Of Truth and Beasts

Chapter 18

Wynn stirred in the wagon’s back and sat up, feeling groggy. A whole moon had passed since they’d left Lhoin’na lands. She rubbed her eyes and crawled out of her lean-to canvas shelter. Two facts hit her instantly.

First, she’d overslept. It was fully dark, and they’d normally be on the move by now, traveling during Chane’s waking hours. They’d made good time so far, as winter nights were longer than the days.

Second, she was alone, but this didn’t worry her. The others were likely out foraging again, as their supplies were more than half gone.

Even if Wynn hadn’t had her makeshift map, they couldn’t have missed the head of the Slip-Tooth Pass. Once inside the pass, navigation became unnecessary; they simply pressed south by southeast between the tall ridges on both sides.

No one appeared to use this pass anymore. There was little path to speak of, let alone an actual road. Their way was occasionally interrupted by a depression, a boulder field, or having to locate a place to cross the broad stream that ran along parts of the pass’s floor. Eventually this route would lead them to the northern side of the Sky-Cutter Range. Beyond the leagues and leagues of those immense mountains lay the vast Suman desert.

And they were nearing the end of the pass.

Crawling to the wagon bed’s back, Wynn looked around, hoping to spot Chane or Shade returning. She didn’t, and her thoughts drifted to the previous morning.

The wind had kicked up shortly after nightfall, channeled down upon them by the pass’s high sides. The gale was so strong that the wagon rocked and rain began pelting them. Then the rain turned into hail.

Chane spotted a stone outcrop on the leeward slope and drove the wagon in beneath it. They lost part of a night and the next day but were grateful for any shelter. After Wynn’s companions had gone to sleep, she’d stayed awake past dawn, listening until the patter abated. Then she crawled out in daylight to see what lay ahead.

In the hazy distance were the vast peaks of the Sky-Cutter Range. She’d studied those mountains, so great in size that it was difficult to judge how far they had to go. Finally, she’d settled down, curling up beside Shade in the small shelter on their side of the wagon’s bed, and slept away the rest of the day.

Now she’d awakened alone in the dark.

“Shade?” she called tentatively.

The dog didn’t answer. Hopping out, Wynn spotted pots and pans already laid out near a lit campfire, and both horses were munching oats from their buckets. She stumbled toward the fire, stretching out her aches, and her movements loosened an odor from her clothing.

Wynn wrinkled her nose as she picked up the teapot. She could barely remember the last time she’d had a decent bath.

Chane and Shade had taken to hunting as a team. Wildlife wasn’t abundant, and Wynn knew what they’d likely bring back. She should’ve been grateful, but she didn’t look forward to yet another roasted wild hare. That’s all they seemed able to catch. What she wouldn’t give for an herbed lentil stew with tomatoes, celery, and a bit of onion.

She dug through burlap supply bags in the wagon’s back. All the melons were long gone, though they still had some small apples and dried jerky. She was saving those for when they entered the range, where nothing else might be available. Pulling out another sack, she found their last few potatoes and a couple of limp carrots. Maybe she could try making a quick soup?

Wynn paused, pondering the fire.

It was already lit, and the horses had been fed. Ore-Locks wasn’t a hunter, so he’d taken to foraging for necessities like firewood. Had he already returned and was here somewhere? Bending over, she looked under the wagon.

He wasn’t resting there. Straightening, she looked about, and then spotted a flicker of light halfway up the sheer slope on the outcrop’s southern side. She barely made out a hulking form by that small torchlight.

“Ore-Locks,” she called. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. She noticed how high he held the torch, its flame well above his head, but she hesitated at being alone with him up there. Curiosity won out when he began climbing higher, and she raced for the slope and scrambled upward to follow him.

“What ... are you ... ?” she panted, closing as he reached the outcrop’s top. “What are you doing?”

Up close, he didn’t smell any better than she did. A focused intensity covered his face.

“The top did not look right,” he said absently, not looking at her. “This is not natural.... Too level.”

Wynn followed his gaze.

The hang of the rutted ledge they’d seen from below was indeed level on top. By torchlight, she made out a pile of huge stones near its outward end. She was still staring when Ore-Locks headed out over that unnatural level toward the stone pile near the precipice.

Chane followed a few paces behind Shade as they made their way back to camp. Though he carried a large hare from a successful hunt, he wished they could have found something—anything—else to bring back from this wild, rocky land. Wynn never complained, but he knew she was probably dreaming of lentil stew.

Creeks and streams were plentiful enough for water. A few were large enough to support fish, if he was given time for the lengthy act of catching them. Wynn normally wanted to forage and move on as soon as possible. Between him and Shade, the quickest meal they could catch was a flushed rabbit, or maybe a partridge, if they caught it asleep.

Chane was walking at a good clip when Shade suddenly stopped. Her ears pricked up, and at first he thought she had lost her way.

But Shade never lost her bearings.

He followed her eyes to beneath a sparse pine tree downslope. A downed deer lay there, and Chane stepped around Shade to check out their find.

When their supplies were still plentiful, he had replenished his stores of life with the feeding cup by dragging down a few deer or wild cattle. He had not seen either in nearly a moon. An animal this size would provide food for some time, and venison might be a welcome change for his companions. But how long had the beast been dead? Would its flesh still be safe to eat?

Shade rumbled softly.

“What?” he asked, as if expecting an answer.

She remained where he had left her and wouldn’t approach the carcass.

Chane dropped to his knees and found that the carcass was still warm to the touch. That gave him hope that it had not yet spoiled, but it felt boney and gaunt. He could not see it clearly and grabbed its hind legs to drag it out beneath the moonlight. It weighed almost nothing.

Once Chane saw it clearly, disappointment set in.

At first, he thought the creature had died of old age. Its skin was shriveled and stretched tight over its rib cage. Then he noticed that its antlers were short, barely nubs, where tines would eventually grow. The deer could not have been much more than a yearling, yet it looked old.

He rose to his feet and backed away. He had no reason to fear disease, but he did not want to carry any taint back to camp.

“Come. We’re late,” he told Shade, and she loped ahead as he stepped onward.

Even as he reached camp, something about the carcass still bothered him—until he realized the camp was empty, and all thoughts of the deer vanished.

“Wynn?” he rasped.

The black gelding nickered, and he saw that the horses had been fed and the fire was lit. He leaned down to look under the wagon. Ore-Locks’s bedroll was empty, though his iron staff still lay there. Shade growled, and Chane straightened.

Shade sniffed the air, perhaps searching for Wynn in her own way, and Chane grew tense as the dog began ranging about the camp and peering out into the dark. Had Ore-Locks decided to drag Wynn off on his own in search for the seatt? Then why leave the wagon, horses, and weapons behind? Why bother building a fire?

“Wynn!” Chane called.

His maimed voice didn’t carry far. Shade threw back her head and howled once.

“Up here!” Wynn shouted. “Come quick.”

Chane looked up and saw light above the outcrop’s top, perhaps thirty or more yards overhead. His relief faded under annoyance. What was she up to now?

He dropped the hare by the fire and ran to catch Shade scrambling up the slope along the outcrop’s southern side. When he ascended to a height where torchlight reached his eyes, Shade was beside Wynn and Ore-Locks out on the outcrop’s strangely level top. They were climbing over a pile of large stones—practically boulders—near the outcrop’s end.

Chane was about to call Wynn back, not caring what brought her up here, when Ore-Locks dropped to a crouch beside one large, erect stone.

“Get over here,” Wynn called, waving.

Exasperated, Chane stepped outward, but his curiosity did not take hold until Ore-Locks stood back up. The stone next to the dwarf was about his height and half that in width. Roughly weathered, it seemed too square. It was raggedly sheared at an angle, as if it had once been quite tall, but had broken off.

“What is it?” Chane asked.

Neither Wynn nor Ore-Locks answered at first. Perhaps they had not yet discussed this.

“A pylon?” Wynn suggested. “Like the ones in Dhredze Seatt, used to show directions?”

Uncertain as he was, her notion made him uncomfortable. By its worn and shattered state, it was very old, perhaps ancient.

“Why?” Ore-Locks ventured, for once so focused that he seemed open to discussion. “My people do not need pylons outside our own seatt.”

“Unless ...” Wynn began, “unless it’s from a time when there was more than one seatt.”

Ore-Locks’s frown began to fade. “Or when more of my people once traveled well-used ways.”

Reluctantly, Chane asked, “Is there writing?”

Wynn and Ore-Locks exchanged a look, and then both crouched and pawed at the erect stone’s surface.

Chane hoped they found nothing—hoped Wynn might have grown weary by now and notions of giving up were in the back of her mind. When they reached the great range, and perhaps after days and nights on foot in those peaks with no sign of a “fallen mountain,” he might finally take her home to relative safety. There were fewer threats that would risk following her among her own kind.

“Here!” she breathed.

That one word almost extinguished Chane’s hope. Ore-Locks crouched beside Wynn near the squared stone’s base.

“Can you feel them?” Wynn asked. “There’s not much, but these might be worn traces of old engravings.”

“Perhaps,” Ore-Locks said at first. “Perhaps, yes ... yes.”

He rose again, torch in hand, and peered southward in the direction of the stone’s face. Wynn looked up at him, her dust-smudged face faintly hopeful.

“This must mean we’re on the right track,” she said.

Ore-Locks tilted his head, appearing thoughtful now. “If the seatt is on the range’s southern side, this marker is much too far away. Pylons, as you call them, point to the next closest location or subsequent marker in the direction from an engraved surface.”

“Like what?” she asked.

Ore-Locks fell silent for a moment. “Perhaps the seatt is not as far as we thought.”

“No, it has to be on the far side. Its name is derivative of an old desert language.”

Ore-Locks paused, as if uncertain. “Then a way station ... perhaps.”

Chane’s discomfort increased.

Wynn stood up. “A what?”

“A land-level entrance to a seatt or its settlements,” Ore-Locks continued. “Like those of my people’s stronghold, Dhredze Seatt.”

“A passage?” Wynn asked. “All the way through the range to a seatt? That’s not possible even for your people.”

Ore-Locks gazed southward. “Something is out there, along our path.”

He strode off past Chane and down the sheer slope. As Wynn passed, following the dwarf, Chane saw thoughts working hard upon her face. He just stood there, tired and frustrated, as Shade passed him, as well. When he turned to follow, Shade had paused at where the overhang met the slope.

Her ears pricked up and she stood rigid, facing northward.

Chane tried to follow Shade’s gaze but saw nothing. The rushing night breeze made it impossible to pick up a scent. Then he heard a low rustling in the scant trees. A low branch swayed, but nothing came bustling out. Shade had likely sensed a hare or perhaps a thrush attracted by the torchlight.

“Come,” he said.

Shade scurried off downslope, and Chane climbed down. When he reached camp, he went straight for the fire to skin and spit the hare.

“Couldn’t you find anything tonight?” Wynn asked from behind the wagon, a nearly empty burlap sack in her hands.

Chane looked to the fireside and then all about the camp. The hare was gone. He glanced upward to the outcrop above. Perhaps Shade had not sensed another hare, but something else scavenging for an easy meal.

“Chane?” Wynn asked.

What could he say? He was not about to alarm her over some fox or wildcat that had outwitted him and Shade.

Sau’ilahk hovered in the shadows of a fir tree just above Chuillyon’s camp on the pass’s western slope. He’d discovered the elves trailing Wynn many nights ago. Unlike Wynn’s group, these elves had no majay-hì to sense his proximity. He sometimes floated in the darkness, listening for bits of information they might unwittingly share.

Tonight was more difficult.

For one, the deer he had fed on provided so little life that he was still hungry. The sight of Chuillyon only thirty paces away was a nagging temptation. He had not forgotten how the old elf had hampered him, helped to trap him back in Dhredze Seatt.

But Sau’ilahk could not risk a vengeful feast just yet.

The old elf traveled with two others. By what Sau’ilahk had overheard from them, one was possibly another white-robed sage, though all three were dressed for travel. Tonight, only Chuillyon and the one called Shâodh were present, both looking a little worse for wear. They had not stocked supplies as carefully as Wynn, and had been sleeping on the open ground. There was no fire, only a glowing crystal resting on the boulder they leaned against.

The elves had always kept pace with Wynn, so why had they not packed up to ride out?

Chuillyon closed his eyes and leaned back, half sitting on the waist-high boulder. However, Shâodh glanced southward through the slope’s trees a little too often.

Where was their third companion, the woman called Hannâschi?

“How much longer will the human journeyor continue?” Shâodh asked tonelessly. “They must be in a similar state to us.”

Sau’ilahk sensed dissension between them as he caught the almost imperceptible tightening of Chuillyon’s mouth as the old elf’s eyes opened. These two had had this conversation before.

“As I have said,” Chuillyon answered, “I believe she is looking for a seatt ... which are always built in mountains or a high vantage point.”

“You do not think she will turn back?”

“I do not.”

Sau’ilahk wondered if perhaps against only two, he might take the old one and leave the younger alive enough for questioning.

Shâodh suddenly stood up and stared southward. Tree branches wavered and snapped back, as if something had passed through them. A strange ripple in the night formed three steps inward from that disturbance on the camp’s southern side.

Hannâschi stepped out of the warped air as if from water, the colors and textures of the trees and earth flowing off her.

Sau’ilahk had not seen her do this before. It confirmed she was a thaumaturge, a metaologer among the sages. And she was fairly skilled, if she could bend light to hide herself at night.

“Well?” Chuillyon asked, straightening. “Are they moving? How far are they?”

Sau’ilahk realized the female had been spying on Wynn’s group.

Hannâschi hesitated before answering. “No, they have not yet broken camp, but they will soon.”

“Not yet?” Chuillyon echoed. “It is long past dusk.”

“Come, sit,” Shâodh interrupted, waving Hannâschi forward.

Of the three, she was the most exhausted by far—growing worse over the long nights. Sau’ilahk had noted this was another contention point between the two men. Chuillyon’s annoying jovial nature had turned serious over this journey. However, he politely but more pointedly insisted that they continue.

“The pale one and the dog were out hunting,” Hannâschi said, settling against the boulder at Shâodh’s insistence. “The journeyor and the dwarf found a pile of stones high up on an outcrop. They seemed quite interested.”

“Why?” Chuillyon asked, his brows creasing.

“I could not get close enough to hear. The majay-hì appeared to sense me or pick up my scent.” She paused. “But if we can risk a small fire, I brought something back.”

The two males exchanged quizzical glances.

“Supper,” Hannâschi explained with a smile, opening her cloak to pull out a dead hare.

Chuillyon smiled back, a trace of his former demeanor returning.

Sau’ilahk anticipated when he would catch that old elf alone and unaware. That one would never stand in his way again.

Ghassan il’Sänke had traveled for more than a moon. He stood on a craggy foothill, gazing across the shallow depression before him at what appeared to be a fallen mountain.

The first part of his trek had taken him northward along the coast to the vast range’s western end. There he had turned eastward along the foothills between the peaks and the desert’s northern fringe of dried, dusty earth.

Tracking Wynn by the staff’s sun crystal was limited, for he gained only a sense of her general direction and distance. But she was coming south from the Lhoin’na. By a map copied from the ship captain’s records, Ghassan guessed she was nearing the end of the Slip-Tooth Pass. She would soon enter the range from the northern side, but he was not concerned. He had ample time, and she had a long, hard trek ahead of her.

With his copy of the poem fragment translated for her and the clues that it bore, Ghassan was certain he would find the seatt well before she did—if it existed.

He still wore his midnight blue robe with its cowl to protect him from the bright sun and the freezing nights. But he hadn’t found ample firewood for the past eight days. All he had left to eat was dried flatbread. Water was not so much an issue.

Ghassan had grown up near the desert before joining the guild. Interaction with tribal people who still ranged the dunes taught him the ways to find water where others would see none. Even weary as he was, ever since translating that poem fragment, Ghassan often lingered in memories of his youth.

Allowed to sit “silently” at the evening fire with his grandfather when tribal elders came to visit, he heard many an entertaining though frightening tale—including one about a headless mountain. It was said that for any who found it, the last thing they heard in this world were whispered rumblings in the dark. Then the head of the mountain took form again, but as fire instead of stone. All there were consumed, leaving only ash that blew away in the next dawn’s wind, and the mountain remained headless once again.

That tale had not been so entertaining or frightening to eight-year-old Ghassan. If such noises were the last thing one heard before the peak’s missing head reappeared as fire, then ... ?

“How could anyone have lived to tell of it?” he had whispered to his grandfather, not daring to speak openly, impolitely, before the hosted tribal elders.

Grandfather had smiled brightly. With a wink and pat on Ghassan’s hand, he placed a finger over his wrinkled lips.

Ghassan had not thought of that tale again until after he met Wynn Hygeorht. Now he looked up the base slope of a headless—or “fallen”—mountain beyond, hidden from the desert below by the jagged hills and lower crags.

It must have once been as immense as any other peak in the range. He could almost not see from one side of its base to the other. About halfway up, the entire top half seemed to have caved in. He wondered, if he climbed all the way up, would he find a flat plateau, crumbled hillocks of boulders, or a crater?

“I am here, Wynn,” Ghassan whispered in the cold evening breeze. “I have found it first.”

He rushed downward through the depression to the mountain’s base.

If this was where Bäalâle Seatt had once existed, climbing to its top would avail him nothing. Any higher entrance would have collapsed if the mountain-top had indeed fallen. But if the tales of the “headless mountain” were based on fact, anyone who had come here and lived had never mentioned anything below it. Lower entrances, if they existed, surely would have been found. So did they even exist?

Yes, he was here. He believed he had found the location of the lost seatt.

“But how do I get inside?” Ghassan whispered again on the wind.