Of Truth and Beasts Read online

  Wynn blinked at his reference to the ring. It had nothing to do with the Fay hunting her because she was the only mortal who could hear them, spy upon them whenever and wherever they manifested near enough. And then realization of what he truly meant finally spread across her oval face.

  “Oh, Chane,” she said. “Sau’ilahk is gone. I burned him to nothing down in the sea tunnel.”

  “You burned him once before in the streets of Calm Seatt,” he countered. “And yet—”

  “This time was different,” Wynn insisted. “I destroyed him, and that’s the fact.”

  Perhaps . . . but this was the point of contention. It was not a fact, as there was no proof of it.

  In the underworld of the dwarves, Wynn had used her only weapon against the undead—her sun crystal staff—to vanquish the wraith. It was true that this time she had had powerful help. Cinder-Shard, the craggy-faced master of the dwarven Stonewalkers, those who guarded the remains and spirits of the dwarven honored dead, had somehow been able to seize Sau’ilahk’s incorporeal form with his massive bare hands. And that sardonic elf called Chuillyon, dressed in white robes like a false sage, had held the wraith at bay with little more than serene, smiling whispers.

  Those two, along with the other Stonewalkers, had hindered and bound Sau’ilahk. They had given Wynn time to burn the wraith with her staff, its crystal emitting light akin to the sun.

  She was convinced the wraith was gone.

  Chane was not.

  “Compared to the wraith, I am a common vampire,” he countered.

  He could hear himself shifting from his normal, voiceless hiss to something more raspy, grating, and heated. He tried to sound calmer, more rational. “Yet you watched as Magiere severed my head from my body.”

  This was also how his voice had been permanently maimed.

  Wynn fell silent, glancing away.

  “Yet here I am,” he finished quietly.

  He hated feeling forced to bring this up. Watching him die his second death had been more than difficult for her. He still had no understanding of how he had later managed to come back. All he remembered was waking up soaked in blood and covered in freshly killed bodies in a shallow-earth hollow. He was whole again—and Welstiel had been looking down at him, as if waiting.

  “I traveled with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap for a long time,” Wynn finally answered. “They—we—destroyed vampires who did not come back.” She gestured toward her desk, at the stacks of journals piled there. “I’ve recorded it all, regardless that my superiors have no interest in the truth.”

  Chane glanced at the journals. Another notion resurfaced, one that he had mulled over in recent nights. He had never even seen those journals until Wynn managed to steal them back.

  But she had written everything in them about her travels with Leesil and Magiere, about her experiences with the undead and the an’Cróan, the elves of the Farlands. If he could read them, he might better understand her . . . comprehend her true drives, goals, hopes, and fears. Even if she had not recorded events literally, he knew her well enough to read between the lines of her script.

  His one task was to protect Wynn, including from herself. This gave him purpose, and to do so, he needed to understand everything she had been through.

  “May I read them?” he asked, nodding at the stack.

  Wynn turned pale.

  “I wrote them in the Begaine syllabary,” she blurted out. “You won’t be able to.”

  “I read a little of your guild symbols.” He stepped closer. “And you can help me. Studying your works will teach me to follow the script.”

  Wynn started to say something more but it never came out.

  Chane did not understand her reluctance. He had already strained her patience by pushing his point about Sau’ilahk, but now that he had made the request, he would not stop.

  “The information in those journals could help me—us—in the journey to come.”

  This reasoning was sound. If they were to travel to another guild branch in search of more answers, how else would he know what to look for? She viewed him as part of her purpose now. He should be allowed to know everything.

  Wynn was still silent.

  Chane understood her well enough. Everything she had brought to the guild had been taken from her. Now that she had regained some of her prized possessions, perhaps she was reluctant to relinquish them again, even to him.

  “As you said,” he went on, “we must pass time constructively until the council decides. I will need to purchase the supplies for our trip if you are confined. Otherwise, I must better understand what has brought you this far.”

  And still she hesitated.

  “Were they not written to recount your experiences, share your knowledge?”

  Wynn looked up at him.

  “Of course, yes.” She stood up, stepping to her little desk table. “I recopied this one while on the ship from the Farlands. This recounts my journey to Droevinka with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap. You can start here.”

  Her sudden acquiescence was a relief, but something in her eyes troubled Chane. Even as she held up that first journal, her small fingers were white from clutching it too tightly.

  What was she hiding?

  CHAPTER 2

  Seven nights later, Wynn knelt on the floor of her small room, feeding Shade bits of dried fish. All was quiet except for the dog’s clacking teeth and smacking jowls. She glanced at the door again, wondering why Chane still hadn’t arrived, and then looked around at her simple room: the bed, desk, small table, and one narrow window with a view of the keep’s inner courtyard.

  Once she’d felt safe here, in what was now her prison. The council had maintained a deafening silence, and she had begun to wonder if they’d ever decide her fate. She and Chane had pressed ahead, anyway, itemizing supplies for him to acquire and making preparations for a journey. He stopped by her room each night before heading into the city to either tell her what he’d acquired or to see if anything new had been put on the list—or to return a journal and pick up another.

  Wynn clenched all over every time he did the latter.

  It wasn’t that she minded him reading her journals. They were a scholar’s records, after all. But a fair portion of their content dealt with the undead, with hunting and eliminating them. Chane often grew sullen or even bitter whenever she mentioned her old companions, Magiere, Leesil, and Chap. She could only imagine his state while reading so much about them.

  Wynn’s relationship to those three was . . . complex.

  Magiere was a fierce, dark-haired rogue and the only dhampir Wynn had ever even heard of. Leesil was half-elven, raised in his youth to be an assassin enslaved to a warlord, a life he had escaped. Chap was a majay-hì like no other, a true Fay who’d chosen to be born into a pup of the Fay-and-wolf descendants of the elven lands.

  In Wynn’s time in the Farlands of the eastern continent, she’d journeyed with these three in search of an artifact once wielded by the Ancient Enemy of many names. Their journey’s last leg ended in the far south of the region, in the high, desolate range of the Pock Peaks. There they’d finally uncovered the artifact—the orb—as well as those old texts that had given Wynn nothing but misery since returning home. She and her companions carried away what they could, and upon their return to the new little guild branch in Bela, Wynn had been given the task of bearing those texts safely back to Calm Seatt.

  Magiere, Leesil, and Chap had sailed with her, bringing the orb. Their journey encompassed the better part of a year. They stayed together until the city of Calm Seatt loomed into sight and then parted ways. Wynn’s companions—mostly Chap—had decided the orb was too dangerous to bring to the sages. So they’d left to find a place of hiding for it against those who might seek it out.

  Wynn still missed them. Magiere, Leesil, and Chap had become more than friends to her. They were like blood . . . like family. She was lonely for them, and Chane knew it.

  He’d wanted so badly to read her j
ournals, and she understood his reasons, but each time he returned one and took another, he grew more silent, tense, and matter-of-fact. Even worse, he feigned ignorance if she asked why. His darkening mood might have nothing to do with the journals, but she doubted it.

  And to make matters worse, he kept returning to the topic of Sau’ilahk.

  Sau’ilahk was gone—Wynn knew this. She’d seen the end, and Chane hadn’t. She’d described every detail to him that she could, though she couldn’t explain the influence of Chuillyon or the Stonewalkers upon the wraith any more than he could.

  But he hadn’t seen it happen.

  Chane was many things to Wynn. He’d appeared at some of the worst times in her life, when it seemed no one else could protect her. He’d thrown himself in front of her and done whatever he deemed necessary to make certain nothing got past him. But he was a vampire, one of the higher forms of the undead, known in some cultures as the Noble Dead. By any account, as a predator of the living, he went too far at times in defending her.

  Much as Wynn trusted him as an ally, how could she dare feel anything more than that? Still, she wished she understood him better. Was he worried about their journey or about their limited chance of blind success? Or was it what else they’d pieced together in their time in Dhredze Seatt? Between more passages she’d translated from the ancient texts and a scroll in Chane’s possession, they’d uncovered a deeper burden.

  Magiere, Leesil, and Chap had not carried off the only orb.

  The Enemy had created five for some unknown purpose, one for each of the Elements of Existence. The one Wynn’s friends possessed was likely that of Water, and they were somewhere to the north of this continent, trying to secure it in secret.

  At the great war’s end, the Enemy had given thirteen vampires known as the Children the task of scattering the five orbs into hiding. A thousand years later, it seemed the orbs still existed . . . somewhere . . . the last tokens of a war so few believed had ever happened at all. The Enemy now had minions—old and new—on the move, seeking the orbs again.

  Wynn suspected one orb might still be in Bäalâle Seatt. If so, she had to find it before any other servants like the wraith reached it first.

  Shade finished the last of the fish and whined for more.

  “You’ll not become a glutton like your father,” Wynn said, stroking the dog’s head. “Time for your language lessons.”

  Shade scooted backward on her rump, flattening her ears with a low snarl.

  “Shade . . . no more arguing.”

  Wynn’s head suddenly filled with a chaos of her own memories. In each image, she was touching Shade and communicating by sharing mental pictures. But the rushing cascade made her head pound.

  “No . . . no memory-speak,” she said. “You will learn words, even if I have to pin your ears back to hear them.”

  Like her father, Chap, and other majay-hì, Shade communicated through memories with her own kind via touch rather than any form of speech. Wynn called this memory-speak. Shade’s father was unique, for he could speak words into Wynn’s head. Both father and daughter could also raise another being’s own memories so long as they had line of sight. But, unlike Chap, Shade couldn’t speak words in Wynn’s head.

  In place of this, Shade could send her own memories to Wynn when they touched. She could also share memories she’d picked up from others. To Wynn’s knowledge, no other majay-hì and human could do this.

  “Shade, come here,” she said.

  Shade curled her jowls, and the pink tip of her tongue flicked out and up over her nose—just like Chap used to do.

  Wynn exhaled.

  “I barely tolerated that from your father. Don’t think I’ll give you half as much. Come here!”

  Recently, Shade had made a slip. Wynn had uncovered that her young majay-hì guardian indeed understood spoken words—to a point. Shade couldn’t speak, but she could listen, and she’d been doing so without anyone knowing it. She was going to listen now, and learn.

  Shade abruptly launched straight from a squat.

  Wynn lurched back in surprise, but the dog only hopped to the bed, turning a full circle before settling. Shade curled up, facing away, toward the stone wall.

  Wynn scrambled to her feet. “Don’t be obstinate.”

  Shade resented being forced to communicate like “jabbering” humans, but Wynn was determined to expand the dog’s vocabulary. The grueling process of memory-speak might be all right for fluent majay-hì accustomed to nothing else, but it wasn’t efficient enough for Wynn.

  Wrestling an animal bigger than a wolf would’ve made a sensible person hesitate, and yet . . . it didn’t stop Wynn from grabbing Shade’s tail.

  Shade whipped her head around with a snarl.

  Wynn didn’t let go. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Then Shade’s ears stood straight up. She looked across the room, rumbling low as her ears flattened again, and she scrambled up to all fours.

  Wynn released Shade’s tail and turned around, looking to the door.

  “Chane?” she called. “Is that you? Come in.”

  The door didn’t open, and Shade’s rumble turned to an open growl of warning.

  Before Wynn looked to the dog, the wall to the door’s left appeared to shift. She backed up until her calves bumped the bed.

  Gray wall stones bulged inward, as if something pushed through them.

  Wynn rushed for the corner beyond the door and grabbed the staff. She ripped the leather sheath off its top, exposing the long sun crystal, and thrust it out toward the rippling wall stones.

  Something like a cloak’s hood overshadowing a face surfaced out of the wall. Thudding footfalls landed upon floor stones, and a cloaked and stout hulk stood within the room, easily twice as wide as Wynn, but no taller. An overbroad hand swiped back the hood, and a stocky dwarf glowered at her, eye-to-eye.

  Wynn’s initial fright turned to anger. “What are you doing here?”

  Ore-Locks cast one glance toward Shade, who was still growling. Beardless, something uncommon for male dwarves, his red hair flowed to the shoulders of an iron-colored wool cloak. He looked young, perhaps thirty by human standards, so likely sixty or more for a dwarf. Wynn knew better still.

  Ore-Locks was older than that due to his life among the Hassäg’kreigi—the “Stonewalkers” of Dhredze Seatt.

  “Why do you still delay departure?” he asked, ignoring her question.

  She clenched her teeth. He’d left his own sect, determined to join her in search of Bäalâle Seatt, but she didn’t trust him. He was an even darker complication beyond dealing with the council.

  From what she’d gleaned of Bäalâle Seatt, its fall—its destruction—had been the work of a traitor. That one’s name had been forgotten long ago, and only a cryptic title in ancient Dwarvish remained: Thallûhearag, the “Lord of Slaughter.” Only Ore-Locks seemed to know his true name.

  Byûnduní—Deep-Root—had been a stonewalker of Bäalâle Seatt, just as Ore-Locks was in Dhredze Seatt. But the connection went deeper than that, for Ore-Locks claimed it was this spirit of his ancestor that had called him to sacred service as a stonewalker, a guardian and caretaker of the dwarves’ honored dead.

  Ore-Locks worshipped this genocidal traitor, claiming that Deep-Root—that Thallûhearag—was not a Fallen One, those who stood for the opposite of all that the dwarves’ Eternals represented.

  Chane claimed, by his truth sense, that Ore-Locks truly believed Deep-Root was no traitor. But there was no proof in mere believing. Knowingly or not, it all made Ore-Locks a potential tool of the Enemy through the spirit of a mass murderer. Perhaps he already was.

  Wynn wanted no part of him.

  Then she noticed his attire.

  He no longer wore a stonewalker’s black-scaled armor. He still bore their twin battle daggers on his belt, along with the new, broad dwarven sword in its sheath. But the long iron staff in his large hand was the first bad sign. He was dressed plainly in brown breeches and a
natural canvas shirt, and through the split of his cloak, Wynn saw the burnt orange, wool tabard.

  Stunned, she stared at his vestment. “What are you wearing?”

  “I am in disguise,” he answered quietly.

  That was something else about Ore-Locks; he didn’t behave like a typical dwarf. Most of his people were slow to anger and quick to laugh. They wore their emotions on their broad faces, their feelings expressed proudly with booming voices.

  Ore-Locks’s voice was too often low and quiet, his dark eyes devoid of his people’s heartfelt emotions. She could never be certain what lay behind his words. And while she wasn’t religious, his choice of disguise, that tabard and staff, were blasphemous.

  Ore-Locks had “disguised” himself as a holy shirvêsh of Bedzâ’kenge—“Feather-Tongue”—the dwarves’ saintly Eternal of history, tradition, and wisdom. That was as far removed from the deceits of Thallûhearag as possible.

  “Take that off,” she told him.

  “The shirvêsh of Feather-Tongue are well received in most northern lands. I do not wish to be noticed along the journey.”

  “I said . . . take it off.”

  Anyone who worshipped a servant of the Enemy had no business masquerading as a shirvêsh, a religious servant, of Feather-Tongue.

  “When do we leave?” he asked.

  “I never agreed to let you come.”

  “That was settled in fair barter with your companion.”

  Wynn glanced away.

  Chane had broken his sword trying to get them past a massive iron door because of her obsession with finding the Stonewalkers. When they’d returned to the guild, Ore-Locks had appeared. He’d brought Chane a new sword made of the finest dwarven steel, which Chane never could have afforded.

  Chane distrusted Ore-Locks only half as much as Wynn did, and he needed a new sword. At the offer of one of such craftsmanship, he hadn’t said a word to refuse it.