Of Truth and Beasts Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  EPILOGUE

  BY BARB AND J. C. HENDEE

  THE NOBLE DEAD SAGA—SERIES ONE

  DHAMPIR

  THIEF OF LIVES

  SISTER OF THE DEAD

  TRAITOR TO THE BLOOD

  REBEL FAY

  CHILD OF A DEAD GOD

  THE NOBLE DEAD SAGA—SERIES TWO

  IN SHADE AND SHADOW

  THROUGH STONE AND SEA

  OF TRUTH AND BEASTS

  ALSO BY BARB HENDEE

  THE VAMPIRE MEMORIES SERIES

  BLOOD MEMORIES

  HUNTING MEMORIES

  MEMORIES OF ENVY

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, January 2011

  Copyright © Barb and J. C. Hendee, 2011

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Hendee, Barb.

  Of truth and beasts: a novel of the noble dead/Barb & J. C. Hendee.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47531-7

  1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Quests (Expeditions)—Fiction. I. Hendee, J. C. II. Title.

  PS3608.E525O4 2011

  813’.6—dc22 2010030890

  Set in Adobe Garamond

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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  THE MIDDLE CONTINENT COASTAL CENTRAL

  PROLOGUE

  . . . never close your eyes again . . . not ever . . . not until they all die. . . .

  Byûnduní—Deep-Root—halted in the dark of a chamber so tall and empty that he heard the frightened clench of his own massive hands. And why should there be light or sound in the temple of his people? The hall of the Bäynæ, the dwarven Eternals, was now a place filled only with false hopes. The people’s greatest ancestral spirits had abandoned them.

  Suddenly, he heard the pounding behind him, though it seemed to hammer within his skull, until it took shape in a thunderous gale of breathy, tangled voices.

  . . . they will kill you, if they can. . . . They will; you know this . . .

  He wanted to scream in rage at the chorus of overlapping whispers in his head. They had torn at him for so long, he could not tell if those words of warning were his or theirs. He could not remember when he had last closed his eyes, though he felt as if he were asleep. Not in a dream, but in an endless nightmare where silence had been slain.

  In the depths of Bäalâle Seatt, there was but one long ever-night of fear and madness.

  The pounding would not stop, and he could almost feel it upon his broad back. He turned about and stared in panic at the great doors of the chamber of the Eternals.

  Each was the height of four dwarves. Each had been hewn whole from the trunk of a great oak and was as thick as his forearms were long. Yet he could hear those who crowded outside the doors, pounding . . . so many of them it began to sound like a rain of stones upon the wood. They were pounding to get in, though their voices could not breach the barrier like the hammering of their fists.

  “What are you doing?”

  Deep-Root spun at the threatening whisper and reached to his belt. All he saw at first were the great silhouettes in the dark. They reached to the hall’s impossible heights. Three lined the wall of the door, and three more stood at the far side. All these statues of his people’s Eternals were silent, their stone faces lost to sight.

  A flickering light caught his eye.

  An approaching flame wobbled toward him. Behind it was the reddened glow of a craggy old face, perhaps worn down and shriveled like the corpse of a human. The closer it came, the more he made out its features—and the two black, olive-pit irises of one of his own people.

  Broad featured and gray bearded, the elder’s eyes widened in wariness, exposing bloodshot whites around his irises. The torch glimmered upon the steel-shorn tips of the black scale armor of Master Kin-of-Far.

  “You would let them in!” the old stonewalker accused.

  “No . . . not anymore,” Deep-Root denied.

  “Liar!” the other hissed, and his free hand dropped to the black-lacquered hilt of one of his daggers.

  In reflex, Deep-Root reached for a blade sheathed at his own waist.

  “Where have you been?” Master Kin-of-Far asked, cocking his head. “To your prattling brother? Is that how it started?”

  The elder stonewalker watched Deep-Root with one eye, while the other tried to see whether the doors had been opened as he crept forward.

  “All of them turned against us once the siege began,” he continued. “What deceits did you spit into the people�
�s ears . . . through your brother?”

  And the whispers rose like a torrent in Deep-Root’s head.

  . . . no one left to trust . . . never turn your back . . . they are coming for you. . . .

  Deep-Root released his dagger’s hilt and slapped his hand to his head.

  But one voice, so much louder than the others, cracked through his mind.

  Listen only to me—cling only to me.

  The other voices began to grow again, making it too hard to think.

  “No . . .” he whispered, and then gripped his head with both hands as he shouted, “Leave me be!”

  “Leave you be?” asked the elder, feigning puzzlement. “Why would I? You—you did this to us, traitor. You and your brother . . . made them come for us!”

  “No . . . my brother has no part in this.”

  “More lies!” shouted the elder, jerking his blade from its sheath.

  Do what is necessary and come to me.

  Deep-Root closed his hands tighter upon his head.

  The elder dropped his torch and charged, raising the dagger as he shouted, “Keep your treachery, Byûnduní!”

  Do not listen. Come to me.

  And again the other voices raised such a cacophony that he tried to cling to the one clear voice. He tried to crush the others from his head.

  Byûnduní—Deep-Root—snatched out one dagger at the sight of his caste elder coming for him.

  This tainted place had to end. There would be sleep and silence once Bäalâle fell and was forgotten.

  CHAPTER 1

  Wynn Hygeorht paced the floor of her room inside Calm Seatt’s branch of the Guild of Sagecraft. Shade, a large wolflike dog with charcoal black fur, lay on the small bed, watching her through crystal blue eyes.

  Wynn was in trouble, and she knew it.

  Only one night before, Wynn and Shade, and her other companion, Chane Andraso, had returned from Dhredze Seatt, the mountain stronghold of the dwarves. In that place, Wynn had disobeyed every order and every warning from her superiors. The repercussions were staggering. By now, word of her return had surely spread through the guild to its highest ranks. It was only a matter of time before she would be summoned before the Premin Council.

  “Where’s Chane?” she whispered absently, still pacing.

  Whatever happened tonight, he’d want to know. He’d taken guest quarters across the keep’s inner courtyard, but it was well past dusk, and he was late.

  She nearly jumped when the knock at her door finally came. Pushing strands of wispy brown hair away from her face, she hurried to open it.

  “Where have you . . . ?”

  It wasn’t Chane outside the door.

  There stood a slender young man only a few fingers taller than Wynn. He was dressed in the gray robe of a cathologer, just like her. His shoulders were slumped forward, as if in a perpetual cringe.

  “Nikolas?” Wynn said, then quickly dismissed her confusion and smiled. He was one of the few friends she had left inside the guild.

  He didn’t smile back. In fact, he wouldn’t even look her in the eyes.

  “You . . . you’ve been summoned,” he whispered, swallowing hard halfway through. “Premin Sykion says you’re to come straightaway to the council’s chamber. And you’re supposed to leave the . . .” He glanced once toward Shade. “You’re to leave the dog here.”

  Wynn just stared at him. But she’d known this was coming. Hadn’t she? She straightened, smoothing down her own gray robe.

  “Give me a moment,” she said. “Go tell the council that I’ll come directly.”

  He hesitated nervously, then nodded. “I’ll walk slowly. Buy you a little time.”

  Wynn gave him a sadder smile. “Thank you.”

  She watched him disappear down the passage, but she closed the door only partway. She took a breath before turning about, for the next part wouldn’t be easy.

  “Shade, stay here,” she said firmly. “You cannot come.”

  Wynn used as few words as possible, as Shade’s understanding of language wasn’t fluent yet.

  With a low rumble, Shade flattened her ears and launched off the bed.

  Wynn was ready. She spun through the half-open door and jerked it shut. The door shuddered as Shade slammed into the other side with her full bulk. Then the howling began.

  “Stop that!” Wynn called through the closed door.

  With no time for Shade’s drama over being left behind, she gathered up her robe’s skirt and hurried down the passage to the end stairs, and then out into the night air of the courtyard.

  She made her way across to the old stables and storage building, long ago converted to workshops, laboratories, and, of course, the guest quarters. Slipping through one outer door, she headed upstairs to a door she knew well. These were the same quarters once used by her old ally, Domin Ghassan il’Sänke of the guild’s Suman branch, far to the south. She knocked lightly.

  “Chane, are you there?”

  No one answered, and anxiety swelled inside her. Where could he be? She had to at least let him know she’d been summoned.

  She knocked again, more sharply.

  “Chane?”

  A scuffle rose beyond the door, followed by the sound of rumpling paper and a sudden screech of wooden chair legs on a stone floor. This time, the door opened, but the room beyond was dark. Wynn looked up at Chane Andraso towering over her, his face pale as always.

  “What in the world were you . . . ?” She stopped midquestion.

  Chane’s clothes were wrinkled, and his red-brown hair was disheveled. He blinked several times as if she’d just roused him from dormancy. And . . .

  “Umm, you have a piece of parchment stuck to your face.”

  His eyes cleared slightly, and he reached up. Instead of grabbing the torn scrap, he swatted at it with his hand, and it fell past Wynn into the passage.

  “Did I wake you?” she asked in confusion.

  Chane always woke the instant the sun fully set. Light from the passage’s small cold lamp seeped into the guest quarters’ outer study. The chair behind the old desk was pushed at an awkward angle against the wall. A pile of books and papers was lying haphazardly all over the desk, and some had even fallen to the floor.

  “I must have read too late . . . near this morning,” he rasped in his maimed voice.

  Wynn raised one eyebrow. Chane had fallen dormant at the desk, not aware that dawn was coming? She shook her head, for they had larger problems.

  “I’ve been summoned.”

  Realization spread over his handsome features as he came to full awareness.

  “I am coming,” he returned instantly, stepping backward to grab the room key off the desk.

  Then he hesitated, glancing down at himself. He still wore his boots from the night before, along with his rumpled breeches. He quickly began tucking in his loose white shirt.

  Wynn didn’t care how he was dressed. It didn’t matter.

  “Only me,” she said. “I was even ordered to leave Shade in my room.”

  Chane froze. He knew Shade almost never left Wynn’s side. The dog rarely tolerated that. He returned to tucking in his shirt.

  “I am as responsible as you,” he insisted, “for all that happened. You are not facing them alone.”

  As he came to the door, Wynn looked up, meeting his eyes in silence. She felt ashamed by her relief at the thought of his standing beside her to face the council. But that wasn’t the way this would work.

  “I don’t think they’ll let you—”

  “I am coming,” he repeated, and stepped out, closing the door.

  He headed down the passageway toward the stairs before she could argue further. Without intending to, she sighed—in relief, resignation, or at the weight of her burdens. Perhaps all three.

  Wynn still felt cowardly in her relief at Chane’s presence as they climbed the stairs to the second floor of the guild’s main hall. With all that had happened in the Stonewalkers’ underworld, deep below Dhredze
Seatt, she could imagine the Premin Council like some Old World mock court. Its verdict would be predetermined before any trial began.

  But it wasn’t a trial. This was a guild matter, and what she’d done would never be revealed publicly. She would have no statute of law to protect her against any unofficial conviction.

  She glanced up at Chane beside her, his expression grim with determination. Perhaps his presence might keep the council in check, for there were internal affairs they might not raise before an outsider. But she doubted it.

  When they stepped onto the upper floor, two sages waited outside the council’s chamber down the broad passage. Chane never slowed, and Wynn tried not to falter, but the closer they came to the council chamber, the odder it all looked.

  A middle-aged woman in cerulean, from the Order of Sentiology, and a younger man in a metaologer’s midnight blue stood in silence on either side of the great oak double doors. Wynn didn’t immediately recognize either one, although, with their differing orders, they made a strange combination. She’d never seen attendants outside this chamber before.

  Both watched her as she approached, which made her nervous. Then they both reached out at the same time and opened the doors without a word.

  Inside, standing about, waiting, was the entire Premin Council. And Domin High-Tower, the only dwarven sage and head of Wynn’s order, was present, as well.

  Folklore of the Farlands, Chane’s world, spoke of dwarves as diminutive beings of dark crags and earthen burrows. High-Tower, like all of his people, was an intimidating hulk compared to such superstitions. Though shorter than humans, most dwarves looked Wynn straight in the eyes. What they lacked in height, they doubled in breadth.

  Stout and wide as he was, he showed no hint of fat under his gray robe. Coarse reddish hair laced with gray hung past his shoulders, blending with his thick beard, which was braided at its end. His broad, rough features made his black-pupiled eyes seem like iron pellets embedded in pale, flesh-colored granite.

  He glowered at her from where he stood beyond the council’s table. Suddenly, his glower turned to an incensed glare, quite disturbing from any hulkish dwarf. He rounded the table and tall-back chairs, coming straight toward the opened doorway, his long red hair bouncing with each stride.