Of Truth And Beasts Part 47

He looked back to find Wynn hurrying over, with Shade trailing her.

"Where is Ore-Locks?" he asked.

She pointed. "He headed off behind that statue, looking for a way onward." Then she leaned closer, lowering her voice. "Does it feel like he led us here, like he knew where he was going?"

Wynn watched him expectantly.

"That is not possible," he answered, though doubt crept in. The dwarf had brought them directly to this hall.

"Is he leading us where he wants to go?" Wynn asked, not letting the notion drop. "Does he know more than he's told us . . . perhaps even about the orb?"

Chane had never truly cared what Ore-Locks wanted here. It had sometimes seemed the dwarf simply wished to know if the seatt was just a myth or if anything could be learned of his long-dead ancestor. It had not occurred to Chane that Ore-Locks might also be seeking the orb.

If so, Wynn was in more danger than Chane had thought. His first instinct was to take her from here, by force if necessary. But she would never forgive him.

"If he knows . . . anything," Wynn continued, "all the more reason to follow him, since I don't know where to look."

Shade growled in obvious disagreement, but Wynn turned and headed toward the effigies.

Chane checked both his swords for a smooth draw before hurrying after her. At the first sign of treachery, he would take Ore-Locks suddenly, killing the dwarf before he could react. That would end this foolish exploit.

"Ore-Locks," Wynn called.

"Here."

They rounded the last of the statues, the only female among them, and Ore-Locks stood before another archway. The dwarf's expression had altered, filled with relief or satisfaction. Then Chane took a better look at the archway.

Set deep between the thick frame stones was a panel of old, marred iron with a worn seam down its middle. The panel fully filled the arch, slipping into the wall on either side through a thick slot. It would be at least an inch thick, with two more like ones behind it. There was no lock, handle, or latch, nor brackets for a bar, and there would not be on the other side, either.

Chane knew those panels would open only for a certain set of individuals. His hand dropped to his sword hilt as he eyed Ore-Locks.

This portal matched the same impa.s.sable barriers they had once faced in Dhredze Seatt. One way or another, all black iron portals led to the underworld of the Stonewalkers.

Wynn became more suspicious of Ore-Locks by the moment. He was looking for something specific down here-and it wasn't effigies of the Byn. His steady progress was beginning to border on manic, and he appeared to know where he was going, as if he had been here before.

"This must be opened from the other side," Ore-Locks said.

Wynn remembered how Ore-Locks's superior, Cinder-Shard, had pa.s.sed right through such a portal. The master stonewalker had opened it by manipulating a series of rods in the wall on the other side that functioned as a complex lock. And Ore-Locks knew very well how these doors worked.

Panic hit Wynn as she realized he was about to pa.s.s through the wall. What if he didn't unlock the portal? The look of satisfaction on his broad face could only mean he was getting close to whatever he sought here. What if he just abandoned them and went on alone?

"Take Chane with you," she said. "You don't know what you'll find, or even if you can unlock it. You may need him to help force the portal open."

"I am not leaving you alone," Chane argued.

Ore-Locks turned his head, looking at Wynn. "No one could force a portal . . . it would take a dozen warrior thn, and even they might fail. If I cannot open it . . . I will return."

His tone dared Wynn to challenge his word. She didn't trust him, and he knew it. She tried to think of another way to stall him until she came up with something, anything else they could try.

Ore-Locks stepped straight into the iron and vanished.

"No!" she cried, slapping her hand against the portal, sending a thrum through the great hall. "Chane, why wouldn't you go? Now there's no one watching him, and we cannot follow."

"I am not about to be trapped on the other side, away from you."

How could he be so calm? Then another thought occurred to Wynn.

The locks for these portals had a combination for which rods were pushed or pulled into differing positions. Cinder-Shard, as master stonewalker of Dhredze Seatt, had likely set those combinations himself. How could Ore-Locks possibly know the combination here, set by a master stonewalker a thousand or more years ago?

She realized he'd never intended to bring her through, and panic threatened to overwhelm her. Had she come all this way to be left behind?

A rumbling grind of metal on stone made her lurch back.

The iron panel split, its halves slowly grating away into the frame stones on either side. The noise increased as the second, and then the third panel followed.

The portal was open, and Ore-Locks stood dead center, looking out at Wynn.

CHAPTER 23.

Chuillyon led the way through the decaying, empty tram station and into a tunnel. He saw an archway ahead but was unprepared for the sight beyond it-a domed cavern as large as a small town.

"Oh, my," Hannschi breathed.

Chuillyon stared up at the remnants of walkways that had once stretched between remaining columns as thick as some old trees of his people's forests. Column fragments and the ruins of huge stairways lay piled and scattered everywhere.

Even malnourished and exhausted, Hannschi's awe and wonder were plain to see. Shodh, however, appeared singularly unimpressed. He stepped through the rubble, glancing once at a skeleton still wearing a thrhk.

"Fewer bodies here," he noted dispa.s.sionately.

Chuillyon almost winced, thinking of the grim fate of these lost dwarven ancestors.

"Did Wynn come through here?" he asked.

Shodh paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. His exhale thrummed briefly in his throat, and Hannschi crouched beside a set of broken bones.

"So much death," she said quietly. "What happened here?"

"No one knows . . . as yet," Chuillyon answered.

She looked up, but her long hair and cowl covered half her face.

"This is the greatest archaeological find of our time," she went on. "Balle is no myth. If there is evidence here-amid all of this-then we will have proof the war did take place . . . that it was not, is not, some overblown legend."

Shodh's eyes opened, and he looked down at her with the barest frown.

In truth, Chuillyon had so single-mindedly followed Wynn that he had forgotten this possibility. But Hannschi was only half-right.

"Such information must be kept from the public," Shodh stated before Chuillyon could express the same notion.

Hannschi rose and turned to Shodh with her mouth set tightly. Clearly, she did not need his reminder, and seemed about to tell him so. This was not the time for a spat-although one might come later. Chuillyon decided not to mention it yet, but, in truth, even few of his peers at the guild could be told of this place until he understood more himself.

"Did she come through here?" he asked again.

Shodh nodded once. "But we have another problem. I sense three distinct lives. The journeyor's protector cannot be one of them, and the majay-h's presence is different. That leaves her and the dwarf."

"And so?" Chuillyon asked.

"Someone else is here, either with her or near her."

This was all Chuillyon needed: one more unknown variable. "Which way?" he asked.

Shodh pointed south. "Do we follow?"

Chuillyon fought an urge to snap at him for that same tiresome question. Did Shodh think they were going home to announce their great find and bathe in glory? They were here to learn what Wynn was after.

When Chuillyon did not answer, Shodh held out his hand, helping Hannschi over a pile of loose rubble. He kept hold of her hand as he led the way across the cavern. Chuillyon never missed these small familiarities between them. Neither had he ever commented on them. But that might have to change.

They pa.s.sed more crumbling stairways and fragmented columns . . . and more remains of the long dead. After a good distance, Shodh slowed, but he did not sink into meditation again. He gestured toward an archway at the cavern's south wall.

Just inside of it lay a small pile of blankets and canvas bags.

Chuillyon hurried over to see inside the tunnel.

Chane stepped through the portal last, finding himself in a narrow pa.s.sage. Ore-Locks walked to an open recess near the door that held the grid of metal rods exposed by a sliding metal panel.

"No," Chane said quickly. "Do not close the portal."

Ore-Locks eyed him in surprise. "It will bar any pursuit if we are still followed."

"It will also lock us in. If we are forced to flee, we may not have time to stop and open it. Leave it open."

The dwarf did not appear convinced, but Chane had no intention of allowing him near those rods. Should Ore-Locks close the panel, he could leave them entombed and trapped.

Wynn held up her cold lamp crystal, illuminating the pa.s.sage. "Chane's right. There's been no sign of followers since the vibrations on the tram tracks. Ore-Locks, what if you get hurt . . . or worse? The rest of us will be trapped with no means to get ourselves . . . or you out."

Her argument was rational and logical, and far less accusatory than what Chane was thinking. Ore-Locks finally nodded. It must go against his training and nature to pa.s.s through a portal without closing it. With the decision made, the strange, dark focus returned to his face, and he headed down the pa.s.sage at a quick pace.

Shade rumbled low in discontent, watching him, and Chane shared her concern over the dwarf's s.h.i.+fting moods. He was obviously looking for something.

Wynn trotted after Ore-Locks. "Come on."

Within a few paces, Chane detected the floor's slight slant. They were going deeper again, and he tried to gauge their descent. When he reckoned they were about two levels lower, Ore-Locks stopped before a side pa.s.sage. He turned his head, c.o.c.king it, as if listening.

Ore-Locks suddenly turned into the side pa.s.sage, as did Wynn. She seemed to be just blindly following the dwarf.

"Wynn," Chane rasped, but she had already stopped.

Another iron portal blocked the pa.s.sage's end. Ore-Locks did not even pause, but walked straight through the iron and vanished.

"No!" Wynn cried, rus.h.i.+ng to the closed portal.

The smallest hope flickered inside Chane. Perhaps this time, Ore-Locks truly had left them. Without his obsession feeding Wynn's drive to go deeper, Chane might yet convince her to turn back. To his surprise, Wynn closed her fist around her crystal and pounded on the portal.

"Ore-Locks!" she shouted. "Open these doors now! Do you hear me?"

The words echoed loudly along the narrow pa.s.sage, but Wynn only pounded harder.

Chane stood waiting, hoping, for her to finally halt in exhaustion.

Sau'ilahk drifted from the hall of the Eternals and through the open portal into a smaller pa.s.sage. From a distance, he saw light down its gradual slope. The light suddenly dimmed by half and then spilled out of what might be a side pa.s.sage. When the illumination faded from the pa.s.sage's mouth, he followed carefully.

The sound of Wynn shouting and pounding rolled out of the side pa.s.sage and toward him in echoes. He stopped and slipped close to the main pa.s.sage's wall, prepared to sink into it. He had not caught her words-something to do with the dwarf-but she sounded more distressed than angry.

Something had gone wrong.

Sau'ilahk fled back to the open portal into the hall of the Eternals. He feared being sensed by the dog, and he could not move until certain of which way Wynn might go next.

A grinding sound rose in the narrow pa.s.sage, rumbling all around Wynn, and she stopped pounding. When the last of the iron triple doors rolled away, Ore-Locks stood in the opening, but this time he looked angry.

"Do not disturb the peace of the honored dead," he ordered, and then looked to the crystal in her hand. "Close that in your fingers, and allow only enough light for sure steps."

With that, he turned away, heading inward beyond the portal.

Wynn glanced back at Chane and Shade, and then hurried after, entering a natural cave beyond a shorter pa.s.sage. It all looked alarmingly familiar.

She walked a wide, cleared path between calcified, shadowy forms. A hulking stalagmite rose from the cavern floor, thick and fat all the way up to head height. Others were joined at the upper end by descending stalact.i.tes, forming natural, lumpy columns that glistened with mineral-laden moisture. But in the dim phosph.o.r.escence of the walls, some forms looked too big and bulky to have been made only by calcified buildup. To an unknowing observer, they might have been boulders at one time, now buried beneath decades of crust.

Wynn knew exactly what those protrusions were. She stood in the chambers of the honored dead, as she once had in Dhredze Seatt. This was where dead thn were entombed in stone, to be tended in eternal rest by the Stonewalkers of this lost seatt.

Ore-Locks glanced at only a few of the lone stone protrusions in this first cave. He moved to a nearby opening and stepped off the open path and into the next shadowed forest of such formations. Wynn followed, watching as he examined each one with a kind of mania before rus.h.i.+ng for the next.

"What is he doing?" Chane asked. "Has he gone mad?"

"Shhhh," Wynn said. "Those aren't just mounds of calcified stone."

She didn't know why the Stonewalkers wouldn't allow bright light in these caves. They seemed to think it would disturb the dead they cared for. Wynn spread her fingers, letting just a little of her crystal's light seep out.

"Look," she told Chane, and he leaned in.

The top of one glistening stone protrusion narrowed over rounded "shoulders" to a bulk like a "head." This one had melded to the tip of a long, descending stalact.i.te. The hints of features, like the face of a sculpture roughly formed and left unfinished, were barely visible in the light of Wynn's crystal.