Of Truth and Beasts

Chapter 20

With little choice, Chane spent the entire night helping Wynn search for some hidden entrance to a passage beneath the mountains.

To his silent relief, they found nothing.

He preferred that she head into the open range, aboveground, where he could better protect her. Let her look for the “fallen mountain” among hundreds of other peaks until she finally gave up and let him take her back into civilization.

Less than an eighth night before dawn, Wynn called a halt for the night, and they returned to their camp. After a meal of boiled oats, she sat near the fire and began repeating a ritual Chane had observed her doing more and more in her scant spare moments along this journey.

She and Shade would sit by the fire, and Wynn would open two or three worn, shabby journals. She placed them on the ground, and then opened a newer one directly in front of her. She would glance at pages of the old ones, write in the new one, and then close her eyes and touch Shade.

Once, he had summoned the courage to ask what she was doing. She had shifted uncomfortably and told him she was simply reorganizing her notes. His feelings toward her journals were so mixed that he did not press the point.

In nights past, Chane had recognized several of the shabby journals she copied from ... because he had read them. In essence, these were also copies. Wynn told him she had recreated some journals from memory after a number of them were lost in a snowstorm during her journeys with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap. One of their packhorses had been dragged over a cliff by a snowslide.

Of course, upon returning to Calm Seatt, she had lost all her journals, recreated or otherwise, to her superiors for the better part of a year. Now that she had them back again, she seemed to be using spare moments to recopy them yet again. Chane wondered why.

Tonight, Wynn had two journals that seemed even older lying on the ground. Their covers were faded blue. He had seen them in Wynn’s small stack but had not read these. She also had a faded brown one lying open that he had read. It was the one that covered her encounter with Vordana in Pudúrlatsat, when Chane had saved her from the undead sorcerer. The omission of his name in that particular journal still hurt him.

Chane moved toward her, as if to walk past. Wynn instantly took her hand off Shade, picked up the aged blue journals, and closed them.

“What are those?” he asked casually, as if they did not matter.

“Some older notes. When I was in Stravina with Magiere and Leesil, I managed to send Domin Tilswith a few journals before the rest were lost. He returned them to me later. I’m just copying and reorganizing.”

Same excuse. She appeared to be doing a lot of copying these days, but he did not press her.

“I am going hunting,” he said. “Shade can stay with you.”

She nodded, but waited until he walked away before resuming her task.

Chane did not go hunting. Instead, he slipped into the shadows of a small outcrop and stood there, hidden and watching her. Again, she laid out the three old journals. She would glance at them, write briefly in the new journal, and then close her eyes and touch Shade.

After a while, she was turning pages of the old journals faster than the newer one. As little as she wrote, she was writing less and less as she went on.

Suddenly, she turned the final pages of the two blue journals, and then the final page of the brown one he had read. She touched Shade for a long moment, sat straight, and sighed as if in relief.

“All right. I think that’s it—we’re done.”

Wynn stroked the dog’s ears and slipped the new journal into her pack, which rested a few paces from the fire. And then, to Chane’s shock, she picked up all three of the old journals and dropped them in the fire.

He wanted to shout at her to stop, but he braced himself to keep from running forward and kicking the journals out of the fire. Mixed feelings or not, those were her scholarly accounts! She could not have fit the contents of all three into the new journal now stored in her pack.

Chane did not know what to do and kept fighting his instincts to rush forward.

“Wynn, can you see to the horses?” Ore-Locks called out. “I will look for more firewood.”

“Of course,” she called back, and with one last look at the now smoldering journals, she walked away.

Chane waited only an instant more, until she was out in front of the wagon, where she could not see him. He dashed out of the shadows and grabbed the journals out of the fire, quietly stomping out their smoldering edges. Since he had already read the brown one, he quickly opened the blue ones—the oldest ones.

To his astonishment, he found numerous references to himself as he flipped through the pages. He was lost in trying to wrap his thoughts around this revelation.

Looking up, making sure she was still off with the horses, he quickly retrieved the new journal she had shoved in her pack. When he opened it, he found that he could not read it at all.

The symbols were dense, more complex than anything he had seen before written in the Begaine syllabary. The few he could discern by slowly deconstructing their combined letters and marks made no sense to him at all. Wynn had filled very few pages with these symbols, as if she had written condensed, encrypted notes—intentionally difficult to read.

Chane tucked the journal back into her pack, exactly as he had found it, and pondered this puzzle.

In her earliest work, she had included the stories of his involvement with her. Then, in her first rewrites, she had omitted him for some reason. Now that she was boiling all her journals down to encrypted notes—and far too few to hold all that she had originally recorded—she was burning anything readable.

He heard her humming, a little off-key, as she finished with the horses. She would return soon. A part of him desperately wanted to keep the three singed journals. The thought of a sage, his Wynn, destroying knowledge was like witnessing a fall from grace by one who truly mattered in this world. The thought of these journals burning felt like one of the last of Wynn’s connections to scholarly pursuits would turn to smoke and ash.

How many old journals had she burned so far? And why did she stop in her reading and writing to touch Shade in silent stillness before continuing?

Chane rose in the dark as the only possible truth came to him.

Wynn could be doing only one thing with Shade—passing memories. Shade remembered everything once it settled in her strange mind. Wynn was not copying all that she had previously written into the new journal. She was copying encrypted symbols ... and then mentally sharing the contents of the old journals with Shade.

To his shame, he envied their closeness.

He flipped open the brown journal. There were newer, small notes she had made in the margins beside names like Sorhkafâré. One read, Omit anyone who might have lived during the war. She was actively working to hide information from the wrong eyes. But foremost in his mind was still the question: Why had she omitted him completely in her first round of recopied journals and the much-later ones that had not needed to be re-created? She had mentioned all vampires but him.

Chane returned to his first revelation that Wynn was hiding knowledge. Another realization changed everything, and his hands began to tremble. She had not been trying to blot him out of her life.

Wynn had been hiding ... protecting him.

And he could hear her coming back.

He could not risk her seeing him like this. He desperately wanted to keep the journals—especially the blue ones—to save a part of her for himself. But she had gone to great lengths to hide his existence, along with any possible information their enemies might acquire.

Wincing, Chane dropped the old journals into the fire and fled back into the shadows. He did not look back, as he could not bear to watch them burn.

Several nights later, past dusk, Chane watched Wynn and Ore-Locks climb higher up one of the foothills. Occasionally, they both used the ends of their staffs to pound the ground and listen for any hollow sounds echoing beneath.

Shade paced beside Wynn, sniffing dirt and rocks. Like Chane, she was a reluctant partner in this current task. The choice had been to either help or do nothing; the latter would have destroyed any illusions Wynn might still harbor that they wished for her success.

Until now, they had both tried to help despite their reservations. But Chane’s recent discoveries through Wynn’s journals did not make him any more bound to her mission. They made him only more determined to protect her, even from herself.

By this fourth night after stumbling upon the way station, they had found no further clues to a hidden entrance beneath the mountains. Their supplies were almost gone, and game was even scarcer here than along the ridges of the pass. There was nothing for Shade and him to hunt. Chane had been taking note of Wynn’s demeanor, watching for any growing hints of uncertainty.

It was time to move on.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “We are wasting time.”

When Wynn looked down from her higher vantage point, he expected her to argue, but for the briefest instant, doubt crossed her pretty, dusty face, as if she partially agreed. And he knew he had her. He required only the tiniest crack in her armor.

“One more night,” she said, not sounding confident. “We’ll look for the rest of tonight, and if we don’t find anything, then tomorrow we’ll return to the pass and move into the mountain range.”

He could see the pain in her eyes as she spoke these words. Looking for a fallen mountain in a vast range was like seeking a single, special pebble in a rushing river. Shade looked up from her sniffing, swinging her head back and forth between Wynn and Chane.

“Do you want to waste another whole night looking for something that does not exist?” he challenged, crossing his arms.

This drove the doubt from Wynn’s face, and she stepped toward him.

“Chane, you are not making the—”

“The decisions?” he cut in. “Apparently, neither are you. We have wandered in the foothills, wasting nearly four nights.”

Her eyes widened. He rarely spoke to her like this, but he was not going to back down, not this time. Ore-Locks stopped and watched them both.

“So you think you found a way station?” Chane asked Ore-Locks. “Could it not be there for some other reason?”

Ore-Locks looked away. He never spoke to Chane anymore unless absolutely necessary.

“Perhaps it was built there as a rest stop for dwarves,” Chane went on, “or it was just a lone settlement placed well off the pass to remain hidden from foreign travelers.”

“Not likely,” Ore-Locks said. However, like Wynn, he appeared less than certain.

“So your people are the exception among all others ... and no dwarves would live any way other than the way you believe they should?”

No one answered, and Chane took a step closer to Wynn, softening his tone.

“It has taken so long to get this far, but there is nothing to be found here. It is time to move on.”

Shade huffed once in clear agreement. Wynn looked down at her and then closed her eyes.

Chane knew the crushing disappointment she must feel. They had lost the hope of a possible path leading them straight to the seatt, and now they were back to a blind search in the mountains.

Wynn opened her eyes again, looking to Ore-Locks.

“They’re right,” she said bitterly, sadly. “If we’re to find the seatt, we should head into the mountains now. Too much time has passed already.”

Chane waited for Ore-Locks to argue—and then he would handle the dwarf. But Ore-Locks only began descending the hill with a similar expression of defeat. His obsessive goal was to find the seatt, and they were making no progress here.

Shade gazed up at Chane in what appeared to be surprise, and then she trotted beside him back toward the wagon—as if rewarding him for this victory. Indeed, he felt as if he had just won an important battle. Wynn’s chances inside the range were almost nonexistent. In less than a moon, he might yet coerce her into giving up entirely.

The chances of this were certainly better now than they had been three moments ago.

Wynn drove the wagon down the pass for three more days before they completed traveling through the foothills and reached the base of the mountains. Her heart was heavy, and all along the way she’d never stopped looking for hints or clues to the elusive entrance Ore-Locks had placed in her mind.

If only it existed. If only she could find it.

Tonight, Shade lay beside her on the bench, and Chane and Ore-Locks sat in the back on opposite sides of the wagon bed, both looking forward. The base of the range’s first ridge loomed above them. In the night, Wynn could not see all the way to their tops, but Chane pointed ahead.

“The end of the pass,” he said. “We may have to leave the wagon behind.”

Wynn squinted, but he could see so much better in the dark than she could, at least from a distance. She’d known this moment was coming. They couldn’t take a wagon into the range, and, eventually, they might even have to abandon the horses. She knew firsthand the dangers of bringing horses onto narrow cliffs.

“Pull up over there,” Chane said, now pointing off to the left.

She sighed and pulled the wagon over. Chane jumped down to unharness the mare and the gelding. They would serve as packhorses now. Both were calm and gentle, and she hated the thought of eventually leaving them in the wilderness. She’d face that task when it arrived, as she had faced so many unpleasant tasks to get this far.

While Chane worked on the harness, Wynn climbed in the back with Shade to take down their makeshift tents, folding the canvas up with their blankets. If she packed things properly, the horses could still carry all the supplies that remained.

“Wynn ... ?” Ore-Locks called from somewhere.

She could not see him.

“Wynn, come up!”

He rarely used her name, and she’d never heard him sound quite so agitated—or perhaps animated. Looking around, she spotted him to her right, partway up the base of the mountain.

“What is he doing?” Chane asked.

Shade rumbled softly.

Wynn jumped from the wagon’s back and scrambled upward after Ore-Locks. Chane rasped something after her, but she couldn’t make it out. She was too busy climbing as quickly as possible, sending small stones downward with her feet. Shade dashed up after her, and then she heard Chane cursing, as he only had the horses partway unharnessed and couldn’t leave them in a tangled state.

“What?” she panted upon reaching Ore-Locks. “What is it?”

“Look,” he said.

Pulling a cold lamp crystal from her pocket, she rubbed it and held it out. The light illuminated fragments of what appeared to be cut stone lying against the slope.

Wynn’s heart began pounding from more than exertion.

“What are you doing?” Chane asked, coming up behind them. “I had to leave both horses loose down there!”

Wynn leaned slightly forward holding out the crystal. “These stones aren’t natural.”

“There,” Ore-Locks said, moving up and to the left. “More of them.”

Shade rumbled again, and Chane now appeared more unsettled than angry. Ore-Locks climbed further with surprising speed.

“And here,” he said, pointing.

Wynn hurried after him, spotting more fragments of cut stone along the way. Soon the fragments became slightly larger, and then ...

She glanced back and saw the pattern. It might never have been noticed if she hadn’t first spotted them one by one along the way. There were two lines of those barely noticeable stones with open ground in between, as if ...

“A path,” she whispered, willing herself not to hope too much. “Are we walking an ancient path?”

Ore-Locks didn’t answer. By the crystal’s light, his eyes were wide and intense as he scanned the slope. He went onward and upward, and Wynn hurried after, barely aware that Chane and Shade came behind.

“I left the horses loose,” Chane repeated.

“Then go down and tie them up,” she said without looking back.

She didn’t hear him turn back as she kept climbing after Ore-Locks.

The path began to curve and snake. Occasionally Wynn lost sight of any stones with telltale signs that they weren’t natural. Ore-Locks would wave her and the others to a stop and begin clambering over the slope, searching. Again and again, he finally straightened up and waved Wynn onward. Soon they were passing through wind-bent trees, jagged outcrops, and rougher terrain. Pauses became longer, but Ore-Locks always continued.

“How far will we climb?” Chane asked.

Again, Wynn didn’t look back. “To the end.”

Shade growled, but kept on as they made their way out onto the crumbled base of a cliff. It was covered in heavy brush that had grown so tall it reached above Chane’s head. Ore-Locks stopped, his gaze searching the rocky ground and the sheer rise of rock above them.

“I’ve lost the path,” he said. “It just leads into the brush.”

“It must go farther,” Wynn returned, peering around at the heavy brush covering the cliff’s base. “It wouldn’t just stop here unless ...”

She whirled around but pointed into the brush. “Shade, search! See what is behind there.”

Shade’s ears flattened.

Wynn didn’t understand her reluctance, but as back in the foothills, neither did the dog refuse. She trotted to the thick brush, sniffing at its scraggly branches. Ore-Locks went to try to bend some of it out of Shade’s way and looked to Chane.

“Help me.”

Chane strode over, and with one final pause, dropped down to grip handfuls of the thick brush, bending it aside so Shade might crawl through.

“I do not know what you expect to find,” he rasped. “We are wasting more time.”

Wynn ignored him.

Shade crawled through the underbrush toward where the cliff’s face must meet the slope behind the brush. Unable to stop herself, Wynn closed the crystal in her hand and dropped to all fours to follow Shade.

“What are you doing?” Chane asked in alarm, almost letting go of his branches.

Wynn scrambled in before he could stop her, keeping her eyes on Shade’s tail ... until she realized Shade should’ve reached the wall of the cliff by now. She raised the crystal, but all she could see was Shade’s haunches.

“What do you see?”

—Dark—

Darkness, and that was all? Shade wormed into the brittle branches to one side, and a strange, soft shift of stale air blew over Wynn. She crawled into the space Shade had left and found herself in a barren area beyond the brush. Wynn held up the crystal again.

Light shone upon a stone archway directly above her. She stood and her head almost touched the top. Shade stood beside her, and Wynn turned around, holding the crystal forward.

Wynn almost couldn’t believe what she saw. They were in the mouth of a tunnel, and every stone in the walls was perfectly set without a trace of mortar.

A short while later, Chane crawled into the tunnel after Wynn—with a knot in his stomach. In addition to his packs, he now carried heavy burdens of water, three blankets, and their remaining food supplies. They had abandoned the wagon and their travel chest, and let both horses go.

During the busy moments of final packing, when no one was looking, he had gulped down the last of the red-black life in his final brown bottle. After a moment’s hesitation, he also took another dose of the violet concoction as well.

Shade was now leading the way, and Ore-Locks brought up the rear. But once through, Chane could not stand fully erect and had to hunch in the tunnel.

“It was foolish to abandon the horses and trust this passage to take us through,” he said. “We do not know where it leads.”

Wynn turned her head and gave him a resolute look he had come to know well. She carried her staff in one hand and her cold lamp crystal in the other.

“Ore-Locks says it is common for his people to build a back way out of their seatts,” she said. “Though this one would be much longer than any he’s heard of. Why else would this tunnel be here in the middle of nowhere?” She turned back around. “No, this tunnel has to lead to somewhere else.”

The knot in Chane’s stomach tightened, as he could not fault her reasoning. Why else would the dwarves build a tunnel that led to the foot of the Slip-Tooth Pass?

Wynn pressed on behind Shade, and Chane began to wonder how long he could walk stooped over like this. Then an opening appeared ahead in the light of Wynn’s crystal, and they all emerged into a large, open area.

“What in the ... ?” Wynn began, and she quickly pulled out the spare cold lamp crystal, warmed it, and handed it to him.

Chane held up his to match hers and he saw openings in the walls at ground level. The knot in his stomach eased slightly. As his light shone on Wynn’s face, he could see doubt and even fear in her eyes. This was clearly not what she’d expected to find.

“Ore-Locks?” she said, her voice wavering. “What is this?”

The dwarf stepped around her. “I do not know. It looks similar to the entrance chamber at Cheku’ûn Station, in my seatt, but ...”

Ore-Locks pointed up.

Chane followed his finger to see large dead crystals embedded high on the walls. In his mind’s eye, he envisioned the rushing, busy entrance caverns that he and Wynn had visited at Dhredze Seatt, with glowing orange crystals offering warmth and light. Vending booths had filled the cavern air with the scent of sausages, smoke, and livestock amid the sounds of dwarves in avid barter.

Yes, he could see the similarities in this lifeless place, but it was somewhat smaller than the market cavern he had visited. Had they simply wandered into the remains of an old settlement? Perhaps they could still go back and he could catch the horses.

Wynn headed at a fast clip for a large archway at the chamber’s far side. Chane and the others were forced to quickstep to catch her. In spite of himself, Chane began to wonder what they had found here.

Holding his crystal high as they passed through a short tunnel to the next cavern, he immediately spotted the large tunnel beyond. Three lanes of grooved tracks stretched into the dark passage. At the tracks’ near ends were triple platforms. But what troubled him more was the sight of long-dead trams at all three docks. Whatever happened here, all trams that once served this unknown route had arrived and been left abandoned.

Did any of the trams still function? If so, he hated this prospect even more, for that would hasten Wynn’s rush toward whatever lay at the route’s end. He was losing any remnants of control here, with no way to stop her. If he openly argued now, she might realize his true intention and dismiss him.

Shade glanced up at Chane and rumbled, as if this was all his fault, as if he should have somehow prevented it.

Perhaps he should have.

“Come look at this,” Wynn said quietly, standing beside the far end car of one tram.

Chane joined her and found her studying a cylindrical, dead crystal about the size of his torso. It was secured at the front of what had once been some form of engine to push and pull the tram.

“Do you remember?” she asked.

Of course he did. How could he possibly forget the sight of these crystals bursting into light and then the tram lurching until it raced down the tracks? The determination on Wynn’s face was increasing by the moment. This must be so much more than she had hoped to find.

“Ore-Locks,” she called. “Can you make these work?”

The dwarf was examining a long-decayed car. “I have no knowledge of such engineering, but even if I could, the tram cars are not sound.” Then he looked ahead down the tram’s tunnel. “I think I may see ... wait here. I will be back.”

Before anyone could speak, he trotted off at a fast pace.

“What is he doing now?” Chane asked.

Wynn just gazed down at the tram’s crystal. “I wish we could make one of these work. Imagine how quickly we’d make it under and across the range.”

But that was the crux—the trams did not, would not work.

“Can you not turn back?” he said suddenly, unable to stop himself. “Have you not tried hard enough, suffered enough, only to walk into dangers we cannot even guess?”

Wynn blinked in surprise. “Turn back? Chane, you don’t really want to ... ?” She trailed off, as if struggling for words. “You know we can’t fail. You’re with me here, aren’t you?”

Chane hesitated, glancing aside, and he found Shade watching them both.

“Always,” he answered.

He could see Wynn about to press him further, but Ore-Locks came trotting back, no longer carrying his iron staff.

“What did you find?” Wynn asked.

“Give me a moment, and I will show you.”

To Chane’s surprise, the dwarf leaned over and used his broad hands to bend the brackets holding down the crystal engine. Both brackets broke easily, and he lifted the heavy crystal off its base.

“Follow me,” he said, trotting off again.

With little choice, they hurried after him. He led them a short way down the tracks to find two good-sized carts made of solid metal. Wynn walked quickly to the one farthest down the tracks.

Its platform was thick, but a large metal “box” with high sides had been attached on the top, as if the cart had once been used to transport materials for short distances. Ore-Locks’s staff was already stowed inside. A bare section of the platform at the back sported a two-man pump.

Wynn looked to the large crystal in Ore-Locks’s arms. “Do you think you can—?”

“No, I cannot make the crystal drive us, but this crystal may still absorb and reflect the power of another.”

Chane did not follow the dwarf’s intention. He watched as Ore-Locks laid the large crystal on a bare section of the platform at the cart’s front, and then lashed it in place with a length of rope from his sack.

“What are you planning to do?” Chane asked.

Ore-Locks reached out to Wynn. “Give me your crystal.”

With some hesitation, she passed it off to him.

“Step back,” he said.

Ore-Locks looked away from the engine crystal and touched it with Wynn’s cold lamp crystal.

Light instantly exploded from the front of the cart, illuminating a good distance down the track. Chane put his hand up to shield his eyes, and he pushed Wynn behind the cart, out of the engine crystal’s sightline.

“Your sage’s crystal does not provide enough light for safe travel with speed,” Ore-Locks said. “The larger crystal can amplify its light, with the cart’s box shielding us in back from too much glare.”

“Good,” Wynn said, nodding. “Chane, can you pump this cart?”

He could, but his despair began growing again.

“We will take shifts,” Ore-Locks said.

His sudden willingness to work together only irritated Chane. The dwarf was nothing if not single-minded.

“Shade, up,” Wynn said, tossing her pack into the walled box and climbing onto the platform. “Chane, we can put your packs and our supplies here in the box.”

With one final, accusing glance at Chane, Shade jumped aboard after Wynn. Chane began passing blankets and water to Wynn. Every action, every movement, felt wrong, and as Shade blamed him, he could not help but blame Ore-Locks.

Wynn had both a route and means of transport beneath the range.

Nothing would make her turn back now.

Sau’ilahk had come to depend more and more on the elves who followed Wynn. No one in their group was able to sense his presence, yet they had their own method of tracking that had proven more than adequate so far.

Although he longed to feed on them, he had come to view their presence as necessary. They served him unwittingly, and he never needed to risk exposure. In the foothills with all the outcrops, trees, and brush, it was never difficult for him to hide close to them and listen without being detected. But his confidence in their abilities fell apart as they dismounted their horses and stood beside Wynn’s empty, abandoned wagon.

Chuillyon picked up an empty harness, his face filling with confusion.

“You saw nothing?” he asked Hannâschi.

“No.” She shook her head, equally troubled. “When I arrived, they were gone. Their horses were still here, set loose. All their belongings but the chest and tents are missing, and I could find no sign of the journeyor or her companions.”

Sau’ilahk longed to kill them all right now. How could they let Wynn slip away?

Tall Shâodh approached the slope, his dirty cloak swinging over the top of his boots.

“It is clear they entered the mountains,” he said, and turned about. “Will we do the same?”

His tone was almost challenging.

“Of course,” Chuillyon answered. “Can you sense for their life shadows again?”

Sau’ilahk had become familiar with the abilities of these elves. He was not surprised when Shâodh turned to face the slope and closed his eyes, chanting softly under his breath. He stood there for long moments, and then raised one slender hand.

“There,” he said quietly, pointing upslope and to the right.

It seemed Shâodh could sense the lingering tendrils of life and was capable of separating people from wildlife. At least he was doing something.

Sau’ilahk remained hidden behind an outcrop near the bottom of the pass as he watched all three elves begin to climb. It felt too long before he heard Hannâschi’s voice echo down the slope.

“Look, Domin! A path.”

He longed to blink up beside them, but there was little cover where they stood. Soon they started off again, snaking and curving up the mountain until he lost sight of them.

Sau’ilahk allowed himself to fall slightly dormant, to dematerialize and blink up the mountain. At first, he could not see them, but he heard voices again. He drifted ever so cautiously around the sharp slant of a sheer cliff face.

The last of the three elves was disappearing into the brush at the base of the cliff wall.

When they did not come out, anxiety began to trickle through Sau’ilahk. Rather than blink into the unknown, he drifted nearer, slowly following where he had seen the elves vanish. Within moments, he found himself looking out of a tunnel into a vast cavern with dead crystals lining the upper walls.

The elves were crossing the cavern, looking about in wonder. A large, open archway filled a good section of the far wall. The three were debating something, but Sau’ilahk had missed the first part.

“We cannot leave the horses saddled down there,” Hannâschi said. “And we need what is left of our supplies.”

“Go quickly,” Chuillyon answered. “We cannot let the journeyor get too far ahead.”

“I will go,” Shâodh said.

Before the slender elf came straight toward Sau’ilahk, he blinked out, focusing on the archway at the vast cavern’s far side. He was not at all surprised when he rematerialized and hurried onward to find a tram platform.

His anxiety changed to hope. Wynn had found an ancient tram station on this side of the range, but did it lead to the seatt? He dared not believe it yet. He had been disappointed too many times.

Drifting past the tram, he spotted an old metal pump cart out on the tracks, and he stilled his mind to listen. Far ahead, he could hear the rhythmic creak of heavy wheels in the tunnel’s stone grooves for tracks. Wynn was already well ahead, leaving the elves behind.

Sau’ilahk glanced back, hearing Chuillyon’s muffled voice in the tunnel leading to the tram station. He no longer needed these elves, and Shâodh was outside. Could he risk attacking the girl and the old elf to replenish himself before going after Wynn?

He remembered how Chuillyon alone had almost bested him once in Dhredze Seatt. He might spend more energy than he gained, and even in hunger, it was not wise to take such risks when he was so close to victory.

Sau’ilahk turned back toward the tracks in one last instant of indecision. Then he blinked down the tunnel after the sound of those wheels in the deep stone tracks.

Ghassan il’Sänke was not a man easily disheartened. But day after day, night after night, of searching this fallen mountain for an entrance had left him questioning his abilities. In addition, he’d been tracking Wynn’s rough position. By her distance from him, she had to be inside the range. Although she had a long way to go before reaching this side of the mountains, she was moving more rapidly than he thought possible. How was the question he could not answer.

Tonight he searched the upper regions of the mountain’s northern base, stopping once for a supper of flatbread—which was almost gone. He should have been glad for anything to eat out here, but when closing his eyes, all he saw were lamb kebabs, honeyed yams, and herbed rice. He had been away from home for so long now.

Ghassan was also not a man given to any kind of sentiment, but he could not help missing his rooms at the Suman guild, eating properly prepared food, and partaking of the companionship of his peers there. He had been too long among the Numans, with their tasteless vegetable stews and open, unguarded chatter.

And now he was alone, sitting on a fallen mountain, and looking for a way inside.

He shook his head, admonishing himself. His task to intercept Wynn, to learn what she was doing, took precedence over everything.

When Ghassan opened his eyes, he started slightly.

The sparks of two unblinking eyes looked back at him from around the side of a rock. Thoughts of self-defense flooded his mind first, but the eyes were small and curious. He focused in the darkness and made out the shape of a ground-dwelling creature remembered from his youth.

A geufèr, with light brown fur, round ears, and rotund body, was a harmless small animal that lived on grubs and insects.

Ghassan remained still, careful not to frighten it off, while his mind turned inward. He had rarely seen a geufèr above ground. Something about the sight of it here felt like a sign. Closing his eyes again, he raised the image of the small creature in his thoughts. Over this, he drew the shapes, lines, and marks of blazing symbols stroked from deep in his memory, and he chanted silently.

Once again, he drove a sense of fear into the animal. He focused hard on the need for the creature to go deep, deep down. When he opened his eyes, it was gone. There had been no chance to lock its presence in his awareness.

Ghassan scrambled up the slope, looking about for the geufèr. He glimpsed a light brown form as it shot between two boulders taller than him. He rushed up to the boulders but saw no way to get between them, and he stifled a cry of anguish.

He quickly rounded the left boulder, trying to see if it had shot out the narrow gap on the other side. What he found instead was a broader space between the bases of the two boulders.

Ghassan pulled out his cold lamp crystal and crouched down. Within the gap, he saw a pile of rubble and a pure darkness beyond it so deep that the crystal’s light did not illumate the back of the space. Drawing a sharp breath, he wriggled inside. As the top half of his body passed into that darkness, he reached out, holding his crystal as far into the space as possible.

He saw a smooth surface above him.

He dared not hope too much, for this could simply be a shallow cave long filled with rubble. He crawled forward, and the rubble beneath him began to decrease as the space grew larger. He held his crystal up to the wall and ceiling, which were smooth, and knew then that he was inside what must have been a passage that had not caved in when the mountain collapsed. Still crawling, he reached a side passage on his left that was nearly clear. He scrambled over the last bits of broken stone and stood up, holding his crystal high.

There was no sign of the geufèr, but Ghassan still whispered his thanks. The tunnel he stood in stretched far beyond his light, leading straight into the mountain. Remnants of long-dead dwarven crystals were still embedded in the walls.

He had found the seatt.