Of Truth And Beasts Part 3

Recently, Shade had made a slip. Wynn had uncovered that her young majay-h guardian indeed understood spoken words-to a point. Shade couldn't speak, but she could listen, and she'd been doing so without anyone knowing it. She was going to listen now, and learn.

Shade abruptly launched straight from a squat.

Wynn lurched back in surprise, but the dog only hopped to the bed, turning a full circle before settling. Shade curled up, facing away, toward the stone wall.

Wynn scrambled to her feet. "Don't be obstinate."

Shade resented being forced to communicate like "jabbering" humans, but Wynn was determined to expand the dog's vocabulary. The grueling process of memory-speak might be all right for fluent majay-h accustomed to nothing else, but it wasn't efficient enough for Wynn.

Wrestling an animal bigger than a wolf would've made a sensible person hesitate, and yet . . . it didn't stop Wynn from grabbing Shade's tail.

Shade whipped her head around with a snarl.

Wynn didn't let go. "You wouldn't dare."

Then Shade's ears stood straight up. She looked across the room, rumbling low as her ears flattened again, and she scrambled up to all fours.

Wynn released Shade's tail and turned around, looking to the door.

"Chane?" she called. "Is that you? Come in."

The door didn't open, and Shade's rumble turned to an open growl of warning.

Before Wynn looked to the dog, the wall to the door's left appeared to shift. She backed up until her calves b.u.mped the bed.

Gray wall stones bulged inward, as if something pushed through them.

Wynn rushed for the corner beyond the door and grabbed the staff. She ripped the leather sheath off its top, exposing the long sun crystal, and thrust it out toward the rippling wall stones.

Something like a cloak's hood overshadowing a face surfaced out of the wall. Thudding footfalls landed upon floor stones, and a cloaked and stout hulk stood within the room, easily twice as wide as Wynn, but no taller. An overbroad hand swiped back the hood, and a stocky dwarf glowered at her, eye-to-eye.

Wynn's initial fright turned to anger. "What are you doing here?"

Ore-Locks cast one glance toward Shade, who was still growling. Beardless, something uncommon for male dwarves, his red hair flowed to the shoulders of an iron-colored wool cloak. He looked young, perhaps thirty by human standards, so likely sixty or more for a dwarf. Wynn knew better still.

Ore-Locks was older than that due to his life among the Ha.s.sg'kreigi-the "Stonewalkers" of Dhredze Seatt.

"Why do you still delay departure?" he asked, ignoring her question.

She clenched her teeth. He'd left his own sect, determined to join her in search of Balle Seatt, but she didn't trust him. He was an even darker complication beyond dealing with the council.

From what she'd gleaned of Balle Seatt, its fall-its destruction-had been the work of a traitor. That one's name had been forgotten long ago, and only a cryptic t.i.tle in ancient Dwarvish remained: Thallhearag, the "Lord of Slaughter." Only Ore-Locks seemed to know his true name.

Byndun-Deep-Root-had been a stonewalker of Balle Seatt, just as Ore-Locks was in Dhredze Seatt. But the connection went deeper than that, for Ore-Locks claimed it was this spirit of his ancestor that had called him to sacred service as a stonewalker, a guardian and caretaker of the dwarves' honored dead.

Ore-Locks worshipped this genocidal traitor, claiming that Deep-Root-that Thallhearag-was not a Fallen One, those who stood for the opposite of all that the dwarves' Eternals represented.

Chane claimed, by his truth sense, that Ore-Locks truly believed Deep-Root was no traitor. But there was no proof in mere believing. Knowingly or not, it all made Ore-Locks a potential tool of the Enemy through the spirit of a ma.s.s murderer. Perhaps he already was.

Wynn wanted no part of him.

Then she noticed his attire.

He no longer wore a stonewalker's black-scaled armor. He still bore their twin battle daggers on his belt, along with the new, broad dwarven sword in its sheath. But the long iron staff in his large hand was the first bad sign. He was dressed plainly in brown breeches and a natural canvas shirt, and through the split of his cloak, Wynn saw the burnt orange, wool tabard.

Stunned, she stared at his vestment. "What are you wearing?"

"I am in disguise," he answered quietly.

That was something else about Ore-Locks; he didn't behave like a typical dwarf. Most of his people were slow to anger and quick to laugh. They wore their emotions on their broad faces, their feelings expressed proudly with booming voices.

Ore-Locks's voice was too often low and quiet, his dark eyes devoid of his people's heartfelt emotions. She could never be certain what lay behind his words. And while she wasn't religious, his choice of disguise, that tabard and staff, were blasphemous.

Ore-Locks had "disguised" himself as a holy shirvsh of Bedz'kenge-"Feather-Tongue"-the dwarves' saintly Eternal of history, tradition, and wisdom. That was as far removed from the deceits of Thallhearag as possible.

"Take that off," she told him.

"The shirvsh of Feather-Tongue are well received in most northern lands. I do not wish to be noticed along the journey."

"I said . . . take it off."

Anyone who worshipped a servant of the Enemy had no business masquerading as a shirvsh, a religious servant, of Feather-Tongue.

"When do we leave?" he asked.

"I never agreed to let you come."

"That was settled in fair barter with your companion."

Wynn glanced away.

Chane had broken his sword trying to get them past a ma.s.sive iron door because of her obsession with finding the Stonewalkers. When they'd returned to the guild, Ore-Locks had appeared. He'd brought Chane a new sword made of the finest dwarven steel, which Chane never could have afforded.

Chane distrusted Ore-Locks only half as much as Wynn did, and he needed a new sword. At the offer of one of such craftsmanship, he hadn't said a word to refuse it.

"When do we leave?" Ore-Locks repeated.

"I don't know. I'm waiting for funding and . . . other matters to settle."

She wasn't about to tell him anything more than necessary.

Ore-Locks turned away. "I am at the Harvest Inn, west of the Grayland's Empire district. Send a message when you are ready." He paused with his back to her. "You would do well not to leave without me."

Shade's rumble turned to a snarl. Though Ore-Locks's quiet tone hadn't changed, those last words had sounded like a threat. Or perhaps Shade had s.n.a.t.c.hed a memory that rose in the dwarf's conscious thoughts. Either way, Wynn kept silent as Ore-Locks strode toward-through-the wall.

She sank on the bed's edge, feeling stretched thin on all sides, and snarled her fingers into Shade's scruff. Shade shoved her head against Wynn's neck, but soft fur and a warm, wet tongue weren't comfort enough as Wynn glanced at the door.

Where was Chane?

Upon rising at dusk, Chane dressed quickly, pausing briefly at the mirror over the short dresser. He tried to smooth his raggedly cropped, red-brown hair. Several objects, the results of his nightly errands, rested upon the dresser. As of yet, he had not told Wynn about these extra acquisitions.

The sword that Ore-Locks had brought him now had a plain leather sheath. A fresh cloak of deep green wool, with a full hood, was folded atop the dresser's end. Upon it lay a matching scarf, a pair of new, fitted leather gloves, and two small leather triangles with attached lacing for their final purpose.

He still had two more items to attain, and tonight, he was already late in seeking one.

Rushing through the small study and into the outer pa.s.sage, Chane locked the door to his guest quarters and hurried to the end stairs. When he reached the building's ground level, he did not head for the courtyard. Instead, he ducked into one ground-floor chamber laden with workbenches, books, and gla.s.s contraptions and other tools. Rounding to the back, he headed down another flight of stairs.

Emerging in the building's first level of underchambers, he stepped into a narrow stone corridor lit by two sage-crafted cold lamps set in wall-mounted metal vessels. Alchemically mixed fluids provided mild heat to keep them lit. By their steady light, he counted three wide iron doors on both sides of the pa.s.sage. These were the lower laboratories of the guild.

In two previous visits over eight nights, he had never seen what lay behind any but one. He had tried opening others to peek in and satisfy his curiosity. Not one budged, though there were no locks or bars on their outsides. He headed for the last on the right, but tonight it was shut tight, like the others.

Chane let out a sigh, an old habit left over from living days. He knocked, listening for an answer, but none came. He tried the heavy iron handle, anyway, expecting the door would not open. To his surprise, it slipped inward as he twisted the handle. He hesitated and glanced along the other heavy doors.

This was wrong. Still, perhaps she was within and had not heard him. He pushed the door wide.

"Georn-metade," he called in Numanese.

No one answered his formal greeting.

A short, three-step access hallway emptied into the left side of a small back chamber. He had come here twice before, just past dusk, both times in haste before going to Wynn's room. He never told her where he had been.

Chane entered, quietly closing the door. All he could see from the hallway were shelves pegged in the chamber's left wall. They were filled with books, bound sheaves, and some slender, upright cylinders of wood, bra.s.s, and unglazed ceramic. As he stepped out of the pa.s.sage, the room filled his view.

Stout, narrow tables and squat cas.e.m.e.nts were stuffed with more texts, as well as odd little contraptions of metal, crystal and gla.s.s, and wood and leather. A rickety old armchair of tattered blue fabric barely fit into the back right corner beyond the orderly mess upon the age-darkened desk of many little drawers. Atop the desk's corner sat the dimming cold lamp, brighter than he had first thought.

Someone had been here recently to rub its crystal to brilliance.

Chane scanned stacks of parchment and three bowls of powdered substances. An array of bra.s.s articulated arms anch.o.r.ed to the desk's other corner each held framed magnifying lenses. They were mounted so that one or more could be twisted into or out of alignment with the others.

Chane stood in the private study of Frideswida Hawes, premin of the Order of Metaology. And he was tempted to dig through everything in sight.

He understood a little of thaumaturgy, the physical ideology of magic, as opposed to the spiritual perspective of his own conjury. Still, something here might shed a spark of light on his own research. He leaned over the desk, touching nothing as he examined the stacks of parchment and paper. Most appeared mundane, concerning daily guild operations and Hawes's own order. Considering the top one's immature topic, one stack seemed to be papers written by initiates.

Chane returned to the left wall's pegged shelves.

Spines and labels on texts and containers were all marked in the Begaine syllabary. Even after nights of stumbling through Wynn's journals, he still struggled to understand the sages' mutable writing system. He reached for a ceramic cylinder with a wooden cap to verify that it was a scroll case.

"So . . . disrespect is not your only flaw."

Chane spun at the voice behind him and came face-to-face with a mature, slight woman in a midnight blue robe.

"Do we now add thievery to the list?" she asked.

Chane studied the narrow face of Premin Hawes. With her cowl down, cropped, ash gray hair bristled across her head, though any lines of age were faint in her even, small features. Severe-looking, she was not unattractive.

"My apologies," he began. "I was . . . only . . ."

Chane glanced down the short pa.s.sage to the chamber door.

Hawes could not have pa.s.sed by without b.u.mping into him, so how had she entered unnoticed? He flashed back to their first meeting.

When Wynn had been called before the Premin Council and he had been ejected, Hawes had stood inside the chamber doors. As the doors shut tight, the seam between them began to vanish. In a mere instant, the doors became one solid barrier. The image of Hawes with one hand raised, as she glared at him through the closing doors, had remained fixed in his mind. Her revealed abilities that evening were why he had ultimately sought her out in private.

"Well?" she said.

Chane remained calm, facing this deceptively academic-looking woman.

"Is it finished?" he asked.

She scrutinized him a moment longer and then turned toward her desk. Opening its top left drawer, she lifted out a narrow pouch of brown felt stacked atop two torn half sheets of paper and one of Chane's own books. Much as he hungered to know what she made of the latter three items he had shown her, the first was the most important.

Premin Hawes loosened the pouch's drawstring and slid its contents into her hand.

"This pair is smaller," she said, "as you requested."

She held out a pair of gla.s.ses much like those Wynn wore when igniting the sun crystal.

"They are the same?" he asked.

"Yes, simple enough to duplicate . . . though these have structural improvements."

Smaller compared to Wynn's, their round, smooth lenses were framed in pewter. Unlike the straighter, thick arms of the original pair, these had tin wire arms with curved ends to better hook around a person's ears.

Hawes had likely engaged her apprentices to make them-considering what little Chane discerned of her. Wynn had mentioned that Domin il'Snke had scant respect for this branch's metaologers compared to his own. Gha.s.san il'Snke had not known with whom he was dealing.

The premin, like a mage of worth, did not put her skills on display unless necessary. Only petty dabblers made a show. From what Chane had seen at the council chamber, she was far beyond some academic pract.i.tioner.

"They were created from your specifications," Hawes continued, "though they will not fit you."

Chane said nothing. These gla.s.ses were meant for Wynn, to replace the ones she had. As to the first pair . . .

He stepped around Hawes to her desk. Fingering aside the two half sheets of paper, he picked up the book he had left with her.

Chane had scavenged and saved as many books, journals, and sheaves as he could from a remote keep of Stravinan healer monks, ones that Welstiel had turned into feral vampires. This text, thinnest among them all, had held Chane's attention from the start, though he could not truly say why. An accordion-style volume of grayed leather cover plates, it had one thick parchment folded back and forth four times between the plates. Its t.i.tle read The Seven Leaves of . . .

That final word in old Stravinan was too obscured by age and wear.

"Did you make anything of this, based on my attempted translation into Numanese?" he asked.

Hawes barely glanced at the book. She slowly pivoted the other way and retrieved the first half sheet of his notes-his translation. There were now more notes written in her own hand.

"Of ingredients mentioned, some are rare. They are mostly herbs and substances considered beneficial to healing . . . but not all."

Her explanation made sense, considering where he had acquired this text. To some relief, he realized what the last word of the book's t.i.tle must be.

The Seven Leaves of... Life.

But not all seven substances in the translated list implied leaves. Two he could not make out at all, proving difficult to copy them rote into Belaskian letters of similar sound. He glanced at Hawes's notes, looking for those two.