Through Stone and Sea ndst-2

by Barb Hendee

  She walked him to the sitting chamber's entrance and ushered him inside, but as she turned to leave, she hesitated. Spinning back, she grabbed his arm, jerked him toward her, and clenched the front of his shirt with both hands.

  Reine pulled herself up and Frey down, until her mouth pressed firmly against his. When she let go, she kept her eyes shut until she'd turned away.

  Danyel stood at full attention, his gaze averted.

  As she neared the door, she whispered sharply, "Don't let him near the pool."

  Danyel nodded once, seeming unaffected by all that had happened. It was difficult to shake the Weardas—the Sentinels of the royal family. Then he surprised her, asking, "Highness, what if the … others … return?"

  He glanced toward the tunnel at the pool's rear.

  In truth, Reine would've preferred leaving Chuillyon with Frey, but she needed him and Tristan at her side.

  "They won't," she assured him. "Not until tomorrow's highest tide. I'll return before then."

  "My lady?" someone called softly.

  Chuillyon stood in the outer passage.

  "We should go," he said. "I must speak with Cinder-Shard."

  Reine sighed in exasperation and stepped out, shutting the door and locking Frey and Danyel inside.

  "Do not antagonize Cinder-Shard," she warned as they headed off. "We are guests, and Prince Freädherich is their cherished ward. This new threat is all that upstart sage's doing!"

  Even so, she hadn't forgotten Wynn trying to reclaim the staff. The sage had shouted for it, as if lives depended on that simple object. In retrospect, Reine began to wonder.

  Who was this black figure that created fire from nothing and made it run at them like something alive? She trembled at a murderer with such skills learning of Frey's presence.

  When she and Chuillyon reached the intersection with the main passage, Captain Tristan was waiting, his expression impassive. She'd rarely seen him without his cloak, and he carried his helm under his arm. His cropped hair made him appear more human than the coldly fierce leader of the Weardas.

  "Highness," he said, gesturing ahead.

  Reine strode past him. Once they reached the main cavern, she slowed, spotting Cinder-Shard near another of the cavern's openings. Bulwark, the other elder, stood with him, glaring suspiciously at the staff in Cinder-Shard's grip. A movement among the calcified columns pulled her eyes.

  Balsam, one of the females, paced a winding path toward the pair. Her head thrown back, she studied the cavern's ceiling.

  Reine glanced up but couldn't guess what she was looking for.

  Balsam was less wide than her comrades, with straight brown hair and a nose a bit flattened yet smoothly fitted between her rounded cheeks. Reine found her refreshing. For a cloistered Stonewalker, Balsam tended toward action first, questions later. Stoic Master Cinder-Shard and acidic Master Bulwark were much harder to fathom.

  "Why did you stop us from forming a barrier?" Balsam called, lowering her gaze. "Now it can attack again at any time."

  "Better us than our people above," Cinder-Shard returned. "And because I failed, it may be loose among them. Guardian Thänæ and constabularies will not stop it with ax, rod, or sword."

  Balsam took a breath through her nose, blatantly dissatisfied with her elder's answer.

  Reine looked around the cavern. A total of six Stonewalkers lived here deep beneath Dhredze Seatt, but only three were present. She didn't see Ore-Locks anywhere.

  It had all happened so fast. Perhaps Amaranth and Thorn-in-Wine couldn't reach the battle in time. Amaranth was the other female of the group—and a healer before she took up a greater calling in the underworld. She was probably busy tending to Saln. As to Thorn-in-Wine, he could be daunting, like a younger version of Cinder-Shard.

  Reine wondered about the missing three, especially Ore-Locks. He had been here for the battle, so where was he now?

  The murderer hadn't entered directly with Wynn Hygeorht, but it had gained the underworld undetected. The unanswered question remained, How? Rumors during the killings in Calm Seatt suggested that it could walk through walls—like a Stonewalker.

  "Well, then," Chuillyon said pointedly, and pushed past into the cavern.

  Reine's frustration sharpened. She rushed after his swishing white robe as he headed straight at Cinder-Shard.

  "If you will not lock it out, then what do you intend?" the counselor demanded. "Do something, and soon, or I will."

  Reine didn't know how Chuillyon had held off the black mage's racing fire. She knew little about him—even less about his sect among the Lhoin'na sages. Exactly what did the elder of the Pras'an je Chârmuna—the Order of Chârmun—think that he or Cinder-Shard could do about this mage?

  "I did not say I would do nothing!" Cinder-Shard retorted.

  He glanced at Reine and then jerked the leather sheath off the staff's top.

  Chuillyon cocked a feathery eyebrow as Reine too peered at the exposed crystal. Its perfect long prisms were as clear as polished glass. Cinder-Shard leaned it out toward her.

  "What is this?" he demanded. "Obviously a made thing … likely from the sages' furnaces. I can sense all forms of stone and earth … but nothing of this."

  Reine shook her head. "I don't know, and I hesitate to ask. We can't give that sage more opportunity for manipulation. Domin High-Tower and Premin Sykion both implied she's irrational."

  "I saw no madness in her face," Bulwark said, folding his thick arms over his scaled hauberk.

  "Nor I," Balsam added, "and that thing was afraid of her wolf."

  Chuillyon still studied the staff's crystal, but he rolled his large eyes. "Could we delay discussion of canines and contrivances … and return to plans?"

  "What would you suggest?" Cinder-Shard growled back. "Do share, you sanctimonious jester!"

  Another Stonewalker, Amaranth, approached through the cavern's columns, and Reine turned to greet her. For all of Cinder-Shard's and Chuillyon's sharpness, they were friends of old. It was best to leave them to their crucible of bickering until they extracted a solution.

  "How is Saln?" Reine asked.

  Amaranth was wider than Balsam, with heavy creases surrounding her eyes and mouth, though no gray showed in her sandy hair. She finished wiping her hands on a muslin square and tucked it into her stout belt.

  "His burns are not as deep as I first believed," she answered. "But more blistering will come. If he ignores my instructions—and proper treatment—scarring and disability may occur."

  Tristan stepped closer. "Can he stand for his duty?"

  "I just said… ." Amaranth scowled and shook her head. "It is his wish, though I warn against it."

  Reine glanced up at the captain towering over everyone except Chuillyon. A flicker passed across his face. Was it remorse, sorrow, or misguided shame?

  The Sentinels numbered twenty-seven, almost always working in threes. She didn't know if hers were friends as well as comrades. It seemed strange that Tristan was disturbed by Saln's loss of duty more than the man's injuries. But at times, she knew duty was more precious than life.

  Chuillyon's too-sharp whisper pulled Reine's attention.

  "She already saw how you got your stubby fingers into that shadow!"

  Cinder-Shard didn't lash back. His eyes flicked once toward Reine, and he quickly looked away.

  What were they arguing about now—and what did it have to do with her?

  "What shadow?" Reine demanded.

  Chuillyon's sarcastic annoyance faded. He appeared to study her—assess her—before turning an accusing glance upon Cinder-Shard.

  "I heard you shout," he said. "Do you or do you not believe it was a servant of—"

  Cinder-Shard's eyes widened, and Chuillyon never finished. The old elf had almost said something the master Stonewalker disapproved of, but Reine didn't know what or why.

  "Was it thkyensmyotnes?" Chuillyon demanded.

  At that strange word, Reine closed on them. It sounded like somethin
g in Elvish.

  "Who are you talking about?" she asked.

  Bulwark shifted uncomfortably, exposing clenched teeth. Balsam glanced between her two elders, apparently as lost as Reine.

  "It is old," Cinder-Shard answered grudgingly. "Very old."

  "You did not deny my suspicion," Chuillyon challenged. "So, what else did you sense?"

  Cinder-Shard grunted. "What did you sense, as you blocked its flames?"

  "Nothing … and that frightens me."

  "Someone answer me!" Reine demanded.

  Cinder-Shard flexed his free hand, stared at it, then looked to the cavern wall near the main entrance. No one answered her.

  "Apparently, I cannot entomb it," Cinder-Shard muttered. "What other way is there to kill what is already dead?"

  Reine stared at him in astonishment. Surely he didn't believe Wynn's insane notions.

  "We need to bind it … in, not out," he said to Chuillyon. "And your ways, though effective against manipulations outside of itself, will not halt it from acting directly."

  Reine grabbed Chuillyon's sleeve. "You cannot bring that murderer back here, not so near Frey!"

  He looked down upon her, saddening for less than a blink before his mouth set in a hard line.

  "We will not have to bring thkyensmyotnes," he answered coldly. "It will come when ready."

  Reine could don a regal air at a whim. She could match any monarch, noble, or commoner stare for stare with an outward ease of detachment. But she wavered under Chuillyon's icy gaze.

  "Who are you talking about?" she asked again. "I don't know that name. Is that the man in the black robes?"

  "Not who … but what," Chuillyon corrected, "though it may have been a man … once."

  "Enough dramatics," Cinder-Shard grumbled. "Needlessly frightening her accomplishes nothing."

  "Yes, it does," Chuillyon countered. "If I—if we—are correct about what that thing is."

  Again, "thing" and "it," as if the black mage were …

  "You cannot believe the sage's prattle," Reine returned. "Walking dead … spirits … whatever?"

  The sages believed an old enemy might rise again, one connected to the end of known history in a great forgotten war. Many people—most people—thought that war was only an overblown myth. Once, she had thought so herself—until she married Frey and became tangled in the secret of the reskynna bloodline. Only until she had spent too much time dealing with sages.

  Like the premins, Reine's new family believed the world wasn't ready to know the truth about an Ancient Enemy—and a forgotten war. In silence, the reskynna and even her own uncle, King Jacqui Amornon Faunier, and all of their ancestors, had been waiting and watching through generations.

  She'd never known … until Frey.

  But this nonsense from Chuillyon, the family's oldest advisor, as well as from the master of the Stonewalkers, was too much. War was fought by the living, not the dead, whether it was one of the past or one yet to come.

  Still Chuillyon watched her, as if waiting to see something in her face.

  Amaranth rested her fists upon her hips. "Someone please tell me what has … will happen."

  Balsam opened her mouth, but Bulwark cut in.

  "Soon," he rumbled, and turned indignantly to Cinder-Shard. "You want to trap it here, among our honored dead?"

  Reine's attention shifted from one to the next, her exasperation growing. Had Master Bulwark succumbed to the sage's nonsense as well? Chuillyon's eyes brightened as he looked away from her, but he shook his head.

  "That would require permanence."

  "No," Cinder-Shard countered, "only long enough to hold it … to finish it."

  "Can you?"

  Cinder Shard took a deep, slow breath full of doubt. "I was taught the way, as was my master before me. But I fear trapping this malignant thing may take time—and the focus of all my order. This will be … difficult."

  Chuillyon frowned. "Very well, I can think of nothing better … for now."

  Before anyone else spoke, a booming voice echoed across the cavern: "We have other matters first!"

  Thorn-in-Wine strode toward them, phosphorescent light catching upon each polished steel tip of his hauberk's scales. Unlike the other Stonewalkers, he kept his dirt-brown hair cropped. A few curling strands looped around his ears and upon his brow to match his short beard.

  "The constabularies in the access tunnel are dead!" he declared. "But the portal thänæ saw no one come through."

  Cinder-Shard shook his head. "It evaded the warrior guard."

  Reine peered toward the entrance to the main passage. She didn't need Chuillyon's cryptic babble to frighten her. The sage-killer may have followed Wynn Hygeorht to the seatt, but if the guards above had been killed, then the mage had followed someone else into the underworld.

  The murderer had followed her.

  "I must warn the conclaves," Thorn-in-Wine said, "and learn whether anything has happened in the settlements."

  Cinder-Shard released the staff, letting it topple into Chuillyon's waiting hand.

  "My lady," Cinder-Shard addressed Reine. "Thorn-in-Wine has need of your captain, at least until more guards are placed in the tunnel. Tristan has experience with pragmatic strategy that we do not."

  "Of course," she answered, waving Tristan on.

  But the captain remained planted. "My duty is to the life and blood of the royal line—above all else."

  "You can best protect the prince by securing the underworld," she returned. "Chuillyon can ward against this mage's skills, and as to any mundane assault …"

  She settled a hand on her saber's hilt.

  Tristan's expression didn't change, and he didn't move. Lifting one knee, Reine pulled a narrow-bladed dagger from her boot and slipped it at the ready into her belt.

  "That wasn't a request, Captain," she said.

  He reluctantly nodded and turned away, following Thorn-in-Wine toward the main passage. But Chuillyon headed off in another direction.

  "Where are you going?" Reine asked.

  He paused without turning. "To speak with the sage."

  "Why? She's done nothing but lie and connive. What could we possibly gain from her that we could trust?"

  "Confirmation," he answered.

  Reine quick-stepped to grab his sleeve. "You are a royal counselor, not my keeper, so answer me! What are you and Cinder-Shard hiding? What is this Ath … Athkin … ?"

  Chuillyon whipped around.

  "thkyensmyotnes," he hissed, and Reine shrank back.

  "The sovereign of spirits," he went on, "another forgotten word, like the sage's ‘wraith.' I searched it out in little-known Numan folktales, once I heard things concerning the murderer in Calm Seatt. By the time I found anything, Wynn Hygeorht and her associates had taken matters into their own hands."

  Reine just stared at him.

  Chuillyon's branch lay too far south in Lhoin'na lands, and she'd never gone more than two days without seeing him. If he'd gone to the Calm Seatt guild, she would've heard mention from High-Tower or Sykion. How and where had he learned this?

  Or was it all some excuse? Had he learned that odd name some other way?

  "There is no time for your disbelief," he warned. "Your husband's safety matters more than your own—more than the texts—and that thing cannot learn of him."

  Chuillyon jerked his sleeve from her grip.

  "My counsel, Highness, is that you keep that foremost in your thoughts." He looked to Cinder-Shard. "Are you coming? I assume you wish to hear the sage for yourself."

  Cinder-Shard had watched the exchange in silence. Without a word, he fell in beside Chuillyon. Both strode onward.

  Reine watched them in shock before hurrying to catch up.

  Chapter 20

  Chane shivered, though he did not feel the cold. Along with Wynn and Shade, he'd been locked away in pure darkness. He could not see anything at all.

  "Open the door!" Wynn shouted. "You have to listen!"

  "
Enough," he said. "They are gone. Light your crystal … I cannot see."

  "What? But … you're undead."

  "Even our—my—eyes require some light."

  He heard clothing rustle, and a soft glow rose in the dark, orange-red at first.

  Chane watched light build, filtered through Wynn's small, rubbing hands. When she opened her fingers, her face was illuminated by the cold lamp crystal resting in her palm. They both looked around.

  Shade stood nosing the stone landing's left side. Just beyond her, stairs led downward along a curved wall. The landing itself was no more than six paces square, its front and right side dropping straight off into the dark. Though the crystal lit the wall around the arch, its light barely reached the high ceiling above.

  Chane peered over the landing's edge and could not make out what waited below. His thoughts were overwhelmed.

  The wraith still existed. At its barest touch upon the cavern floor, fire had erupted and been shaped in a way he could not imagine. Dwarves had emerged from cavern walls. A small stone creature with one glowing eye had done so as well and then broken apart in midair around the disturbingly serene elf.

  But worse, Chane was hungry.

  The effort to gain the underworld, as well as swiping his hand through the wraith, had taken much from him. Possibilities for feeding were almost nonexistent. He feared what might happen if he grew desperate.

  Glancing back, he expected to find defeat in Wynn's round face. What he saw startled him more.

  In the crystal's upward light, her features looked so hard. Wynn's bright, sweet face was filled with anger unlike anything Chane had ever seen in her.

  "Imbeciles and idiots!" she whispered sharply. "They don't know what they're dealing with, and they lock up those who do!"

  Wynn glanced at him. The dark taint in her expression lingered an instant longer before it finally drained away.

  "We have no weapons at all, if the wraith attacks us here," she said, "nothing to hold it off without the staff."

  Overstating the obvious accomplished nothing, but Chane kept silent. In truth, he felt vulnerable without his sword or the treasured belongings in his packs.

  "How could it have survived?" she whispered. "I watched it burn to nothing!"