Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

“Chane.”

He looked back to find Wynn hurrying over, with Shade trailing her.

“Where is Ore-Locks?” he asked.

She pointed. “He headed off behind that statue, looking for a way onward.” Then she leaned closer, lowering her voice. “Does it feel like he led us here, like he knew where he was going?”

Wynn watched him expectantly.

“That is not possible,” he answered, though doubt crept in. The dwarf had brought them directly to this hall.

“Is he leading us where he wants to go?” Wynn asked, not letting the notion drop. “Does he know more than he’s told us ... perhaps even about the orb?”

Chane had never truly cared what Ore-Locks wanted here. It had sometimes seemed the dwarf simply wished to know if the seatt was just a myth or if anything could be learned of his long-dead ancestor. It had not occurred to Chane that Ore-Locks might also be seeking the orb.

If so, Wynn was in more danger than Chane had thought. His first instinct was to take her from here, by force if necessary. But she would never forgive him.

“If he knows ... anything,” Wynn continued, “all the more reason to follow him, since I don’t know where to look.”

Shade growled in obvious disagreement, but Wynn turned and headed toward the effigies.

Chane checked both his swords for a smooth draw before hurrying after her. At the first sign of treachery, he would take Ore-Locks suddenly, killing the dwarf before he could react. That would end this foolish exploit.

“Ore-Locks,” Wynn called.

“Here.”

They rounded the last of the statues, the only female among them, and Ore-Locks stood before another archway. The dwarf’s expression had altered, filled with relief or satisfaction. Then Chane took a better look at the archway.

Set deep between the thick frame stones was a panel of old, marred iron with a worn seam down its middle. The panel fully filled the arch, slipping into the wall on either side through a thick slot. It would be at least an inch thick, with two more like ones behind it. There was no lock, handle, or latch, nor brackets for a bar, and there would not be on the other side, either.

Chane knew those panels would open only for a certain set of individuals. His hand dropped to his sword hilt as he eyed Ore-Locks.

This portal matched the same impassable barriers they had once faced in Dhredze Seatt. One way or another, all black iron portals led to the underworld of the Stonewalkers.

Wynn became more suspicious of Ore-Locks by the moment. He was looking for something specific down here—and it wasn’t effigies of the Bäynæ. His steady progress was beginning to border on manic, and he appeared to know where he was going, as if he had been here before.

“This must be opened from the other side,” Ore-Locks said.

Wynn remembered how Ore-Locks’s superior, Cinder-Shard, had passed right through such a portal. The master stonewalker had opened it by manipulating a series of rods in the wall on the other side that functioned as a complex lock. And Ore-Locks knew very well how these doors worked.

Panic hit Wynn as she realized he was about to pass through the wall. What if he didn’t unlock the portal? The look of satisfaction on his broad face could only mean he was getting close to whatever he sought here. What if he just abandoned them and went on alone?

“Take Chane with you,” she said. “You don’t know what you’ll find, or even if you can unlock it. You may need him to help force the portal open.”

“I am not leaving you alone,” Chane argued.

Ore-Locks turned his head, looking at Wynn. “No one could force a portal ... it would take a dozen warrior thänæ, and even they might fail. If I cannot open it ... I will return.”

His tone dared Wynn to challenge his word. She didn’t trust him, and he knew it. She tried to think of another way to stall him until she came up with something, anything else they could try.

Ore-Locks stepped straight into the iron and vanished.

“No!” she cried, slapping her hand against the portal, sending a thrum through the great hall. “Chane, why wouldn’t you go? Now there’s no one watching him, and we cannot follow.”

“I am not about to be trapped on the other side, away from you.”

How could he be so calm? Then another thought occurred to Wynn.

The locks for these portals had a combination for which rods were pushed or pulled into differing positions. Cinder-Shard, as master stonewalker of Dhredze Seatt, had likely set those combinations himself. How could Ore-Locks possibly know the combination here, set by a master stonewalker a thousand or more years ago?

She realized he’d never intended to bring her through, and panic threatened to overwhelm her. Had she come all this way to be left behind?

A rumbling grind of metal on stone made her lurch back.

The iron panel split, its halves slowly grating away into the frame stones on either side. The noise increased as the second, and then the third panel followed.

The portal was open, and Ore-Locks stood dead center, looking out at Wynn.

Chuillyon led the way through the decaying, empty tram station and into a tunnel. He saw an archway ahead but was unprepared for the sight beyond it—a domed cavern as large as a small town.

“Oh, my,” Hannâschi breathed.

Chuillyon stared up at the remnants of walkways that had once stretched between remaining columns as thick as some old trees of his people’s forests. Column fragments and the ruins of huge stairways lay piled and scattered everywhere.

Even malnourished and exhausted, Hannâschi’s awe and wonder were plain to see. Shâodh, however, appeared singularly unimpressed. He stepped through the rubble, glancing once at a skeleton still wearing a thôrhk .

“Fewer bodies here,” he noted dispassionately.

Chuillyon almost winced, thinking of the grim fate of these lost dwarven ancestors.

“Did Wynn come through here?” he asked.

Shâodh paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. His exhale thrummed briefly in his throat, and Hannâschi crouched beside a set of broken bones.

“So much death,” she said quietly. “What happened here?”

“No one knows ... as yet,” Chuillyon answered.

She looked up, but her long hair and cowl covered half her face.

“This is the greatest archaeological find of our time,” she went on. “Bäalâle is no myth. If there is evidence here—amid all of this—then we will have proof the war did take place ... that it was not, is not, some overblown legend.”

Shâodh’s eyes opened, and he looked down at her with the barest frown.

In truth, Chuillyon had so single-mindedly followed Wynn that he had forgotten this possibility. But Hannâschi was only half-right.

“Such information must be kept from the public,” Shâodh stated before Chuillyon could express the same notion.

Hannâschi rose and turned to Shâodh with her mouth set tightly. Clearly, she did not need his reminder, and seemed about to tell him so. This was not the time for a spat—although one might come later. Chuillyon decided not to mention it yet, but, in truth, even few of his peers at the guild could be told of this place until he understood more himself.

“Did she come through here?” he asked again.

Shâodh nodded once. “But we have another problem. I sense three distinct lives. The journeyor’s protector cannot be one of them, and the majay-hì’s presence is different. That leaves her and the dwarf.”

“And so?” Chuillyon asked.

“Someone else is here, either with her or near her.”

This was all Chuillyon needed: one more unknown variable. “Which way?” he asked.