Through Stone and Sea ndst-2

by Barb Hendee

  Wynn suddenly recognized him. It was Carrow, Hammer-Stag's kinsman from the greeting house.

  The monk among them quickly reached out, and Mallet turned to join them.

  They stood talking below where Sliver sat, but the dwarven smith never looked down. As the last of the filing shirvêsh exited onto the floor, their chant died away. Wynn saw the dark, uncertain expression return to Mallet's old face. Carrow made some sharp exclamation, and one warrior thänæ gritted his teeth. The youthful shirvêsh in white frowned as well.

  Wynn craned her head, wishing she could hear them. Something troubling passed among those five. She took one step, peering about to see if she might sneak closer.

  Chane's grip closed on her arm.

  Wynn tried to pull away but couldn't break his hold. "I'm just trying—"

  "Quiet!" he rasped.

  Chane was also staring at Mallet and his four companions.

  Wynn had known a few Noble Dead since first meeting Magiere, Leesil, and Chap. Like their skin, their disquieting eyes lost some color in death. Still, there was always some tint that remained.

  Any hint of brown drained from Chane's irises, and Wynn shivered as his eyes turned as colorless as ice.

  The instant Chane gripped Wynn, halting her, he heard Shade snarl. Wynn tried to pull free, but he was not going to let her try to sneak up on Mallet. He fixed upon the far gathering around the old shirvêsh. As the chant died away, and the amphitheater remained quiet for the moment, Chane quickly widened his senses, listening.

  Unlike the others in the small group, Carrow looked more outraged than forlorn.

  "Heârva!" he snapped.

  Whatever that meant, the closest thänæ clenched his jaw as the white-clad monk frowned in silence. Chane was uncertain if they disagreed with whatever Carrow had uttered, or if they just disapproved that he had said it aloud. No one verbally denied the young one.

  Chane heard Wynn suck in a sharp breath, but kept his gaze locked on Mallet and the other four.

  "Your eyes … what's wrong with …" she began, but never finished. "What are you doing?"

  "I am trying to listen."

  "Why?" she asked. "You don't understand Dwarvish."

  True—especially if she kept interrupting—as it was hard enough to pick up on the conversation. But he might catch something she could translate.

  "You would hear nothing," he answered, "if caught sneaking up on them … in plain sight!"

  "You can't possibly hear them from here," she argued in hushed voice. "Can you?"

  "Not if you keep talking!"

  Wynn's intelligence and education were never in doubt, but not so for her wisdom at times. She did not always make wise choices in the moment. Her rashness had already lost them one potential source of information.

  Mallet leaned close to the monk in white, and Chane could not pick up their whispers. In frustration, he glanced down at Wynn.

  "He-air-va," he said, trying to pronounce the one word he had caught clearly. "What does it mean?"

  "You mean … heârva?" she asked, and he nodded. "Umm … a past-tense verb from the root heâr, referring to ‘slaughter' … so ‘slaughtered.'"

  "In other words, killed … or slain?"

  "No, marû is the root for a killing or execution. Dwarvish and Elvish, akin in structures, have more specific terms for—"

  "This is no time for language lessons!"

  Wynn's brow furrowed in anger. "Heâr is the concept of ‘slaughter' … the killing of that which cannot defend itself or does so to no effect!"

  Some of her ire faded when she glanced across the amphitheater floor.

  "What is going on over there?" she whispered.

  Chane wanted to know as well.

  Only Mallet and the other monk still spoke in close whispers. The three warriors listened in silence. Wynn's question stuck in Chane's head as he looked to the stage and the body covered in gray cloth.

  Hammer-Stag, braggart that he was, seemed more than able to defend himself. So what made Carrow so angry at a time of mourning? And by Wynn's accounting, why had he used such a specific term for his kinsman's demise?

  Wynn watched that quiet gathering with intensity, until Shade suddenly inched out ahead of her. About to grab the dog, she realized Shade was standing at full attention, ears raised, staring at Mallet and his companions. Carrow turned away from the others in sudden disgust—and Shade's head moved.

  Shade wasn't watching the gathering, just Carrow. Then she looked up at Wynn and whined softly. Her face almost expressed frustration, as if she didn't know what to do next.

  Wynn reached down. The instant her hand lighted between Shade's shoulders …

  … a memory erupted in Wynn's mind.

  She was looking down a long passage lit by braziers spaced far apart. Then she was moving, walking along it. Hunks of stone lay on the floor among scattered chips of pulverized rock. She looked aside, running her hand across stone, feeling and seeing the deep gouges and pitted marks. All along the way, the walls were beaten and broken by something swung with great force.

  One pit was so deep that her thick fingers slid in to the last knuckle.

  Wynn went cold inside. That hand was broad and heavy, callused of palm, its wrist nearly three times as thick as it should be.

  This wasn't her memory.

  Wynn glanced down at Shade, now watching Mallet weaving his way back among others on the amphitheater floor. Another image rose in Wynn's mind, and it flickered with a third.

  She saw Hammer-Stag's face, seemingly pale and shocked but with hints of frozen rage at the instant of death. The dead visage quickly vanished, replaced by one of two shirvêsh from the temple of the three warrior Bäynæ.

  She saw them speaking to her, their expressions strained, but their voices were muted and garbled, as if not remembered clearly. Then it dawned on Wynn that these weren't Shade's memories either.

  Wynn snatched her hand off Shade's head, sucking in a breath so fast she heard it.

  "What?" Chane asked. "What is wrong?"

  Shade cocked her head and one ear twitched in a hint of puzzlement.

  Wynn shuddered. Those memories couldn't have been Shade's. They had come from someone else—perhaps someone here in this place. But that wasn't possible.

  Chap couldn't pass the memories he'd dipped from others, and Wynn had been among other true majay-hì. They didn't have even his ability to read people's memories from a distance. He'd once told her they could memory-speak only by touch with one of their own. They couldn't even pass on a "heard" memory not their own unless it was given to them by another. This accounted for how Shade had received a few hazy memories through Lily long after Chap had left his chosen mate behind.

  And Wynn … she was the only exception.

  Chap's dual nature—Fay-born within a Fay-descended body—combined with how he'd tried to suppress the taint of awry magic left in Wynn, somehow ended up allowing her to hear him inside her head. This also had to be how Shade was able to memory-speak with her alone.

  But not with stolen memories.

  "How could you?" Wynn whispered.

  Shade's blue eyes widened until their yellow flecks showed clearly. She crept closer, sniffing wildly at Wynn—then lunged suddenly.

  "No!" Wynn squeaked.

  Shade slammed her forepaws into Wynn's chest.

  Wynn toppled flat on her back. Before she could fend off the dog, Shade shoved her face hard against Wynn's cheek. A cascading flood of images followed.

  A shattered passage …

  Hammer-Stag's dead, pallid features, his hair streaked with gray …

  Two elder shirvêsh in white vestments, faces lined with fearful worry …

  "Get off of her!" Chane hissed.

  Wynn's head was still spinning as Shade wheeled away. Her sight had barely cleared when she heard Shade's jaws snap. When Wynn sat up, all the hackles on Shade's neck and upper back stood on end.

  Shade faced the other way, growling as her w
hole body shook in rage. And Chane …

  He stood a pace off, holding one hand with his other as he glared at the dog.

  Chane must have tried to pull Shade off, and she'd bitten him!

  "Both of you, stop it," Wynn whispered, and looked to Chane. "She wasn't trying to hurt me."

  Chane acknowledged with a quick glance toward Wynn, but Shade wouldn't budge.

  "Shade," Wynn whispered. "No … no more."

  Shade pivoted about, growing quiet. Inching closer, she lowered her head, though she was still so tall she looked Wynn straight in the eyes.

  Wynn stared into those sky blue crystalline irises and hesitantly reached out, running her fingers down Shade's neck. She felt the persistent shudder in Shade's whole body.

  Shade whined, a pitiful sound, full of uncertainty.

  "You didn't know," Wynn whispered. "You didn't know you could do that … with me, did you?"

  "What is going on here?" someone demanded.

  The sharp tone made Wynn jerk upright where she sat.

  Shirvêsh Mallet stood over her, his hands on his hips.

  "This solemn occasion is not the place for such behavior!" he growled, and his outrage turned on Chane. "Your presence is a privileged consideration. Do not take it lightly!"

  Wynn cringed, searching for a plausible lie to explain all this away, but Chane cut in.

  "What about he-air-va?" he asked Mallet. "What ‘slaughter' were you talking about?"

  Mallet went slack-jawed and backed up a step.

  "Chane, watch your manners!" Wynn warned. She'd been so overwhelmed by Shade that she'd forgotten what Chane had somehow overheard.

  "My apology," Chane said, though his civility sounded forced.

  Mallet was still stunned speechless, but the shock in his expression quickly vanished.

  "I see no need to answer to a thief!" he snarled, "who steals words not given to him."

  Wynn quickly got up. Mallet's choice of words implied something worse than eavesdropping, considering he was an elder monk of a poet Eternal in a culture of oral tradition.

  "Please, shirvêsh," she pleaded. "There's no time for formality. What happened in the shattered passage? How did Hammer-Stag die?"

  Mallet turned renewed astonishment on Wynn. The obvious unspoken question was how did she know that? But there was no time to cover up her blunder.

  "It could be very important," she said. "We need to know."

  The old shirvêsh eyed her as if he had indeed caught a thief in his temple.

  "Nothing is certain," he finally answered, "only that a vicious battle took place. Passersby found him and alerted the local clan guard. No one knew what to make of what they found. His ax lay just beyond his hand and … and as you said, the passage was shattered all around him. Yet no blood … as if not one of his blows had struck true on his opponent, and there were no wounds on him. He was just … pale, eyes still open … as if his heart gave out in an instant and all blood drained from his face."

  Wynn grew colder with every word that Mallet uttered. Hammer-Stag was renowned as a warrior. In that narrow tunnel that Shade had shown her, how could he not have struck his attacker even once?

  A thunderous beat echoed about the amphitheater. Any low sounds among those present died instantly. Four more beats of an unseen drum echoed around the high curved walls, and Mallet spun about.

  His eyes roamed the stage and then fixed as she heard him inhale. Wynn forgot everything as her gaze followed his.

  From out of the far square opening upon the platform came six dwarves, all dressed in black and dark gray. The drum kept on, its thunder matched to their steps. Wynn barely caught that two of them were women, dressed exactly like the men, before she focused entirely on their leader.

  Black, steel-streaked hair framed an old face with a broad nose over a mouth rimmed by a cropped and bristling steely beard. Like all the others, he wore char-gray breeches and a shirt beneath a hauberk of oily black leather scales that glinted strangely. In the low light, it took a moment to make out those sparks. Polished steel fixtures covered the tips of each scale upon his armor.

  Wynn had seen him once before in the doorway of Domin High-Tower's study. As much as his attire, she remembered that face, that bearing. If Death personified stepped into the path of this one, the grim dwarf would walk right through him without acknowledgment. Or Death would scurry out of the way.

  Wynn stared at the Stonewalkers as their elder paced straight to the litter upon the stone block. The amphitheater's silence was so complete that she heard every grind of his heavy boots upon stone. He stopped directly behind the head of Hammer-Stag's draped corpse. The five remaining Stonewalkers took places around the litter, two to either side and one at his feet. The last caught Wynn's full attention.

  His red hair was unmistakable … the one she'd overheard High-Tower call "brother."

  It was Ore-Locks.

  Wynn took one furtive glance toward Sliver in the stands.

  The smith was on her feet. She leaned hard upon the stone rail, but without eagerness in her face. Her expression twisted over and over, as if she might weep in pain, but then instantly hardened in resentment at the sight of Ore-Locks.

  Wynn understood why Sliver had come tonight—to hopefully catch a glimpse of one long-lost brother. But Wynn didn't know why hate rather than love shone upon Sliver's face.

  A roaring voice like cracking stone jerked Wynn's gaze to the stage.

  "Who brings this one to wait upon us?" called the eldest of the Stonewalkers.

  "Stálghlên—Pure-Steel—brings him," answered a white-clad shirvêsh.

  There was hesitation in his voice, as if Hammer-Stag's fate remained uncertain.

  "Then he comes by virtue of championship?" asked the eldest stonewalker.

  "Most certainly Fiáh'our—Hammer-Stag—was this and more," the monk answered.

  Another long silence left Wynn fearful that something had gone wrong. A shout rose from the silver-streaked elder of the Stonewalkers.

  "An honored thänæ!"

  The entire amphitheater erupted in shouts and cries, and the crowd's noise pounded in Wynn's ears. It was so loud she could almost feel it upon her skin. Warriors upon the floor before the stage unsheathed weapons, raising them in the air. Every dwarf in the place was on his or her feet, chanting that Hammer-Stag was to be taken "into stone."

  Chane's hissing voice rose close to Wynn's ear.

  "We should slip out amid the distraction," he insisted. "We must find out how they got in before they take the corpse. This may be our only chance to catch them."

  Wynn came to her senses. She was here for a reason, but how could she just slip away? What would Mallet say when he discovered his guests were gone? She hadn't thought through her hopes for this night, but High-Tower's brother was right here. She couldn't miss the chance of getting to him.

  The elder stonewalker abruptly jerked off the gray cloth, and his comrades instantly tilted the litter up. Shouts for Hammer-Stag's acceptance turned into an incomprehensible roar.

  Wynn's gasp was drowned in the cacophony.

  Hammer-Stag's body stood carefully dressed and groomed, his armor oiled and polished. The sides of his hair were braided, the two tendrils bound at the ends by tight rings of dark metal. His arms were folded and bound across, clutching his great ax against his chest. But Wynn stared only at his face and hands.

  They were ashen—almost gray beyond the mottled undertones of his people.

  His features weren't twisted as in the memory Shade had passed. But whatever attempt had been made to relax them in final repose hadn't fully succeeded.

  Hammer-Stag was as sallow as the victim of a Noble Dead.

  Wynn looked up at Chane. He too stared at the dead thänæ.

  A few others on the floor nearest the stage exchanged disturbed glances. Those in the stands were too far off to notice. The roar in the amphitheater continued as Wynn struggled to get hold of herself.

  She grasped Chane
's sleeve.

  "Say nothing!" he insisted, but his eyes flickered in rapid thought.

  The Stonewalkers lowered the litter and re-covered Hammer-Stag with the shimmering cloth. They jointly hoisted the litter upon their shoulders as their elder turned toward the stage's far exit.

  "We must catch up with them," Chane whispered, and grasped Wynn's hand.

  She half turned, following him, and then spotted a small group entering the amphitheater.

  Duchess Reine Faunier-reskynna swept out of the dark tunnel onto the flagstones. A trio of the weardas surrounded her, followed by the white-robed elf so often seen at her side. Everyone standing near the tunnel's mouth quickly stepped aside for the entourage.

  "Valhachkasej'â!" Wynn cursed, and pulled out of Chane's hold.

  She grabbed the back of his cloak, jerking him halfway around as she ducked in behind him. Then she had to grab him again to keep him from turning around on her.

  "Don't move!" she whispered, and peeked cautiously around his side.

  Dressed in high riding boots and a dark sea green cloak, Duchess Reine had thrown back her hood. Thick chestnut hair was pinned up with twin combs of mother-of-pearl, shaped like foaming ocean waves. Neither she nor any of her companions broke stride as they drove straight through the crowd.

  What was a member of Malourné's royal family doing here?

  "Master Cinder-Shard," the duchess called out. "Please wait."

  And the leader of the Stonewalkers paused.

  Wynn's mixed fears faded for an instant. The duchess had called the dark elder by a given name.

  Duchess Reine had done everything possible to turn aside investigation into the murders surrounding the guild's translation project. In acting for the royal family, as well the domins and premins of the sages, she'd also tried within the law to keep the texts out of Wynn's reach. She could very well do so again, if she saw Wynn here.

  Wynn leaned out a little farther, trying to see without being noticed behind Chane's tall form. The duchess had never seen Chane or Shade, and Wynn didn't wish to be spotted, not until she understood what was happening.