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

  A voice rose in his mind, dull at first, but sharpening as he fixed his will upon it.

  Master?

  Yes, Mujahid, he answered.

  She is here. I do not know how or why, or how you knew . . . but she arrived last night.

  Indeed, Ghassan had half expected this, for he knew her general location. He had his own way of tracking Wynn, one she would never suspect. As long as she carried the staff, he would know her whereabouts by direction and approximate distance. He could always find the staff with his mind if he focused. He had helped to make the crystal and imbued it with a fragment of his will.

  Ghassan knew Wynn had left the Numan branch of the guild, traveling south at first. Much later she had turned east. He had never been completely certain where she headed, but the direction pointed toward very few places she might go. It was pure chance that Mujahid had been on assignment at the Lhoin’na branch. Ghassan had notified the young journeyor under his tutelage, who was also a prime future candidate for his inner sect.

  Was she alone or with others? he finally asked.

  Three companions. A tall human male, a male dwarf, and a wolf . . . or what the Lhoin’na call—

  A dwarf?

  Yes, Domin, but I know nothing about him as yet.

  Ghassan moved on to details over which he had more control. Is the human called Chane?

  Yes.

  This troubled Ghassan deeply. Wynn Hygeorht’s choice of companions had always been a concern and an unpredictable influence. How in all of Existence had Chane Andraso walked into the Lhoin’na forest?

  Do not allow yourself to be alone with that one, Ghassan warned, and then paused in thought. Do you know why Wynn is there?

  Not yet, but . . . the Lhoin’na Premin Council has shut the archives.

  What? Why?

  The territorial Shé’ith—their Serenitiers—guard all entrances rather than sages. Domin Safir and Journey or Marwan were physically barred from entering.

  This was too much, so drastic it could not be about Wynn alone. No branch dared deny access to ranking sages from another branch, at least not in such an obvious way. Something else was happening in the upper ranks of elven sages.

  They claimed it is for restructuring, Mujahid went on, but I have not seen one archivist or assistant enter access points that I have watched. Only once did anyone pass the guards . . . only premins.

  Ghassan had no notion of what purpose this severe action served or what had caused it.

  When did this happen?

  Mujahid paused before answering. I took Journeyor Hygeorht to see Premin Gyâr, as she had an official communication for High Premin T’ovar, who is not present. I left her there, as I did not think it pertinent.

  Likely neither had Wynn. Ghassan’s suspicions were already working. There was little chance to learn what that letter contained, but it must have come from the Numan Premin Council if it was for T’ovar—perhaps directly from Sykion. Was there something developing between the Lhoin’na and Numan sages? If so, would they leave Ghassan’s own branch out?

  Domin . . . how am I to continue if I cannot access the archives?

  Ghassan slouched upon the bunk’s edge. Mujahid’s assignment was critical, but more critical was why Wynn had shown up at the Lhoin’na branch. Likely she sought those same archives for good reason, but the message she had brought had cut off both her and Mujahid.

  What should I do? Mujahid asked.

  Keep me appraised of Journeyor Hygeorht’s activities. Without access to search for what we need, you will continue reporting to me, and only to me, so long as your group remains there. You will report anything you learn concerning the Lhoin’na Premin Council.

  Yes, Domin.

  And especially, Ghassan added, everything you can learn concerning Premin Gyâr.

  Mujahid fell silent.

  Is there a problem?

  The journeyor of Metaology did not answer immediately. When he did, Ghassan felt the trepidation carried by two words.

  No, Domin.

  Ghassan let the medallion fall against his chest and sat silent.

  Mujahid was frightened of Gyâr, as he should be, though there was no real danger. The Lhoin’na premin of Metaologers was manipulative, ambitious, cold, and cunning, and a bigot. But Gyâr would never overstep guild protocols too far if he caught a “foreign” journeyor snooping about.

  Ghassan tucked away the medallion and returned to the open deck. He leaned over the rail, looking ahead for any sign of a harbor along the coastline. As yet, there were none, and he traipsed back toward the aftcastle.

  “Captain,” Ghassan called out. “Please make landfall at the first opportunity. I must disembark.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Chane awoke to scuffling and hushed voices. He swatted off the blanket and sat up.

  Wynn and Ore-Locks were busy about the guest quarters, gathering belongings. Shade watched from the other ledge bed with her nose on her paws. At Chane’s sudden movement, Wynn glanced over.

  “We have our own rooms,” she said. “I told Mujahid we’d be out by now.”

  Before Chane even straightened his rumpled shirt, Ore-Locks grabbed the chest. Chane hefted his packs and swords. He was still groggy and beginning to wonder what had happened while he lay dormant. Wynn’s manner was not only brusque; her expression and whole demeanor had changed.

  He saw no relief in her face in gaining their privacy, let alone in having reached her destination. She looked strained, and her brow suddenly furrowed over some unknown thought. A trace of anger marred her soft features.

  “I am hungry,” Ore-Locks said.

  Chane realized it had been more than a day since the dwarf had eaten anything besides apple slices. Hopefully, Wynn had found something for herself and Shade.

  But then he found himself distracted as he stepped out into the passage.

  Since entering the Lhoin’na forest, he had felt watched, continually prodded, as if something unseen sought him out. Now he stood inside of a living place. Much as the ring dulled his awareness and hampered his heightened senses, he dared not take it off until they left this land.

  Wynn nodded ahead down the passage and looked to Ore-Locks. “Those two doors on the right. Soon as we’re settled, I’ll show you the meal hall.”

  She opened the nearer door and held it for Chane. Ore-Locks seemed about to argue, but dropped the chest by the door and headed off to the next one. Chane entered and found the room identical to the one they had left—minus Mujahid’s paraphernalia. After Wynn and Shade followed, he waited until he heard Ore-Locks’s door close. He then dropped the packs, quickly slid the chest inside, and closed himself away in privacy with Wynn.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Wynn sank on the far bed ledge. Shade crawled up beside her, though it was a tight fit, and nosed Wynn’s hand.

  Chane’s head had not fully cleared, and perhaps the nagging prod of the forest’s presence wore on his patience, as well.

  “Wynn?”

  She raised only her eyes to him. “The archives have been shut.”

  Chane took a quick step. “What?”

  She recounted everything from when she awoke to the two Shé’ith expelling a pair of Suman sages. Chane turned aside and dropped down hard on the opposite bed ledge.

  “Armed guards? You told me it is impolite to openly carry weapons inside a guild branch.”

  “It is,” she answered dryly. “And yet.”

  No doubt something in Wynn’s delivered message had caused all of this, though it seemed extreme to cut off everyone just to keep her out.

  “Has this ever happened in Calm Seatt?” he asked.

  “I don’t know of this ever happening at any branch,” she answered. “Domin Tärpodious oversaw categorical restructurings, when holdings in some sections outstripped space. But he closed off one section at a time, not the whole archive.... And no city guards or constabularies were called in.”

  Wynn appeared to grow weary be
fore Chane’s eyes. She ran her hands over her face, pushing back her hair, looking small and defeated. Even the anger drained from her features. Chane began to fume in her place.

  Why did Wynn’s own superiors keep going to ever greater lengths to hinder her? The twisted world at large had never been worth Chane’s concern. Now he saw the same taints inside the guild. If not for Wynn, he would have had no part of it anymore. That dream of a better life in her world almost died within him.

  “When did this happen?” he asked.

  “Just after lunch.”

  “What did you do all afternoon?”

  She got up and went for her pack, digging out a new journal.

  “Their public library was open, so I took a look, for the sake of it. Sometimes things don’t get put back where they belong, out of sight.”

  This was the Wynn that Chane knew, never leaving any possibility unexplored.

  “Did you find anything?” he asked.

  “No.” She laid the journal on her bunk and began turning pages. “But I copied bits of an old map. It’s crude, but might be useful. I don’t dare ask for a scribed copy, or request to take it off grounds for the work to be done elsewhere. I’m probably being watched.”

  Chane got up to join her, standing to one side as he looked down at the journal. It was a simplistic line sketch of the region at large. It showed general areas south all the way to the nearest part of the Sky-Cutter Range separating Numan nations and free territories from the southern desert. Wynn pointed to a blank vertical strip between columns of inverted wedges for unnamed mountains.

  “This is called the Slip-Tooth Pass,” she said. “It ends at the northern side of the range. It isn’t enough to go on, but if I can’t gain some hint to Bäalâle Seatt’s whereabouts, it’s the shortest and clearest path to the range.”

  Chane shook his head. “That range is at least a thousand leagues long, probably much more. It would take a year to search even that nearest part of it. We must get into the archives.”

  Shade hopped off the bed, rumbling in agitation as she squatted. Perhaps she understood and did not care for Chane’s suggestion.

  “How?” Wynn asked. “I’ve gone over everything I can think of, including you drawing the guards off for me. All notions lead to you getting arrested . . . and all of us being expelled.”

  “Ore-Locks could slip through one of the walls.”

  Wynn shook her head. “I don’t think stonewalkers can pass through wood—only earth and stone, maybe metal. And Ore-Locks isn’t as skilled as his elders. When I was taken to the texts in Dhredze Seatt, he stood guard, but he had to wait for another to retrieve me.” She paused. “Besides, I don’t trust him in there on his own.”

  Chane scowled at this. He trusted his own newfound instinct for deceit, though of late, it seemed to vanish at times. But at their first real meeting with Ore-Locks in the Chamber of the Fallen, his sense of deception had been acute. Chane had not sensed a lie when Ore-Locks had denied Wynn’s insinuation that the dwarf served some traitorous ancestral spirit.

  Ore-Locks had his own agenda, unknown as it was, but the wayward stonewalker was the closest thing they had to an ally with necessary skills. Any help should not be so quickly dismissed.

  “Show me where the guards are,” Chane said. “Perhaps we—”

  A quick, triple knock sound at the door.

  Chane heard Wynn’s breath catch, and she rose and hurried over, not yet opening it.

  “Yes?”

  “Journeyor Hygeorht?” called a light voice outside. “A message for you.”

  Wynn pulled the door open as Chane approached behind her.

  A metaologer in a midnight blue robe stood outside. Chane had seen few elves in his life before coming to this continent. Even he was a bit startled at the sight of her.

  Stunning, even for an elf, she was like something out of his land’s fables and folklore. She was so slight she might break under a strong breeze, and so beautiful she couldn’t be real. She smiled and held out a folded and wax-sealed sheet of paper.

  “Who is it from?” Wynn asked as she took the message.

  The young woman simply shook her head, as if she did not know, then turned and walked away. Wynn closed the door, flipping the message in her hand.

  The cream paper was thick and of fine quality, its folded edge locked down with a green wax seal impressed with the shape of an ivy leaf. Wynn broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and revealed a sharply stroked script. Chane assumed it was Elvish.

  Wynn dropped her hand so fast the paper crackled, and she jerked the door open, rushing out to look down the passage.

  Chane leaned out, looking both ways. “What is it?”

  Wynn pushed him back, stepped inside, and shut the door. She stood staring blankly at the sheet of paper.

  “It’s a pass . . . into the archives,” she answered without the slightest relief or joy.

  “Who would send you this?”

  Wynn shook her head and studied the letter again. “It’s unsigned, but the council seal makes it official. I just show it to the guards and . . . and I’m in.”

  Chane distrusted sudden changes of fortune, and it was clear Wynn had equal doubts.

  “I don’t care who sent it,” she said firmly. “We go now, before someone finds out and takes it back. Shade, come!”

  This time Shade growled more sharply.

  If the dog truly understood what had happened, Chane could not disagree with her warning. But what choice did they have?

  Sau’ilahk rose from dormancy and materialized after dusk on the plain bordering the Lhoin’na forest. He had sated himself after finding the caravan before the previous dawn, and now brimmed with consumed lives. He would need that power tonight.

  Drifting nearer the tree line, he kept to the road, shying from those little domes of velvety white flowers and whatever lay beneath in the earth that had filled him with painful cold. He stopped when he felt the slight tingle of the forest’s presence reaching out to find him.

  Sau’ilahk looked down on the road’s stone-packed bare earth at a spot that would serve his need. There he crouched. This time, he would use the externalized trappings of ritual to aid his conjury.

  Solidifying one hand, he scraped a double circle in the hard earth with one black, cloth-wrapped finger. Once he had filled that border ring with sigils, he rose and shut out the world to focus his thoughts on that pattern.

  The lines in the earth began glowing with pale chartreuse in his sight.

  Sau’ilahk drew upon his stores of life. He formed a clear image of a small creature in his mind. In a long existence, he had learned of many things, even of creatures that lived in places from which he was barred. He shaped that image, seeing that creature as if it stood there in the circle. Lost in the summoning, he did not notice it leave the forest until grass along the tree line rippled in its passing.

  It broke from the plain’s grass and bounded up the road.

  Sau’ilahk immediately shifted focus, and the luring image in his sight vanished. He looked on the animal as it halted within the circle. No common beast would serve his purpose as well as this one.

  About the size of a common barn cat, it had a ferretlike body as well as some of that animal’s coloring. A stubby tail, darker than its bark-colored fur, quivered once before it rose on its hindquarters. Large, round brown eyes peered around a pug muzzle in a face masked with black fur. Twitching, wide ears made the tufts of white hairs on their points blur in vibration. But most useful of all were those tiny forepaws.

  Almost like small hands, their stubby digits ended in little claws. A tâshgâlh—“finder of lost things”—stood mesmerized before Sau’ilahk.

  A natural-born thief, the tâshgâlh possessed dexterous paws that exceeded a raccoon’s for getting at whatever it became obsessed with. A trilling coo vibrated from its throat, for it was still entranced by the summoning; it did not actually see him yet. Tâshgâlh were found only in elven lands. Wherever he sent
it, no one would give it notice other than to hide any shiny baubles that might catch its attention.

  In a smooth flash, Sau’ilahk solidified one hand and snatched the tâshgâlh by the back of its long neck. Its trance broke, and its pigeonlike purr became a squealing, screeching chatter. He let it thrash, its tiny rear claws hooking nothing as it tried to tear at his incorporeal forearm.

  It was the most perfect selection for a familiar.

  With this beast Sau’ilahk could hunt for Wynn Hygeorht within a land forbidden to him.

  Wynn paused at the courtyard door and looked back into the meal hall.

  Ore-Locks’s reddish hair badly needed brushing, as it was looking wild and tangled even when pulled back with a leather thong. As he gulped large spoonfuls of stew, nearby initiates stood dumbfounded, eyeing the other plates they’d brought him moments ago, which he’d emptied. They obviously had no idea how dwarves could feast at a moment’s notice, though why Ore-Locks did so now was puzzling. Dwarves could store up food and go without for three times as long as a human.

  “We should bring him,” Chane whispered.

  Wynn shook her head. This small venture was best kept from Ore-Locks; she’d told him nothing about the mysterious letter. Instead, she told him that she would look into how else she might gain access to the archives. He’d been too hungry to argue.

  She might not be able to get rid of Ore-Locks, but she would keep the upper hand in whatever they did—by what she learned and he did not. The more dependent on her that he was, the better. For whatever he wanted at Bäalâle Seatt, she couldn’t have him leaving her behind and getting there first.

  Wynn turned to hurry out, shivering once in the cold air as they emerged in the courtyard.

  “Which way?” Chane asked.

  “North.”

  She trotted ahead, still gripping the unsigned letter and wondering who had sent it. Was someone here actually trying to help her? Or was the letter merely bait to trap her, complete with grounds for her expulsion? If the latter, it wasn’t very effective. She would still have the pass with which to implicate whoever had sent it.