Of Truth and Beasts

by Barb Hendee

  Without breaking stride, he slipped a hand into his pocket and drew out the cold lamp crystal Wynn had left with him. He rubbed it, quickly and briskly, across his thigh.

  Entering the barracks, he made his way up to the door of Wynn’s room and opened it. Just as he was about to step inside, movement down the passage’s dead end caught his eye.

  “Sir . . . ?” a frightened, wavering voice asked.

  A small form in a tan robe came out of the shadows. It was a little girl with freckles and pigtails. Chane remembered her as the one who had been arguing with her friends about Shade that night when Wynn first told him the council had approved their journey.

  Eyes wide, head craned back to look up at him, she held out a piece of parchment, and her voice wavered.

  “Journeyor Hygeorht said to give this to you if you returned this evening.”

  Chane took the parchment, unfolded it, and read it.

  Chane,

  All is well. I’m down in the archives and will return soon. Wait for me in my room.

  Wynn

  The words brought a mix of annoyance and relief. He had wanted her to stay out of sight, but at least the need to search onward may have pulled her from too much despair. He paused, looking again at the note’s script. He had not even thought about it in his distraction with the messenger.

  It was written in the Begaine syllabary, though the symbols were purposefully simplified.

  Why had Wynn done this? Why had she sent this child in pigtails to give it to him? Then he remembered the initiate telling her friends she was fluent in Begaine.

  So many secrets, so much of importance was often written in the syllabary. Remaining with Wynn, believing in her—in her cause—would be more complicated than he had ever imagined. Until last night, he had never given it this much thought amid his fantasies. If he wanted her, and her world, more changes had to be made.

  “Kyne . . . is it not?” Chane asked, looking down at the girl.

  Puzzlement began to outweigh the nervousness marring her small features. She nodded but did not speak.

  “I have heard that . . . Wynn says . . .” he began, and faltered in the attempt. “She told me you grasp the Begaine syllabary better than most . . . for your age.”

  She cringed at the sound of his maimed voice. Her lips parted as if to speak, but she could not find her voice.

  “You will teach . . .” Chane started to demand, and then halted. It took effort to force a softer tone. “I would like . . . be grateful, if you could assist—tutor—me . . . when you are able.”

  She blinked once and then twice more, but did not move.

  “Please,” he added too sharply.

  Chane’s patience thinned quickly in the waiting silence. Suddenly, she took a step closer. In her slow approach, her gaze kept flicking to the glowing crystal in his hand.

  That lure had the effect he expected, as predictable as a dropped pouch of coins at an alley’s mouth when he hunted in the night streets of a city. Or at least it caused enough confusion to make her wonder against her fear of him.

  She moved even closer and glanced into Wynn’s empty room.

  No doubt she had seen him before with a journeyor who had wandered the world like no other and returned with wild tales, and with a dark majay-hì out of folklore. What the girl did not know—what no one here knew for certain—was of the monster who had followed Wynn across half a world.

  Kyne looked up, her voice still lost, and only nodded again.

  Chane held out his free hand, and she took it.

  Her tiny palm felt overly warm and a bit sweaty. She jumped at his grip, likely too cold in her own. He led her down the stairs to where the parallel passage through the keep wall at the back of these barracks emptied into the initiates’ outer ones.

  “Your message is delivered,” he said. “Go to bed.”

  Chane watched as she scurried off, though she glanced back at him several times. When she finally vanished from sight, he made his way back to Wynn’s room. Closing his hand over the crystal as he entered, he peered out the window to the inner courtyard below.

  No one was out there, and he stood waiting in the dark, watching for Wynn.

  The beast inside him strained at its bonds, but he pushed it down, focusing on one truth. He would now viciously guard this place—as well as all who resided here, worthy or not.

  And he would do so for as long as Wynn would allow him.

  EPILOGUE

  Wynn sat in an intersection alcove, deep in the guild’s catacombs, while Shade lay on the floor, watching her. Upon the night of her return, she’d sought out Domin High-Tower to give proper notice that she was back. She preferred to deal with him rather than Premin Sykion, but her effort hadn’t mattered.

  The impassive way that High-Tower looked at her suggested he already knew. Some word must have reached him, and he’d merely dismissed her to her quarters. He hadn’t even told her to remain on grounds; he didn’t have to.

  So much had happened over the course of a single winter.

  Wynn had watched helplessly as her guild began to curl up on itself, one faction or branch turning against the others in distrust, suspicion, and secrecy. The Fay had come for her again, manifested in anguish and anger like some avatar of a divine force called by a wild priestess. In dead Bäalâle Seatt, the forgotten gí’uyllæ—the all-eaters, the dragons—whose generations went back to the first animate life that had walked in Existence, were found guarding a weapon and waiting for the blood of Deep-Root to come.

  And in one desperate moment, Wynn had bent Chane to her will by his love for her.

  In that, she’d revealed that she knew how he felt, though she couldn’t even consider how she felt about him. That was too much, yet too little a thing, in the face of everything else.

  The light of a cold lamp exposed one open book upon the table before Wynn, and the sun crystal staff leaned beside her. Chane’s scroll lay nearby, as did her new journal of short, cryptic entries in convoluted Begaine symbols. This single, brief journal was all that she needed now that she had Shade.

  The old journals that she’d burned weren’t truly gone. What they’d contained was now even farther beyond anyone’s reach than ashes. On the nights she’d sat alone with only Shade, preparing scant, cryptic notes in the new journal, she’d silently read every line in the old journals, over and over, until . . .

  Shade had echoed back every word.

  Shade might never speak with Wynn as Chap had done, but Shade could do one thing perhaps even better than her father. Along with any memory Wynn recalled, once Shade understood something, she remembered it—perfectly.

  What better place to hide secrets than with the one who would never forget the smallest detail? Who better to secure knowledge than such a companion, a majay-hì from whom no one could forcefully take it?

  Shade understood why this was necessary. Perhaps she would finally come to understand the risks Wynn had taken—would continue to take.

  A whining rumble made Wynn stiffen on her stool, and she looked up.

  Shade stood before the alcove opening leading back toward the stairs up to the guild. She’d been fidgeting more and more as the night grew later.

  “Stop!” Wynn said. “There’s no one else down here . . . and I already took you outside after dinner.”

  Just like with Shade’s father, Wynn sometimes slipped up when frustrated or exhausted. She forgot the powerful spirit and unique intelligence hidden in the guise of a young animal.

  Others saw them as majay-hì, mere mythical beasts of awe. Even most Lhoin’na, who regarded them as sentient and free-willed, treasured them with too much reverence to understand them as individuals.

  Wynn knew better, which added a spike of guilt to her burdens.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, expecting a petulant retort in broken memory-words.

  But Shade merely returned to Wynn, not even grumbling. With a sigh, Wynn propped her elbows on the table and dropped her foreh
ead into her palms.

  Three of the five orbs were still missing, and what had finding the second one truly accomplished? Chane had kept it from Sau’ilahk, but still, Wynn knew next to nothing of the orbs’ creation or purpose other than that the one now with Ore-Locks had been used somehow in an attempt to breach Bäalâle Seatt. But how else were they used?

  Wynn had little to go on except for Magiere’s mistake with the first one, the orb of Water, when she’d blindly opened it in the cavern below the ice-bound castle. Did Magiere have the only way to open an orb, with that tool she’d been given?

  The tool might look something like a dwarven thôrkh, but it wasn’t one. So what good was it, if all it did was unleash an orb’s effect without control? What purpose, if any, might there be in finding all of the orbs, beyond keeping them from falling into the hands of the Ancient Enemy?

  More lies and deceits weighed Wynn down, more suffering for others because of it, and one more secret.

  That last one, which held no discernable bearing upon any greater questions, was something she dared not tell to anyone, most especially Ore-Locks. It made her sick inside after what she’d already done to him—forbidding him from clearing Deep-Root’s name. Only Shade knew this additional secret by now, but Wynn couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  One phrase she’d seen clawed into that cave wall had made her falter twice.

  May only my brother . . .

  She looked down at the open book: an original lexicon of dwarven root words, compiled over centuries from archaeological recoveries. An abridged copy was available in the upper library. But what she sought here in the original wasn’t a confirmation of what she knew. Rather, she’d hoped it would prove her wrong and free her from another burden. Even when she’d asked Master Tärpodious where to find it, she had known it wouldn’t let her escape the truth or her deceit.

  Beneath Bäalâle, she’d heard an ancient name. It had come as the dragon recited Deep-Root’s last words, damning himself to eternal death. That name had filled her head in every language she knew, by whatever translation she would’ve given it at first. She hadn’t grasped the ancient Dwarvish until she’d focused on the Numanese that came with it. It had choked off her voice.

  May only my brother, Softly-Spoken, remember me. . . .

  Why the orb’s guardians hadn’t forced her to repeat it only confirmed why she hadn’t. Perhaps they’d known what she feared, should Ore-Locks hear it.

  Wynn glanced at the last set of cryptic Begaine symbols in her new journal. The strokes were so tangled, so truncated that only she would be reminded of what they meant.

  Bhedhägkangâva . . . Softly-Spoken.

  If Ore-Locks had heard it in the Numanese she’d spoken, perhaps he wouldn’t have caught the hidden connection. As a cathologer steeped in language, Wynn had missed it only for an instant. Pronunciation changes in the Dwarvish root words hadn’t hidden it from her. And suffixes, prefixes, and alterations for creating verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs had remained mostly stable over a thousand years.

  Bhethäg was an adverb in the vocative for a proper name. Its root had to be something like vetheg. It was listed so in the lexicon.

  Vetheg, vedhegh; see vedzagh in contemporary usage.

  Its most accurate translation in Numanese was “softly,” but the more literal, if less meaningful, might’ve been “featherly.” Vedzagh—vetheg—was the root for “feather.”

  Kangâva had been less clear, but she’d worked it out. The vocative of a past-tense verb, its root was something like changa or changasa.

  Changasa, changaksa, chenghak; see chenghaksé in contemporary usage.

  “Spoken” was the precise meaning in Numanese, but the more literal would be “tongued.” The root chenghaksé—changasa—meant “tongue.”

  The name of Bhedhägkangâva—Softly-Spoken—would need to change only so slightly over so many centuries to . . .

  Bedzâ’kenge.

  Feather-Tongue had been Deep-Root’s twin brother. The repercussions Wynn now hid with that name were overwhelming.

  Ore-Locks had barely succumbed to her reasoning as to why he couldn’t speak of Deep-Root to anyone except Master Cinder-Shard. From the beginning, he’d been silently obsessed with one thing: to clear his ancestor’s forgotten name and restore his family’s heritage.

  Wynn had denied him that right, to do what was right.

  If he’d heard that brother’s name, desperation and a great heritage would’ve made him unstoppable. She’d seen fear, hatred, and revulsion evoked from Shirvêsh Mallet at her naive mention of Thallûhearag. Sliver and High-Tower were vehemently sickened by their elder brother’s passion for a long-dead ancestor that had called him into service among the Stonewalkers.

  If Ore-Locks had proclaimed who Deep-Root was, what his ancestor had done and why, he would’ve been denounced by any who still remembered Thallûhearag. Without verifiable proof, at even a testament from Wynn, a mere “scribbler of words,” Ore-Locks would’ve turned to the name of Deep-Root’s brother as his last salvation.

  What would happen if Ore-Locks publicly claimed that the forgotten worst of the Lhärgnæ, the Fallen Ones, was blood kin to a Bäynæ, an Eternal?

  Feather-Tongue was revered as a paragon of knowledge and wisdom, but also for a cherished heritage. That meant everything to any dwarf with faith, as it did to Ore-Locks. Wynn had seen her own people let belief override reason to the point of denouncing fact . . . or worse.

  Ore-Locks would’ve been branded a heretic, at best. His family would’ve suffered more than they already had. And at the worst . . .

  Any head shirvêsh, even Mallet himself, could’ve incited righteous outrage. Neither Ore-Locks nor his family would’ve been safe—not even High-Tower. Any dwarven family, clan, or tribe coming after the domin would rouse the guild to his defense. And the royals would have used any means to defend the guild. They already had against Wynn’s efforts.

  The people of Malourné and the dwarves of Dhredze Seatt had been neighbors, allies, even comrades for over four centuries. Those connections could not be destroyed simply because one stonewalker yearned to clear his family’s heritage by any means.

  Wynn couldn’t face the chance that any of this might happen. She’d stolen Ore-Locks’s final hope of absolution and locked it away. She’d sacrificed his chance to be free of a hidden heritage to the Lord of the Slaughter.

  Wynn had been raised, nurtured, trained to seek the truth for all to hear. Another choice like this crushed her down even more. Every muscle in her small body ached as if that growing weight were real. If anything more dropped upon her, she felt she might break. And there was more to come; she knew this.

  Except for Shade, Wynn felt alone in this moment. There was no one far enough outside the guild for her to trust. There was no one here who knew enough and believed in what would come . . . not even Chane.

  Shade’s low rumble cut through Wynn’s growing anguish.

  “All right, we’ll go,” she whispered.

  Shade’s rumble grew to a snarl.

  Wynn almost sighed. Was Chane coming? Maybe he hadn’t received her message—or he’d ignored it.

  —not . . . Chane—

  Shade’s hackles stood on end. Her ears flattened as she bared her teeth and glared through the opening at the alcove’s rear.

  Wynn snatched up the staff as she dug into her robe’s pocket for her glasses. Did she sense some other undead?

  Shade suddenly twisted her head, looking to the opposite opening among the four ways into the alcove. Her head whipped twice both ways before she turned again toward the front opening.

  —behind—

  Wynn shoved on the glasses and ripped the sheath off the staff’s crystal. Shade’s snarl sharpened again as Wynn barely turned toward the rear arch, and she almost glanced back.

  A dark form crept around the rear entrance’s left side.

  Wynn thrust the staff out as shapes and phrases for its ignition raced through he
r mind.

  The sun crystal ignited.

  “My eyes!”

  That strange cry came the instant that Wynn’s glasses blackened. She couldn’t see anything except the sun crystal’s dimmed point of light.

  “Put that thing out!”

  Wynn spun at the snarling command behind her, but still held the sun crystal toward the first intruder. The glasses began to adjust.

  Beyond Shade’s tense form, Wynn barely made out a tall figure outside the other alcove arch. It was dressed in a heavy cloak, with one gloved hand held up to shield its face within the cloak’s hood. Beside it stood the shape of a huge canine.

  Shade wasn’t snarling anymore.

  That is enough, little one. It is all right now.

  Those strange multilingual words barely filled Wynn’s head when a cry rose behind her.

  “My eyes! Ah, seven hells, Wynn, you’ve blinded me!”

  She spun back, staring at the first intruder, now standing in the alcove’s corner between two of its openings. This one had both gloved hands clamped over its face. Only then did it dawn on Wynn . . .

  Both intruders were speaking Belaskian.

  Wynn instantly snuffed the sun crystal’s light, and only the cold lamp’s softer glow lit the dark alcove.

  The figure before her was slight, tightly built, and obviously male. Beneath the cloak and the wool pullover, the collar of a leather hauberk protruded. There were unusual weapons lashed to his thighs. Around the gloved hands clamped over his eyes she thought she saw tendrils of white-blond hair.

  Fright and guilt flooded Wynn at what she might’ve done. She dropped the staff across the table and rushed at him.

  “Leesil?” she whispered, and grabbed at his hands, pulling them down.

  There was his caramel-tinted face. Faint scars showed on his jawline, and those feathery eyebrows weren’t quite as slanted as a full-blooded elf. He opened his eyes, blinking several times.

  Wynn was still panting in fright, and then . . .

  He winked at her with a sly grin. “You’re just too easy to play. You know that, don’t you?”

  He was still blinking through a squint when Wynn sucked in a shocked breath. All the joy and relief at seeing him once more faded under fury at another of his stupid tricks.