Through Stone and Sea ndst-2

by Barb Hendee

  Wynn caught the unmistakable spark in his eyes at that last mention. She saw hunger there, and maybe some strange thirst for relief. For the first time, she wondered if he'd given her something to bargain with.

  "I can read some of the languages in those texts," she rushed on. "Take me to them … and perhaps I can learn what really happened. I know Bäalâle is not a myth."

  Another bluff, for she didn't know any such thing. All she had was Magiere's account of a single mention of a fallen seatt in the memories of Most Aged Father. That, and a cryptic reference found within the obscured verse of Chane's stolen scroll.

  What she truly needed was to learn where Beloved's thirteen Children had gone and why.

  The wraith had selectively murdered for this knowledge. More important was how the Night Voice … Beloved … il'Samar was connected to it all, past, present, and future.

  Wynn sat in the forge's dim light, looking into the black eyes of a Stonewalker, the one and only who might help her.

  Ore-Locks dropped her hand and stood up. As he straightened, his eyes seemed too dark for even a dwarf.

  "You know no such thing," he said. "It is only myth … unless proven otherwise."

  Wynn's hope withered. She'd had him for an instant and then lost him.

  "Regardless of what you think you heard from my lips," he added, "my sect has sacred oaths. Fragile trusts and faiths you do not understand, even among your guild. I will not be the one to shatter them … not for the misguided guesses of one wayward sage."

  Ore-Locks looked at the hearth room's door. His lips parted, but he never said a word. Instead, he turned and strode out of the smithy.

  "You won't shatter them," Wynn insisted, scrambling to her knees. "You might even serve them all the better if—"

  "I serve the honored dead," he returned without looking back. "Go home, Wynn Hygeorht. I pray to the Eternals that no more harm comes to you … nor that you bring further to my own."

  Ore-Locks vanished, leaving Wynn kneeling on the floor with a silent Shade.

  Once the duchess reached Breach Mainway, Chane worried about trailing her farther in the open. But she turned down the very next southward-side passage. He rushed to the tunnel's mouth, pausing a moment before peering around the corner.

  Several large frontages carved from the passage's stone looked much like other shops and businesses. Perhaps even an inn in one case, since both dwarves and humans lingered out front, coming and going from that third establishment down the way. This made sense. At least some inns or common houses would be near a major market.

  The duchess stopped before that third frontage, with its wide, heavy doors propped open. Captain Tristan was the first up the two steps, glancing inside before ushering her in. The rest followed, ducking their heads to clear the low doorway.

  Chane leaned back against the mainway's wall. Wynn had been correct. Duchess Reine was not lodging with the Stonewalkers but in a place very near where she could reach them. How and why was another matter. Why had the Stonewalkers allowed her to accompany them at Hammer-Stag's funeral?

  Surely she did not need to check on the texts, if some arrangement existed for the Stonewalkers to look after their safety. So what had she been doing in the time between now and when Wynn and he had been escorted out?

  At least he now knew one place to pick up the duchess's trail.

  Chane headed off along Breach Mainway. It was a long way down to the Iron-Braid smithy. His own task complete, he broke into a trot, hurrying to see how Wynn had fared with hers—the far more difficult one.

  Wynn gathered her things and numbly headed out of the smithy. When she stepped into the narrow passage, Ore-Locks was nowhere in sight. A part of her couldn't believe what she'd just done to the Iron-Braids. Another part knew she'd had no better choice. Too much was at stake.

  But Ore-Locks had spurned her just the same.

  Wynn shuffled back toward Limestone Mainway, remembering the look in Ore-Locks's eyes at the mention of Thallûhearag—and then Bäalâle Seatt. He wanted to know more of the latter; that much was clear. But she couldn't mistake the conviction in his voice. He would never break the oaths of his sect, even for his own desires. She had played an all-or-nothing game … and she had lost.

  She felt sick inside, and then Shade barked.

  Wynn was too tired for whatever the dog wanted, but Shade wouldn't stop.

  She barked twice more and halted, pawing the passage's stone floor. Her crystal blue eyes sparked in the limited light. The mainway lay just ahead, and it was early enough that other people would still be about.

  "What now?" Wynn asked.

  Shade dropped to her haunches and rubbed the side of her head with a paw.

  Wynn sighed and crouched down. Obviously Shade had another memory she insisted on sharing.

  Touching the dog's neck, Wynn whispered tiredly, "Show me."

  The passage vanished.

  She saw Ore-Locks rising upon the platform through the domed chamber's white metal portal. The image faded instantly, and Wynn guessed that Shade was simply identifying Ore-Locks. Just as quickly, she found herself staring through the smithy's workroom, and Ore-Locks stood in its outer doorway.

  Wynn heard her own voice say, Who is Thallûhearag?

  The smithy vanished.

  That brief memory had been one of Wynn's own, but the rapid changes were making her dizzy. Still uncertain what Shade was trying to tell her, Wynn found herself standing in a dark cavern.

  A greenish phosphorescence tinged the rough, glistening walls. Stalactites and stalagmites joined together in concave, lumpy columns. Odd twisted shadows played over and between them. In a few steps, Wynn realized the walls' own glimmer caused everything to throw multiple shadows every which way.

  She understood the purpose behind Shade's chain of memory-speak. Her own question in the smithy's hearth room had triggered a memory in Ore-Locks.

  Wynn—or rather Ore-Locks—walked through the cavern's dim glimmer. Now and then, natural openings appeared, leading off to other places, but he never glanced aside enough for Wynn to get a peek into any of them.

  Everything flickered to black—then returned.

  The surroundings had changed. A rough stone path still wove in and out of adjoining caves and pockets. Two more flickers, and Wynn guessed that Ore-Locks's scattered memory had raced onward in skips rather than tracing a complete path. Something caught her attention for an instant.

  In one place, out of the corner of her eye—Ore-Locks's eye—she thought she saw standing figures. They hid in the cavern's dim recesses among the lumpy, bulging columns and half-formed mineral-laden cones protruding from the ceiling. But those mute figures remained still as statues. The only sounds were the scattered patter of drips and the echoes of Ore-Locks's heavy footfalls. Then he stepped upslope toward a ragged opening ahead.

  Half-hidden behind a rising stalagmite, something passed on the left as she stepped out of the cavern.

  Wynn stiffened for real. Had that been a face shaped in glistening wet stone?

  The memory shifted and altered. Wynn stood before an arch filled with age-darkened iron. It looked just like the triple-layered portal in the amphitheater at Old-Seatt, but smaller. Again, the memory wavered, as if Shade hadn't been able to follow or comprehend what Ore-Locks was doing.

  The archway was now open.

  The space beyond was so dark that Wynn couldn't see anything except a flight of stairs arcing downward along a curved wall. She took only four steps and stopped—or Ore-Locks stopped—going no farther into the depths.

  She couldn't see how far down the stairs went, but far enough that any floor below wasn't visible over the stairs' outer edge. The curved wall to her other side was smooth and perfect. This wide space wasn't natural and had been carved out. But what was down there?

  "Enough," she whispered—but in Ore-Locks's deep voice. "Please leave me be."

  Wynn shivered, locked inside his memory. She was in the Stonewalkers' underworl
d.

  "You called me," Ore-Locks whispered. "I came to that calling … to serve. But I have learned no more. I cannot save you … free you."

  Whom was he speaking to and what did he mean by … "save you"?

  "No one will believe or remember," Ore-Locks continued. "I beg you … please, leave me be!"

  Everything faded.

  Wynn knelt in the passage, her fingers clutching Shade's face.

  "No, there has to be more!"

  Shade just whined, flattening her ears dejectedly. This was all she had caught. Like her father, Shade dipped only memories that surfaced—whatever rose in a person's conscious thoughts. But Ore-Locks had known what was there in the depths, in speaking to whomever or whatever.

  Wynn rocked onto her heels. Was there something down there that called Stonewalkers to a life of service? The evening had ended, and that stolen memory had begun with a question.

  Who is Thallûhearag?

  And Sliver had spoken of a "false" ancestor.

  Wynn couldn't fit it all together, but as she stared at the smithy door, she wondered how the Iron-Braids had come to such a low state. How many generations had existed this way and why? She didn't see how this helped with her own pursuit, but the memory left her pondering one person.

  Ore-Locks still might be the one to help her—if she found a way to understand the memory Shade had stolen. Together, she and Shade headed out into the Limestone Mainway.

  At dusk, Sau'ilahk willfully awakened from dormancy and coalesced in a shadowed side passage across from Wynn's chosen inn. It was the last place he had followed her, when she and her companions left the tram the night before. Before sunrise had forced him into dormancy, he had slipped deep into the settlement's back ways. In that desolate place, he had drained one young dwarven female caught by surprise and dragged her body into a storage chamber filled with dust-coated crates and barrels.

  That one life had been strong and still brimmed vibrantly within him.

  Sau'ilahk waited outside of Wynn's inn, but no one came or went. Where else might she have gone, or had she even returned from her day's wandering? He mentally recounted her visits to Sea-Side and blinked into dormancy, envisioning one place. He reemerged in the end chamber of Limestone Mainway on the lowest level and peered at the greeting house where Wynn had first met the warrior thänæ.

  Why had she come back to Sea-Side? Was she seeking more concerning Hammer-Stag's death? Again he waited, sinking almost fully into the side of the end chamber's arched opening.

  Business was done for the day, but Limestone Mainway still bustled with dwarves. Frustrated, he blinked out again and materialized in a dim passage beyond the Iron-Braids' smithy.

  Sau'ilahk quickly conjured, hiding himself in another pool of light-banishing darkness. He heard nothing within the smithy. Then he caught a glimpse of movement, and he looked down the passage, toward the exit leading into the mainway.

  Someone short, in a long robe, huddled low beside a black form.

  Wynn stood up, patting Shade's head.

  Sau'ilahk had wasted energies, but he slipped from his conjured darkness, letting it fade. Wynn had visited the smithy, but he was too late, missing whatever had taken place.

  Where was Chane?

  Wynn must be close to something, if she returned to previously visited locations.

  Sau'ilahk watched her slip into the mainway, and then he glided quickly to the passage's end and halted. Too many people still wandered about for him to follow her, but he could not continue in ignorance. He needed to hear—to see—what she said and where she went. He pulled back into the passage, steeling himself and shutting out the world.

  Air for sound was not enough. Fire, in the form of Light, was needed for sight, but its emanations could betray the servitor's presence. It had to be encased with Earth as well, as drawn from Stone. But a base servitor of multiple elements, in three conjuries, would cost him dearly. And a fourth conjury had to intertwine with the others. His creation would need a hint of sentience, though this would make it less subservient.

  Sau'ilahk began to conjure Air first of all.

  When its quivering ball manifested, he held it and reached out. Caging the warp of Air with incorporeal fingers, he began conjuring Fire in the form of Light.

  A yellow-orange glow began to radiate from within his grip.

  Sau'ilahk forced his hand corporeal and slammed the servitor down into the passage floor.

  He was only half-finished. The last two conjuries had to come simultaneously while he held the first pair firm. Around his flattened hand, a square of glowing umber lines for Earth via Stone rose in the passage floor. A circle of blue-white appeared around that as he summoned in Spirit and inserted a fragment of his will.

  The spaces between the shapes, glyphs, and sigils of white grew iridescent, like dew-dampened web strands as dawn first broke. He called upon his reserves, imbuing his creation with greater essence. It would be birthed closer to the edge of sentience, to serve him better.

  Sau'ilahk's hand began to waver in his sight. Everything faded black for an instant. Exhaustion threatened to drag him into dormancy. He exerted more will to remain present, and he straightened, lifting his hand from the floor.

  All glowing marks upon the stone vanished.

  He whispered only with his thoughts. Awaken!

  Another glow rose beneath the passage's floor.

  Mute and pale yellow, it shifted erratically, darting about as if something swam through stone beneath the passage's floor. Sau'ilahk raised his hand higher, fingers closing like a street puppeteer toying with strings.

  The glow halted. The floor bulged above it, like gray mud about to belch a bubble of noxious gas. And the light emerged—and winked at him.

  A single eyelid nictitated with a soft click of stone as it closed and opened over a lump of molten-formed glass. Its oblong stone body holding that glass eye surfaced next and rose. Three small holes on either side of that mass were marked by small rippling warps of air where it would take any sound it heard. It stood up on four legs of thin rock, each three jointed, with pointed ends. Where those ends touched the floor, small ripples spread in rings, like those created by an insect shifting nervously upon a still gray pond.

  Then it bolted for the passage wall.

  No … no return for you … until I wish it!

  The stone-spider skittered to a halt and began to quiver. Whirling around, that lump of glass eye opened wide, fixing upon him, and its light shifted to hot red. The servitor dashed straight at him.

  Sau'ilahk curled his fingers, crushing their tips into his palm.

  Obey!

  The stone-spider halted, and quivers turned to shudders as that one eye burned with conscious rage.

  Sau'ilahk sank his awareness into it.

  Everything tinged red in the dim passage. Darker still was a black form of gently writhing cloak, robe, and cowl. He saw himself through the servitor's singular eye.

  Very good … Follow the gray-clad one beyond the passage's end, but remain out of her awareness. You will not return until I recall you. Now go!

  Sau'ilahk opened his clutching fingers, and the servitor rushed the wall once more.

  It shot upward and across the passage's ceiling. Faint ripples in the stone marked its passing, like a fisher-spider darting across water.

  Sau'ilahk watched it scurry out of the passage's top, and he drifted closer to the exit.

  The walk back along Limestone Mainway seemed longer than Wynn remembered. But as she passed the greeting house, someone called from the mainway's end chamber.

  "Wynn!"

  Chane's raspy voice brought some comfort, and Wynn quickened her pace. He trotted to meet her. Noble Dead he might be, but he was always there for her.

  "Did Ore-Locks come?" he asked. "How was it at the smithy?"

  "Brutal," she answered. "I may have lost him, even more than Sliver."

  He shook his head. "How?"

  Wynn briefly recounted what
had happened, and then asked, "And you?" "The duchess returned," he answered, "as you guessed. She is lodged at an inn off Breach Mainway, near the market."

  Wynn took a deep breath, though her relief was small. At least one thing had worked out this night. They might yet follow the duchess and learn more of why she was here. In turn, perhaps something useful would come of that.

  "Come," Chane insisted. "I will show you … before we return to our lodging."

  He led the way back up the curving tunnel.

  Wynn was tired by the time they approached Breach Mainway, but Chane suddenly stopped short of the end chamber. He turned sharply, staring past her down the curve, and Wynn followed his gaze.

  She saw nothing but the tunnel's curving dark walls. Shade had stepped beyond them but returned to Wynn's side.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  Chane's brow furrowed. He looked all around, as if uncertain what he searched for.

  "I thought I heard something," he whispered. "A click on stone."

  He stepped farther downslope, looking beyond the curve.

  "Shade would've heard it too," Wynn said. "It was probably just an echo of her claws on the floor."

  Chane glanced over at her and then turned back. Wynn fell in beside him as they stepped out into Breach Mainway.

  This level looked much like the one above, where the station was. Or at least, it did until she walked into a section where the ceiling rose out of sight. A gigantic gash lunged upward into the mountain above. She'd never noticed that before in all their hurrying about.

  As they reached another left-side passage, Chane stepped close to the mainway's wall. Peeking down the side tunnel, he pulled her across to its right side.

  "The third frontage on the left," he whispered, and pointed the way.

  Wynn peered in. About to step around for a better look, she caught sight of a flash of chestnut hair that made her freeze.

  The duchess stepped out of a shop farther down the way. She carried what looked like a thick, bulky comforter and headed up the passage with one of her bodyguards. With so few others about, her voice carried all the way to Wynn.