Of Truth and Beasts

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.