Of Truth and Beasts

Chapter 1

Wynn Hygeorht paced the floor of her room inside Calm Seatt’s branch of the Guild of Sagecraft. Shade, a large wolflike dog with charcoal black fur, lay on the small bed, watching her through crystal blue eyes.

Wynn was in trouble, and she knew it.

Only one night before, Wynn and Shade, and her other companion, Chane Andraso, had returned from Dhredze Seatt, the mountain stronghold of the dwarves. In that place, Wynn had disobeyed every order and every warning from her superiors. The repercussions were staggering. By now, word of her return had surely spread through the guild to its highest ranks. It was only a matter of time before she would be summoned before the Premin Council.

“Where’s Chane?” she whispered absently, still pacing.

Whatever happened tonight, he’d want to know. He’d taken guest quarters across the keep’s inner courtyard, but it was well past dusk, and he was late.

She nearly jumped when the knock at her door finally came. Pushing strands of wispy brown hair away from her face, she hurried to open it.

“Where have you ... ?”

It wasn’t Chane outside the door.

There stood a slender young man only a few fingers taller than Wynn. He was dressed in the gray robe of a cathologer, just like her. His shoulders were slumped forward, as if in a perpetual cringe.

“Nikolas?” Wynn said, then quickly dismissed her confusion and smiled. He was one of the few friends she had left inside the guild.

He didn’t smile back. In fact, he wouldn’t even look her in the eyes.

“You ... you’ve been summoned,” he whispered, swallowing hard halfway through. “Premin Sykion says you’re to come straightaway to the council’s chamber. And you’re supposed to leave the ...” He glanced once toward Shade. “You’re to leave the dog here.”

Wynn just stared at him. But she’d known this was coming. Hadn’t she? She straightened, smoothing down her own gray robe.

“Give me a moment,” she said. “Go tell the council that I’ll come directly.”

He hesitated nervously, then nodded. “I’ll walk slowly. Buy you a little time.”

Wynn gave him a sadder smile. “Thank you.”

She watched him disappear down the passage, but she closed the door only partway. She took a breath before turning about, for the next part wouldn’t be easy.

“Shade, stay here,” she said firmly. “You cannot come.”

Wynn used as few words as possible, as Shade’s understanding of language wasn’t fluent yet.

With a low rumble, Shade flattened her ears and launched off the bed.

Wynn was ready. She spun through the half-open door and jerked it shut. The door shuddered as Shade slammed into the other side with her full bulk. Then the howling began.

“Stop that!” Wynn called through the closed door.

With no time for Shade’s drama over being left behind, she gathered up her robe’s skirt and hurried down the passage to the end stairs, and then out into the night air of the courtyard.

She made her way across to the old stables and storage building, long ago converted to workshops, laboratories, and, of course, the guest quarters. Slipping through one outer door, she headed upstairs to a door she knew well. These were the same quarters once used by her old ally, Domin Ghassan il’Sänke of the guild’s Suman branch, far to the south. She knocked lightly.

“Chane, are you there?”

No one answered, and anxiety swelled inside her. Where could he be? She had to at least let him know she’d been summoned.

She knocked again, more sharply.

“Chane?”

A scuffle rose beyond the door, followed by the sound of rumpling paper and a sudden screech of wooden chair legs on a stone floor. This time, the door opened, but the room beyond was dark. Wynn looked up at Chane Andraso towering over her, his face pale as always.

“What in the world were you ... ?” She stopped midquestion.

Chane’s clothes were wrinkled, and his red-brown hair was disheveled. He blinked several times as if she’d just roused him from dormancy. And ...

“Umm, you have a piece of parchment stuck to your face.”

His eyes cleared slightly, and he reached up. Instead of grabbing the torn scrap, he swatted at it with his hand, and it fell past Wynn into the passage.

“Did I wake you?” she asked in confusion.

Chane always woke the instant the sun fully set. Light from the passage’s small cold lamp seeped into the guest quarters’ outer study. The chair behind the old desk was pushed at an awkward angle against the wall. A pile of books and papers was lying haphazardly all over the desk, and some had even fallen to the floor.

“I must have read too late ... near this morning,” he rasped in his maimed voice.

Wynn raised one eyebrow. Chane had fallen dormant at the desk, not aware that dawn was coming? She shook her head, for they had larger problems.

“I’ve been summoned.”

Realization spread over his handsome features as he came to full awareness.

“I am coming,” he returned instantly, stepping backward to grab the room key off the desk.

Then he hesitated, glancing down at himself. He still wore his boots from the night before, along with his rumpled breeches. He quickly began tucking in his loose white shirt.

Wynn didn’t care how he was dressed. It didn’t matter.

“Only me,” she said. “I was even ordered to leave Shade in my room.”

Chane froze. He knew Shade almost never left Wynn’s side. The dog rarely tolerated that. He returned to tucking in his shirt.

“I am as responsible as you,” he insisted, “for all that happened. You are not facing them alone.”

As he came to the door, Wynn looked up, meeting his eyes in silence. She felt ashamed by her relief at the thought of his standing beside her to face the council. But that wasn’t the way this would work.

“I don’t think they’ll let you—”

“I am coming,” he repeated, and stepped out, closing the door.

He headed down the passageway toward the stairs before she could argue further. Without intending to, she sighed—in relief, resignation, or at the weight of her burdens. Perhaps all three.

Wynn still felt cowardly in her relief at Chane’s presence as they climbed the stairs to the second floor of the guild’s main hall. With all that had happened in the Stonewalkers’ underworld, deep below Dhredze Seatt, she could imagine the Premin Council like some Old World mock court. Its verdict would be predetermined before any trial began.

But it wasn’t a trial. This was a guild matter, and what she’d done would never be revealed publicly. She would have no statute of law to protect her against any unofficial conviction.

She glanced up at Chane beside her, his expression grim with determination. Perhaps his presence might keep the council in check, for there were internal affairs they might not raise before an outsider. But she doubted it.

When they stepped onto the upper floor, two sages waited outside the council’s chamber down the broad passage. Chane never slowed, and Wynn tried not to falter, but the closer they came to the council chamber, the odder it all looked.

A middle-aged woman in cerulean, from the Order of Sentiology, and a younger man in a metaologer’s midnight blue stood in silence on either side of the great oak double doors. Wynn didn’t immediately recognize either one, although, with their differing orders, they made a strange combination. She’d never seen attendants outside this chamber before.

Both watched her as she approached, which made her nervous. Then they both reached out at the same time and opened the doors without a word.

Inside, standing about, waiting, was the entire Premin Council. And Domin High-Tower, the only dwarven sage and head of Wynn’s order, was present, as well.

Folklore of the Farlands, Chane’s world, spoke of dwarves as diminutive beings of dark crags and earthen burrows. High-Tower, like all of his people, was an intimidating hulk compared to such superstitions. Though shorter than humans, most dwarves looked Wynn straight in the eyes. What they lacked in height, they doubled in breadth.

Stout and wide as he was, he showed no hint of fat under his gray robe. Coarse reddish hair laced with gray hung past his shoulders, blending with his thick beard, which was braided at its end. His broad, rough features made his black-pupiled eyes seem like iron pellets embedded in pale, flesh-colored granite.

He glowered at her from where he stood beyond the council’s table. Suddenly, his glower turned to an incensed glare, quite disturbing from any hulkish dwarf. He rounded the table and tall-back chairs, coming straight toward the opened doorway, his long red hair bouncing with each stride.

“Does your impudence know no limits?” he rumbled, halting within arm’s reach.

For an instant, Wynn had thought Chane was the domin’s target, but High-Tower’s anger was fixed on her.

“This is a guild matter,” he growled. “It is no business of any outsider!”

Wynn glanced up at Chane—who stared down at the broad domin.

“You need to leave,” she said quietly. “Wait for me in my room.”

“No,” Chane rasped.

Wynn stiffened. Most times, she no longer noticed his maimed voice. But there was warning in that one word. Chane passively looked at everyone inside the chamber, and this only heightened Wynn’s tension.

Chane’s resolve might have given her relief at first, but now it was making things worse.

“You will leave,” someone else said flatly.

Wynn followed the sharp shift of Chane’s eyes.

Premin Frideswida Hawes of Metaology stepped straight toward them in a smooth gait that didn’t even sway her long, midnight blue robe. Within the shadow of her cowl, her hazel eyes watched them both. She stopped six paces off and focused fully on Chane. In place of High-Tower’s anger, she appeared mildly disdainful.

Chane didn’t move—and Wynn began to panic. What could anyone here possibly do to force him?

“High-Tower,” Hawes said.

The dwarven domin lunged and grabbed Wynn’s arm, jerking her into the chamber.

Chane took one step. “Release her!”

A sharp utterance cracked the air between the wide chamber’s walls.

Wynn twisted her head to see.

Hawes’s eyes narrowed as she stamped the floor and lashed out with an open palm.

The echo of High-Tower’s steps seemed to vibrate in the floor, and Chane wobbled, as if about to topple, his eyes widening.

The floor beneath his feet suddenly lurched. Its stones rolled like a wave rising on a tidal beach. He fell backward through the open doors and toward the passage’s far wall. Hawes swept forward to stand before the opening, her back to Wynn.

“Why are you doing this?” Wynn asked, and jerked forward, but she couldn’t break High-Tower’s grip.

The two attendant sages grabbed the door handles, pulling the great oak doors closed. Hawes raised one hand before the narrowing gap.

“Wynn!” Chane rasped, trying to scramble to his feet.

“Wait for me in my room!” she called.

The doors slammed shut, and he was gone from her sight.

Hawes swept her hand down with another sharp utterance.

Wynn went limp in High-Tower’s grip as the doors’ aged oak began flowing together along the passing of Hawes’s hand. The gap blended downward along the seam. In an instant, the twin doors became one solid barrier, the wood’s grain now looking as if it were cut from one piece.

Premin Hawes laid her fingertips on the wood, cocking her head as if listening.

Wynn stared numbly at the barrier as High-Tower released her. Even Chane would be hard-pressed to break his way through from the other side. More than once she’d heard Domin Ghassan il’Sänke’s innuendos about this branch’s metaologers compared to his own. During his visit from the Suman Empire’s guild branch, he’d made plain how little he thought of even Premin Hawes’s skill as a thaumaturge.

Il’Sänke had been very wrong.

Everyone within the room remained silent for the longest time.

Premin Hawes finally turned and nodded to the others. She glided toward the long table’s right end, and the rest of the council turned to follow. But her gaze fell upon Wynn as she passed. There was no malice or anger there, merely a cold and calculating study.

Council members began taking their seats, and Wynn turned to face what awaited her ... alone.

Hawes settled silently in one of the smoothly crafted, high-back chairs at the right end of a long, stout table that stretched across the room’s rear. All the chairs were now filled with the five robed members of the Premin Council.

Premin Adlam, in the light brown of Naturology, sat at the table’s left end. Next, on High Premin Sykion’s left, sat portly Premin Renäld of Sentiology in cerulean. Sykion, as head of the council, sat at the table’s center, dressed in the gray of Cathology—Wynn’s own order. On her right, Premin Jacque of Conamology had his elbows on the table. His fingers were laced together, and he rested his high forehead against them, hiding his face.

And Hawes at the far right end still studied Wynn, almost without blinking. Her hazel irises now seemed the color of the walls’ gray stones.

Wynn stood straight, meeting that gaze, but then she couldn’t help glancing at the sixth person present.

As with the last time she’d been called here, Domin High-Tower, her immediate superior in Cathology, returned to standing beyond the table. He wouldn’t even look at her and stared out one of the narrow rear windows. He’d once been a beloved teacher, but was now her fiercest, most open opponent, trying to hobble her efforts at nearly every turn.

“Journeyor Hygeorht,” Premin Sykion began slowly, “I hardly know where to begin.”

Wynn shifted her gaze.

“Lady” Tärtgyth Sykion, once a minor noble of the nearby nation of Faunier, was an aged but tall and straight willow of a woman. A long silver braid snaked out of the side of her cowl and down the front of her gray robe. Beneath her usual motherly and temperate veneer, she was as untrustworthy as the rest. Tonight, there was no nurturing care in her expression.

Strangely, that took away all of Wynn’s shame and fear.

She wasn’t about to give them the slightest chance for a long recitation of her offenses. She wouldn’t subject herself to more subterfuge hidden beneath righteous indignation, no matter her guilt.

“I request to go south,” she said immediately, “to the Lhoin’na, and our guild’s elven branch.”

Sykion sat upright, like a willow suddenly revitalized in resistance to an autumn gale. Her eyes barely betrayed shock, but not so for Premin Jacque. He lifted his head from his laced fingers, his broad mouth gaping for an instant.

“You are not here to request anything!” he said. “You are here to answer for your actions.”

Wynn clenched her jaw.

Sykion lightly cleared her throat and straightened a stack of papers. The topmost appeared to be a letter of some kind, but Wynn couldn’t make out its contents from where she stood. Then she spotted the sea green tie ribbon lying beside the stack. She grew sick inside, thinking of a royal wax seal that must have bound the ribbon enclosing that letter.

“Journeyor Hygeorht,” Sykion began again, “it has come to our attention that a number of journals secured with the texts are missing.”

Wynn was ready for this, the first and least of her “crimes.”

Six moons past, she’d returned from abroad, bearing a treasure like none before it—a collection of ancient texts from the time of the Forgotten History, presumably penned by forgotten Noble Dead. These texts hinted at an ancient enemy who’d nearly destroyed the world a thousand years ago ... in a war that many now believed was an overblown myth or had never even taken place.

Wynn knew better.

To her shock, upon returning home, she’d lost this treasure. Out of fear of the contents, her superiors had seized the texts—along with her own journals. They’d locked everything away, to be translated in secret. Wynn had uncovered hints that the original texts were hidden somewhere in the underworld of Dhredze Seatt. Against all orders, she’d found them again, but was only able to take back her journals.

“The journals are not missing, but back where they belong,” Wynn answered. “I wrote them.”

Perhaps they’d expected her to be contrite. Why else would they make her stand alone before them like some miscreant schoolgirl about to be expelled?

“You don’t deny that you took these journals?” Adlam asked, perhaps a little uncertain.

“They’re mine,” Wynn answered.

“You will return them immediately,” Sykion said.

“No.”

“Journeyor Hygeorht—”

“By law, the texts are mine, as well,” Wynn interrupted. “I found them. I brought them back. If you make any attempt to regain my journals, I’ll engage the court’s High Advocate ... with my own case to have all the texts returned to me.”

She spoke without wavering, but her stomach knotted.

Making threats gave her no pleasure, but she’d learned a thing or two about what was right and what was necessary. This place had been her home since the day someone found her abandoned in a box at its outer portcullis. She had no wish to be expelled from the only life she knew. On the other hand, the premins wanted her gone—and yet still under their control. They couldn’t have that without her continued connection to the guild.

But as Wynn’s last words escaped, any pretense of formality vanished from the chamber.

High-Tower turned her way. He was not a premin, and so not part of the council. He didn’t speak, but his breath came strong and hard.

Premin Renäld glared at Wynn and whispered, “And what of the loss of Prince Freädherich?”

He may as well have shouted.

This was the worst of it—her true crime. This was the reason she’d been commanded before the council. Next to the loss of Prince Freädherich, stealing back her journals was a child’s prank.

Wynn slid one foot back a half step before catching herself. She’d known this was coming, but the quick shift in their assault had caught her off guard just the same.

A gleam of righteous ire—but also horror over the consequences—sparked in Renäld’s eyes.

“If the worst comes ... you have cut our hopes in half!” he spat at her.

Wynn knew it all more than he did. During her ordeal in the Stonewalkers’ underworld, she’d uncovered a dark secret unrelated to her purpose.

A prince of Malourné, thought drowned years ago, was alive and locked away in the Stonewalkers’ underworld—to protect him from himself. His wife, Duchess Reine Faunier-Âreskynna, princess of Malourné by marriage, had been caring for him in secret. The family line of the Âreskynna had an ancient blood connection to the Dunidæ—Dwarvish for the “Deep Ones.” A fabled people of the sea, only the Stonewalkers and the royal family knew of them.

Freädherich had been slowly succumbing to sea-lorn sickness, carried in his blood from a forgotten ancestor married in an alliance to one of the Dunidæ. Wynn had unwittingly drawn a black wraith named Sau’ilahk into the underworld, and the threat of the wraith’s presence had accelerated the prince’s illness and its transformation.

Prince Freädherich had fled, escaping to the open ocean with the Dunidæ, who always sought him out at the highest tides. Because of Wynn’s actions, Malourné had lost not only a prince, but the prime emissary to the Deep Ones, and an ancient alliance along with him.

Duchess Reine had lost her husband for the second and final time.

Wynn’s certainty of her choices wasn’t enough to hold down her guilt. She tried not to let it show but smoothed her robe a bit too obviously. The council was watching for weakness, anything to use against her, and they had more than enough.

“If this hadn’t been kept secret for so long,” Premin Renäld went on, “you wouldn’t be standing before us. You would be facing the High Advocate yourself, on trial for—”

“As far as the public is concerned,” Wynn cut in, “the prince died years ago.”

It was a shabby, cruel response, but there was nothing else she could say. What happened couldn’t be undone. She had no intention of justifying herself to those whose fears overrode necessary action, who denied obvious conclusions for all of these events.

The Ancient Enemy was returning. Another war was coming. There was no if; only when. And Wynn had to continue in her determination to stop it.

“So, you deny any part in the prince’s loss?” Premin Jacque demanded.

“I deny its relevance ... in the present,” Wynn answered. “It has no bearing on my request to travel south to the Lhoin’na’s guild branch.”

This was her goal. In the brief time she’d regained access to the ancient texts, searching for clues of the Ancient Enemy’s return, Wynn had found hints of where to look for the mystery’s next piece.

Bäalâle Seatt: a great dwarven settlement, lost in the mythical war at the end of the Forgotten History.

Her best guess placed it somewhere south, nearer the great desert and mountains separating the north from the southern Suman Empire. The Lhoin’na—elven—branch of the guild was not far from that range of mountains. Each guild branch had gathered lost fragments of the far past in their own regions. The archived library of the Lhoin’na sages might be the better place to find clues to the location of that lost seatt. She now staked everything on the hope that her own guild branch wanted to rid itself of her presence.

Wynn stood in a long silence, watching her superiors. During some moment she hadn’t noticed, Hawes had pulled down her cowl. The premin of metaologers was the only one who hadn’t spoken as of yet.

Premin Frideswida Hawes appeared to be late middle-aged, but her short, cropped hair was as fully grayed as dull silver. With smooth, narrow features above a pointed chin, her expression rarely betrayed mood or thought.

Hawes’s silence, versus the others, seemed out of place.

Wynn viewed metaologers as logical, willful, used to the subtleties and hazards of balancing belief and knowledge. She wondered if blunt honesty would now be a useful tactic.

“I wish to go south. You wish me gone,” Wynn said, looking at Hawes, but then she turned to Sykion. “Simply give me approval. A quick word serves all our needs.”

Shocked expressions rose on both Sykion’s and Adlam’s faces, but no one spoke for the span of three breaths.

“The council will discuss your request ... later, in private,” Sykion said. “For now, as you clearly won’t face your transgressions, you are dismissed.” Then she leaned forward. “You are confined to the guild grounds.”

Wynn tried not to stiffen, but failed. “You cannot order me to—”

“Journeyor Hygeorht, you will remain on grounds!” the high premin commanded. “Or I will have your status revoked. I may face the consequences of that, but it would be a price worth paying.”

Wynn was too stunned for her growing anger to escape.

“Understand this clearly,” Sykion went on. “No guild protection, no funding, no status whatsoever as a sage. Threaten us again with action to regain the texts, and I will have you charged with the theft of the journals, which were in the dwarves’ possession at the time. We shall see whose case the High Advocate takes ... and whose word stands unblemished before the people’s court!”

Her aged features were strained with a fury that Wynn had never seen there before. But open hostility was preferable to politely veiled aggression.

They were in a deadlock. No matter Sykion’s warnings, she was desperate to keep a hold on Wynn. And no matter what Wynn threatened, she couldn’t afford to be cast out, or she would have no right to enter the archives of Lhoin’na sages.

“Do you understand?” Sykion asked.

Wynn nodded curtly.

“Then you are dismissed ... for now.”

Wynn turned slowly and found herself staring at the impenetrable barrier of solid wood. By the time she glanced back, Hawes’s hand finished an upward sweep, thin fingers curling lazily inward at the last. When Wynn turned back, only normal, old oak doors stood before her.

They began to open under the push of the outer attendants.

Looking out hesitantly, Wynn was relieved not to see Chane outside. He must have followed her request and gone back to her room. Trembling slightly, Wynn left the now silent council chamber, trying not to break into a jog until she was out of sight of the attendants.

A short while later, Chane paced Wynn’s small dormitory room, listening to her recount what had happened with the Premin Council. Seething, and still startled by how easily he had been locked out of the proceedings, he listened carefully to all that had transpired.

“They gave no answer to your request?” he asked.

“Only that I’m confined to guild grounds.”

She sat on the bed, one limp hand on Shade’s back. Chane studied them both.

Wynn looked less troubled than he expected. Her wispy brown hair hung around her pretty, olive-toned face. He suppressed an urge to push a few strands behind her ear.

Shade still appeared put out at having been left behind. Reading a canine face was not always easy, but she had almost taken on an air of petulance. Though she was an elven breed of dog called a majay-hì, anyone who did not know this saw only an oversized, long-legged, near-black wolf.

Wynn ran her hand down Shade’s neck.

“I think they’ll let me go in the end,” Wynn said. “Once they believe they have the means to get me out of their way and keep me on a leash.”

Chane stopped pacing. “How soon do you think we can leave?”

“I can’t even guess, but we’ll make use of our time while we wait.”

He stood there a little longer, debating his next words. An uncomfortable concern had nagged him since returning from Dhredze Seatt. Wynn had more than enough burdens, but with another journey ahead, he could no longer put this off.

“Then we should discuss safeguards,” he said carefully. “Once we leave civilization—”

“I know,” she broke in tiredly. “I’ll be away from so many other mortals, and we’ll be traveling through isolated places where the Fay might try to seek me out.”

At that, Shade raised her head, rumbling softly into Wynn’s face.

This was going to be harder than Chane thought. Before Wynn or Shade could start in about the Fay, Chane cut them off.

“Whenever possible on the road, I need to keep my ring off.”

Chane wore a brass ring that he called his ring of nothing, which had been created by his old undead companion Welstiel Massing—who was now truly dead. The ring protected Chane against anyone sensing his nature as an undead. But it also dulled his own heightened senses, including his awareness of the living and the undead.

Wynn blinked at his reference to the ring. It had nothing to do with the Fay hunting her because she was the only mortal who could hear them, spy upon them whenever and wherever they manifested near enough. And then realization of what he truly meant finally spread across her oval face.

“Oh, Chane,” she said. “Sau’ilahk is gone. I burned him to nothing down in the sea tunnel.”

“You burned him once before in the streets of Calm Seatt,” he countered. “And yet—”

“This time was different,” Wynn insisted. “I destroyed him, and that’s the fact.”

Perhaps ... but this was the point of contention. It was not a fact, as there was no proof of it.

In the underworld of the dwarves, Wynn had used her only weapon against the undead—her sun crystal staff—to vanquish the wraith. It was true that this time she had had powerful help. Cinder-Shard, the craggy-faced master of the dwarven Stonewalkers, those who guarded the remains and spirits of the dwarven honored dead, had somehow been able to seize Sau’ilahk’s incorporeal form with his massive bare hands. And that sardonic elf called Chuillyon, dressed in white robes like a false sage, had held the wraith at bay with little more than serene, smiling whispers.

Those two, along with the other Stonewalkers, had hindered and bound Sau’ilahk. They had given Wynn time to burn the wraith with her staff, its crystal emitting light akin to the sun.

She was convinced the wraith was gone.

Chane was not.

“Compared to the wraith, I am a common vampire,” he countered.

He could hear himself shifting from his normal, voiceless hiss to something more raspy, grating, and heated. He tried to sound calmer, more rational. “Yet you watched as Magiere severed my head from my body.”

This was also how his voice had been permanently maimed.

Wynn fell silent, glancing away.

“Yet here I am,” he finished quietly.

He hated feeling forced to bring this up. Watching him die his second death had been more than difficult for her. He still had no understanding of how he had later managed to come back. All he remembered was waking up soaked in blood and covered in freshly killed bodies in a shallow-earth hollow. He was whole again—and Welstiel had been looking down at him, as if waiting.

“I traveled with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap for a long time,” Wynn finally answered. “They—we—destroyed vampires who did not come back.” She gestured toward her desk, at the stacks of journals piled there. “I’ve recorded it all, regardless that my superiors have no interest in the truth.”

Chane glanced at the journals. Another notion resurfaced, one that he had mulled over in recent nights. He had never even seen those journals until Wynn managed to steal them back.

But she had written everything in them about her travels with Leesil and Magiere, about her experiences with the undead and the an’Cróan, the elves of the Farlands. If he could read them, he might better understand her ... comprehend her true drives, goals, hopes, and fears. Even if she had not recorded events literally, he knew her well enough to read between the lines of her script.

His one task was to protect Wynn, including from herself. This gave him purpose, and to do so, he needed to understand everything she had been through.

“May I read them?” he asked, nodding at the stack.

Wynn turned pale.

“I wrote them in the Begaine syllabary,” she blurted out. “You won’t be able to.”

“I read a little of your guild symbols.” He stepped closer. “And you can help me. Studying your works will teach me to follow the script.”

Wynn started to say something more but it never came out.

Chane did not understand her reluctance. He had already strained her patience by pushing his point about Sau’ilahk, but now that he had made the request, he would not stop.

“The information in those journals could help me—us—in the journey to come.”

This reasoning was sound. If they were to travel to another guild branch in search of more answers, how else would he know what to look for? She viewed him as part of her purpose now. He should be allowed to know everything.

Wynn was still silent.

Chane understood her well enough. Everything she had brought to the guild had been taken from her. Now that she had regained some of her prized possessions, perhaps she was reluctant to relinquish them again, even to him.

“As you said,” he went on, “we must pass time constructively until the council decides. I will need to purchase the supplies for our trip if you are confined. Otherwise, I must better understand what has brought you this far.”

And still she hesitated.

“Were they not written to recount your experiences, share your knowledge?”

Wynn looked up at him.

“Of course, yes.” She stood up, stepping to her little desk table. “I recopied this one while on the ship from the Farlands. This recounts my journey to Droevinka with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap. You can start here.”

Her sudden acquiescence was a relief, but something in her eyes troubled Chane. Even as she held up that first journal, her small fingers were white from clutching it too tightly.

What was she hiding?