Of Truth And Beasts Part 23

He didn't respond, but he set the chest down next to the packs. Chane sank onto one bench, his expression strained.

"Are you all right?" Wynn asked.

"Chuillyon serves the royal family of Malourne," he said. "What is he doing here?"

She'd wondered that herself since they'd left the white-robed pretender leaning against Chrmun as if it belonged to him. She just shook her head.

"It may have nothing to do with us."

Chane frowned at her. Yes, it was a weak evasion.

"What is the next step?" he asked.

Ore-Locks looked over as he sliced an apple, waiting on Wynn's answer.

"I'll deliver the message from the council," she said. "That's my excuse for coming-even if the letter is nothing more than a warning against me, then I need to start searching their archives. If anyplace has information on Balle Seatt, it is most likely here."

"You guess," Chane whispered.

"Yes, I guess. Every guild branch has its region from which it recovers lost information unearthed in various ways. We know Balle Seatt was likely in the Sky-Cutter Range, considering its name was based in terms of tribal dialects once spoken in the great desert. This is the closest branch to the range."

"Anything that old should have been shared with all branches," Chane returned.

"Yes . . . it should have," Wynn echoed coldly.

Ore-Locks closed on her, holding out slices of apple. "If the premin here exposes the content of your branch's message, these sages might not be any more helpful than those of Chathburh."

"I don't need their help. I'm a journeyor, and guild branches share-are supposed to share-archives with all ranks of journeyor and above." She looked back to Chane. "So long as they don't learn what I'm really after, I'll find the information myself. All we can do is avoid Chuillyon until I dig up something useful . . . something to tell us where to begin searching an immense range that crosses an entire continent."

Thinking that, let alone saying it aloud, prompted Wynn to drop tiredly on the bench beside Chane. After so many days on the road, and switching back to being awake in daylight, she wasn't accustomed to being up all night. She was about to say more when she heard a soft rattle.

It carried through the archway from the main chamber nearer the courtyard. She stepped over to look out.

"What is it?" Chane asked, rising.

The outer chamber was empty all the way to the courtyard door.

"Nothing. I just thought I heard-"

The door's handle twisted and the door swung open.

It was shoved by the shoulder of a slender figure not tall enough to be an elf, dressed in a midnight blue robe. Dark hands juggled a small pile of books as the visitor stepped in, trying to keep the top book from sliding off. With another shoulder nudge, he shut the door and turned about.

Wynn saw that he most certainly wasn't an elf.

Dusky skin and kinky black hair inside the midnight blue cowl of a metaologer marked him as Suman, though certainly not as tall or distinguished as Domin il'Snke.

He froze at the sight of her.

He looked about twenty, though his self-a.s.sured expression made him seem older. A triangular tuft of beard on his chin was so well manicured it could've been there awhile. He smiled, bowed his head without lowering his eyes.

Then he noted the sliced apples in her hand. His dark eyes rose to see Chane standing beside her, as Shade nudged her way into the arch between the chambers. The barest hint of surprise crossed the young man's face, followed by what Wynn thought was . . . an instant of recognition.

That brief change vanished, and she was certain she'd never seen him before.

"Apologies," he said in Numanese, and his accent was even thicker than il'Snke's. "I did not know anyone would be here so early. I would have announced my presence properly."

"We arrived too early-I mean late-for room a.s.signments," Wynn returned.

He bowed slightly again, still smiling. "I am Journeyor Mujahid il'Badryah of the guild branch in Samau'a Gaulb, il'Dha'ab Najuum."

Wynn knew little of Suman Empire culture, or, rather, its many cultures, but it was considered polite to make proper introductions right away. She stepped closer so that her companions could enter behind her.

"Pleased to meet you," she said. "I'm Journeyor Wynn Hygeorht of the Calm Seatt branch. This is Chane Andraso, and Ore-Locks Iron-Braid."

"Ah, so I am not the only one far from home," he replied.

"You are up very early," Chane observed. "It is not even light out."

If his rasp affected the journeyor, the young man didn't show it. Nor did he appear surprised by a dwarf's presence in elven lands. Instead, he glanced toward one stairway leading up on the left, and then back to Wynn, as if trying to reach a decision.

"Yes, I hoped for some quiet time to study," he said, and his expression filled with a sort of formal concern. "Perhaps I can a.s.sist you. I, too, came with companions. This is not the traveling season, and the guest wing is nearly empty. I cannot procure rooms for you, but you are welcome to rest in mine and the adjoining one, until something proper is arranged."

His offer struck Wynn as odd, but she had no idea why. He was just so amiable and eager to help. However, the thought of lying down even for a short while was tempting, and she needed to secure Chane someplace before he fell dormant at dawn.

"We're so tired that we may sleep all day," she said. "Will that be all right?"

"Most certainly," Mujahid answered. "I have a full day with no need to disturb you until after dinner."

Again, he was all too eager to help, but Wynn couldn't fault his generosity.

"Thank you," she told him, and then something more occurred to her. "I'm sorry to ask, but would you let the journeyor on watch know where we are? He'll be looking for us as soon as his domin awakens."

"You mean Domin In-Ridge?" Mujahid queried.

That answered Wynn's question on how to shorten the unknown domin's name in translation.

Mujahid nodded with a slow close of his eyes. "I will . . . as you would say, pa.s.s the word."

Still uncertain but aching for sleep, Wynn followed him to the stairwell leading up.

Sau'ilahk desperately needed life. Conjuring a servitor with consciousness and the long struggle to control it had drained him. When his creation had come upon that strangely lit glade while following Wynn, the black lash of its destruction had wounded him somehow. It was as if in riding the servitor's consciousness, he had stepped into the clearing himself.

Whatever had disa.s.sembled the servitor had partly reached him, and he had lost track of Wynn's whereabouts.

Sau'ilahk stood upon the road through the plain with no animate life within his awareness. The forest's trees were like a wall beyond which he could see or sense nothing. Worst of all, he did not have the strength to blink elsewhere by memory over a great distance.

He studied the tree line stretching in both directions beyond sight. Even if he found sustenance, even if he made another, more suitable servitor, how would he locate Wynn?

Sau'ilahk began to fade, sinking into dormancy, and cried out in that darkness upon the edge of his G.o.d's dream.

"Beloved . . . help me!"

Do you follow the sage? Does she still lead you?

"I starve for my efforts!"

Then find life, as small as it might be. Consume it in the hunt for a greater feast . . . so you may serve.

This was no answer, and frustration frayed Sau'ilahk's wits even more.

"There is no life substantial enough for my need that I can reach here and now."

His patron's hiss sharpened like spit-upon coals-or the grind of ma.s.sive scales upon sand.

A droplet of moisture from a corpse can be lifted from the desert, though it be barely enough for a burrowing carrion beetle.

"Wynn Hygeorht is beyond my reach," Sau'ilahk argued. "I cannot sense even the forest's own life. Even if I could, how am I to find her singular spark in such a place?"

Where life is . . . death follows. Find the latter to find the former.

Sau'ilahk paused. In a land teeming with life that shut him out as unliving, perhaps "death" had walked into those trees if Chane had somehow followed Wynn in there. Beloved's cryptic retort seemed to confirm this, but Sau'ilahk had so rarely been able to sense Chane's presence. Perhaps that strange ring had also allowed the vampire to enter where no other undead could.

His interest in Chane's little bra.s.s ring grew.

"I still . . . cannot," he pleaded. "Please, my Beloved . . . I starve."

Unearth your need, like a droplet in sand . . . and then another . . . until you find means to serve. Dig and borrow for it, if you must, but do not pray to me to salve the wounds of your failure.

Sau'ilahk sank deeper into dormancy under Beloved's rebuke. The only source of life he could think of was the caravan. He did not have the strength to search for it, let alone any memory that would let him awaken at its constantly changing location. He remained lost in the black silence, not knowing for how long.

All that was left to him were the painful past memories of his G.o.d that made him seethe in silence. The Children had never been treated this way. Though he had earned Beloved's displeasure through disobedience, he had done all he could to regain a state of grace in his G.o.d's awareness. When trapped between faithful service and desperate need, he was treated like . . . an insect in the dirt, just short of a whim to step upon it.

And the world reappeared.

Sau'ilahk spotted the barest gray in the eastern sky, and panic set in. Had he remained dormant for too long? He could not bear a whole day in darkness amid such hunger, and he sagged like a limp scarecrow draped in black sackcloth.

All that filled his awareness was the road.

Not the sands of the great desert from long ago, but packed earth with stones exposed by decades of weathering and use. Drops of water were not what he needed, though they were more plentiful here than in the dunes. The sting of Beloved's rebuke ran through him like a wasp's poison in the veins of living flesh.

Where there was water, or just moisture, even in another's remains, it could sustain a tiny life. He had once been such sustenance at the end of his living days.

That old, old memory still haunted and sickened him.

All had been mysteriously lost at the war's end. Or, rather, the war had simply ended for no reason he had understood. Years had pa.s.sed since the night that he received the "blessing" of eternal life. Then one night, the Children simply vanished.

Sau'ilahk went to the mouth into Beloved's mountain, and it was gone. Not as if blocked by a collapse or filled in with stone and earth. The opening simply was not there anymore . . . as if it had never been there.

Gone were the guardian locatha, those hulkish abominations like the offspring of a man and some monstrous reptile. The tribes and others of the horde began to disperse, but not before they turned on each other. Northerners and other defectors in the war turned against the desert tribes. Tribes turned on each other, no longer needing the excuses of old blood feuds. Packs and herds of the Ygjila-what would one day be known as goblins-tore into any but their own kind.

They ma.s.sacred each other over what little spoils of war had been gained, and then fled into the peaks and across the sands. Amid it all, the Children's offspring from the battlefields hunted and harried the living in the nights. They slaughtered anything for as much blood, as much life, as they could gain so deep in the desert.

Sau'ilahk fled with the remains of his underlings among the Reverent.

In more years that followed, he searched for any trace of the Children. Each year, he grew more afraid and maddened by spite. For when he looked in his polished silver mirror, his own visage was too much to bear.

Lines had grown on his once beautiful face. His glistening black curls of hair steadily dulled with streaks of gray. His joints slowly lost their range of motion amid growing aches at every movement. Food consumed for its comfort became mud upon his tongue, devoid of all taste. And his days became as his nights as his sight began to fail. That last loss was almost a relief from ever looking into the mirror again.

Sau'ilahk had grown old.

He withered, cheated by the lie of eternal life. It was not until after his heart finally halted its weak beats that a truth made his fear grow all the more. When he finally died, he could see again.

Sau'ilahk lay in the tent upon piled rugs for a bed, amid the haze of funerary incense. All around him, the remaining Reverent in their black robes and cloaks murmured prayers for Beloved to welcome him into the afterlife. Sau'ilahk was little more than a withered bag of bones as he watched them, knowing he could not be dead if he could now see.

His followers bowed their heads and closed their eyes, though some faces appeared subtly relieved rather than mournful. He tried to take a breath to rebuke them for prematurely dismissing him.

Sau'ilahk could not draw air-nor could he move his mouth. He could not blink or close his eyes-or if he did so without knowing it, no one noticed . . . and he could still see them.

The nearest swiped a hand across his old face as if to shut his eyelids. Still he could see them, hear them.

Some of the lesser Reverent left in that last night of his "life." Three remained to whisper among themselves, until whispers became sharp words. They argued over whether or not to bother fulfilling his final decree concerning proper burial. In the end, two of the trio won out by using a hooked-point blade to tear out the throat of the third.

It brought Sau'ilahk no satisfaction.

He lay mute and paralyzed, unable to tell them he was not dead, even as they stripped and washed his withered flesh. They wrapped him in strips of black burial cloth, layer by layer, so suited to Beloved's most reverent of the Reverent. Even as they rolled the strips over his eyes, again and again, he still watched them. He screamed from within as they bore him off, though no sound escaped his still lips.

They lodged him in a small cave high in the great mountain range. As they crawled back to the opening, all he had left to see was a rough stone ceiling an arm's length above him, torchlight still flickering upon it. That light began to grow dim as he heard the stones being piled.

Until that flicker vanished altogether, and there was only silence.

Sau'ilahk's silent screams turned to sobs as he came to know Beloved's truth. He had his eternal life, but not eternal youth. All his beauty was gone, but not the prison of his flesh in its death.

How long did he wait until they came?

Something entered his awareness in the dark. Like a spark he could not see, it skittered around the s.p.a.ce of his tomb. And then another-and another.

Something pulled, jerked, and tore at the cloth strips over his sunken belly. A small form scuttled over his face and burrowed into the cloth over his right eye.

Were they worms, beetles, flies? What had crept and flitted too many times, too close across his cloth-wrapped face, only to wriggle through the wraps over his desiccating flesh? How long had it taken for them to ama.s.s?

Was it days, moons, or even years in that dark silence, until all he felt and heard was their burrowing, their biting and gnawing? It became a distant thing to be eaten alive-eaten dead-like a wound so harsh, the mind shuts it out. Horror numbed any sensation too torturous to bear.

For slow ages Sau'ilahk lay there, eaten away in small pieces while the rest of him decayed, until . . .

Out of dark dormancy Sau'ilahk rose one night through the mountain-side, his first utterance a scream that had built within him over a century. No longer anch.o.r.ed in flesh, dawn soon cut into his madness and drove him back down into a dormancy as dark as his tomb had been. But he rose again under the stars after the following dusk, still mindlessly wailing and unable to touch anything, most of all himself.

Even now, as he stood upon the road Wynn had taken, Sau'ilahk quaked under those endless years. Only the sound of scuttling in the dark had kept him company. That and the screams of his thoughts, so loud they could have cracked his dried bones if he had had a true voice.