Of Truth and Beasts

The impassive way that High-Tower looked at her suggested he already knew. Some word must have reached him, and he’d merely dismissed her to her quarters. He hadn’t even told her to remain on grounds; he didn’t have to.

So much had happened over the course of a single winter.

Wynn had watched helplessly as her guild began to curl up on itself, one faction or branch turning against the others in distrust, suspicion, and secrecy. The Fay had come for her again, manifested in anguish and anger like some avatar of a divine force called by a wild priestess. In dead Bäalâle Seatt, the forgotten gí’uyllæ—the all-eaters, the dragons—whose generations went back to the first animate life that had walked in Existence, were found guarding a weapon and waiting for the blood of Deep-Root to come.

And in one desperate moment, Wynn had bent Chane to her will by his love for her.

In that, she’d revealed that she knew how he felt, though she couldn’t even consider how she felt about him. That was too much, yet too little a thing, in the face of everything else.

The light of a cold lamp exposed one open book upon the table before Wynn, and the sun crystal staff leaned beside her. Chane’s scroll lay nearby, as did her new journal of short, cryptic entries in convoluted Begaine symbols. This single, brief journal was all that she needed now that she had Shade.

The old journals that she’d burned weren’t truly gone. What they’d contained was now even farther beyond anyone’s reach than ashes. On the nights she’d sat alone with only Shade, preparing scant, cryptic notes in the new journal, she’d silently read every line in the old journals, over and over, until ...

Shade had echoed back every word.

Shade might never speak with Wynn as Chap had done, but Shade could do one thing perhaps even better than her father. Along with any memory Wynn recalled, once Shade understood something, she remembered it—perfectly.

What better place to hide secrets than with the one who would never forget the smallest detail? Who better to secure knowledge than such a companion, a majay-hì from whom no one could forcefully take it?

Shade understood why this was necessary. Perhaps she would finally come to understand the risks Wynn had taken—would continue to take.

A whining rumble made Wynn stiffen on her stool, and she looked up.

Shade stood before the alcove opening leading back toward the stairs up to the guild. She’d been fidgeting more and more as the night grew later.

“Stop!” Wynn said. “There’s no one else down here ... and I already took you outside after dinner.”

Just like with Shade’s father, Wynn sometimes slipped up when frustrated or exhausted. She forgot the powerful spirit and unique intelligence hidden in the guise of a young animal.

Others saw them as majay-hì, mere mythical beasts of awe. Even most Lhoin’na, who regarded them as sentient and free-willed, treasured them with too much reverence to understand them as individuals.

Wynn knew better, which added a spike of guilt to her burdens.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, expecting a petulant retort in broken memory-words.

But Shade merely returned to Wynn, not even grumbling. With a sigh, Wynn propped her elbows on the table and dropped her forehead into her palms.

Three of the five orbs were still missing, and what had finding the second one truly accomplished? Chane had kept it from Sau’ilahk, but still, Wynn knew next to nothing of the orbs’ creation or purpose other than that the one now with Ore-Locks had been used somehow in an attempt to breach Bäalâle Seatt. But how else were they used?

Wynn had little to go on except for Magiere’s mistake with the first one, the orb of Water, when she’d blindly opened it in the cavern below the ice-bound castle. Did Magiere have the only way to open an orb, with that tool she’d been given?

The tool might look something like a dwarven thôrkh, but it wasn’t one. So what good was it, if all it did was unleash an orb’s effect without control? What purpose, if any, might there be in finding all of the orbs, beyond keeping them from falling into the hands of the Ancient Enemy?

More lies and deceits weighed Wynn down, more suffering for others because of it, and one more secret.

That last one, which held no discernable bearing upon any greater questions, was something she dared not tell to anyone, most especially Ore-Locks. It made her sick inside after what she’d already done to him—forbidding him from clearing Deep-Root’s name. Only Shade knew this additional secret by now, but Wynn couldn’t stop thinking about it.

One phrase she’d seen clawed into that cave wall had made her falter twice.

May only my brother ...