Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Wynn remembered every word like it was yesterday, for then Fréthfâre had slapped those flowers across Magiere’s face. Magiere was not an undead, but her father had been one, and she shared some of their nature through him. When the flowers struck her, their effect was so damaging that she’d nearly collapsed.

Chane was a true undead, and he’d touched the same white petals. Why?

His hand clamped down on Wynn’s thigh. She felt its icy chill through her pants, and though he tried to squeeze, his fingers convulsed too much.

“Flowers ... for you,” was all he said.

His eyes closed, and he stopped moving.

“Chane?” Wynn whispered as she shook him. “Chane!”

She looked wildly over his body lying facedown in the dirt. Was he gone? Had the anasgiah finished him? How was she to know with no way to check for ... someone who wasn’t alive?

“Move aside,” Ore-Locks said, stepping in over Chane. “I will bring him, but we must leave— now !”

Chane’s body flinched at the sound of Ore-Locks’s voice. Wynn gasped, not realizing she’d been holding her breath.

“Get him deeper into the trees,” she whispered to Ore-Locks. “I’ll come in a moment.”

“No, you will—”

“Go! Now!”

Wynn ran onto the field, crouching low. All of this was mixed up in Chane’s obsession with her. Whatever purpose he had for those flowers might’ve cost him even more in his ignorance. When she reached the place where he’d fallen, she barely spotted the dropped flowers in the dark. They were crushed by his fall.

She spun on her haunches, spreading the grass as she crept about, looking for more. As she saw another dome of white and grabbed hold of its roots, a rumble from behind pulled her around.

Shade stood there, jowls still quivering.

“Where have you been?” Wynn whispered.

She immediately wondered if Shade had been scouting for the patrollers. There was no time to ask as another notion came to her. She took Shade’s snout in her hand and tried to remember useful images to pass as she spoke.

“Riders are coming. Lead them away. Then find me.” She released Shade. “Go!”

Shade rumbled once and took off through the dark.

Wynn ripped out the dome of flowers, roots and all, and ran for the trees.

Sau’ilahk remained far off, uncertain if his ploy had worked. As much as he had wanted to take the chance to feed, he had not. He had only slipped through the dark and nestled in the grass along the riders’ path. When the horses cantered nearer, moving too quick to see or sense him, he lashed his arms through the lead one’s legs.

It had screamed and fallen instantly, and he had blinked away before its rider hit the earth. When he rematerialized, he could see the three elves moving about in confusion. It was not long before they regained their wits and the horse recovered, but it was longer still until they gathered themselves and continued on.

They reined in short of the place where he had first spotted Chane. He thought he saw one of them point back the way they had come. They remained there, their horses stamping the grass, and Sau’ilahk finally risked rising to look.

Back along the way the riders had come, something raced away that left a trail of whipping grass. Not one of the riders took chase, though neither did they race on toward where Wynn had vanished.

For the second night in a row, Wynn stood in a room while Chane lay worse than broken and unconscious. Shade had barely caught up before they reached the inn, and now sat poised near the door.

It hadn’t taken much for Wynn to get Ore-Locks to leave the room. Perhaps he thought Chane was finished and no longer a concern to his own goals. But Wynn saw the occasional shift of Chane’s closed eyes, and the intermittent twitch of his one unmarred hand.

From what little Wynn knew of the ways of the Noble Dead, Chane didn’t appear to be in true dormancy. She couldn’t stop staring at his face.

Dull black squiggling lines like veins ran through his other hand, up his arm, and into the same side of his throat and face. She’d found more across his chest on the same side, as if something had wormed through him just beneath his pale skin. He was so cold all over, and she couldn’t think of any way to help him.

She carefully wrapped the flowers and stowed them in her own pack. She thought again of Fréthfâre’s words that anasgiah could hold off death. Had Chane inferred this from scant notes in her journals and made the connection when he saw the flowers?

Wynn realized why he’d wanted the flowers so badly ... for her.

Chane suddenly gagged and rolled onto his side. She pushed back several strands of hair sticking to his eyelids. She let out an exhausted breath, sick with worry. This all had to stop, one way or another.

Two nights later, Wynn pulled the wagon’s horses to a halt on the road at the forest’s edge. She looked out across the grassy plain.

Chane was conscious but lay in the wagon’s back, wrapped in his cloak. The black lines in his face and hand were fading but still visible. He’d claimed to be able to travel, and she hadn’t argued with him.

It was time to move on ... almost.

Ore-Locks had wanted to head directly south, through the forest. She’d told him that the branch road that the caravan had taken would give them easier access toward the south and the Slip-Tooth Pass. But that wasn’t the real reason she’d come here again.

Wynn needed to see this plain—this place from Most Aged Father’s memory—one final time.

The Lhoin’na called this the Bloodless Plain, though the origin of that name had been long forgotten. It wasn’t that no blood was to be spilled here, but rather that those who’d perished here had no blood to spill. Their bones had been long buried by time and nature.

What bothered Wynn most was that glimpse of Chane, an undead, a Noble Dead, standing in the dark amid the grass. A connection tickled the back of her mind between what lay in the earth and him.

Magiere had once severed Chane’s head, yet somehow he’d come back from a second death. Welstiel had done something , but Wynn had gotten no more than that from Chane. Aside from wondering if he really didn’t know ...

She stared across the plain, thinking of the horrors that lay buried and forgotten here, where only a blind tradition forbade the spilling of the blood of the living upon this place.

“What are we waiting for?” Ore-Locks asked.

Wynn didn’t look at him, though he sat at the bench’s far end. Shade rested her head over the bench’s back between them.

Yes, it was time to go, since nothing more could be learned here.

Wynn snapped the reins. The wagon lurched forward along the road through the plain before her eyes and the other one in her memory.

Chuillyon sat on a horse amid the trees far off from the road. He waited beside Hannâschi and Shâodh, sitting on their mounts.

When Chuillyon had requested Hannâschi accompany him abroad, Gyâr had fumed until Chuillyon explained. Even Gyâr would want to know what some “covert” little Numan sage was up to. Not that Chuillyon would share all he learned of Wynn’s pursuit.

“Why are they traveling by night?” Shâodh asked.

Chuillyon put a warning finger across his lips. He still had not spotted Wynn’s wagon pull out of the forest onto the road.

“Her tall guardian is likely an undead,” he whispered. “Though it would seem he has some method of hiding his nature.”

Hannâschi, sitting on a white gelding, leaned forward to glance at him around Shâodh.

“And you neglected to mention this?” she said.

Chuillyon rolled his eyes and shushed her. “Either you or Shâodh can detect the others. The stonewalker will be the greater problem, if they actually locate the seatt. He can travel in ways that we cannot follow.”