In Shade and Shadow nd-7

by Barb Hendee

  "Yes, yes." And il'Sänke held up a hand before she continued. "Such skill seems difficult to accept, but I will not make conjectures based on a few moments of what anyone has seen."

  He paused, and his expression hardened.

  "And not a word of this to anyone, Wynn. No more wild rumors without substantiation. It might yet cut you off from what you have been waiting to see."

  Wynn tensed, afraid to grow hopeful.

  "And I trust," il'Sänke went on, rising and heading for the door, "that you will use equal discretion regarding anything you find? This knowledge must be protected. Now get dressed. I will wait outside."

  He grabbed the latch and opened the door, but Wynn couldn't budge.

  "Well?" he said. "Are you coming or not? Your precious translations and codex will not sprout legs and come to you."

  "But…" she started.

  Domin il'Sänke turned halfway, with the barest hint of a smile beneath his sly eyes.

  "No one knows either of us was out. Now put some clothes on!"

  The door thumped shut. Wynn didn't care how he'd done this. She snatched up her robe, struggling to get it on in a hurry. As the robe's neck finally cleared her head, she found the majay-hì standing before her.

  The young female tilted her head with only one ear raised. She stared with wide unblinking eyes, as if trying to figure out what Wynn was doing.

  The dog—the female… the charcoal colored majay-hì… Chap's daughter. None of these seemed right for a being that Wynn knew was as sentient as herself in its own way.

  The an'Cróan elves of the Farlands had an aversion to forcing a name upon another sentient being. Even their children eventually went before their ancestral spirits for what they called "name-taking." By whatever vision was gained there, they chose a name of their own in place of the one given at birth. And still…

  "What am I going to call you?" Wynn asked, though she wouldn't get an answer.

  As she gathered her elven quill, a bottle of ink, and a journal, stuffing these in a satchel, she thought of other dogs she'd known, aside from Chap or Lily. She slung the satchel's strap over her shoulder, but when she reached for the door's latch, a cascade of images flickered through her mind.

  Chap alone—then with Lily, their heads touching—and finally a hazy secondhand memory of the old wolfhound.

  "I know who your parents are," she said. "It doesn't help."

  She wasn't certain what those raised memories truly meant. When she opened the door, the majay-hì trotted out before Wynn could stop her.

  "Wynn… what are you doing?" il'Sänke asked, an edge of warning in his voice as he glared at Chap's daughter.

  "She stays with me," Wynn answered.

  "And how will you explain a wolf's sudden company amid curfew?" he asked. "Do you want your outing to be discovered?"

  Yes, that was another matter, as well as how il'Sänke had managed to conceal it.

  She stepped off down the passage with the female close behind, not giving the domin further opportunity to argue. Chap and Lily had sent their daughter. Much as Wynn questioned that decision, she would keep this young female as close as she'd once kept Chap.

  Il'Sänke remained silent as he followed.

  Wynn knew she should thank him for saving her, but he hadn't been the only one there. She dropped her hand, uncertain of how much Chap's daughter had become accustomed to her in so short a time.

  Wynn's hand suddenly lifted and dragged across furred ears, as the female pushed under her palm.

  Chane had been there, too. She longed to ask il'Sänke about him, but she held her tongue. As she opened the door to the courtyard, she glanced over her shoulder.

  "How did you get us back?" she asked, and her gaze dropped to the majay-hì as they approached the main keep's double doors. "How did you get her to come?"

  "She was persistent," he answered. "And I was too burdened carrying you to get rid of her. My first thought was to bring you to the hospice, but you didn't seem in serious danger. Taking you both to your room was best, before anyone learned you were gone."

  Yes, but how did he get past the guards? He hadn't offered that, so she suspected he wouldn't answer.

  Wynn opened one of the double doors and stepped into the main building's entryway. Amid the rush of others coming and going, she reached the common hall. As expected, the sight of her with a tall wolf brought a sea of stunned stares and frantic whispers.

  "You and your dramatics!" il'Sänke grumbled.

  Wynn forced an outward show of calm, but inside she was thankful not to spot Domin High-Tower among the forest of faces. He would've confronted her directly for an explanation. Then a less than proper notion popped up into her head, and she stroked the head of Chap's daughter.

  "Perhaps I should introduce you to Regina Melliny and her pack of gossips," she whispered.

  The female rumbled, and a quiver ran through the dog's back under Wynn's hand.

  Wynn glanced down to find the dog looking about nervously.

  Wynn's small room had been hard enough on the female—a strange and alien place for a majay-hì, who'd known only the forest wilds and perhaps the elves' tree enclaves before arriving in this city. But this enormous half-filled hall of humans must be nearly overwhelming. Wynn stepped quickly to the nearest table.

  "Wynn?" il'Sänke called in warning.

  She leaned between a pair of initiates and grabbed two bowls of vegetable stew and a doughy wheat roll.

  "What do you think you're doing?" someone hissed.

  "You lunatic!" another growled. "Get that thing out of here!"

  Before Wynn spotted either source, the young initiate to her right screeched.

  The boy nearly threw himself into the lap of a willowy apprentice in pale blue next in line on the bench. He stared off behind Wynn as his startled savior glared first the same way, and then at Wynn.

  "Haven't you caused enough trouble?" the apprentice demanded.

  Suddenly the boy's breathing turned to rapid whimpers as others around the table lunged away in all directions. A rumble rose directly behind Wynn.

  "Wynn, move on! Now!" il'Sänke snapped at her.

  She glanced back.

  The majay-hì crept in with a soft snarl, but the dog was shaking almost as much as the boy. Who feared whom more?

  "She won't hurt you," Wynn quickly tried to assure the boy.

  She reached for his small hand, and the apprentice holding him slapped her hand away.

  Chap's daughter snarled as Wynn quickly swung her arm back to block the dog. She'd made another terrible mistake.

  Her brethren saw only an overly tall and ominously dark wolf—not a majay-hì.

  The very term meant "hound of the elementals" or "Fay dog," something she'd learned in scant writings and the mentions of Domin Tilswith. It was a quaint fable for a young girl not even an initiate at the time. Even others who might've heard of these beings in the deep forests of Lhoin'na to the south probably never saw one. No one had, not even Wynn, until she'd met Chap. But she'd recognized him—or at least guessed in wonder at what he was that first time some two years ago.

  But Chap's daughter looked nothing like him, and she wasn't like him. She'd been born wild, for all her sentience, in a far-off land, where humans were an enemy to be guarded against. How many ways could Wynn alienate herself inside her own guild?

  "Get going!" il'Sänke growled, his voice directly behind her.

  Wynn pushed the majay-hì along and headed straight for the narrow side archway. Wide-eyed initiates and apprentices glowered at her until she slipped from sight into the outer passage. All the way to the heavy stairway door leading to the catacombs, she heard Domin il'Sänke muttering behind her. And they descended into the shadowy spiraling stairwell.

  Although Wynn would've never agreed, it seemed strange that il'Sänke hadn't demanded that she get rid of the dog. Her life in the guild was going to get more complicated than before. As they emerged into the catacombs' cavernous entry r
oom, Master Tärpodious sat at the back table, scribbling rapidly with a quill. But he looked up.

  "Ah, young Hygeorht," the old archivist began, his tone chill.

  He scowled over the bowls and bread clutched in her hands. Food wasn't allowed in the archives. Then his gaze shifted to the female with a harsh squint.

  "What… is… that?" he sputtered. "I was asked to prepare space for reviewing the codex, and assist you as needed. What is that beast doing in my archive?"

  Assist indeed—more likely keep an eye on her. High-Tower or Sykion must've gotten to him, and she'd lost another friendly acquaintance.

  "She must remain with me," Wynn answered without apology, and kept a hand on the female's back. "She won't even nudge the shelves, I promise, but it's my duty to watch over her."

  "Not in here!" Tärpodious croaked, and heaved himself up with wrinkled hands.

  Domin il'Sänke slipped around Wynn, straight at the old man, and began whispering. The old archivist sneered in a twist of astonishment.

  "That is nonsense!" he hissed. "I've never heard of anyone even seeing one… let alone the notion of it outside Lhoin'na lands!"

  Wynn's gaze narrowed on il'Sänke, still whispering in Tärpodious's ear. If the Suman had read her journals, others involved in translation had done so, High-Tower especially. Yet they still refused to believe her recordings any more than her verbal claims concerning more deadly matters than a majay-hì.

  "Fine, if she's that far gone," Tärpodious grumbled. "But you're responsible, Ghassan, if that animal causes damage."

  Wynn also hoped Chap's daughter would behave, but she didn't like the hint of how il'Sänke had gained the elder sage's agreement. Tärpodious hunched where he braced upon the table's edge and eyed Wynn like a vulture waiting for her to drop dead.

  "But no food inside!" he warned. "You may finish it here or leave it behind."

  Domin il'Sänke ushered Wynn to a table farthest from the archivist.

  "What did you just tell him?" she demanded in a whisper.

  "If you are thought a madwoman—or act like one—at least take advantage of it… and anything that seemingly soothes your addled mind."

  She glanced down at Chap's daughter.

  "I'm not mad!" Wynn hissed. "And you of all people know it."

  "Not by that nonsense in the common hall," il'Sänke returned. "Keep your new companion away from the populace. Now finish your meal, and Tärpodious will show you to your place."

  With that he turned and left, and Wynn settled at the table, unshouldering her satchel. She set one bowl of stew on the floor for her "companion." The female sniffed it uncertainly, but finally began lapping at her stew, finishing off the gravy but not touching the vegetables.

  Wynn sighed. "We'll find you something better tonight."

  She quickly ate her own meal, pocketing the roll for later, and shouldered her satchel once more.

  "Where am I to study the translations?" she asked.

  Tärpodious grunted and gestured to the archway behind himself. "In there."

  Wynn walked over to peer inside.

  There were few shelves in the small antechamber. It was probably an old storage room turned into a temporary holding place for material waiting to be reshelved. Dust trails on the floor suggested the shelves had been recently moved. The room now contained a table for her special workspace. The table had been placed in a direct sight line with the room's doorless opening.

  Tärpodious had been told to watch over her.

  Why did Sykion and High-Tower always have to paint her as untrustworthy? But the arrangement was better than none—and all she planned to do was read and take notes.

  "Thank you," she said politely, and stepped into her prepared space.

  Four heavy stacks of scribed sheets lay upon the table, some bound and some not. Beside them rested a large makeshift book, laced together with temporary waxed string—the codex. Forgetting hurt pride, Wynn motioned to the dog.

  "Come."

  Whether Chap's daughter understood or not, she trotted in, sniffing the floor and scanning the strange surroundings.

  "Stay in here with me," Wynn said softly, "and do not knock anything over."

  The female cocked her head, whined once, and went back to sniffing about.

  "Come here," Wynn insisted, settling into her chair.

  The majay-hì didn't look at her.

  Master Tärpodious glanced over his shoulder, watching with his lips pressed tightly together in disapproval. Wynn pretended not to notice him.

  Chap's young daughter hadn't traveled as her father had. Likely she didn't understand spoken words, let alone human tongues. But perhaps she'd heard a little of the an'Cróan dialect, enough to understand a few basic words—if she chose to.

  Wynn pointed at the floor beside her chair. "A'Shiuvalh, so-äiche! Walk… come, here!"

  The female craned her head around, and then sneezed. Snorting to clear her nose of dust, she wandered about the room, but finally settled beside the chair.

  With a long exhale, Wynn turned to the materials before her, suddenly daunted. She'd waited so long for this, but now where to start?

  Some sheets were bound in thin volumes of hardened cloth covers. It was easy to discern that these were complete sections, perhaps whole chapters, kept together because they related to a particular text. But others were merely neat, loose collections awaiting further translation or transcribed passages. Wynn closed her eyes, gathering her thoughts.

  Translation had been ongoing for half a year. A good deal of work had been accomplished from the look of things, but Wynn knew better. She'd brought back two large bundles and one iron-bound sheaf of hardened leather sheets. The inked content here was written with compact Begaine symbols but with extra space between lines for further notes and corrections. At a guess, less than a fifth of what she had brought had even been touched. But the murders and thefts had only recently begun, so she knew she shouldn't spend much time on the pages completed earlier.

  But which ones were they?

  And more important, she had to be able to cross-reference which pages existed in the codex but weren't present on the table—as the murderer had taken them. These would be the pages she needed to examine, and she wouldn't receive an ounce of guidance from her superiors.

  She opened the codex, flipped to its rearmost pages, and breathed in relief. The record of scheduled work had been kept intact, all the way to the project's beginning. At least she could roughly determine which pages were most recently translated. She took a moment to scan the names of those who'd been involved.

  Cathology was the second smallest of the orders, next to metaology. Of course High-Tower's name appeared time and again, as well as two others. But there were also domins and masters from the other orders, as needed. Ghassan il'Sänke appeared infrequently. It seemed even he, as an outsider, had seen only a minimum of the work.

  Wynn picked up a thin, bound volume and looked at the opening page—volume seven, section two. But which text did this refer to? Most of the texts she'd selected hadn't had any titling on their crude bindings.

  She didn't know how her superiors had tabulated the originals, so she checked the reference against the codex's schedule of completed work. This thin volume had its last addition made on the fourth of Billiagyth—Leaf's Shower—the last third of autumn by the elven calendar used throughout the region. And that was within the present moon.

  Taking up loose pages, Wynn prepared to read, but she stopped upon seeing two running columns of text on each page.

  Both were scripted in the Begaine syllabary, but the left column represented the original language, while the right was a translation into Numanese. Her estimate of how much work had been completed had just been cut in half again.

  Many passages didn't make sense, for only bits and pieces had been finished. In some she found strings of dots between the syllabic symbols, which indicated the number of words that remained unreadable or untranslatable from the original. Th
ere were also long strokes across entire columns for anyplace in a text that was too faded or worn to count words. And there were margin notes wherever a readable word or phrase had defied translation so far.

  Yet the passages before her clearly held information regarding a war—or rather, battles fought in locations she'd never heard of. She struggled through broken terminology and gained a sense that different sections, further separated by blank lines, were written from the perspective of differing authors. But one dimension of content remained constant.

  Details, such as numbers of combatants lost or territory taken or estimation of enemy forces slaughtered, were related as cold facts in past tense. As if death and suffering were irrelevant to those who recorded it long ago. The countless dead were of no more consequence than an itemized account of possessions, of no personal value in being lost.

  Taken as a whole, in quick estimate, the numbers were staggering… unbelievable.

  Wynn guessed at the original text these passages had come from, as she and Chap had looked for books that might contain references to the Forgotten History. One in particular had seemed to contain an accounting of past events, like some general's tactical campaign history. Chap advised her to take it for the sheer weight of concise information.

  How had her superiors decided which pages to translate first? By sampled content topic? By estimated order in which they'd been written?

  She picked up another collection of pages, looking for translator's notes on the text's internal chronology. But even strange dates mentioned were noted as vague or approximate and without correlation. In most cases a time reference wasn't present at all, leaving only a guess concerning the chronology of how one text might fit among the others.

  Wynn rubbed her eyes. The elven calendar, based on the seasons, each divided into named thirds, had been taken on 483 years ago, when King Hräthgar had first united territorial clans in the beginnings of Malourné. From that time forward was now known as the Common Era. But how many years, centuries, or more came before that, since the lost time of the Forgotten History? No one knew, not even the elves, the Lhoin'na… supposedly.

  Any dates mentioned by the ancient authors of these texts would be of little use. There was no point of reference to compare a long-lost calendar system used at that time with the one now part of life in the Numan Lands.