Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

He rose to his feet and backed away. He had no reason to fear disease, but he did not want to carry any taint back to camp.

“Come. We’re late,” he told Shade, and she loped ahead as he stepped onward.

Even as he reached camp, something about the carcass still bothered him—until he realized the camp was empty, and all thoughts of the deer vanished.

“Wynn?” he rasped.

The black gelding nickered, and he saw that the horses had been fed and the fire was lit. He leaned down to look under the wagon. Ore-Locks’s bedroll was empty, though his iron staff still lay there. Shade growled, and Chane straightened.

Shade sniffed the air, perhaps searching for Wynn in her own way, and Chane grew tense as the dog began ranging about the camp and peering out into the dark. Had Ore-Locks decided to drag Wynn off on his own in search for the seatt? Then why leave the wagon, horses, and weapons behind? Why bother building a fire?

“Wynn!” Chane called.

His maimed voice didn’t carry far. Shade threw back her head and howled once.

“Up here!” Wynn shouted. “Come quick.”

Chane looked up and saw light above the outcrop’s top, perhaps thirty or more yards overhead. His relief faded under annoyance. What was she up to now?

He dropped the hare by the fire and ran to catch Shade scrambling up the slope along the outcrop’s southern side. When he ascended to a height where torchlight reached his eyes, Shade was beside Wynn and Ore-Locks out on the outcrop’s strangely level top. They were climbing over a pile of large stones—practically boulders—near the outcrop’s end.

Chane was about to call Wynn back, not caring what brought her up here, when Ore-Locks dropped to a crouch beside one large, erect stone.

“Get over here,” Wynn called, waving.

Exasperated, Chane stepped outward, but his curiosity did not take hold until Ore-Locks stood back up. The stone next to the dwarf was about his height and half that in width. Roughly weathered, it seemed too square. It was raggedly sheared at an angle, as if it had once been quite tall, but had broken off.

“What is it?” Chane asked.

Neither Wynn nor Ore-Locks answered at first. Perhaps they had not yet discussed this.

“A pylon?” Wynn suggested. “Like the ones in Dhredze Seatt, used to show directions?”

Uncertain as he was, her notion made him uncomfortable. By its worn and shattered state, it was very old, perhaps ancient.

“Why?” Ore-Locks ventured, for once so focused that he seemed open to discussion. “My people do not need pylons outside our own seatt.”

“Unless ...” Wynn began, “unless it’s from a time when there was more than one seatt.”

Ore-Locks’s frown began to fade. “Or when more of my people once traveled well-used ways.”

Reluctantly, Chane asked, “Is there writing?”

Wynn and Ore-Locks exchanged a look, and then both crouched and pawed at the erect stone’s surface.

Chane hoped they found nothing—hoped Wynn might have grown weary by now and notions of giving up were in the back of her mind. When they reached the great range, and perhaps after days and nights on foot in those peaks with no sign of a “fallen mountain,” he might finally take her home to relative safety. There were fewer threats that would risk following her among her own kind.

“Here!” she breathed.

That one word almost extinguished Chane’s hope. Ore-Locks crouched beside Wynn near the squared stone’s base.

“Can you feel them?” Wynn asked. “There’s not much, but these might be worn traces of old engravings.”

“Perhaps,” Ore-Locks said at first. “Perhaps, yes ... yes.”

He rose again, torch in hand, and peered southward in the direction of the stone’s face. Wynn looked up at him, her dust-smudged face faintly hopeful.

“This must mean we’re on the right track,” she said.

Ore-Locks tilted his head, appearing thoughtful now. “If the seatt is on the range’s southern side, this marker is much too far away. Pylons, as you call them, point to the next closest location or subsequent marker in the direction from an engraved surface.”

“Like what?” she asked.

Ore-Locks fell silent for a moment. “Perhaps the seatt is not as far as we thought.”

“No, it has to be on the far side. Its name is derivative of an old desert language.”

Ore-Locks paused, as if uncertain. “Then a way station ... perhaps.”

Chane’s discomfort increased.

Wynn stood up. “A what?”

“A land-level entrance to a seatt or its settlements,” Ore-Locks continued. “Like those of my people’s stronghold, Dhredze Seatt.”

“A passage?” Wynn asked. “All the way through the range to a seatt? That’s not possible even for your people.”

Ore-Locks gazed southward. “Something is out there, along our path.”

He strode off past Chane and down the sheer slope. As Wynn passed, following the dwarf, Chane saw thoughts working hard upon her face. He just stood there, tired and frustrated, as Shade passed him, as well. When he turned to follow, Shade had paused at where the overhang met the slope.

Her ears pricked up and she stood rigid, facing northward.

Chane tried to follow Shade’s gaze but saw nothing. The rushing night breeze made it impossible to pick up a scent. Then he heard a low rustling in the scant trees. A low branch swayed, but nothing came bustling out. Shade had likely sensed a hare or perhaps a thrush attracted by the torchlight.

“Come,” he said.

Shade scurried off downslope, and Chane climbed down. When he reached camp, he went straight for the fire to skin and spit the hare.

“Couldn’t you find anything tonight?” Wynn asked from behind the wagon, a nearly empty burlap sack in her hands.

Chane looked to the fireside and then all about the camp. The hare was gone. He glanced upward to the outcrop above. Perhaps Shade had not sensed another hare, but something else scavenging for an easy meal.

“Chane?” Wynn asked.

What could he say? He was not about to alarm her over some fox or wildcat that had outwitted him and Shade.

Sau’ilahk hovered in the shadows of a fir tree just above Chuillyon’s camp on the pass’s western slope. He’d discovered the elves trailing Wynn many nights ago. Unlike Wynn’s group, these elves had no majay-hì to sense his proximity. He sometimes floated in the darkness, listening for bits of information they might unwittingly share.

Tonight was more difficult.

For one, the deer he had fed on provided so little life that he was still hungry. The sight of Chuillyon only thirty paces away was a nagging temptation. He had not forgotten how the old elf had hampered him, helped to trap him back in Dhredze Seatt.

But Sau’ilahk could not risk a vengeful feast just yet.

The old elf traveled with two others. By what Sau’ilahk had overheard from them, one was possibly another white-robed sage, though all three were dressed for travel. Tonight, only Chuillyon and the one called Shâodh were present, both looking a little worse for wear. They had not stocked supplies as carefully as Wynn, and had been sleeping on the open ground. There was no fire, only a glowing crystal resting on the boulder they leaned against.

The elves had always kept pace with Wynn, so why had they not packed up to ride out?

Chuillyon closed his eyes and leaned back, half sitting on the waist-high boulder. However, Shâodh glanced southward through the slope’s trees a little too often.

Where was their third companion, the woman called Hannâschi?

“How much longer will the human journeyor continue?” Shâodh asked tonelessly. “They must be in a similar state to us.”

Sau’ilahk sensed dissension between them as he caught the almost imperceptible tightening of Chuillyon’s mouth as the old elf’s eyes opened. These two had had this conversation before.