Chapter Three

It was well past dusk when the Cloud Queen made port in Soráno. Leesil was up on deck, while the others remained below.

Captain Bassett descended the aftcastle the moment the ramp was lowered to the pier. He was a thin, wiry man with gray stubble on his jaw and dressed in worn boots, an oiled hide jacket, and a battered brown hat. The captain kept his eyes averted when Leesil or any of his companions were on deck, as if he couldn’t bring himself to even look at them anymore.

Leesil, like Magiere, could hardly blame the captain.

“Call the rest of your group and get off,” Bassett said without preamble. “There’s plenty of time for you to find an inn tonight.”

Leesil suspected arguing was futile but still asked in his broken Numanese, “Stay tonight? Leave morning?”

“Off,” Bassett repeated.

Leesil headed for the aftcastle door to the passengers’ quarters below. When he reached the cabin he shared with Magiere and Chap, he found Magiere already packing. No surprise in that. She was dressed in her studded hauberk and cloak, with her falchion on her hip. She must have expected to be thrown off the moment they docked. Well, they all had.

“I take it Brot’an and Wayfarer are packing up, too?” he asked.

Magiere nodded without stopping, and her black hair fell forward over one shoulder, for she hadn’t tied it back. In the dim light of a single-candle lantern, Leesil could barely see the bloodred tints in her tresses. Her beautiful, pale features tightened with worry, always about everything from their journey’s success to the littlest tasks at hand . . . or the not-so-little things.

“Wayfarer will be fine,” Leesil assured her, and hoped he sounded more certain than he felt.

Magiere didn’t respond and continued stuffing their meager belongings into two packs and their small travel chest.

Leesil glanced at Chap, who was resting on one bunk and watching Magiere.

—The girl will . . . have . . . to be—

The dog’s words, drawn from Leesil’s own memories, rose in his mind: a new little trick learned from Wynn . . . and Shade, Chap’s daughter.

—We have . . . no choice . . . but to continue—

This time Leesil didn’t snap at Chap to stay out of his head.

Chap was right: they had no choice but to reach il’Dha’ab Najuum, the westernmost nation of the Suman Empire. There they hoped to find a first clue or lead to locating the orb of Air. Privately Leesil longed to forget everything about the orbs and go home to their little tavern, the Sea Lion, nearly halfway across the world. That wish was pointless.

Magiere would never give up the search, and wherever she went, he stayed at her side. When this was over—all over—he knew she would gladly go home with him, and they could finally have some peace together.

“That’s all of it,” she said, taking one pack and handing him the other before she hefted the small travel chest over her shoulder.

There was little else to say. If they stayed much longer, the captain would throw them off, one way or another.

Leesil shouldered his pack and picked up his weapons. As they headed into the passage, with Chap in the lead, Brot’an, followed by Wayfarer, stepped out of the next cabin. Both were ready as well, but fear was back in Wayfarer’s green eyes.

“Léshil,” she said, pronouncing his name in an’Cróan Elvish. “Must we?”

There was only one answer, one she didn’t want to hear—one he didn’t want to say. For all his resignation, he knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Magiere said nothing, either, and jutted her chin down the passage.

Chap nosed Wayfarer out ahead as the rest of them followed. Leesil was the last to come up on deck and find Alberto and Paolo standing under a glowing lantern. Behind them was a muscular dark-haired man; Dirken always seemed to wear that ever-serious expression.

Leesil and Magiere had rescued these three from a slave ship back in a cesspool of a port called Drist. Dirken had taken responsibility for both boys and managed to find all of them a place among the ship’s crew. His eyes fixed on Leesil.

“We have to stay,” he said.

“Of course,” Magiere answered. “It’s best for all of you.”

The last thing Leesil needed was two boys to watch over; keeping Wayfarer safe when none of them would ever truly be safe was hard enough. Still, he felt strange at saying farewell.

“Captain . . . is good man,” he said. “You have good life here.”

Dirken nodded once, but both boys stared at Wayfarer. Alberto’s lower lip trembled, and Paolo was pale with a tight expression. And, to make matters worse, as Wayfarer looked at each of them, none of them said anything.

The young often had no idea how to say good-bye or why it had to hurt.

Leesil had no false comfort to offer, such as You might see each other again. That would be a lie, as it would never happen, and he didn’t have the strength to sell a lie right now. Instead he took hold of Wayfarer’s hand.

“Don’t let go,” he told her in Belaskian.

She gripped down on his palm, and as the captain watched from the aftcastle, Leesil led everyone down the ramp and onto the pier. They left the Cloud Queen for the last time and walked into the port city of Soráno. This time Brot’an brought up the rear.

Leesil glanced back more than once to see the old assassin watching all around, perhaps even more than Chap did out ahead. Leesil never let down his own guard, though he knew there was little chance that any of the anmaglâhk team trailing them could have beaten them to this port. For tonight they were likely safe. As to the port itself, he had no idea what to expect.

This far south, the night air was warm, and the small city appeared orderly and well maintained. But as he strolled along with Wayfarer clinging to his hand, one startling thing about the people on the well-lit street sank in suddenly. Magiere beat him to the first words.

“They all look like Wynn,” she half whispered with shock.

She wasn’t wrong.

Fine boned but round and oval faced, these people weren’t as tall as the Numans of Malourné or as dark skinned as the few Sumans they had met. Nearly everyone walking past wore strange pantaloons, cotton vestment wraps, or long shifts of either white or soft colors to their ankles. But every one of them had olive-toned skin, and light brown hair and eyes, just like Wynn.

Even Chap, with ears pricked up, slowed a little ahead in watching the passersby. Wayfarer was staring a bit too much. Anyone walking by who noticed merely smiled with a slight nod.

“Did she come from here?” Leesil asked.

Chap looked back once, for he needed a sight line to answer. —I don’t know— . . . —She was . . . left . . . at the guild . . . as an infant—

Oddly Chap knew more about Wynn than anyone else did. Leesil recalled some mention of the troublesome little sage “growing up” at the guild. It suddenly bothered him that he’d never asked her more, perhaps because he didn’t like talking about his own childhood . . . as a slave and then a spy and assassin to a warlord.

Soráno’s streets were made of clean, cobbled, sandy-tan stone. Smaller open-air markets, rather than the big central ones of Leesil’s land or even those back in Malourné, popped up everywhere. Many stalls were still open for business, and everyone not on the move appeared to be some kind of merchant of dry goods or a farmer with a small harvest from a spring crop. The number of offerings for sale was overwhelming.

Arrays of olives, dried dates, fish, and herb-laced cooking oils were abundant. The scents on the air were spicy and unfamiliar. He slowed briefly as they passed stacked bolts of fabrics with wild, earthy patterns.

At the sight of glass bottles filled with oil and black olives, Leesil considered pausing for a purchase or two. Then he took a glance at Wayfarer.

Any surprise or puzzlement over so many people like Wynn was gone from the girl’s triangular face of tan elven features. The old fear of being among too many humans was clear to see there.

Leesil looked behind at Magiere and found her watching the girl as well.

“We should find an inn,” she said quietly, and he nodded.

So far Brot’an had been completely silent, and that left Leesil suspicious. The old anmaglâhk master continued his vigil.

Like Chap, Leesil still struggled for a way to be rid of Brot’an’s company. As yet, no opportunity had presented itself. As they headed down the strange street lit by glass lanterns that bulged like perfectly made pumpkins of pale yellows, oranges, cyans, and violets . . .

Brot’an quick-stepped past Leesil and even Chap to get ahead. He stopped one of the locals with a nod and raised hand.

“Can you direct us to an inn?” he asked in Numanese.

The fine-boned man in a long shift of saffron cotton over matching pantaloons looked up—and up—at the tall an’Cróan. After an instant of shock, he smiled and pointed down the way at a two-story tan building. Leesil couldn’t be sure, but the whole place looked as though it was all made of dried brown clay.

“Our thanks,” Brot’an said.

As the man shrugged with a smile and walked on, Brot’an didn’t move. Instead he glanced back, his amber eyes moving over Chap, Magiere, Leesil, and finally Wayfarer. He exhaled audibly.

“One more time we take rooms at an inn,” he said flatly, and the notion didn’t appear to please him. “Tomorrow we try to find another ship.”

In spite of Leesil’s disgust at ever agreeing with Brot’an, his thoughts echoed one more time. He wondered how many more times there would be until all of this was over, and they could finally go home.

• • •

Two evenings after Chane had given Wynn the scant description of the messenger, he once again sat in his room at the guild with little to do. After her cursory visit at dusk, she had taken that brooding elf to the main hall for supper.

Chane had no desire to join them, to sit at a crowded table, pretending to eat, while Wynn slathered pity all over Osha, who would pick at his food and speak to her in Elvish. Chane had already suffered through that once the night after Osha’s arrival. He would not repeat it again.

Instead he paged through a history text not intended for public use and fought to read the complex and compact Begaine symbols. If he could master these, he would be more help to Wynn in her research—unlike Osha. In fairness to Kyne, the girl was an adequate teacher, and her natural talent with texts and languages was enviable; he was progressing quickly enough.

Chane turned another page.

Later he was uncertain what pulled his attention.

Something made him look up to his room’s outer door . . . as the wall beside it appeared to shift. He grabbed the hilt of his longsword leaning against the desk and stripped off its sheath as he rose, his legs shoving his chair back with a scrape across the floor.

Gray wall stones bulged inward as something pushed through them. The color of stone flowed away as a cloak’s hood overshadowing a broad face surfaced out of the wall.

Chane relaxed—and frowned irritably—as he set his sword’s mottled dwarven steel blade on the desktop’s side.

Thudding footfalls landed upon floor stones. A cloaked and stout hulk, easily twice as wide as Wynn but no taller, stood within the room. One overly broad hand pulled back the hood, and a stocky dwarf looked Chane up and down after a glance at the sword.

“Could you not use the door for once?” Chane rasped.

“I did not wish to be heard knocking,” Ore-Locks replied. “Especially after our last outing in this keep.”

Chane had no response for that, considering what his . . . friend . . . ally . . . or something less definable had done in helping to free Wynn from confinement here not long ago.

Beardless, something uncommon for male dwarves, Ore-Locks’s red hair flowed to the shoulders of an iron-colored wool cloak. Though he looked young, perhaps thirty by human standards—so likely sixty or more for a dwarf—Chane knew better.

Ore-Locks was older than that, because of his life among the Hassäg’kreigi—the “Stonewalkers”—of Dhredze Seatt, the caretakers for their people’s honored dead. He no longer wore a stonewalker’s armor of steel-tipped black leather scales, though he still bore their twin battle daggers upon his belt. But the stout dwarven sword sheathed on his belt, and the long iron staff in his large hand, were both a bad sign.

Why would he feel the need to travel fully armed?

He was dressed plainly in brown breeches and a natural canvas shirt, and Chane saw the burnt-orange wool tabard through the split of the dwarf’s cloak. Again, not a good sign.

Ore-Locks had donned his past travel disguise as a holy shirvêsh of Bedzâ’kenge—“Feather-Tongue”—the Eternal, or dwarven saint, of history, tradition, and wisdom.

Chane had once been enemies with this dwarf, but by the end of their journey to Bäalâle Seatt—a fallen civilization of the dwarves—they had forged something between them that led to an unexplainable trust. Even Wynn had entrusted the dwarf with the safety of the orb of Earth.

However, Ore-Locks did not make social calls.

“What has happened?” Chane asked.

Ore-Locks leaned his iron staff against the wall and stepped closer. “Someone breached the underworld . . . managed to get through the portal below the market in Chemarré.”

“That is not possible.”

Frowning, Ore-Locks glanced away. “We think the would-be thief must have slipped through unseen when the portal was opened to bring down supplies.”

“Would-be thief?”

“Whoever it was headed straight for the . . . the spot through which Wynn was first taken to the hidden pocket in the earth where we store the ancient texts for the guild. The same place, with no physical entrance, where I had the orb hidden.”

Chane went silent, more than alarmed now.

Wynn had removed a small wealth of ancient texts—written by the first vampires to walk the world—from the library of the six-towered castle in the Pock Peaks of the eastern continent. This was the same place where Chane had stumbled upon the scroll that he brought to her later. Upon Wynn’s return to her own guild branch, her superiors had confiscated all the texts and given them to the Stonewalkers for safekeeping. One or two stonewalkers were occasionally given the task of bringing certain texts to the guild for the ongoing translation work.

This was done with great secrecy, and only guild superiors had access to the material.

At present Chane was far more worried about the orb.

“You have to move it,” he said.

Ore-Locks shook his head. “The orb is safe where it is. Only a member of my caste could walk through stone to it, let alone know where it is . . . though . . . that wall in line with the deeper cave pocket was where the interloper was spotted. All clan leaders and constabularies have been alerted with a description of the thief.”

“You do not have him in custody?”

Stonewalkers could move through any earth and stone, and nothing could elude them. They had once even pinned down the wraith Sau’ilahk.

Ore-Locks drew himself to full height with a long exhale. “No, she—or he—vanished.”

Chane’s whole body tightened: he had heard a similar uncertain description too recently.

“What do you mean, ‘she or he’?”

Ore-Locks settled in the chair before the desk as if weary, which was not like him. “I only caught the barest glimpse of the intruder. My brethren were closing in when the interloper simply disappeared. I had barely arrived at that particular cave and . . . was hit in the face by a strange wind. The others shared what they saw, claiming it was either a tall woman or a slender man, human by build and wearing a black cloak, gloves, and a mask. Master Cinder-Shard ordered a full search that uncovered nothing.”

Suddenly Chane needed to sit as well. Cinder-Shard was the leader of the Stonewalkers, the most skilled among them.

“When did this happen?”

“The night before last. I came as soon as I could after the search and preparations. When I did not find Wynn in her room, I came looking for you, as you should both be informed.”

Chane locked eyes with Ore-Locks. At a guess, Stonewalkers could make the journey here in less than a day by quickly passing through stone and earth. But there was something more disturbing about the timing of certain events.

“Three nights ago someone matching that description brought a message here for a young apprentice sage . . . from the young man’s homeland.”

Ore-Locks straightened up in his chair, his mouth partly open but silent as he stared at Chane.

Chane stood up, heading for the door. “We need to find Wynn. She must be told.”

Ore-Locks rose instantly. “I cannot be seen here. You know this.”

Chane looked back, seeing the torn expression on the dwarf’s face.

Ore-Locks might be an ally, but if his brethren learned that he had come here . . .

The Stonewalkers guarded their secrets with a vengeance. Should word get back to Cinder-Shard that Ore-Locks had been seen on guild grounds—with Chane or Wynn—then Ore-Locks could suffer serious consequences.

“I will tell her,” Chane said. “Go back before you are spotted. We will investigate from here and try to learn about this intruder . . . messenger . . . and the young sage who received the letters. There may be something more to that. I will let you know, if I can.”

Still appearing troubled, Ore-Locks retrieved his staff. “Do not fear for the orb. No one can reach it.”

“It was good to see you,” Chane said without thinking—and then felt uncomfortable about this, as it was so uncommon for him. Chane was thankful that Ore-Locks did not respond in kind and only nodded once before sinking into the room’s stone wall.

• • •

In the keep’s common hall, Wynn finished her supper of lentil stew and grain bread while attempting safe conversation with Osha—and that was becoming more difficult. Worse, Shade didn’t care for lentils, and, after a couple of halfhearted laps from her bowl on the floor, a broken barrage of memory-words kept popping into Wynn’s head.

—Meat?—

“No, this is all there is.”

—Fish?—

“Eat and just be quiet.”

—Cheese!—

Wynn sighed.

“Here,” Osha said, and he tossed a large piece of bread spread with thick butter at the dog.

He hadn’t needed any memory-words from Shade to understand, and she snapped the bread in midflight. It was gone in three chomps.

With a frown at Shade, Wynn rose from the bench. “Shall we take her outside?”

All around them, other sages glanced or outright stared at Osha. He had tried not to attract attention, but that was pointless.

As far as the company Wynn had kept here at the guild, Chane had been a curiosity and Shade more so. But Osha’s height, eyes, and more deeply tan skin and whiter blond hair than a typical Lhoin’na—the elves of this continent—drew far more attention than he or Wynn would have desired. And more so if any gawker knew from where he had truly come.

Still, Wynn felt it was best to drag him out of his room for supper. If nothing else, he was less likely to start prodding her about their past, although she still had many questions about what had happened to him, about his changes, since she’d left him nearly two years ago.

A walk in the courtyard would do him good as well. Together the three of them left the hall and made their way down the passage to the entry alcove. Just as they reached it, one of the huge main doors swung open.

Chane walked in, appearing openly relieved at the sight of her. Then he glowered briefly at Osha.

Wynn didn’t have time for the “boys” and their mutual distaste.

“Something happened?” she asked in alarm.

Chane looked both ways, and his gaze settled on the door of a nearby seminar room. “In there,” he rasped before walking over.

“Chane, no!” she whispered loudly. The room would be empty at this time, but Wynn did not like the idea of a premin or domin coming along and catching them talking.

“Hurry,” he insisted.

With her mouth pursed, she followed him in, and perhaps if Shade hadn’t been the last one to enter, Chane might have shut the door in Osha’s face.

Wynn pulled out her small cold-lamp crystal, swiped it hard down her robe for the heat of friction, and the crystal ignited with dull light. The small room was empty but for rows of wooden benches all facing two chairs and a single lectern at the back wall.

“What is wrong?” she whispered.

Chane glanced sidelong, just once, at Osha—who glared back—before he said, “Ore-Locks visited me only moments ago.”

At that Wynn fell silent and let Chane speak. Ore-Locks wouldn’t come here unless it was important. But as Chane recounted the story he’d heard from the dwarf, Wynn’s stomach began growing tighter and tighter.

That someone . . . someone else . . . had breached the dwarven underworld seemed impossible. That this someone had gone straight for the wall through which Wynn had been dragged to the ancient texts a season ago was even worse. When Chane assured her that the orb Ore-Locks held in custody was safe, that wasn’t quite enough to quell her fear.

Someone had somehow still known where to look for that orb and gone straight to that wall, even though only a stonewalker could reach the tiny pocket in the mountain that held the texts and the orb of Earth.

“The invader was briefly seen,” Chane added.

Panic took hold of Wynn again when Chane described the would-be thief.

“Ore-Locks is certain?” she managed to ask. “That’s what he saw?”

Osha and Shade were both quiet through this exchange, but Shade was watching Chane, and Osha was watching Wynn.

“Yes,” Chane answered, “though he only caught a glimpse of the invader with his own eyes. Others of his caste described someone attired too much like the messenger who brought letters for Nikolas and Premin Hawes.”

Wynn stood there trying to breathe.

“How far Dhredze Seatt?” Osha asked in Belaskian. “Enough time?”

That was exactly what was on Wynn’s mind. If the messenger and the would-be thief were the same person, then even if a ship had been prearranged and waiting . . .

“I do not think so,” Chane said. “There was not enough time to make the journey to the seatt, let alone breach the underworld, from when the letters were delivered.”

Perhaps the thief and messenger were not connected at all, and their similar appearances were a coincidence. After the past two years, and all that had happened surrounding the orbs, Wynn did not believe in coincidences.

A greater fear flooded her.

Only Sau’ilahk, the wraith, knew that the dwarven underworld was involved with the texts. Only he might guess at where an orb could be hidden, considering that Ore-Locks had been seen with her and Chane when they’d gone to Bäalâle Seatt. Sau’ilahk had even invaded the dwarven underworld in following Wynn there before she’d learned of that lost dwarven city.

The Stonewalkers had cast out Sau’ilahk, or at least they first thought he had been finished off. But what if it wasn’t the wraith but some other new minion? Sau’ilahk had been—was—a conjuror whose skills and power had grown over a thousand years.

Or . . .

Was another faction who served the Ancient Enemy now on the move, somehow having gained clues in trying to seek out orbs on this continent?

Either way, someone had brought Nikolas a message from his father, who in turn had requested texts on folklore going back as far as possible to the Forgotten History.

“I have to speak to Premin Hawes,” she said quietly. “Now.”

• • •

Down in Premin Hawes’s study, Wynn rambled out the entire story, the interloper and messenger descriptions, and all of her hypotheses while barely taking a breath. Shade stood listening at her side and for once wasn’t causing trouble or sniffing in corners where she shouldn’t.

Hawes sat in the corner armchair and listened with her typical cold expression, which could unnerve anyone. But when Wynn finished and finally sucked a breath, she was already too frantic to be affected by the premin’s chilling stare.

“What do you think?” she asked. “What should we do?”

Premin Hawes didn’t answer. Her gray-hazel eyes shifted, looking here and there but not at anything specific, at least as far as Wynn could tell.

“Domin High-Tower approved Nikolas’s leave of absence, along with funding,” she finally said. “Nikolas sails the day after tomorrow for the small port of Oléron on the southern end of Witeny’s coast. From there he can arrange transport by land to the duchy.”

The premin’s eyes came back to Wynn’s face.

“I cannot accompany him,” the premin added. “I have too much . . . There are preparations to finish for the pending expedition.”

Wynn started slightly. She knew exactly what “expedition,” as Hawes had told her of this guild secret in confidence. Some factions of the guild’s upper ranks were planning to launch a journey to the eastern continent, back to the Pock Peaks to the library of the six-towered castle, where Wynn had found the ancient texts. She’d brought back only a small fraction of what existed there.

This was beyond foolhardy for a pack of defenseless sages!

Magiere and Leesil had locked away a thousand-year-old Noble Dead—one of the first thirteen called the Children—in a cavern beneath that castle. Wynn had no certainty that the undead called Li’kän had not escaped, or would not.

Hawes had mentioned that the documented reason for the expedition would simply be to help expand and stock the small but growing guild annex in Bela, on the west coast of the eastern continent. However, Wynn suspected that Premin Hawes was working in quiet ways to ensure that the expedition never took place.

Wynn noticed that Shade had slipped around to her other side and now sat staring in the corner between Hawes’s old armchair and the back wall’s closest bookcase.

“Shade,” she whispered, patting her leg.

The dog looked up, glanced once more into that hidden corner, and finally sidled over next to Wynn.

“You will go with Nikolas,” Hawes said suddenly. “If there is a connection between the messenger and the other who breached the Stonewalkers’ realm . . .”

The premin never finished, but Wynn knew what was expected of her, what she had wanted in the first place: to go with Nikolas and find any trail to anyone after the orbs. She was then caught off guard by a strange sight.

Premin Hawes’s eyes wandered again, and her smooth brow wrinkled so slightly. It was the closest thing to worry that Wynn had ever seen on the face of the premin of Metaology.

“Of course I’ll go,” Wynn said, “with my companions. I’ll need them.”

Hawes actually flinched, which made Wynn do so as well, as the premin came out of whatever deep thought had distracted her.

Premin Hawes was definitely not her usual self this night, and she pointed to a bulky oiled canvas satchel on her desk.

“There are the requested texts for Master Columsarn’s eyes only,” she said, “though you should familiarize yourself with them. You will have to watch over Nikolas in whatever lies ahead.”

Wynn nodded as she picked up the satchel, but before she could turn to leave, the premin continued.

“Domin High-Tower and Premin Sykion are worried about Nikolas’s state. He has physically recovered from the assault by the wraith, but there are concerns. I should have minimal trouble gaining permission for your leave of absence, since you are now under my charge and will be on an errand for me, traveling to the same destination as Nikolas. High Premin Sykion will likely be glad to have you off someplace else.” She rose, stepped to the desk, opened a drawer, and took out a pouch. “I will arrange passage on Nikolas’s ship for the three of—”

“Four of us,” Wynn corrected. Whether she wanted Osha along or not, she couldn’t see how she could leave him behind.

“As you wish.” Hawes returned and handed over the pouch. “There is enough for your travel expenses when you land.”

Wynn looked inside the pouch. There were far more coins than any stipend she had ever received—would have received—from the guild.

“Premin . . . this is your own money. I cannot—”

“Take it,” Hawes ordered. “I have no need of it, and this is too important a matter.”

The premin gestured toward the short three-step passage to the door. Wynn nodded and turned to leave as Shade stepped out ahead of her. They had barely walked out into the courtyard when Wynn halted and turned to Shade.

“Anything?” she asked.

Shade shook her head, a too-humanlike response.

Wynn sighed, though she hadn’t truly expected Shade to succeed. The dog couldn’t catch actual conscious thoughts. But like her father, Chap, if Shade focused on someone, she could pick up fleeting memories rising in anyone’s mind, so long as she wasn’t distracted in nosing about.

There were very few people Wynn had ever encountered who could hide surfacing memories from Shade. Chane was one, but only because of the brass “ring of nothing,” stolen from Welstiel Massing, Magiere’s undead half brother, that he wore.

Premin Frideswida Hawes was another.

Much as such subterfuge was ungrateful, considering all that Hawes had done, Wynn needed to know as much as she could about what was going on inside her guild branch . . . and anything the premin of Metaology might be hiding.

—Satchel . . . more . . . books—

Wynn started slightly at Shade’s memory-words. “I have it, and . . . what other books?”

Shade slipped in close and tucked her nose under Wynn’s palm. At that touch a memory rose in Wynn’s mind, and it wasn’t her own. This was something unique that Shade could do only with Wynn.

Wynn—Shade—sat off to one side and peeked behind Premin Hawes’s armchair, as she had moments before in the study. In that hidden space between the chair and the bookcase’s end was a large drawstring sack rather than an actual satchel. The way it bulged with square edges suggested there were possibly books inside of it. Many such.

Shade pulled her nose away and sat staring up. The image vanished instantly.

—Other . . . satchel— . . . —Other . . . books—

Wynn was lost as to what this meant. The only books needing packaging were the ones she held, so what were the others for? Then she thought of the expedition.

—Many spaces in . . . shelves— . . . —Missing . . . books—

Wynn wasn’t certain what Shade meant. Among supplies to be taken to the little guild branch in Bela, situated in a decommissioned city guard barracks, there would be many newly copied texts to increase its holdings. Those would be packaged in crates for the long journey across this continent and the eastern ocean. Such books wouldn’t come from any private library of . . .

Wynn turned, staring at the door that led back into the storage building . . . and to the stairs leading down to the laboratories and Premin Hawes’s private study.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

Premin Hawes had packed books from her own library. There was only one reason for that: she was going with the expedition. That meant that she had failed to stop the other sages from launching the journey.

Wynn grew frantic, trying to think of a way to warn everyone off of this foolishness. But even if she did, that would reveal she knew something she wasn’t supposed to know. And there was the messenger, the invader into the dwarves’ underworld, and Nikolas, and all of whatever was now rising around her search for an orb.

Why was it that no matter what she did, there would always be a price?

• • •

After Wynn had gone off to speak with this Premin Hawes, Osha returned to the solitude of his room to get away from Chane. Though he had said little during the exchange between Wynn and Chane, he had understood the magnitude of what that undead had recounted.

Something was about to happen. Osha simply did not know what. So he waited, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room. His mind had just achieved a state of stillness when he heard light footsteps in the passage outside.

Someone knocked on his door.

Osha rose fluidly and reached the door in one long step. It would be Wynn, as only she ever came to see him.

So it was when he opened the door. She slipped inside along with the black majay-hì, and Osha took in the sight of Wynn’s pretty oval face and olive-toned skin. There was worry, maybe even fright, there, though he did not know where it came from.

Had Chane done something?

“We’re leaving the day after tomorrow,” she blurted out in Elvish. “Premin Hawes is sending us with the young sage I mentioned, Nikolas. There is not much time to prepare, but his passage has already been arranged. The premin thinks she can get us on the same ship.”

“I could leave tonight if you asked,” he said, motioning around the room. “I have little to pack.”

Although Osha was uncertain this journey would lead to anything of use, his relief at the prospect of traveling outside this guild was profound. But even with Wynn’s excitement, there was still that strange concern on her face.

To his surprise, she appeared relieved by his reply.

“You do not mind?” she asked. “You will come with us to protect Nikolas and help me with what might be a wild-goose chase?”

He did not understand what geese had to do with any of this, but her words made him almost angry. Why did she think he had come here if not to help her?

Perhaps his own expression betrayed him.

She stepped closer, and it seemed that her concern, her worry, was suddenly focused on him. Then she glanced away at the long, canvas-wrapped bundle at the end of his bed.

“Before we leave,” she began, “could you tell me something of what happened to you since we parted on the docks of Bela? This might prove a dangerous journey, and I feel . . . I feel like I do not know you anymore. You have changed.”

“And so have you,” he returned. It sounded bitter to his own ears, and he swallowed hard.

What if he was wrong? What if the chasm between them was due to how much he had changed and not her?

“What caused this change in you?” she asked, barely above a whisper, and she glanced at the wrapped bundle at the bed’s end.

The black majay-hì called Shade never blinked as she watched him. And Wynn looked back to him as well. Now there was as much expectation in her small, brown human eyes as there was frantic worry on her face.

Though she asked what had changed him, perhaps when would have been the better question.

Well over a year ago, he had still been an anmaglâhk in his homeland on the eastern continent, as he had tried to find some purpose to his life while in the main enclave of the Coilehkrotall clan and the dwelling of Leanâlhâm and the old healer Gleannéohkân’thva. He had come to bring them tragic tidings: the death of their loved one, the great Sgäilsheilleache, who had also been Osha’s jeóin, or mentor, for his final training.

Osha had been determined to stay and help them heal, if he could. In this way he could atone for having brought them such news. But also he needed to do so, for he could not face his own losses in all that had happened.

Only a few days after his arrival, the greimasg’äh—Brot’ân’duivé—had uprooted him by showing him a small, smooth stone sent by the Chein’âs—the Burning Ones. Brot’ân’duivé told him what was etched upon the stone in claw marks—“a sudden breeze.”

It was the meaning of the name “Osha” had taken when he had gone to the ancestors’ burial ground as a youth for his name-taking.

He was being summoned for a second time to the Chein’âs.

They lived in the lava-heated depths of the mountains bordering the an’Cróan’s southern territories. Once young initiates completed basic training and received approval by the caste’s elders to stand among the caste, word was sent to the Chein’âs via the Séyilf—the Windblown, winged people. When new weapons and tools were ready, the Chein’âs sent a stone—a summons—to a caste elder among the Anmaglâhk. One elder then guided the initiate on a journey to the fiery cavern to receive those precious gifts.

Like all newly approved Anmaglâhk, Osha had received his weapons and thereby was allowed to seek out an experienced member of the caste as a jeóin to finish his training. He had known even before then that he wanted no one but the great Sgäilsheilleache for his mentor.

But young anmaglâhk were never summoned a second time.

Something was very wrong, yet he dared not refuse . . . even if he had known then what waited for him at the end of that second journey.

“Tell me,” Wynn pressed, inching closer. “Please . . . What happened to you?”

Even at the sight of her eager, worried eyes, he could not answer, though he wanted to. To do so would only widen the chasm between them, and he needed to cross that before he could take such a risk. And he needed to know why she had changed so much in so many ways: another wayward majay-hì at her side, the strange robe she now wore, and . . . that undead thing who went everywhere with her.

Osha turned away. “I will be ready to leave when you are.”

At her sudden intake of breath, he could not bear to look back at any disappointment on her face, though he almost did. Instead, in that quick flinch, he found the black majay-hì still watching him.

• • •

After delivering the news to Osha and then Chane concerning their impending departure, Wynn retreated to her room with Shade and sank onto her bed. She knew she had preparations to make, especially informing Nikolas of the change in plan. But somehow she didn’t think he would object to having her company foisted upon him on this journey. Even if he did, he certainly wouldn’t argue with Premin Hawes.

Wynn had what she needed: the freedom to seek out this messenger and the invader into the Stonewalkers’ realm. Though they were described in the same way, she doubted they could be the same person, due to the distance between their two closely timed appearances.

She tried not to think too much more on that . . . or on all the implications connected to Nikolas’s father in the attempt to reach one of the orbs. No, in this moment, she couldn’t help the rising sadness when Osha had seemed on the brink of finally telling her about things that mattered.

She’d watched him close himself off before her eyes. She shouldn’t have asked so much of him in the middle of everything else.

Now that she, Chane, and Shade—and Osha—would embark on a journey where they had to depend on one another, she had no idea what scars or damage Osha was hiding. They could not afford any complications.

Shade whined and pressed herself against Wynn’s leg.

“What is it?” she asked, reaching out to stroke the dog’s head.

An image flashed in her mind.

She was inside a great tree dwelling, like those of the an’Cróan homes, and in the bottom of her view were knees—her knees in that moment—covered in forest gray pants of worn cloth. This wasn’t Shade’s memory, though Wynn recognized the home of Gleannéohkân’thva and Leanâlhâm.

Directly in front of her, Leanâlhâm was weeping. For an instant Wynn fought the strange memory passed to her by Shade.

—From . . . Osha—

Shade was passing on something she’d seen in Osha, which meant Wynn was seeing through Osha’s eyes. Hoping to see more, she gripped the fur on Shade’s back.

The scene changed.

Wynn—Osha—stood before Brot’an, and the elder anmaglâhk’s face was visibly tense as he held out a small black polished stone.

Wynn—Osha—said to him, “I already made my journey to them years past to receive my weapons and tools. Why do you show me that?”

“Now they have called you back.”

“No!” Osha cried. “They call us once, when the elders of our caste approve an initiate to seek out a jeóin. That stone is a mistake!”

“There are no such mistakes,” lashed a soft voice.

Outside the memory, Wynn gasped. Within the memory, Osha turned his head to see Leesil’s beautiful mother, Cuirin’nên’a, standing in an archway while holding its curtain aside.

“You are summoned,” she said. “This is our caste’s way, and the way of our people’s elders, based on covenants with the Burning Ones, whom we protect along with the Windblown. This is part of our people’s ways as well. And in keeping them, this is part of what your jeóin died to uphold!”

Within the memory, Wynn felt Osha’s rush of pain as if it were hers. He was being torn from this place, from Gleannéohkân’thva and Leanâlhâm, and he did not want to go.

The image vanished.

Wynn saw only the stone walls and door of her little room.

“Shade!” she cried, gripping the dog’s face. “More! Did you see more?”

With a whine, Shade huffed twice for no, and Wynn sagged.

What did it all mean? Somehow, after returning to the an’Cróan territories, Osha had gone to the enclave of the Coilehkrotall. He had probably just delivered news of Sgäile’s death, for Leanâlhâm had been crying. And then, in some other moment, Brot’an had shown him the small polished stone from the Chein’âs. And Leesil’s mother had insisted that Osha obey Brot’an.

“Oh, Shade,” Wynn whispered, looking at the dog.

At least she had a place to start that she might subtly use to get Osha to tell her more. As to what Osha wanted from her, she didn’t dare think of that now.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 601