Of Truth and Beasts

Why do you leave the sage beyond your sight? Dog her, drive her, at any cost. Serve—if only to serve your one desire.

Sau’ilahk grew so very still in that half slumber upon the edge of his god’s dreams. He could only do as commanded if Wynn still lived. And being so ordered, did his Beloved know so? It brought him thin relief, though he wondered how, even for a god, Beloved knew this. Wynn’s life was still for his taking, when the time came.

But there and then, he was so weary and depleted. He doubted that he could conjure another servitor or even summon some beast to bind as another familiar. Certainly not—not unless he fed yet again.

Sau’ilahk wondered at his god’s determination, but he dared not argue nor reveal doubt or suspicion.

Yes, my Beloved.

Chapter 16

Wynn reached her room at the guild and opened the door, and Shade trotted in. She held it while Ore-Locks carried Chane inside, and then breathed a short sigh of relief at having completed their rush through the redwood ring.

Even late at night, there had been too many sages about. Wynn had urgently clanged the outer gate’s bell and then hurried in when the attendant came. She’d quickly dismissed his offer of aid or to fetch a physician when he saw Chane hanging limply over Ore-Locks’s shoulder.

At least now they were behind a closed door.

“Lay him on the far ledge,” she said.

Ore-Locks nearly dropped Chane onto the ledge. Chane landed with a thud, but his eyelids didn’t even flutter.

“Careful,” Wynn yelped.

Ore-Locks backed away, not bothering to straighten Chane’s skewed limbs. Wynn pushed past and tried to make Chane comfortable, but as she lifted his dangling left arm onto the bed’s edge, she stalled.

A dark stain—not red, but black—had spread around a slash in the side of his shirt. It was still wet. She tried to think of what to do as she tucked his arm against his side to hide the stain. How did one tend the wounds of a vampire?

“Yes ... I saw it.”

She didn’t jump at Ore-Locks’s low voice. Perhaps out in the dark, Ore-Locks hadn’t noticed the stain’s true color.

“It’s not serious,” she said, pulling part of Chane’s cloak from under him to cover the evidence.

“Truly?” Ore-Locks returned. “No serious blood loss ... or any crippling bone breaks?”

Wynn stiffened and then turned slowly about.

Had Ore-Locks tried to kill Chane in the clearing? Was this some test to confirm the dwarf’s suspicions? Regardless that a living man might have died under the dwarf’s iron staff, did he now think he had been wrong?

Shade sat on the bed ledge nearer the door, her eyes fixed upon Ore-Locks’s back. Twice she glanced toward Wynn.

“You saw what happened to him out there,” Ore-Locks insisted. “What is he?”

And there it was. Ore-Locks could no longer pretend to look the other way, and Wynn could no longer hide that Chane wasn’t a living being.

“Why should I answer, if you think you already know?”

“That black thing, that ... wraith, as you called it,” he went on, “came among our honored dead. You brought it, as well.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“How many of these creatures do you—”

“You were there in the tunnel when I destroyed Sau’ilahk,” Wynn cut in. “And you know Chane was just as desperate to kill that wraith. Don’t you ever compare Chane to Sau’ilahk.” She paused. “He protects me. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

Ore-Locks didn’t answer.

“He’s the same man you knew yesterday,” Wynn continued quietly. “The same you’ve sailed with, who has slept across the wagon bed, who has fought beside us. Nothing has changed.”

“Yes, it has,” he returned. “Everything has changed ... except our destination. What else did you learn in the clearing?”

The shift of topic caught Wynn off guard. “Nothing,” she answered.

“I could see it in your face! You heard more out there than I did.”

Ore-Locks took a step toward her.

Shade hopped off the bed ledge and growled at him, but he didn’t acknowledge her presence. Ore-Locks seldom made open demands. This night’s events had clearly shaken him.

“You tell me, or—”

“Or what?” Wynn challenged, but she wasn’t as unafraid as she sounded.

Only the monumentally naive wouldn’t shake to their bones in facing the threat of a dwarven warrior, especially one as tainted as Ore-Locks. But Wynn knew she had the upper hand, and certainly he knew it. He simply thought he could scare her, which was equally true.

“I’m the one who uncovered your lost seatt,” she said. “I’m the one who can find it—not you. Even if I told you more, you wouldn’t understand it. You need me, but I don’t need you ... and I never did.”

Looking into his face, for an instant Wynn saw the dark figure of Ore-Locks in his sister’s smithy. As she tried to pick herself up after being thrown out of his family’s home, literally, Ore-Locks had closed on her. He loomed over her now as then, like a massive granite statue caught in a forge’s red light.