Of Truth and Beasts (Noble of Dead Saga Series 2 Book 3) Read online

Wynn tightened her mouth—only because he was right. For better or worse, Ore-Locks had to at least be treated as part of their group. Then she blinked as something appeared to shift near the ceiling.

  It had seemed as if some breeze had found its way through the old ceiling boards, puffing out a bit of dust. But when she peered upward above Chane’s head, she saw nothing.

  Chane looked up, as well. “What?”

  Wynn squinted and shook her head. She just needed sleep after the strain, and she had a slight headache from struggling with Shade’s lessons.

  Outside in a cutway beside the fishmonger’s shop, Sau’ilahk heard the soft swish of air as his servitor returned. He could conjure small constructs of the Elements to serve his needs, and this one of Air captured sounds within its presence. He waited as the round mass of warped air drifted near.

  Repeat, Sau’ilahk ordered.

  Like a warp upon a desert horizon, it began to reverberate with the sound of voices. Only one recorded utterance was important to him.

  . . . Tomorrow, I’ll book us passage on another ship. We’re bound for Drist. . . .

  . . . the farther south we can travel by sea, the shorter our journey to a’Ghràihlôn’na . . .

  This filled Sau’ilahk with renewed hope. Wynn was headed to the Lhoin’na sages in their capital city, “Blessed of the Woods.” Had she uncovered something of worth in the ancient texts that he could no longer reach? She traveled with her council’s approval, though likely they just wished to be rid of her for as long as possible.

  Yet Wynn Hygeorht would again veer off any course planned for her.

  Useful as this might be, for now all that Sau’ilahk could do was track whatever ship she took. Another sea voyage would again limit him from drawing near, but following her would be less troublesome. He could freely forage for himself, knowing where to easily pick up her trail.

  Banish!

  The servitor vanished, and mundane air popped as it rushed in to fill the space.

  The energy to create it had cost Sau’ilahk. He drifted down the alley, slight hunger gnawing at him as he searched for sustenance in the night of a sleeping city.

  CHAPTER 5

  Two nights later, Chane stood with the others on a small schooner’s deck, watching the lights of Chathburh. Though they had boarded, the captain would not set sail until dawn.

  Wynn had been eager to leave the annex. On the morning after delivering her message, the sages of Chathburh had begun to politely avoid her.

  Chane did not need to guess why.

  Likely the message that Wynn had delivered contained some warning from the council concerning her. Though she would never admit it, the changed attitude of the Chathburh sages bothered her. Chane sympathized in his own way, as he himself would always be an outsider where the guild was concerned.

  Only Ore-Locks seemed unhappy about further sea travel. However, out of the corner of his eye Chane noticed more than once that the dwarf was watching him carefully. He pretended not to notice.

  “Quarters are cramped, but the price was less than I expected,” Wynn said, and she glanced at Ore-Locks without her usual slight frown. “Especially after you haggled with the captain.”

  Ore-Locks merely shrugged and leaned on the rail. “I made a fair barter. He asked too much for what he had to offer.”

  Ore-Locks was soft-spoken for a dwarf, but Chane had seen the dwarven customs of barter in Dhredze Seatt. Should he have cared, he might have pitied the ship’s captain, though the notion also made him feel inadequate. He could not walk in daylight and had not been there to aid Wynn.

  At least while her goals held some hidden value to Ore-Locks, the wayward stonewalker would be one more safeguard for Wynn. The more, the better, as Chane contemplated the future.

  They would need to join a caravan to travel safely inland, which meant following someone else’s rules and schedules. He might be trapped inside a wagon all day while dormant—prone and helpless. The very idea left him anxious.

  “We should get settled,” Wynn said, waving him toward the aftcastle.

  He nodded and hefted their chest to follow.

  “A deckhand loaned me some cards,” Wynn added. “Do you know faro, or maybe two kings?”

  Chane raised one eyebrow. “Do you?”

  “A little . . . Leesil taught me.”

  Chane went silent at that.

  Sau’ilahk materialized beneath the docks of Chathburh, half-submerged in undulating, dark water. His wafting black robe and cloak were unaffected by the water’s motion. He watched Wynn’s chosen ship anchored in the harbor, its sails still furled. She was headed first to the free port of Drist and then on to the Lhoin’na homeland.

  He would not need to follow directly, as there were few ports between Chathburh and Drist. Perhaps he could head south and await her arrival, but first he wished to restore all his life energy lost in conjuring servitors. And taking a few extra lives would bolster him further.

  The thought of Drist pleased him. It was a place where the rule of law depended upon the power to enforce it or to ignore it. He could feed there to his heart’s content, as no one would give much notice to another corpse in an alley. There were so many who died or vanished in the free ports without a clue as to why.

  He winked into dormancy, preparing to awaken on the outskirts of Drist, a place he knew well enough for that. In that brief instant on the edge of eternal dreams, an oppressive presence clawed at him.

  Sau’ilahk . . .

  He could not help but answer. Yes, my Beloved.

  Do you follow the sage?

  Yes, your . . . servant obeys.

  Shortly before dawn, Chane sat on the bunk in his cabin, which was hardly bigger than a walk-in closet. He had passed the night playing cards with Wynn under Shade’s watchful gaze. Not that he cared about the game or Shade’s scrutiny, and he did not mind indulging Wynn in a harmless pastime. But fear of his own limitations never left his thoughts.

  Chane stared at Welstiel’s pack on the floor beside his bunk. With a slight shudder, he finally reached inside it. He drew out a leather-bound box, longer and narrower than the walnut one that held the brass cup. Opening it, he looked upon six glass vials with silver screw-top stoppers, couched in velvet padding. All but one was empty, and that one was filled with murky fluid like watery violet ink.

  Chane took it out and rolled it between his fingers. A thin, fishy-sweet odor lingered around it as he watched the fluid swirl. He had recognized that scent the very first time he had seen this box.

  The fluid’s primary component were the petals of a special flower, yellow at the tips and deepening to violet nearer the pistils. Dyvjàka Svonchek—“boar’s bell” in Belaskian—was named for the belief that only wild boars and heartier beasts could eat it. It had other old names with meanings like “flooding dusk,” “nightmare’s breath,” and “blackbane.” Premin Hawes had called it corpse-skirt in Numanese. In other words, poisonous—toxic, and even mind altering if smelled too deeply by the living.

  Welstiel had found another purpose for it, one that Chane suspected but had not put to the test.

  In their time together in the healers’ monastery, it seemed Welstiel had not fallen dormant during the days. Only later had Chane uncovered clues to some concoction that Welstiel had been making in the monks’ medicinal chamber. Its smell, which revealed one thing that was in it, and its unnatural implications had kept Chane from trying it on himself. All he truly knew was that he had once seen a vial half full, implying the possible dosage.

  Now he was desperate. He needed to know if it would serve him, and thereby help him in protecting Wynn. If so, he would need more of it—much more, if this journey could not be cut short. There would be no foreseeable safer time.

  Chane unscrewed the stopper. He steeled himself, pouring half the vial as far as he could into his throat.

  After a breakfast of biscuits and dried fish, Wynn didn’t feel like sleeping just yet. She walked the decks with Shade in t
he cold air, but the rising sun promised a bright day. She’d grown accustomed to her upside-down world, sleeping part of the day and staying awake part of the night with Chane. She often headed off to bed midmorning, under the curious eyes of Ore-Locks, and then woke in late afternoon, doing the same between midnight and dawn.

  She’d given the captain their old excuse about Chane’s skin, the same that Ore-Locks had heard. She told the captain that due to this condition, Chane had his own food, as well. While this captain had been less concerned than the last one, he grunted acknowledgment. At least no one expected Chane to appear for meals or daylight hours.

  Sailors were busy all around, preparing to set sail, but none seemed to mind Wynn’s presence. She settled on a deck chest beside Shade, one hand on the dog’s back and the other on the rail wall.

  “Rail,” she said, patting it for Shade’s attention.

  Shade curled one jowl in annoyance at another vocabulary lesson.

  —sleep—

  The word rose in Wynn’s mind without warning, in the sound of her own voice.

  “You’re tired?” she asked.

  —Wynn . . . sleep—

  “Yes, I probably should.”

  She got up and headed for the aftcastle and down the narrow stairs just below it. But her tiny quarters could hardly be called a cabin. There was barely room to walk in beside the fold-down bunk supported by chains on one wall. And the mattress was hard enough to please a dwarf, though she was suspicious of sharing it with possible insect life.

  As she passed Chane’s cabin door, she heard a loud thump, and she stopped. The thump came again, followed by a groan. Chane should’ve been long dormant by now, and Wynn reached for the door latch. It wouldn’t open—wouldn’t even turn.

  Their cabin doors didn’t have locks, yet somehow his was barred shut. She tried harder and couldn’t budge it.

  “Chane, are you all right?”

  There was only silence but for the sound of the wind and waves above deck that carried down the passage.

  “Chane?” When no answer came, she tried the door again. “Open up.”

  Heavy footsteps thudded in the passage behind her, and she glanced back.

  Ore-Locks had stepped halfway out of his cabin, turning sideways to squeeze through the overly narrow doorway. He wore only breeches and a black shirt, and his long, red hair hung loose.

  “What is going on in there?” he asked.

  So far, Ore-Locks had held his tongue regarding Chane’s eccentricities. His doubt concerning Wynn’s story was plain, but he hadn’t openly questioned it. The three of them maintained a sort of unspoken state of limbo on the matter. No matter what Ore-Locks might speculate about Chane, he could never be told the truth.

  In Dhredze Seatt, the Stonewalkers had shown their hatred for anything undead, and, admittedly, Wynn understood and agreed. But where Chane was concerned, she couldn’t take any chances.

  “Nothing,” she replied. “He’s a heavy sleeper. Perhaps he just rolled out of the bunk.”

  Ore-Locks rumbled almost like Shade, and then frowned and glanced into his own cabin. Likely he slept on the floor. A dwarf would never fit on one of the bunks, even if it didn’t break under that much weight. Then he looked back at her hand upon the latch—both hands, actually—and stepped closer.

  “I can open it,” he said, his tone suggesting a genuine assistance.

  Shade growled at him in warning. Wynn turned quickly, taking a step and cutting him off.

  “It’s all right.”

  Ore-Locks looked into her face, eye to eye. His expression shifted to a rare flash of frustration.

  “What does he eat?” he asked suddenly, leaning slightly to gaze around her toward Chane’s door. “He has not joined us for a single meal, nor do I believe he has touched our meager stores.”

  “Why were you looking in our stores?”

  Her response gave him pause. Dwarves were a communal people.

  “We take this journey together,” he answered.

  “No, I take this journey. You’re here only by my unwilling consent.”

  She’d been looking for a chance to make it clear who made the decisions here. She also wanted to know what real reason he had to demand following her.

  What did he really want at Bäalâle Seatt?

  He’d never tell her outright, but she hoped he might slip up and let some hint leak out. So she didn’t antagonize him further.

  “Chane will be fine,” she said. “I’ll check again later.”

  Most dwarves were open and forthright. Ore-Locks had proven himself otherwise. He crossed his arms, his gaze intently shifting back to her, but no hint of emotion showed on his broad features. With a slow breath, he returned to his cabin.

  Wynn stood guard a few moments longer and then put her ear to the door.

  “Chane?” she said softly, but not a sound came from the locked cabin.

  Chane crouched on his bunk, his arms wrapped around his pulled-up knees, and he tried not to claw off his own skin. He could not stop shaking.

  The beast chained inside him, that feral nature Welstiel had once warned him of, screamed a last time. It collapsed, still and silent, as if retreating into some inner dormancy.

  But not Chane—no such relief came to him.

  Wynn’s soft footfalls rose in the outer passage.

  He scrambled, falling off the bed as he fumbled with shaking hands to shove the chest against the door. Full fright took hold immediately. The chest was not enough. Wynn might still push the door open and see him . . . awake in the daytime. He clenched the door’s inner handle—and it bent in his grip.

  He felt Wynn weakly attempt to turn the latch from the outside.

  “Chane . . . are you all right?” she called softly.

  Chane quietly gripped the bent handle with both hands.

  He could not hold in the soft whimper, imagining the terror of having to look into her eyes. He realized too late that he was panting, though he did not need to breathe. He tried hard to stop himself, listening to her voice, and then to Ore-Locks’s as Shade growled.

  It was all too loud, as if they stood within his cabin, shouting over the wind he heard outside the ship. The notion horrified him, as if Wynn had come upon him while feeding or looked into his face after a kill . . . and saw his euphoria.

  In Dhredze Seatt’s underside, she had twice forced him into wakefulness during the day. They had been deep inside the mountain, shielded from the rising sun. Even so, he had suffered, hazy and disoriented and unaware of half of what he did.

  This was not the same—he was fully awake.

  Every nerve tingled with an ache. Every muscle vibrated from within. The cabin’s porthole was covered with nothing but burlap. The sun burned just outside, radiating a dim glow behind that fabric.

  Only a curtain and the ship’s thin wall veiled him from daylight.

  He had never been so aware of the sun.

  It was there, just within reach of him, waiting to burn him. He could not even hide from it, because no matter how he tried, he could not fall dormant.

  “Chane?” Wynn whispered through the door.

  A part of him wanted to shove the chest aside, open the door, pull her in, cling to her until nightfall. But he could not let her see him like this, see him so weak.

  He hung on to the door latch until he heard her walk hesitantly away. Then he crawled to the bunk, its mattress tearing under his fingernails as he climbed up, and curled into the corner at its head. Clutching his knees again, he watched the porthole, its one layer of burlap all that lay between him and the sun.

  And no matter how Chane tried, he could not fall dormant.

  What had he done to himself?

  CHAPTER 6

  Thirteen days later, Wynn stood at the starboard rail as the sun nearly touched the ocean’s distant horizon. A sailor suddenly stepped in beside her and pointed to the other side, down the coast.

  “Drist ahead, miss. You can’t see the port yet, b
ut there are ships harbored out from it.”

  Wynn stepped to the port side, and he followed, trying to stay away from Shade.

  “Yes, I see them,” she said. “How long?”

  “Shortly after the day’s final bell, so you might as well pack up.” He paused, looking at her. “Watch out for yourself, miss. It’s a pitiless place. Most of us don’t even get off there . . . except for exchanging cargo.”

  She only nodded her thanks at his warning, and then brushed Shade’s ear with a fingertip.

  “Come on, girl. We’re going below.”

  The journey from Chathburh had been unpleasant at best. Ore-Locks had stayed in his cabin much of the time—not that Wynn minded his absence. Maybe it was the typical dwarven dislike of the sea. But his self-imposed isolation made the tension even thicker when he came out for meals. They both ate in silence. He often stared straight ahead, his dark eyes focused on nothing, as if he spent much of his time living in a world no one else could see.

  And worse, she spent the first six days wondering if Chane suffered from some form of seasickness. He hadn’t come out for two nights. When he did, he looked awful—pale even for him.

  He was anxious, twitchy, and distracted, often sharp and short in his replies. He showed no interest in cards or any other pastime. She once bluntly asked him what was wrong. To her surprise, he told her to leave him alone. As he turned to go, he’d had difficulty opening her cabin door. His hand shook visibly.

  Over the following nights, he slowly returned to his old self. Wynn never thought she’d be relieved to have him return to the brooding, cold state he’d adopted in his days at the guild. But last night, they’d played two kings nearly till dawn. All seemed back to normal, so to speak.

  No, she wasn’t sorry to see this particular voyage end, and she would certainly be choosier about their accommodations next time—if she could afford better. Heading belowdecks, she knocked at Ore-Locks’s door.

  “We’re almost to port,” she called. “Get packed. We’ll disembark as soon as Chane wakes.”