Of Truth and Beasts (Noble of Dead Saga Series 2 Book 3) Page 9

  Had he used a mortal human in this fashion, he could have gone a half-moon without feeding again. He did not know how long the life energy of a cow would last.

  Sitting up, Chane stared at the shriveled husk until his false fever subsided, and then he carefully packed away his equipment. Strong and sated, in control of his senses, he prepared to drag the carcass into the distant stand of trees. It would be a few days before it was found. He and Wynn would be gone by then, and any talk of its condition would never be connected to him.

  He paused once upon opening the barn door and glanced toward the quiet cottage. Then he dragged the husk across the fallow field.

  Sau’ilahk lingered well beyond a copse of barren maples, watching in fascination as Chane dragged a desiccated carcass toward the trees. What had Wynn’s guardian been doing in that barn? Then he felt the tingle of a living presence and heard dead grass crackle in another direction. He froze in place, a still, black shadow barely more than a deeper darkness amid the night.

  Something else moved along the copse’s left. Only a dark hulk at first, it circled around the outside of a leafless tree into sight.

  Ore-Locks stood hidden at the copse’s backside, watching Chane, as well.

  Sau’ilahk was certain the dwarf had not been there an instant before; he would have sensed a life in this empty place. So where had the dwarf come from so suddenly? His attention shifted as Chane walked out the copse’s far side, becoming more obscured by the small stand of trees.

  His pale face had a hint of color. Had he been feeding on the cow? No, that could not be. The animal was shriveled to the bones. Bloodletting would not have had this effect.

  The puzzle of Wynn’s companion only grew.

  Once again, slight movement pulled Sau’ilahk’s attention.

  Ore-Locks watched Chane leave and then turned about, placing one great hand on a tree as if bracing himself. Unlike Sau’ilahk’s fascination, the dwarf was scowling. Perhaps the errant stonewalker did not know Chane’s true nature. Had Ore-Locks seen anything that happened inside the barn?

  The dwarf straightened, arms slack at his sides beneath his cloak, and appeared to sink—drop—straight down.

  Sau’ilahk quickly drifted to the side of the corpse. Few things surprised him after a thousand years of wandering in the nights. He found heavy footprints where the dwarf had stood, but none coming in or out. Ore-Locks had appeared from nowhere and vanished the same way. This matched what Sau’ilahk had seen in the dwarven underworld.

  Stonewalkers had leaped out of the walls at him. Now it appeared Ore-Locks and his caste could pass through earth as well as solid rock.

  Two more things became clear as Sau’ilahk circled back to watch Chane striding the inland road toward Chathburh. First, mystery though Chane might be, he required life energy like any other undead, and second, he had taken effort to slip off and do this in secret.

  Mulling this over, Sau’ilahk blinked out of sight.

  After a late supper, Wynn delivered her sealed message to Domin Yand, head of the annex. A jolly elderly man in the Order of Naturology, he had eaten a few too many honey cakes in his life. He was quite puzzled but in no hurry to open the message so late in the evening. Ore-Locks had finished his own supper quickly, not bothering even to sit, and then vanished to find a room. He never reappeared.

  From what Wynn observed in the Stonewalkers’ underworld, she guessed he’d spent much time in dim light, in the Chamber of the Fallen. Sailing under the open sky, constantly surrounded by other people, must feel quite foreign to him. Perhaps he longed to be alone.

  She didn’t miss his company, and lingered downstairs in the annex’s library. At least until Shade required her nightly trip outside before bed.

  When they finally headed up the central staircase, all the way to the top floor, Wynn found Domin Tamira true to her word. Most of the rooms were empty, and those available had their doors fully open. Wynn picked a large room with a window overlooking the front street. She could just make out the lights of the port between the high rooftops. The faded, four-poster bed was draped with a soft, thick quilt, and old velvet curtains graced the windows. Shade immediately turned a full circle before settling on a washed-out braided rug at the bed’s foot, and then she gazed watchfully at the closed door.

  Wynn pulled out one of her three cold lamp crystals. Once it was glowing, she shut the curtains, stripped off her boots, and sank to the floor before the scrollwork dresser.

  “Come,” she said. “Time for more words.”

  Shade simply wrinkled her nose and remained watching the door.

  “Come on,” Wynn repeated, holding out her hand.

  Shade rumbled and began to squirm. She fidgeted all the way around, until she faced fully away from Wynn.

  “You have to learn, Shade. It’ll make things easier.”

  So far, lessons had focused on simple terms for common objects and actions, as well as basic commands. The last were certainly demeaning, considering the intelligence of the majay-hì.

  “Shade,” Wynn said, clearing her mind, so as not to give any clues by memory, “show me . . . High-Tower.”

  She reached out and touched Shade’s haunch, hoping the dog understood enough to call up or send an image of the stout dwarven domin.

  Nothing came. Wynn tried to think of other ways to describe High-Tower, from his gray-shot red hair and braid-tipped beard to his—

  Suddenly, the domin’s image rose in her head. A brief moment of elation came, followed by disappointment.

  “No cheating!” she said, taking her hand away. “You must get it from the words, not my memories.”

  Shade had to use words as cues and understand which one of Wynn’s memories to call up to answer back when they weren’t touching.

  “Show me . . . my room.”

  Clearing her head, Wynn waited, but again nothing came. She slumped where she knelt. A simpler exercise might be better, something that didn’t have to do with Shade calling back a previously seen memory of Wynn’s. Perhaps something could be used to check Shade’s growing vocabulary.

  “Shade, look at . . . the window.”

  The dog just lay there like a pouting adolescent. How Wynn wished Shade could simply speak words in thought like her father.

  Suddenly, Shade’s ear twitched, and a vivid memory rose in Wynn’s mind.

  She was sitting on the hearth’s ledge in the Sea Lion tavern on the night of Magiere and Leesil’s wedding feast. Chap lay beside her, silent and pensive. They both knew his kin, the Fay, were now aware of Wynn’s ability to know of them, hear them. He was deeply concerned about her safety.

  “What am I to do without you?” she’d whispered to him.

  Remembering that moment from more than a year past made tears well in Wynn’s eyes. No mortal should’ve been able to hear Chap’s communion with his kin, and as a result, they wanted Wynn dead. They’d tried to kill her once, because the taint inside her allowed her to hear them, just as she heard Chap in her head. If it hadn’t been for him, turning on them . . .

  Once you arrive, stay where many are around you, Chap had warned that night on the hearth. They will shy from approaching where they might be noticed.

  “You know something dark is coming,” she’d replied. “Is it your kin . . . from what you sensed in the orb’s cavern? Are they behind all of this?”

  No . . . something more, beyond them. And I have made other . . . arrangements, which I hope will come through for your well-being.

  Wynn hadn’t known then what that meant. But she did now. Through his mate, Lily, Chap had sent Shade. He’d sacrificed a daughter he’d never met to try to guard Wynn in his absence.

  Wynn wiped away fresh tears, uncertain why Shade had called up this memory. Perhaps it was a reminder from Shade that she was the intended guardian and Wynn the ward, and not the other way around. And soon enough, they would be leaving the tenuous safety of civilization.

  “Shade, pay attention,” Wynn said, lightly poki
ng the dog’s rump.

  As her fingertip sank through charcoal-colored fur, another memory erupted in her head.

  Wynn was looking at herself, as if she were two separate people.

  The other her looked too tall, as if Wynn was lower to the floor. The other Wynn glared down, pointing a finger at . . . Wynn. She said something that came out like a series of sounds parroted without an understanding of the words.

  Obviously, this was one of Shade’s own memories passed between them as Wynn’s finger touched the dog. All memories that Shade passed this way had problems when it came to spoken words—which tended to come out muted and dulled. This time, when the memory passed, it instantly repeated, and Wynn caught the words scolded at her . . . by herself.

  “Shade . . . no!”

  She jerked her finger back, so startled that she wobbled on her knees. The obstinate meaning behind the reflected memory was clear. Shade was telling Wynn no, quite plainly.

  “Oh, you little . . . Don’t you tell me . . . !”

  Wynn fell into mute shock as the greater meaning in the memory dawned on her. She had a sudden bizarre notion, so simple that at first she couldn’t believe it was possible.

  “Get up,” she said, pushing on Shade’s rump.

  Shade got up all right, and spun around with a snarl, but Wynn grabbed the dog’s face with both hands.

  She tried to recall any word that Shade had heard often and that meant something important to both of them. She was just as careful not to let any true memory come to mind. She needed not just a person, place, or thing, but a concept connected to moments—to memories—with a like meaning.

  “Wraith,” she whispered.

  Shade’s hackles rose and her jowls pulled back. A cascade of moments involving Sau’ilahk, a mixture of both their memories, flickered through Wynn’s mind. It ended with Wynn’s own perspective of thrusting the ignited sun crystal into the wraith’s hood.

  That was one word that Shade had heard many times—and understood. Likely, she understood far more words than she let on. This time, Wynn didn’t scold Shade for using memory-speak. Instead, she lifted one hand, touched her right temple with one finger, and then pointed more directly at herself.

  “No Shade memory. Yes Wynn memory. Show . . . Wynn hear . . . wraith.”

  Wynn lifted her other hand from Shade’s face and sat back, not touching the dog, so that Shade could not send her own memories—but only call up Wynn’s. The dog stepped forward, reaching out with her nose.

  “No,” Wynn said. “No memory-speak. Wynn memory.”

  Shade’s eyes narrowed an instant before the assault came.

  Every moment in Wynn’s life when she had spoken of the wraith to anyone went racing through her head—too fast! It felt like the world was swirling around and around amid a living nightmare of black-cowled, black-robed, faceless figures. Nausea in Wynn’s stomach lurched up into her throat, and one fleeting, remembered voice sounded inside her head.

  —wraith . . . cannot be gone—

  Wynn flinched, breathing hard. “Stop.”

  Of course it would be that moment, so ugly and fresh, when Chane had come at her in the inner bailey wearing that horrible mask. But the sounds were nearly clear. Wynn held on to that memory herself, hoping Shade still caught it.

  “No see . . .” she said, and then touched her own ears. “Hear yes. Memory of words . . . of wraith!”

  Shade’s jowls trembled.

  An echo rose in Wynn’s mind. Fragmented sounds came out of her own memories of Chane’s toneless voice, saying . . .

  —wraith . . . not . . . gone—

  Wynn grabbed Shade’s face. “Yes . . . yes, Shade!”

  It was a broken set of words, and this would never be like talking with Chap. Shade could use only words found in memories that the dog understood, and unless they were touching, it could be only words Shade had ever heard in Wynn’s own memories. But this was still more than Wynn had ever hoped possible.

  She’d found Shade a voice, stolen and broken as it was.

  Another moment rose in Wynn’s mind.

  Chane had come to her room that night to cryptically demand that she follow him out and leave Shade behind. The view in the memory was twisted, two views of the same moment overlaid from two perspectives—Wynn’s own mixed with Shade’s as the dog had lain upon the bed.

  —Come . . . Shade stays here—

  Wynn stared at Shade, wondering what this recalled memory meant. Then broken words, still in Chane’s voice, shuffled in order and came again.

  —Wynn . . . stays here—

  Wynn was so elated that she didn’t even think about what it meant. Shade was doing more than repeating memory words. She was using them to express herself for her own meaning.

  Wynn hugged the dog, murmuring, “Oh, thank goodness!”

  Then Shade let out a low rumble, and a flash of different moments rose to Wynn’s awareness. They were hazy, muted, and more garbled than any other past memory that Shade had shared. Wynn had experienced this before, the first time Shade had shared memories passed on by other majay-hì—by Chap to Lily, and then to their daughter.

  Wynn saw through Chap’s eyes on the night the Fay had tried to kill her.

  Lily’s pack of majay-hì scrambled over a massive, downed birch tree as its unearthed roots came alive. Those wooden tentacles lashed at them. Through Chap’s perspective, Wynn saw herself jerked out from beneath the downed tree’s branches by a root. She tumbled across the earth, her tunic torn at the shoulder, and lay there, barely conscious.

  Wynn instantly let go of Shade, shrinking away. Those same broken words in Chane’s voice came at her again.

  —Wynn . . . stays here—

  It had happened on a terrible night in the Eleven Territories when the Fay had been communing with Chap and realized Wynn had overheard them. A tainted mortal had been spying on them, and they’d tried to kill her.

  Shade began to growl at Wynn. More fragmented words came, this time echoed in Chap’s strange mental voice from the night at the Sea Lion hearth, after Magiere and Leesil’s wedding.

  —stay where many—

  Shade lunged, shoving Wynn back with her front paws.

  Wynn toppled and her back flattened against the dresser. A hodgepodge of differently voiced words came out of her memories.

  —stay . . . Wynn . . . here . . . no . . . forest—

  Shade was trying to command her with what few words she understood. Even in finding a flawed voice, it was unsettling how quickly the dog caught on.

  Shade had always had her own purpose, one that Wynn too often forgot. Shade was worried about Wynn traveling where there were too few mortals for the Fay to fear being noticed.

  “Oh, Shade . . . I can’t stay,” Wynn stammered.

  Words from her memories came instantly back.

  —Fay . . . kill . . . Wynn—

  Wynn threw her arms around Shade’s neck, hearing and feeling the dog’s distressed rumble. How could she reassure Shade when she couldn’t even do so for herself?

  “We aren’t heading inland yet,” she whispered, though Shade might not understand all of the words. “I haven’t told Chane, but we were going farther down—”

  A knock at the bedroom door stopped her, and then Chane called from outside, “Wynn?”

  Such bad timing made her wish he’d stayed away a bit longer. She sat up, one hand stroking Shade’s neck as she placed a finger over her lips before she answered.

  “Yes, come in.”

  The door opened, and Chane stepped inside. The look of him startled her.

  His face, though still pale, now had a hint of color. He looked . . . at ease, yet more alert than earlier that evening. As if guessing her first question, he said, “A bovine, well outside of the city.”

  After the full urn of blood left behind at the temple, Wynn took nothing for granted.

  “That will work for you, taking just some life from an animal?” she asked.

  He
hesitated, and then answered flatly, “Yes.”

  A strange grimace, a kind of revulsion, twisted his features for an instant. She’d never seen that before where his need was concerned. She felt a little guilty for doubting him, but not for long.

  “You should pick out a room,” she said.

  “I will, but with winter coming, we should begin the inland trek as soon as possible. How long do we stay here?”

  This time, Wynn was the one who hesitated.

  “A night or two, at most,” she began, “but we’re not traveling inland just yet. Tomorrow, I’ll book us passage on another ship. We’re bound for Drist, a free port to the south.”

  “Another sea voyage? Is this other port a better place from which to embark?”

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

  “Can we afford this?” he asked.

  She should’ve told him all this sooner, but waiting meant less chance of an argument.

  “I’ll have to spend a fair bit of our funding,” she admitted, “which means at some point, we’ll need to fend for ourselves. But don’t fight me on this. It’s the only way. The council wants us to take moons to reach the Lhoin’na, and the same or more coming back.”

  “I will not fight you,” he said. “Why do you think I would?”

  Wynn didn’t answer, but for some reason, his expression had changed. He seemed almost relieved. Did he look forward to more sea travel?

  “Have you told Ore-Locks?” he asked.

  “He can wait until it’s already settled. I’ll go out in the morning and see what I can arrange.”

  “Take him with you. I would come myself, but—”

  “Ore-Locks? No . . . Shade is protection enough, and Chathburh is a perfectly safe—”

  “There is no such thing as a safe port, in any city,” Chane cut in. “They are favored by the baser factions of all societies. You are less likely to be bothered with Ore-Locks along . . . instead of just an animal.”

  Shade growled at him.

  “At least to a stranger’s eyes,” he added, for he knew how aware Shade was.