Of Truth and Beasts

Chapter 13

Chane awoke to scuffling and hushed voices. He swatted off the blanket and sat up.

Wynn and Ore-Locks were busy about the guest quarters, gathering belongings. Shade watched from the other ledge bed with her nose on her paws. At Chane’s sudden movement, Wynn glanced over.

“We have our own rooms,” she said. “I told Mujahid we’d be out by now.”

Before Chane even straightened his rumpled shirt, Ore-Locks grabbed the chest. Chane hefted his packs and swords. He was still groggy and beginning to wonder what had happened while he lay dormant. Wynn’s manner was not only brusque; her expression and whole demeanor had changed.

He saw no relief in her face in gaining their privacy, let alone in having reached her destination. She looked strained, and her brow suddenly furrowed over some unknown thought. A trace of anger marred her soft features.

“I am hungry,” Ore-Locks said.

Chane realized it had been more than a day since the dwarf had eaten anything besides apple slices. Hopefully, Wynn had found something for herself and Shade.

But then he found himself distracted as he stepped out into the passage.

Since entering the Lhoin’na forest, he had felt watched, continually prodded, as if something unseen sought him out. Now he stood inside of a living place. Much as the ring dulled his awareness and hampered his heightened senses, he dared not take it off until they left this land.

Wynn nodded ahead down the passage and looked to Ore-Locks. “Those two doors on the right. Soon as we’re settled, I’ll show you the meal hall.”

She opened the nearer door and held it for Chane. Ore-Locks seemed about to argue, but dropped the chest by the door and headed off to the next one. Chane entered and found the room identical to the one they had left—minus Mujahid’s paraphernalia. After Wynn and Shade followed, he waited until he heard Ore-Locks’s door close. He then dropped the packs, quickly slid the chest inside, and closed himself away in privacy with Wynn.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Wynn sank on the far bed ledge. Shade crawled up beside her, though it was a tight fit, and nosed Wynn’s hand.

Chane’s head had not fully cleared, and perhaps the nagging prod of the forest’s presence wore on his patience, as well.

“Wynn?”

She raised only her eyes to him. “The archives have been shut.”

Chane took a quick step. “What?”

She recounted everything from when she awoke to the two Shé’ith expelling a pair of Suman sages. Chane turned aside and dropped down hard on the opposite bed ledge.

“Armed guards? You told me it is impolite to openly carry weapons inside a guild branch.”

“It is,” she answered dryly. “And yet.”

No doubt something in Wynn’s delivered message had caused all of this, though it seemed extreme to cut off everyone just to keep her out.

“Has this ever happened in Calm Seatt?” he asked.

“I don’t know of this ever happening at any branch,” she answered. “Domin Tärpodious oversaw categorical restructurings, when holdings in some sections outstripped space. But he closed off one section at a time, not the whole archive.... And no city guards or constabularies were called in.”

Wynn appeared to grow weary before Chane’s eyes. She ran her hands over her face, pushing back her hair, looking small and defeated. Even the anger drained from her features. Chane began to fume in her place.

Why did Wynn’s own superiors keep going to ever greater lengths to hinder her? The twisted world at large had never been worth Chane’s concern. Now he saw the same taints inside the guild. If not for Wynn, he would have had no part of it anymore. That dream of a better life in her world almost died within him.

“When did this happen?” he asked.

“Just after lunch.”

“What did you do all afternoon?”

She got up and went for her pack, digging out a new journal.

“Their public library was open, so I took a look, for the sake of it. Sometimes things don’t get put back where they belong, out of sight.”

This was the Wynn that Chane knew, never leaving any possibility unexplored.

“Did you find anything?” he asked.

“No.” She laid the journal on her bunk and began turning pages. “But I copied bits of an old map. It’s crude, but might be useful. I don’t dare ask for a scribed copy, or request to take it off grounds for the work to be done elsewhere. I’m probably being watched.”

Chane got up to join her, standing to one side as he looked down at the journal. It was a simplistic line sketch of the region at large. It showed general areas south all the way to the nearest part of the Sky-Cutter Range separating Numan nations and free territories from the southern desert. Wynn pointed to a blank vertical strip between columns of inverted wedges for unnamed mountains.

“This is called the Slip-Tooth Pass,” she said. “It ends at the northern side of the range. It isn’t enough to go on, but if I can’t gain some hint to Bäalâle Seatt’s whereabouts, it’s the shortest and clearest path to the range.”

Chane shook his head. “That range is at least a thousand leagues long, probably much more. It would take a year to search even that nearest part of it. We must get into the archives.”

Shade hopped off the bed, rumbling in agitation as she squatted. Perhaps she understood and did not care for Chane’s suggestion.

“How?” Wynn asked. “I’ve gone over everything I can think of, including you drawing the guards off for me. All notions lead to you getting arrested ... and all of us being expelled.”

“Ore-Locks could slip through one of the walls.”

Wynn shook her head. “I don’t think stonewalkers can pass through wood—only earth and stone, maybe metal. And Ore-Locks isn’t as skilled as his elders. When I was taken to the texts in Dhredze Seatt, he stood guard, but he had to wait for another to retrieve me.” She paused. “Besides, I don’t trust him in there on his own.”

Chane scowled at this. He trusted his own newfound instinct for deceit, though of late, it seemed to vanish at times. But at their first real meeting with Ore-Locks in the Chamber of the Fallen, his sense of deception had been acute. Chane had not sensed a lie when Ore-Locks had denied Wynn’s insinuation that the dwarf served some traitorous ancestral spirit.

Ore-Locks had his own agenda, unknown as it was, but the wayward stonewalker was the closest thing they had to an ally with necessary skills. Any help should not be so quickly dismissed.

“Show me where the guards are,” Chane said. “Perhaps we—”

A quick, triple knock sound at the door.

Chane heard Wynn’s breath catch, and she rose and hurried over, not yet opening it.

“Yes?”

“Journeyor Hygeorht?” called a light voice outside. “A message for you.”

Wynn pulled the door open as Chane approached behind her.

A metaologer in a midnight blue robe stood outside. Chane had seen few elves in his life before coming to this continent. Even he was a bit startled at the sight of her.

Stunning, even for an elf, she was like something out of his land’s fables and folklore. She was so slight she might break under a strong breeze, and so beautiful she couldn’t be real. She smiled and held out a folded and wax-sealed sheet of paper.

“Who is it from?” Wynn asked as she took the message.

The young woman simply shook her head, as if she did not know, then turned and walked away. Wynn closed the door, flipping the message in her hand.

The cream paper was thick and of fine quality, its folded edge locked down with a green wax seal impressed with the shape of an ivy leaf. Wynn broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and revealed a sharply stroked script. Chane assumed it was Elvish.

Wynn dropped her hand so fast the paper crackled, and she jerked the door open, rushing out to look down the passage.

Chane leaned out, looking both ways. “What is it?”

Wynn pushed him back, stepped inside, and shut the door. She stood staring blankly at the sheet of paper.

“It’s a pass ... into the archives,” she answered without the slightest relief or joy.

“Who would send you this?”

Wynn shook her head and studied the letter again. “It’s unsigned, but the council seal makes it official. I just show it to the guards and ... and I’m in.”

Chane distrusted sudden changes of fortune, and it was clear Wynn had equal doubts.

“I don’t care who sent it,” she said firmly. “We go now, before someone finds out and takes it back. Shade, come!”

This time Shade growled more sharply.

If the dog truly understood what had happened, Chane could not disagree with her warning. But what choice did they have?

Sau’ilahk rose from dormancy and materialized after dusk on the plain bordering the Lhoin’na forest. He had sated himself after finding the caravan before the previous dawn, and now brimmed with consumed lives. He would need that power tonight.

Drifting nearer the tree line, he kept to the road, shying from those little domes of velvety white flowers and whatever lay beneath in the earth that had filled him with painful cold. He stopped when he felt the slight tingle of the forest’s presence reaching out to find him.

Sau’ilahk looked down on the road’s stone-packed bare earth at a spot that would serve his need. There he crouched. This time, he would use the externalized trappings of ritual to aid his conjury.

Solidifying one hand, he scraped a double circle in the hard earth with one black, cloth-wrapped finger. Once he had filled that border ring with sigils, he rose and shut out the world to focus his thoughts on that pattern.

The lines in the earth began glowing with pale chartreuse in his sight.

Sau’ilahk drew upon his stores of life. He formed a clear image of a small creature in his mind. In a long existence, he had learned of many things, even of creatures that lived in places from which he was barred. He shaped that image, seeing that creature as if it stood there in the circle. Lost in the summoning, he did not notice it leave the forest until grass along the tree line rippled in its passing.

It broke from the plain’s grass and bounded up the road.

Sau’ilahk immediately shifted focus, and the luring image in his sight vanished. He looked on the animal as it halted within the circle. No common beast would serve his purpose as well as this one.

About the size of a common barn cat, it had a ferretlike body as well as some of that animal’s coloring. A stubby tail, darker than its bark-colored fur, quivered once before it rose on its hindquarters. Large, round brown eyes peered around a pug muzzle in a face masked with black fur. Twitching, wide ears made the tufts of white hairs on their points blur in vibration. But most useful of all were those tiny forepaws.

Almost like small hands, their stubby digits ended in little claws. A tâshgâlh—“finder of lost things”—stood mesmerized before Sau’ilahk.

A natural-born thief, the tâshgâlh possessed dexterous paws that exceeded a raccoon’s for getting at whatever it became obsessed with. A trilling coo vibrated from its throat, for it was still entranced by the summoning; it did not actually see him yet. Tâshgâlh were found only in elven lands. Wherever he sent it, no one would give it notice other than to hide any shiny baubles that might catch its attention.

In a smooth flash, Sau’ilahk solidified one hand and snatched the tâshgâlh by the back of its long neck. Its trance broke, and its pigeonlike purr became a squealing, screeching chatter. He let it thrash, its tiny rear claws hooking nothing as it tried to tear at his incorporeal forearm.

It was the most perfect selection for a familiar.

With this beast Sau’ilahk could hunt for Wynn Hygeorht within a land forbidden to him.

Wynn paused at the courtyard door and looked back into the meal hall.

Ore-Locks’s reddish hair badly needed brushing, as it was looking wild and tangled even when pulled back with a leather thong. As he gulped large spoonfuls of stew, nearby initiates stood dumbfounded, eyeing the other plates they’d brought him moments ago, which he’d emptied. They obviously had no idea how dwarves could feast at a moment’s notice, though why Ore-Locks did so now was puzzling. Dwarves could store up food and go without for three times as long as a human.

“We should bring him,” Chane whispered.

Wynn shook her head. This small venture was best kept from Ore-Locks; she’d told him nothing about the mysterious letter. Instead, she told him that she would look into how else she might gain access to the archives. He’d been too hungry to argue.

She might not be able to get rid of Ore-Locks, but she would keep the upper hand in whatever they did—by what she learned and he did not. The more dependent on her that he was, the better. For whatever he wanted at Bäalâle Seatt, she couldn’t have him leaving her behind and getting there first.

Wynn turned to hurry out, shivering once in the cold air as they emerged in the courtyard.

“Which way?” Chane asked.

“North.”

She trotted ahead, still gripping the unsigned letter and wondering who had sent it. Was someone here actually trying to help her? Or was the letter merely bait to trap her, complete with grounds for her expulsion? If the latter, it wasn’t very effective. She would still have the pass with which to implicate whoever had sent it.

“Do you have any plan?” Chane asked. “Besides showing the pass to the guards and waiting to see what happens?”

She shook her head. “They’ll let us through, and then it’s a matter of time. Whoever arranged this is at odds with Premin Gyâr. We can only hope this comes out too late for him to stop us.”

Wynn was even more uncertain than she sounded. They headed along the courtyard’s paths, reaching a spot beneath the northernmost spire. Upon reentering the great redwood ring, her uncertainty turned to dread.

What if Gyâr had sent the pass? He was acting high premin and could simply claim it was forgery, no matter how legitimate it looked. He could’ve even used the council’s official seal. She’d be trapped, and he would simply misdirect all others in a hunt for whoever had illicitly used the council’s seal.

When had she become this paranoid? Steeling herself, she pressed on. What other choice did she have?

The entrance chamber was empty, and Wynn took a long breath before leading the way. Finally, she pointed up the sloping side passage where she’d seen the Suman sages expelled.

Chane looked positively grim, and Shade had been rumbling intermittently along the way. The dog had even once wrinkled a jowl at Wynn, expressing displeasure at all of this. Wynn pressed onward and upward.

They emerged to face the same two shé’ith standing before the opening to the spiral stairs. She’d forgotten how intimidating they were—tall, armed, and expressionless. She stepped leisurely forward with as much confidence as she could muster, and held out the letter.

“I’m here on assignment,” she said in Elvish. “The Premin Council granted me this pass to enter the archives.”

The female shé’ith looked down—not at the letter, but at Wynn.

Wynn couldn’t help a flash of anxiety. She stood waiting, still holding out the letter.

When the woman took it, she snapped it open and scanned its content. A flicker of surprise on her triangular face washed away under a frown. She looked beyond Wynn at Chane and Shade.

“Is something amiss?” Wynn asked, extending her hand for the letter.

The female shé’ith turned over the letter, taking in the wax seal on its outer wrapping sheet. Still frowning, she finally returned it to Wynn but didn’t move. All the while, her companion watched out of the corner of his eye, as if waiting for her to decide what they would do.

“This is an order from the council,” Wynn said. “Stand aside.”

She considered threatening to get a premin but feared the woman might agree. If the pass was some kind of bait, that would end her attempt to gain the archives right here and now.

Finally, the woman stepped aside.

Wynn avoided the smoldering uncertainty in the female shé’ith’s large eyes. She strode by up the stairs, never looking back, and hoped Chane and Shade would follow quickly. When she glanced back, Chane blocked the view down the steps, but she heard the guards whispering. Then Wynn heard the sound of boots rushing off.

“Hurry,” she whispered. “I think one of them went to verify the pass.”

Chane waved her onward, and they quickstepped upward.

The stairway’s living wood walls narrowed, until they had to climb single file. The stairs curved sharply around and around, but then suddenly leveled off into a more gradually arcing and rising passage.

Wynn passed a teardrop-shaped opening filled with a glass pane in the right wall. Through the window, she saw the tops of trees and knew she was looking beyond the guild’s confines to the open forest. A soft light suddenly glowed beyond the passage’s curve above.

When Wynn finally saw the cold lamp mounted on the wall, she paused on the landing. The lamp’s cream-colored base likely contained alchemical fluids, just like those of her guild branch. The fluid produced enough warmth to keep a crystal lit instead of friction by hand. Then she spotted the door on her left, and it suddenly struck her that the guards weren’t the only obstacles.

She’d been so focused on getting past them that she hadn’t considered any archivists waiting beyond a door. If she ran into some counterpart to Domin Tärpodious, would the letter be enough?

Wynn reached for the door lever but didn’t press it. There were two keyholes in the lock plate; two keys were needed to open the door. That was why only the entrance below need be guarded.

“What are you waiting for?” Chane whispered.

She looked up the passage to another set of stairs leading farther into the redwood ring’s heights. If this door was locked, were there more above? The ring’s thickness wasn’t nearly the breadth of the Calm Seatt catacombs. Perhaps the Lhoin’na split their archives between multiple levels, but she had to start somewhere.

Wynn pressed the lever, and to her surprise, the door opened easily. This was unexpected, after the fuss over closing the archives. Perhaps she’d come to expect that nothing she tried would ever be without obstacles. She peeked in, thinking she would find someone waiting.

The main, northern entrance to her own branch’s archives emptied into Domin Tärpodious’s main room. Here she saw only rows of shelves beyond a smaller open space with three small tables. No one was present.

Standard cold lamps glowed on two tables, one of which had a pile of open books upon it. Someone had recently been working in here and left that work lying out. By the low light, Wynn spotted bound volumes and sheaves, as well as scroll cases, filling the nearest casements beyond the tables.

There was no sign of any restructuring in process.

Her anger returned for an instant, but she’d managed to gain the archives—even if under suspicious circumstances. Now she had to hurry.

Wynn rushed in. Chane couldn’t read Elvish, or many other languages found in archive holdings, but that didn’t matter. She pointed to the end of one freestanding casement where the faded etching of a lone triangle was still filled with remnants of paint.

“Look for Fire by Spirit, a triangle above a circle,” she instructed. “That’s for material on myths and legends in historical context. If you can’t find that, search for a circle above a triangle for direct myths and legends possibly categorized by culture, region, and time frame.”

The guild’s orders were often represented by geometric symbols associated with the prime Elements of Existence: Spirit, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. In turn, any works that fell into an order’s fields of endeavor were filed in libraries and archives by those symbols. Columns of symbols on casements, individual shelves, and on some works themselves, were used to classify, subclassify, and cross-reference subject matter.

Circle, for Spirit and Metaology, indicated works on metaphysics, philosophy, religion, and folklore. Triangle, for Fire and Cathology—Wynn’s own order—marked history and the organization of knowledge and information. The square of Air and Sentiology was for politics, law, government, economics, and so on. A hexagon for Water designated works of Conamology, including mathematics and applied sciences. The last was the octagon for Earth and Naturology, with its emphasis in natural and earth sciences, as well as prominent trades and crafts.

“I will start over here,” Chane answered, heading off to the left.

Wynn passed him the spare cold lamp crystal before she took off the other way with Shade. She fingered along casement ends, scanning their etched symbols, but she found only octagons alone or as the top symbol in pairs and trios. Works about earth sciences and crafts wouldn’t include what she sought. She wandered between the shelves, twice spotting Chane doing the same on the room’s far side.

Most guild archives were much larger than what was placed in their common libraries. She’d heard that the one in the Suman branch dwarfed those of the Lhoin’na and Numan. Still, one could get lost wandering the dark catacombs of her own branch. This place appeared considerably too small, and all the casements so far held only works of various subdivisions under Naturology.

It made no sense. Where were the texts for the other emphases of the guild?

Wynn stumbled upon a narrow, steep stairway in the room’s rear-right corner. Sparked with hope, she climbed into an even smaller room. Making her way through its maze of casements, she found its single central table. But all shelves along the way were marked with a leading octagon, though the columns of symbols were now three, four, or even five deep.

Wynn grew anxious. Something was wrong here. Shade huffed twice, and not from nearby. When Wynn turned about, she couldn’t spot the dog.

“Shade?” she called out, and the dog barked. She followed the sound and found Shade at the top of the narrow stairs.

“Wynn, where are you?”

Chane’s soft rasp carried from below, and Wynn hurried down the stairs.

“Chane?”

“Here.”

She followed his voice around the end of a casement to where he stood scanning the shelves and slowly shaking his head.

“I have found only octagons as lead symbols,” he said. “The only triangles are lower symbols in the columns. I have seen no circles at all.”

Wynn’s worry increased. How was this even possible? The elven archives couldn’t be entirely devoted to the order of Naturology.

“We’ve missed something,” she whispered.

“Perhaps there is another level farther up. We might—”

Chane stopped so suddenly that Wynn looked around in alarm. Then she heard the voices grow louder.

“I swear, Domin, the books were on my desk!” one said in Elvish.

Another voice, crackling with age, replied, “New acquisitions do not just get up to shelve themselves.”

“I unwrapped them with my own hands,” the first returned. “It is not often that the Suman branch sends anything our way. When I saw how old they were, I locked my chamber and came for you.”

“Yet no one else knows of a delivery,” the old one said sharply. “And your desk is bare of even the wrapping paper. Someone has been—”

“Where is she?” demanded a third voice.

Wynn shivered in the following pause. The newcomer’s voice, filled with such cold disdain, was familiar. She covered Chane’s hand, closing his fingers over his crystal as she smothered her own.

“Premin?” the old one replied. “For whom are you asking?”

Wynn scurried silently between the casements toward the light she’d seen upon first entering. When she peeked around the last shelves into the open space of tables ...

Premin Gyâr stood inside the entrance, and a pair of gray-robed elven sages faced him, their backs to Wynn. In the open door behind Gyâr stood two shé’ith that Wynn had never seen. Just how many of the patrollers had the premin requisitioned?

She pulled back to find Chane behind her, his hand on his sword. In the half darkness, he mouthed something at her.

Another way out?

She shook her head and leaned close to whisper, “Let me do the talking.”

Chane’s eyes widened as he grabbed her arm.

“You, look to the next level!” Gyâr commanded. “And, you, start searching in here.”

Chane began to pull Wynn away, but she shook her head at him. There was no way to escape. The longer they dragged this out, the worse it would end. Gyâr had come so urgently—and yet late. That meant he hadn’t been the one to draft the letter to bait her. Otherwise, he’d have been waiting and watching to catch her before she got in.

Someone else had sent her the pass.

Wynn barely finished that thought when she stepped into the open, feigning bafflement as best as she could. She never got out any falsely innocent question as to what was going on.

“You are under arrest!” Gyâr spat immediately, his tight features breaking into a mask of rage. “Shé’ith, here ... take them!”

An elderly cathologer spun about, along with his younger counterpart. The old one stared, stunned, at the sight of Wynn. She recognized him as the elder sage who’d advised her in the meal hall. Was he the master archivist?

Wynn heard Chane’s blade slide from its sheath. Before she could turn, both shé’ith drew their sweeping blades in the same swift motion. Shade’s snarl rose behind Wynn.

“Wait!” she cried out, sidestepping into Chane’s way and grabbing Shade’s scruff. “What is this about?”

“Do not confound your offense with more deceit,” Gyâr answered. “One of the guards below came to ask about the pass you showed them, since they were never told of such.”

“Yes, I have a pass ... with a council seal on it,” Wynn confirmed. “It was delivered to me this evening. I assumed—”

“Give it to me,” he said, striding forward. “I do not know how you forged it, but—”

“I forged nothing,” Wynn countered, fishing the letter from her pocket. She’d barely extended it when he snatched it from her hand.

“I would never have entered without proper authority,” she added.

Gyâr’s expression dulled as he studied the letter. His gaze hung the longest at its bottom, where the council seal was stamped. Confusion briefly broke the anger in his near-yellow eyes. He flipped the letter, glancing once at the wax seal on the sheet that had enveloped it.

Wynn knew one thing.

The council’s imprint at the letter’s bottom was no forgery. Whoever had sent it to her had—or had gained—access to the council’s official seal.

“How is this ... ?” Gyâr began weakly, then his voice sharpened as he fixed on her. “Who issued this for you?”

“I assumed it came from you,” she lied. “Since an apprentice metaologer brought it to our room.”

The premin’s tan face appeared to pale, and he closed another step. Wynn felt Chane’s hand settle on her shoulder, his fingers tightening. Both shé’ith tensed.

“A metaologer ... to your room?” the premin asked. “Which apprentice?”

“I don’t know your people,” she answered. “I don’t know who it was.”

Wynn became reluctant to mention that it had been a woman—probably a journeyor—or to provide any description at all. Whoever had made that pass, possibly someone in Gyâr’s order or the premin of another, may have used the young metaologer as an unwitting tool. That person might be a hidden ally or just another enemy trying to further hinder and malign Wynn. She wasn’t about to risk incriminating the wrong person until she was certain.

Gyâr’s anger surfaced again as he glanced at the elderly archivist watching all of this closely. Some inner frustration seemed to keep the premin from getting out whatever he wanted to say. If the pass was real, the premin certainly couldn’t have them arrested—or worse—in front of witnesses.

“Journeyor,” the old archivist said to Wynn, stepping forward. “What are you seeking in the Naturology archives? For your calling, I would think you would want the southwest of our five spires.”

“The southwest spire?” she echoed.

“Yes ... for the Cathology archives.”

Wynn felt ill.

She’d asked the young initiate in the courtyard for directions to the archives, and the girl had pointed around the redwood ring to the closest way to the closest spire. There was a reason why every casement here had symbols that all began with an octagon.

Five orders and five spires, or five archives for each order, and she’d picked the wrong one.

“Witless” Wynn Hygeorht, the madwoman of Calm Seatt’s guild branch, had done it again.

Even now she didn’t know which of the other four held the archives for Metaology, marked with a circle for Spirit. She wasn’t about to ask, for they were all beyond her reach. Her mysterious pass had been confiscated, more of the Shé’ith would be guarding every spire’s entrance, and she’d again drawn too much attention.

Her stomach began to hurt.

“Tell me who brought you this letter,” Gyâr demanded. “What did he look like?”

Wynn feigned confusion. “I only remember a dark blue robe. I was too surprised when I saw the letter, thinking it had come from you.”

Gyâr took a long, slow breath, and froze in indecision.

“Put those swords away,” the old archivist admonished, gesturing to the guards, and then turned his disapproval beyond Wynn. “You, too, young man. There has been enough irreverence here for one evening.”

Wynn felt Chane’s hand leave her shoulder as he sheathed his blade. The elder archivist stepped past the premin toward Wynn.

“All right, now. Back to your rooms,” he told her, as if she were a child up past her bedtime. “And mind the premin concerning the archives. We will handle the rest of this nonsense ourselves.”

But as he reached toward Wynn, she saw a pleading in his gaze that spoke louder than his fatherly words. He was giving her a way out, a way beyond the premin’s immediate reach, and she’d better take it.

“Of course, Domin,” she said quickly. “And our apologies for this upset.”

To Wynn’s relief, Chane followed her with only one last glare at the elven guards. Shade scurried ahead, rumbling at the younger archivist until he backstepped in shock.

Gyâr reluctantly let them pass, but his eyes never left Wynn.

Her relief was short-lived. They may have escaped the premin’s anger, but they had nothing to show for it.

Chane did not say a word all the way back to their room. Much as he would prefer to let this failure drive Wynn toward home, his thoughts raced elsewhere. He searched wildly for some way to get her into the correct archives. For certainly if he did not, what would she do next, and thereby place herself in even more danger?

None of his abilities, his arcane tools or books, or even his recently mastered concoctions offered a single way to help her. There had to be something, though he could not yet see it.

Wynn shuffled ahead of him through the small common room and up to the passage to their quarters. Only once did Chane catch her profile. He expected to see defeat, but instead her features were tense, eyelids half-closed in some deep thought. This made him worry even more.

He wanted to say something, to do something, to make her feel better or divert her from whatever drastic scheme she would try next. Still, he could think of nothing, and it was driving him mad under the constant prodding of this place, this forest, all over his flesh.

Wynn opened the door to their room and stepped inside.

“Where have you been?”

Chane looked over her head to see Ore-Locks standing inside their room. Without answering, Wynn walked past him and sank down on her bed ledge. This penchant of hers was also beginning to worry Chane. More and more, she often shifted between suffering in defeat and rushing into thoughtless action.

“We had a chance and we took it,” she sighed.

Ore-Locks crossed his arms. “What chance?”

Wynn looked up at him, hesitating, and then told him everything up to the point where Gyâr had come for them.

“We were in the wrong archive,” she finished. “Now I have no way to gain the right one.”

Ore-Locks grimaced, his anger no better contained than the premin’s, though his reason was exactly the opposite. Whatever his ultimate motivation might be, his goal was for Wynn to succeed in finding the lost dwarven seatt.

“We cannot stay here doing nothing,” Chane finally said. “Yet we cannot continue until we learn where to go. We are without options.”

“I know that!” Wynn nearly shouted, and then shut her eyes. “Sorry,” she said more softly, “but I’m well aware of our situation.”

Ore-Locks glanced sidelong at Wynn, his broad face thoughtful. His resentment had vanished, which left Chane wary. Dwarves were not quick to real anger, but once it came, it did not fade easily.

“If you cannot access written words,” Ore-Locks said, “then turn to truer spoken ones.”

Wynn lifted her head, looking at him in puzzlement. Then she dropped her chin back into her hands.

“Oral tradition may be your people’s way,” she said, “but not for the guild or the elves.”

“The elves are long-lived,” he went on. “They may not be as oral as my people, but more so than humans. Someone here must know something of use.”

Wynn sat upright. Something in Ore-Locks’s words must have sparked another wild notion.

“No one here will talk to us,” Chane interrupted. “They have been warned against us by now.”

“Then find someone who disagrees with them,” Ore-Locks stated, looking only at Wynn. “We have already met one such who finds the guild quite distasteful ... because of Chuillyon.”

Wynn lifted her eyes to him and whispered in astonishment, “Vreuvillä!”

Chane’s chest tightened the instant that name crossed her small lips, for Ore-Locks might be correct. That wild woman—priestess, whatever she was—might tell them whatever she knew simply out of spite, if she knew anything useful at all.

Chane could not bear the thought of going anywhere near First Glade again. The first night had been horrible.

Wynn’s soft brown eyes shifted to him, concern and questions on her face, as if she’d read his thoughts. Chane knew it was too late now to stop her, but he raised a hand before she spoke.

“We have no idea where or how to find her in this ... forest.”

The anticipation on her face faltered. It crushed him to crush her hope. Yet Wynn would still push blindly forward, now that Ore-Locks had prodded her.

Chane simply hoped he could stall a little longer—long enough to find a better answer. Only then did he notice an oddity from the only silent one in the room.

This time, Shade had not protested at all.