Of Truth And Beasts Part 49

Suddenly embarra.s.sed, Wynn released Chane's arm and pulled away, completely uncertain of what to do next. The thought of leaving empty-handed was too much after all this. She couldn't even look up at Chane, though she felt him watching her expectantly. She knew exactly what he wanted to do-just leave.

She turned her head and spotted Ore-Locks still standing by the taller, right-end breach. Why had he brought them down here after his futile attempt to find Deep-Root in the caves of the honored dead? He hadn't even looked at the basalt coffins of the Fallen Ones. Perhaps he knew what she would find: Deep-Root wasn't here either. Ore-Locks's ancestor had fallen for the atrocity committed here.

She stepped away from Chane, but he reached after her.

"Where are you going?" he asked. "This is over."

Evading his grasp, she went to the left-end wall and looked into its wide breach. Inside, another dark, raw shaft ran both up and down. She shuffled down the chamber, all the way to Ore-Locks.

The previous pale anguish on his face had been replaced by confusion. Obviously, he hadn't expected to find a dead end. Something final, perhaps, some last discovery, but not this.

"Not here," he whispered. "How could they not be here?"

Those words sharpened Wynn's awareness.

Ore-Locks was too focused in his task and far too knowledgeable for someone who'd never been inside this seatt. But someone else had been here-Ore-Locks's ancestor, that spirit who had supposedly called him to serve among the Stonewalkers.

Did that treacherous ma.s.s murderer guide Ore-Locks's steps?

Wynn's fear and revulsion of him magnified. In the face of her own failure, she lashed out at him.

"What are you looking for?" she demanded. "Deep-Root wasn't among the honored dead-he couldn't . . . never will be! So, what are you after now?"

Ore-Locks's red hair was dirty and wild, even bound back as it was. The beginning of a beard showed on his jaw. Confusion vanished from his face, and he turned on her in equal anger.

"His bones! Why else would I endure your ignorant judgments . . . endure traveling with that?" He pointed at Chane. "I found no truth here, but at the least I could have put him to rest. Now I cannot even do that."

Wynn stared at him, not knowing what to think. Everything Ore-Locks said sounded almost honorable, as if Chane had been right back in Dhredze Seatt. When Ore-Locks had come at her that night she'd found the coffin effigy of Thallhearag, he had denied that his ancestor was that monster. If only he didn't wish to honor one who'd murdered thousands, tens of thousands. But if his ancestral spirit called to him now, deceived and used him even unwittingly, Ore-Locks still couldn't be trusted.

"It cannot end like this," he whispered.

No, she thought, it cannot.

Holding her crystal high, Wynn stepped to the tall breach, leaning in, and her heart jumped. This one wasn't a shaft.

"Did you look inside here?" she asked.

For an instant, Ore-Locks didn't appear to understand. All breaches so far had exposed raw, vertical shafts. Blinking, he gripped one side of the opening, pushing in beside Wynn. They both peered into a rough tunnel running off left and right from the opening.

Wynn's light only showed perhaps forty or fifty paces either way. The wall had certainly been broken by pressure when the mountain fell. She stepped into the raw tunnel, its floor as rough as the walls, and looked back as Ore-Locks followed.

Shade stood beyond the opening with her ears flattened and jowls twitching, and Chane glowered, his eyes narrow.

"Are you coming?" Wynn asked.

CHAPTER 24.

To Chane's dismay, the tunnel behind the breach went on and on, deeper into the mountain. Each time he thought Wynn's perilous mission was finished, it began all over again. Worse, this tunnel was nothing like the ones above.

Roughly hewn, it had been gouged out in a rush, rather than skillfully excavated. Had someone been left alive after the seatt's fall? If so, why dig here, farther into the mountain's depths? Even more puzzling, the tunnel was surprisingly wide and without any supports, but the ceiling appeared sound. Chane could have driven a horse and wagon down this pa.s.sage.

Ore-Locks still led them. Although his manic drive had resurfaced, he appeared less certain of his way, advancing more slowly. Wynn stayed right behind him, her breaths coming too quickly. When she looked back, her lips were parched.

"Drink," Chane said, pulling the water skin off his shoulder.

She took a long swallow and tapped Ore-Locks's shoulder. When he turned, she handed him the water skin. Once he'd finished, she dropped to her knees, set down her staff, and poured water into her hand.

"Here, Shade."

As the dog lapped, Chane noticed even deeper gouges in the wall. He took a few steps past Ore-Locks.

"Look here," he said.

Wynn joined him, holding out her crystal near the tunnel's wall. In some places, three gouges ran parallel, each one so deep they made no sense. Multiple strikes along the same lines would have been necessary to cut paths so deep, but to what purpose? He remembered the blackened wall in one tunnel far above, and the human corpses.

"I do not like this," he said.

"I know," Wynn whispered.

He knew nothing would stop her but another end to this new route. When she retrieved her staff, Ore-Locks moved on. Within twenty paces, the floor became cluttered with debris, and their progress slowed.

Chane looked ahead over Ore-Locks, trying to see how far the tunnel stretched, and then Wynn gave a small cry. She fell forward on the tunnel floor, and Chane moved quickly to help her, but Shade dodged around him, trying to get to her first.

"I'm all right," she said. "I just tripped."

She pushed up onto her knees and reached back, pulling something long and dark out from under her ankle. Dropping it instantly, she scrambled up.

Chane leaned over with his crystal for a closer look. It was a bone, big enough to wield as a club, and so aged that it had blended with the debris.

"Not from a dwarf," he said. "Thick enough, but far too long."

Ore-Locks waited ahead, but for the first time since Wynn had entered this rough-hewn pa.s.sage, her eyes glowed with that old, familiar excitement.

"It's not human, either," she said quietly. "When I had access to the ancient texts, I found a mention in one of Volyno's writings that the enemy's forces may have tried to come in from beneath the seatt."

The knot in Chane's stomach returned. "What mention?"

"It was difficult to make out, and he also wrote 'of Earth . . . beneath the chair of a lord's song . . . meant to prevail but all ended . . . halfway eaten beneath.' "

"Eaten?"

"Ore-Locks, wait," Wynn called out. "Shade, come help me."

Chane was lost for a way to stop her as she dug through the rubble. Shade whined once and sniffed the debris, then huffed, scratching for Wynn to come look.

Puzzled, Ore-Locks came back. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for . . . here!" Wynn exclaimed.

She held up a large skull, having to use both hands. Chane took it from her.

Its back half was gone, and it was heavier than expected. When whole, it might have been the size of a mule or horse's head, but it was not shaped like any equine beast. Neither was it human or dwarven. Huge eye sockets were set wide to the skull's sides, and the long upper jaw was lined with a few remaining, needlelike teeth.

Chane had never seen anything like it.

"What was it?" Wynn asked.

"I do not know," Ore-Locks said.

"It must have been part of the enemy's forces." Wynn's excitement grew again. "That means it was down here for a reason.

"But did it come before or after the seatt fell?" she ventured, as if talking to herself.

Chane could see her mind working, and did not like it. "Either way, more important is how it died," he countered.

He looked to those three deep and long gouges in the wall. Shade huffed again, still digging in the debris, and this time Ore-Locks leaned over to grasp what the dog uncovered.

"I know this one," he said, holding up what was little more than the upper portion of a skull's face. "Shlugga . . . what you call a goblin."

Even Chane knew of goblins, having encountered a pack on his journey across the world to find Wynn. She had told him that some sages believed the Ancient Enemy had used these two-legged beasts during the war.

He kept his thoughts to himself. Unlike Wynn, he had never believed any war could have covered the world enough to blot out history. Before the Guild of Sagecraft, history would have always been a fragmented thing, subjected to "revisions" according to the desires of those who preserved it. But the scale of destruction and death here was beyond any territorial conflict exaggerated over ages to mythical proportions.

Mult.i.tudes had died here over a short period of time, at a guess. He could not help wondering what had happened. And what of these foreign bones in this deep, raw tunnel? What had made those distinct, deep gouges in the wall, and why?

Chane did not voice any of this to Wynn. Instead, he rose, peered down the dark tunnel ahead, and sighed in resignation. He knew they would simply move on.

Sau'ilahk drifted to the open portal of a hall filled with immense basalt statues like coffins. This chamber appeared to be a dead end, except for the gaping breaches in the end walls, but Wynn was nowhere in sight.

He went to look into the wide left-end breach and found a shaft going up and down. Carefully approaching the hall's other end, he found that this taller, narrower breach led into a tunnel. A good ways down it to the right, he spotted the faintest flicker of light.

About to slip in, he paused and looked back. Chuillyon and his companions would come soon enough. No doubt Shodh was tracking Wynn's group. Sau'ilahk did not want to openly engage all three elves, but neither would he tolerate their interference. It was time to do something about Chuillyon.

But when Sau'ilahk looked down the tunnel, the faint light bobbed and winked. Wynn was moving again. There was no time to feed on Chuillyon here and now. What a disappointment, but perhaps something less personal but still deadly was required.

A simple servitor of Air would not be enough. Fire, in the form of Light, would also be required. It needed to be encased in Earth drawn from Stone, as well. A servitor of multiple Elements, in three conjuries, would cost him dearly. Then a fourth conjury had to intertwine with the others to give his creation the necessary spark of sentience.

He began to conjure Air. When its quivering ball manifested, he caged it with his incorporeal fingers and embedded it with Fire in the form of Light. A yellow-orange glow radiated from within his grip. Forcing his hand to become corporeal, he slammed the servitor down into the hall's floor stones.

Sau'ilahk's black form wavered as exhaustion threatened to overtake him. He was only half-finished, and the final two conjuries must be done simultaneously.

Around his flattened hand, a square of glowing umber lines for Earth rose on the hall's floor stones. Within that, a circle of blue-white appeared as he summoned in Spirit and inserted a fragment of his consciousness. In the s.p.a.ces between the shapes, iridescent glyphs and sigils of white appeared like dew-dampened web strands at the break of dawn.

Sau'ilahk called on his reserves, imbuing his creation with greater essence.

His hand began to waver before him. He exerted his will to remain present and straightened, lifting his hand from the floor. All glowing marks on the stone vanished.

Awaken! he whispered in his thoughts.

Another glow rose beneath the floor's surface. It shifted erratically, as if swimming inside the stones. He raised his hand above it, fingers closing like a street puppeteer toying with strings, and the glow halted.

Stones bulged over it, and that light began to emerge. It rose out of the floor like a worm as thick as his wrist. Gray as the stone that birthed it, it wriggled away across the floor. Sau'ilahk had created such a servitor once before, with a gaping maw at one end, its body a vessel for poisonous gas.

Stop, he commanded. As it halted, he focused on its spark of sentience, and he drove it through the tall breach and into the tunnel beyond.

Hide in the wall facing the opening. When a life pa.s.ses through, expel what you hold.

It would obey these simple instructions, drilled into its limited consciousness. Even if the two younger elves survived, without Chuillyon, they would turn back. Shodh would insist.

Sau'ilahk drifted into the breach, weakened but satisfied, and he turned right down the tunnel to trail Wynn.

Wynn's thoughts turned over and over as she followed Ore-Locks. She wasn't as dismissive of Chane's concerns as she pretended, but her concerns differed from his. Clearly, he suspected that something had happened here after the seatt's fall, though just what, neither of them could say.

"What is that?" he asked from behind her.

She saw black on the walls and floor again, but it wasn't the same as before. Her crystal's light caused it to shimmer.

"Chlaks-lg," Ore-Locks answered. "'Burning stone' . . . a vein of raw coal."

It crosscut their path where the tunnel floor dipped slightly in a circular hollow, as if a good deal of the coal had been dug out and removed from the floor and both side walls.

Chane slipped past Wynn into the left-side hollow. "And again here, look."

Both Ore-Locks and Wynn watched Chane trace his widely spread fingers along deep, long gouges in the black wall. This time there were four parallel grooves.

Wynn spotted places in the coal vein where it looked like chunks bigger than her head, or even Ore-Locks's head, had been gouged out.

"Ore-Locks, do your people use . . ." Chane began. "Do they use . . . beasts of any kind in mining?"

Wynn blinked at such a notion. What was he suggesting?

"No," Ore-Locks answered hesitantly. "Not that I have ever heard of."

Wynn didn't like where Chane was going with this. She glanced up the tunnel, thinking of those broken skulls. Did Chane believe something had survived the seatt's fall, something large enough to kill anything that remained or arrived later? Even so, any creature among the enemy's forces couldn't have survived all these centuries with so little to feed it. Unless . . .

Wynn began to worry. What if whatever it had been had taken away the orb for its master? Was the orb already long gone, as far back as the war? Her thoughts turned back to the few scant lines she'd read in the volume by Volyno.

. . . of Earth . . . beneath the chair of a lord's song . . . meant to prevail but all ended . . . halfway eaten beneath.

Something else came to her. Before leaving the guild at Calm Seatt, she'd stumbled on a forgotten dwarven ballad with one obscure word-g'uyll, the "all-eaters" or "all-consumers." Even so, whatever had been here was either long dead or long gone.