said. Then she repeated, “Are you all right?”

Chane let hunger leak slightly through his cold flesh to eat away some of the pain.