Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

“I will be.” Bits and pieces of the night before started coming back. “You ran off alone,” he said, unable to keep the accusation from his tone.

“And I told you to stay in Vreuvillä’s home,” she countered. “You were foolish to go running around in that forest ... no matter how it worked out in the end.”

Chane sat silent at that. Try as he might, he remembered so little beyond the moment he had found her—and then after he had pulled her away from those moving roots.

Wynn watched him closely, with the hint of a frown. She was biting back something more, perhaps not wishing to argue. What else was wrong?

“I’m fine,” she said, perhaps reading him. “I’ve got information that might help us find the seatt ... and other pieces I don’t yet understand.”

The situation was more than disconcerting. He had never lost time like this before. The last thing he remembered clearly was pressing the ring against Wynn’s shoulder in blind fear of losing her.

Wynn sat back on her knees.

“Let’s just move onward,” she said evasively. “I think we need to get you out of this land as soon as possible. Everything will be better, will be all right, after that.”

It was not—would not be so. It was all broken in his head. And the beast began to rumble and whine inside him. He pushed his hair back with both hands and clenched at the sharpening pain in his head. Glancing once toward Welstiel’s pack in the room’s corner, he thought of what he needed in there. In the moment, he had a greater concern.

“You learned the location?” he asked.

“Not precisely. No one could possibly know that. I have a direction and something to look for.”

Wynn related what Vreuvillä had told her and what else she had surmised. When she mentioned the Fay’s scratching “leaf-wing chorus” in her head, Chane was uncertain what to think. Had she truly heard these nature spirits, or could she have imagined this?

“If dwarves visited among the Lhoin’na forerunners in ancient times,” she went on, “then the Slip-Tooth Pass would’ve been the most direct route. We’ll head south down the pass to where it meets the Sky-Cutter Range. I believe the seatt is on its far south side, closer to the desert, but if we travel in a straight line from the pass’s end, we’ll have the best chance to spot any ‘fallen mountain. ’ At this point, it’s the most sensible way to begin.”

“What makes you think it will be on the south side?”

“Something Domin il’Sänke told me. When spoken in Sumanese, ‘Bäalâle’ is pronounced min’bä’alâle , which is an ululation of praise for a desert tribal leader. That suggests the seatt was near the desert. Perhaps the dwarves of old were friendly with some desert tribe or people.”

Taking in Wynn’s oval, olive-toned face, Chane saw a hint of her old, blind confidence there. But he pondered the strange duality of what she said she had heard from the Fay. What was the difference between “the fallen dead of the Earth” and “ that of the Earth?” What did “a slave to a slave” have to do with any of this?

None of it mattered against the mounting danger to her. It unsettled Chane that she had managed to gain enough information to head into what sounded like a correct direction.

“We need to restock supplies,” she said, “and prepare for at least a moon’s worth of travel, if not more. I don’t know if there are settlements along the way. Certainly not once we head into the range.”

Which meant that she had no intention of turning back, no matter what.

Chane swallowed hard, though his throat had gone dry. At least her plans offered two immediate solutions.

“Do you ...” he began, and faltered. “Is there anything more you need here at the guild?”

She looked at him in puzzlement. “I don’t think so. But it may take a few days to prepare before leaving.”

“Then we should lodge elsewhere in the city—find an inn; be on our own.”

Before he even finished, he saw agreement flood her expression, and perhaps relief. It would not surprise him if Premin Gyâr was having them watched. Chane had not forgotten the menace on the premin’s face in the archives.

“Yes,” Wynn said, nodding. “On our own again.”

Shade lifted her head, ears pricked at full attention. She hopped off the bed ledge and padded to the door, sniffing at its bottom crack near the floor.

Chane rose, clenching his teeth against the returning pain. “Take hold of her.”

Wynn started at his words, and then saw what Shade was up to. She pulled Shade back as Chane jerked open the door.

He looked both ways, seeing no one along the passageway’s gradual arc. Someone had been there. Even with the ring on, the starving beast inside him sensed this as much as Shade had smelled it. And there was something more that he sensed.

A thin and strange scent lingered in the passage. Partly cinnamon, but with another spice or two he did not recognize.

Chane backed into the room and shut the door.

“Take Shade and find Ore-Locks,” he said. “Make sure he gathers everything. We are leaving immediately.”

Wynn studied him for an instant and then looked to the door. Her eyes narrowed just before she nodded. Without a word she got up, passing her small fingers over Shade’s head, and they both left. As soon as the door closed, Chane rushed to the corner.

He slumped down the wall, digging furiously into Welstiel’s pack, and pulled out a brown glass bottle wrapped in a felt scrap. Fumbling from exhaustion, he managed to open it, and he downed what was left of its contents. In his rush, a single dribble rolled out the side of his mouth to his jawline. The fluid was so dark red, it was nearly black.

That stolen life, taken by Welstiel’s filthy little cup, burned down Chane’s throat to the pit of his stomach. He buckled over, shuddering and clenching as life flooded through his dead flesh.

It seared him, and he suffered all the more for his broken state. It would heal him somewhat, though it would not bring back his memories of what had happened in the clearing.

And this made Chane feel more powerless than ever in protecting Wynn.

Ghassan il’Sänke sat in his small camp among the thin palm trees along the coast. He required time to think. His instincts had once told him to silence Wynn forever. He had chosen otherwise, and even assisted her in translating part of an ancient scroll alluding to a place called Bäalâle Seatt.

Had he chosen wrongly? He could not count how many times he had second-guessed that decision since he had last heard from Mujahid.

The medallion against his chest began to grow warm.

Ghassan jerked it out by its chain and squeezed it in his hand, and Mujahid’s voice filled his mind.

Domin?

Yes, I am here.

She leaves soon, a few days at most. I am sorry I did not learn more. I was outside her room, and their voices were uneven. I picked out only a few words.

Do you know her destination?

The young journeyor’s grasp of thaumaturgical alchemy was sound, perhaps beyond his years, but he showed less aptitude for ... more subtle skills. He was forced to rely on stealth and his above-average hearing.

I do not. Only that she will follow the Slip-Tooth Pass. Does this assist you, Master?

Ghassan closed his eyes.

What he had translated of the poem in Chane Andraso’s scroll, with its mention of Bäalâle, had combined with other bits and pieces he had gleaned over a lifetime. During the great war, word had spread to the westernmost forces that a dwarven seatt had fallen. For that message to have reached them, the seatt in question had to have been somewhere on the western third of what the Numans now called the Sky-Cutter Range.