Of Truth And Beasts Part 4

"What is . . . a muhkgean branch?" he asked.

"A mushroom grown by the dwarves," she answered. "Its cap spreads in branched protrusions that splay and flatten at the ends."

"Like leaves?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Yes, that might come to mind in looking at one. But I know of no medicinal purpose for them."

This left another puzzle for Chane. To his knowledge, there were no dwarves in his part of the world. So how would those healer monks have known of this mushroom, let alone what it was called by dwarves?

"What of this . . . an-os . . . a-nas-ji . . ."

Chane still struggled with the last of the seven terms. It was not Belaskian, old or contemporary Stravinan, or any language he knew. When Hawes said nothing, he looked up.

She was scrutinizing him again, as if deciphering him like some ancient tome.

"What is this text to you?" she demanded.

"A curiosity. I would think any bit of recovered knowledge would interest a sage as much, if not more. Are these ingredients for something? Is it a type of healing salve, like I have seen Wynn sometimes carry?"

"Not a salve . . . a draught, a liquid concoction, at a guess."

She paused long, never even blinking, and Chane grew unnerved. Before he spoke, she cut him off.

"I'm uncertain of the full process, since it isn't described in detail. By your translations, the text contains only cryptic references, perhaps key points or reminders of some more explicit procedure. It does not appear to be thaumaturgical-or, rather, alchemical-in nature, so perhaps a mundane process."

Chane sagged a bit. Even for these grains of knowledge gained, he had hoped for something more conclusive. His own body was almost indestructible, but Wynn's was not. He would use anything that might keep her whole and sound. Yet if Hawes could not decipher the process hinted at, what chance would he have to do so? He was no thaumaturge, let alone highly skilled as a conjurer. He worked mostly by ritual, sometimes spell, and rarely ever artificing, even in its most common subpractice of alchemy.

"What is this seventh item?" he asked again.

Open suspicion surfaced in Hawes's expression.

"Anasgiah . . . is perhaps Old or even Ancient Elvish," she said, correcting his failed p.r.o.nunciation. "I found no translation for it, though I've heard something similar. Anamgiah, the 'life s.h.i.+eld,' is a wildflower in the lands of the Lhoin'na."

Chane wanted more, but clearly Hawes's patience thinned with each answer. Instead of pressing her on this, he picked up the second sheet of his scribbled marks before her patience ran out. This one he had shown her with hesitation; it concerned a starkly different topic.

"And this list," he said. "Do you know any of these ingredients?"

Hawes whispered in warning, "What kind of . . . man . . . carries works of healing, only to stack them with something of deadly harm?"

Malice flickered so openly across her stern features that Chane tensed.

"It is a poison, as a whole?" he asked. "Or is only one component so?"

He already knew some ingredients for Welstiel's violet concoction were benign. Others baffled him, particularly the flower he knew as Dyvjka Svonchek-"boar's bell" in Belaskian. Hawes might be as puzzled as she was suspicious.

"Do you know the flower?" he urged. "Perhaps by a name other than those I translated?"

In one quick step, Hawes closed on him.

"Who are you?" she demanded. "And make no mistake: I have no fear of you!"

Her claim was obvious, though Chane could only guess how skilled she might be beyond what he had seen. After their encounter at the council chamber, it made him wonder again why she had a.s.sisted him at all.

"You do not agree with the way the guild has treated Wynn," he said, hoping to throw her off balance.

"Agreement is irrelevant," she returned instantly. "The guild's purpose comes first. Answer my question."

To Chane, there were few who mattered among the common herds of human cattle. Fewer still who would be a loss at their death. Wynn was foremost among these.

Hawes was obviously well beyond the unworthy ma.s.ses, and beyond many here within the guild's walls. Had he stumbled upon a hidden, if adversarial, ally that Wynn had not recognized?

"I am the one who keeps Wynn safe," he answered.

Hawes lifted only her eyes, not her head, glaring up at him, as if his superior height were nothing but an annoyance.

"It has been called Lechelppa," she said.

Chane frowned. It sounded Numanese, but he could not translate it in his head.

"Corpse-Skirt," she added in different terms. "It was used by some in the past as a common way to draw out and kill vermin . . . foolishly, considering livestock were attracted to it. I know of no one who carries it or sells it . . . or would be allowed to do so."

So it was known in this part of the world.

Chane was grateful for the information, but one thing disturbed him. Hawes openly discussed an illegal substance, but she never asked what this second deadly concoction was for. This left him wary.

He slowly reached out and took the list of components from The Seven Leaves of Life out of her hand. Clutching the book and his note sheets, he held up the gla.s.ses, peering once through their clear lenses.

"My thanks," he said. "I am late in meeting Wynn."

If his sudden desire to leave startled the premin, she did not show it. She c.o.c.ked her head to the side, still eyeing him, and simply nodded.

Without another word, Chane strode out and down the pa.s.sage. Late as he was, his own quarters were close, so he took both flights of stairs two at a time. Fumbling briefly with the key to unlock his guest quarters, he went directly to the desk, hiding the gla.s.ses and his other burdens in a lower drawer. As Chane turned to leave, his gaze fell upon Wynn's stacked journals, and he winced.

The mere sight of them hurt for what he had found-or rather not found-in their pages.

At first, he had allowed Wynn to work with him, helping him interpret so many symbols he could not follow. The further he traveled within her stories of the Farlands, the more he wanted to study and absorb her writings by himself. He later took to struggling alone in his own room with copious notes made in her company.

Doing so without her a.s.sistance was daunting, but he began to grasp the syllabary's premise of compressing and simplifying multiple letters into symbols of fewer and fewer continuous strokes. These were combined with special marks to account for p.r.o.nunciations and special sounds in any language. It was all elegant, concise, adaptable, and so much could be condensed within a single page.

Fascinated as he was by each of the experiences he wrested from the symbols, something odd began to trouble him. Soon he stopped paying attention to actual events, paged backward, and focused on her accounts of the n.o.ble Dead, most specifically the vampires.

She wrote of Toret-Chane's own maker-once called Rat-Boy, and of Sapphire, Toret's doxy. There were many pa.s.sages concerning Welstiel Ma.s.sing, Magiere's half-brother, and Li'kn, that ancient undead now trapped beneath the castle in the Pock Peaks' frozen heights. Wynn wrote of the feral monks Welstiel had created to fight his battles as they had raced for that castle. She even recounted meeting a vampire boy named Tomas in a decaying fortress outside of Apudlsat in Magiere's homeland.

Chane paged faster, but some of Wynn's encounters with the undead that he knew of were missing.

At times, he had been an intricate part of her life-of her stories. But she had omitted how he had protected her from an undead sorcerer named Vordana, simply noting that Vordana escaped to be later destroyed by Leesil. She omitted how he had saved her from two mindless undead sailors in those same swamps and marshes. The account of Magiere severing his head was missing entirely.

As for the orb's discovery, guarded by the deceptively frail Li'kn, Chane found only a mention of "another undead" in Welstiel's company. And, that in the end, one of Welstiel's "servants" had betrayed him. That one was never described, let alone named.

It had been Chane himself. There were so many holes in the tales, and he felt as if he were falling through all of them at once into nothing.

Chane Andraso was not mentioned once in the journals of Wynn Hygeorht.

Standing in the guest quarters' silence, he could not bear to pick them up again. As if touching them would make the truth all the more real. Wynn had written these journals as if he never existed. All record of him had been blotted away from later becoming a reminder to anyone, especially to her. Chane did not need to ask why.

He was a thing not suitable for her world.

That realization-that intentional omission of him-cut him worse than Magiere's falchion severing his head. Yet he could not leave Wynn.

His place was at her side for as long as she would allow him. He swallowed the pain and locked it away, but he still could not touch those journals again.

Chane left the guest quarters, heading out across the courtyard to the old barracks that served as a dormitory, trying not to let himself think. As he reached the dormitory's second floor and Wynn's door, a part of him did not want to see her. But he always went to her just past dusk. He stood there for a while before he could finally knock.

"I am here," he rasped.

Chane heard Wynn's quick footsteps within the room trotting closer to let him in.

CHAPTER 3.

The following afternoon, Wynn sat in a deep alcove of the archives with Shade on the floor beside her. She was searching for anything to help locate Balle Seatt, but her efforts gained her little.

She'd found an older map of the western Numan lands, all the way to the Rdrshernd, the "Sky-Cutter" mountain range blocking the southern desert and Suman Empire beyond. Paging through a sheaf of obscure dwarven ballads, she found one that mentioned something called the g'uyll. It didn't pertain to what she was after, but stuck in her head just the same.

The dialect was so old that the meaning was only a guess-something like "all-eater(s)" or "all-consumer(s)." At first, it seemed some ancient reference to goblins, but the verse hinted at ma.s.sive size.

Wynn tried to keep sharply focused, but her thoughts kept wandering.

Last night, Chane had acted more strangely than ever when he'd finally arrived. He'd paced about, barely speaking to her. When she'd asked him again what was wrong, he wouldn't answer. She'd tried talking to him, but pus.h.i.+ng him harder seemed to make things worse. And for the first time, he hadn't mentioned the wraith-Sau'ilahk-even once. After only a few moments, he'd left early on more errands.

So what had he been worried about?

Wynn felt quite alone in the world except for Shade and Chane, but he was making her nervous about the journey ahead.

Shade's ears suddenly perked. She raised her head to peer at the alcove's archway.

"What is it?" Wynn asked, looking up. Then she heard shuffling footsteps.

"Young Hygeorht?" a reedy voice called.

"Here," she called back.

Light grew upon the shelves outside the archway, and Master Trpodious shuffled into view in his sagging, old gray robe. As someone who rarely ventured into the light of day, Trpodious's wrinkled skin looked almost pallid. With a glimmering cold lamp in his boney hand, the effect was even starker, like an apparition gliding through a dark, abandoned library. He blinked at her, his milky eyes enlarged by his oversized spectacles.

"Ah, there you are," he said.

Wynn stood up. "Is something wrong?"

"No, no, just an initiate down with a message. High-Tower wants to see you in his study."

A hollow formed in Wynn's stomach. Had the council finally made its decision? She glanced at the stacks of books and sheaves on the small table.

"I'll see to those," Trpodious said, voice crackling like rumpled paper. "Don't keep High-Tower waiting.... He might swallow his own tongue."

Wynn half smiled at his jest and gathered up her journal, quill, and cold lamp.

"Did the initiate say anything else?" she asked.

"No, just to go straightaway." Trpodious began pus.h.i.+ng sheets back into a sheaf. "Off with you."

She nodded and headed out with Shade. The prospect of a private meeting with High-Tower wasn't attractive, but perhaps the stalemate with the council had finally ended-one way or another.

Crossing the old archivist's entry chamber, Wynn reached the stairs before Shade and hiked her robe's hem as she hurried upward. The stairs actually ended at the base of the northern tower, where High-Tower's study was two levels up the next spiraling staircase. She stopped at the landing before his door, all the more anxious over what he would say. Her entire future could be decided within moments.

Shade whined.

"I know," Wynn said, and, unable to hesitate any longer, she knocked.

"Come," someone called in a deep voice.

Wynn opened the door. She'd expected to find him at his desk, but he stood before one of the narrow window slits in the nearer stone wall. His ma.s.sive bulk blocked most of late afternoon's light. She'd learned basic Dwarvish under his tutelage, and he had been fond of her . . . once. Now, the only emotion left between them was a constant exchange of suspicion, if not open animosity.

"You asked for me?" she said, stepping inside. Shade followed, and Wynn closed the door.

Without a glance in her direction, High-Tower headed to his desk and picked up what looked like two wax-sealed, folded parchments.

"The council is sending you south," he said, his voice more gravelly than usual. "You'll deliver two messages along the way."

Wynn's small mouth parted, but she was too stunned to speak, and High-Tower went on.

"One is for Domin Yand of the small annex at Chathburh . . . the other is for High Premin T'ovar of the Lhoin'na branch-immediately upon your arrival there."

"Messages?" she repeated.

The council hadn't simply granted her request; they were giving her two tasks.

"I've booked pa.s.sage for you," he went on, "and the majay-h and your . . . companion. A Numan merchant vessel is bound for Chathburh. From there, you'll travel inland, south to the northern tip of the Lhoin'na lands. Stay inside their forests all the way to a'Ghrihln'na, their southern capital."

"Inland . . . from Chathburh?" Wynn asked.

Regional maps were fresh in her mind. If she disembarked at Chathburh, she'd be forced to cross most of Witeny and the Tillan Ridge at its southern border. The overland trip alone would take several moons, barring complications from oncoming winter and delays in the sea voyage.