Of Truth and Beasts

Chapter 25

Wynn looked into the creature’s face. Her attempt to ignite the sun crystal had failed, though she’d done everything right.

Shade’s snarling suddenly ceased.

An ache grew in Wynn’s head as she saw the creature fixate on the dog.

A cacophony, like a thousand leaves, began blowing about inside Wynn’s skull. It grew to a deafening pitch until she whimpered and dropped to her knees. She clutched Shade tightly. She couldn’t even save the dog, only hold her and wait to die.

Shade’s memory-words rose in Wynn’s thoughts above the scratch of leaf-wings.

—Fay-born—

The creature’s head swung toward Wynn. What was Shade trying to tell her?

The roar in Wynn’s mind drowned out everything else. All she saw were great black eyes within a reptilian face boring into her until everything went dark.

There was only blackness.

Wynn’s chest hurt and then began to burn, as if she’d held her breath too long but couldn’t let it out. She sensed motion but her limbs wouldn’t move. It was so familiar, but amid growing panic to breathe, she couldn’t remember why.

Blackness faded, but only a little.

She exhaled hard and couldn’t stop shaking as she gasped, unaware of where she was. Every muscle in her body clenched and wouldn’t release. Something pulled at her thoughts, but it wasn’t the crackle of leaf-wings.

It was monotonous and endless, like a wind shrieking inside her head. Words rose out of it in fragmented whispers.

... they come ... liars, deceivers ... assassins, murders everywhere ...

The wind inside her skull seemed made of even more than those words, so many whispers that she only caught these broken pieces. Her own thoughts were drowned by the gale, as the first thing she saw was a dim hearth.

Orange-red coals within it barely lit the space where she stood. She stood surrounded by plain stone walls, in a room without a single piece of furniture. Its empty state heightened her awareness until her focus snapped sharply to the left.

She hadn’t even thought of turning, but she did.

... trust no one ... not ever ...

At those whispers out of the gale, Wynn looked to an archway in the room’s left wall. It was nothing but another portal into blackness, for the hearth’s dim light didn’t penetrate the space beyond. She wanted to back away, to find any path out of here, but ...

“Vra’ feilulákè ... bhâyil tu-thé?”

Not a word of that cry made sense, though it rushed from her own mouth with a frantic urgency pushing toward rage. But it wasn’t her voice that she’d heard.

Wynn’s fear mounted.

She was lost inside a memory. But whose? Was Shade doing this? She focused hard, trying to see the world she last remembered—the rough tunnel, the winged reptile, or Shade.

None of this came to her.

Where was she? Who was she? Without answers, she wrestled with what she’d heard to hold off the fear-fed whispers trying to drown her reason.

The first word had been vocative, masculine—she knew the language! She’d been speaking Dwarvish, but either she hadn’t heard it right or she didn’t know the dialect. She couldn’t recognize the word’s root. Only the suffix “-ulákè” barely made sense.

It meant “like” or “alike.”

“Vra’ feilulákè! Bhâyil tu-thé?”

Wynn’s throat turned raw as she repeated the deep shout. A rustle of leaf-wings rose in her mind. Not many, just one this time, like when she’d listened in on Chap as he’d communed with his kin. The first words she’d uttered repeated in her head, this time in every language she knew: Brother-of-like-flesh ... are you here?

Whomever this memory belonged to, Shade was not the one passing it. Shade had called the winged creatures in the tunnel Fay-born. Did those leaf-wing sounds come from them? Was this how the Fay would finally get to her, kill her, while she was trapped and lost in some memory?

Something moved beyond the archway.

It wavered from side to side, staggering forward through the dark. Large, dwarven hands covered his broad features, smothering his haggard, rapid breaths. One eye peered at her through his thick fingers. Then his left hand slid off his face and clutched the archway’s side. Though his other hand remained, its fingers curled upward into his red-brown hair.

This “like” brother—“twin” brother, at a guess—had a broad jaw, once clean-shaven and now shadowed with days of stubble. His eyes were sunken in dark circles, as if he hadn’t slept in many nights. He was young, or might have seemed so, if his face weren’t twisted in horror.

For an instant, Wynn thought she knew him, but that wasn’t possible. She didn’t even know where she was—or who she was. Nothing about this place was familiar.

... loved ones now hunt you ... they are coming ... be ever watchful...

The brother’s gaze darted quickly about, searching the hearth room.

He heard those gale whispers, just as she did!

... never close your eyes again ... not ever ... not until they all die ...

His jaw muscles bulged as his hand jerked from his head, haplessly tearing out tangles of hair. That hand balled into a massive fist.

Wynn saw the same rage in his face that she’d heard in the voice of this memory’s owner, the other brother. She rushed forward, grabbing the brother’s vestment’s front with one large hand. She felt her other hand groping for something at her waist.

“Why are you still here?” she shouted in the deep voice that was not her own. “I told you to leave, while you still could. Get out of here!”

The brother froze, his fist still raised. Then the gale grew once more in Wynn’s mind.

... if they see you, kill them quickly.... They will kill you, if they can.... They will; you know this....

Wynn’s lower hand clenched. She jerked hard, though she barely glimpsed what she gripped. Her gaze remained locked on the brother as he pulled a dagger from a sheath on his belt. He raised it, point downward.

The leaf-wing came again in Wynn’s head.

I am with you—hear only me. Hear the quiet I bring to your thoughts.

Wynn froze as the brothers faced each other, each ready to strike the other down.

A scream carried from somewhere distant.

Wynn released her grip and backstepped, not knowing what she—he—was doing. She spun toward the distant sound.

Then she saw what had become of the furniture.

Chairs, stools, an oak table, and even a large chest were piled against the door of this place. Everything from this room must have been thrown against it in blind desperation. When her focus turned back, the haggard brother stared toward the door, as well. His eyes were wide in fear as he shuddered and looked at her.

“Come ... come, please,” he begged, stuttering. “Come with me.”

“No,” Wynn answered. “Go alone, as I told you.”

“Do not do this!” the brother shouted, advancing one step, anger returning to his face. “Your brethren have fallen, like the rest ... though first, did they not? They locked the people from the temple ... and you helped them? In this plague of madness, where are the people to go even if any could think to leave ... if any could escape?”

He stepped farther out into the hearth room.

The brother’s vestment might have been russet, but it was too filthy, and there was too little light to be certain. His gaze dropped downward, and whoever Wynn was here and now followed that gaze. Wynn saw what she held.

The long, triangular dagger, its base as wide as his fist, had straight edges that tapered directly to its point. Its polished guard and pommel were almost silvery, and bits of the hilt that showed around his broad fist looked lacquered in pure black.

It was the blade of a stonewalker.

Wynn cringed within that imprisoning memory, not wanting to accept what that might mean. The gale whispers rose, as if called by her fear. The single leaf-wing didn’t return until the stonewalker—she—raised the blade.

This is not the one you must kill.

Wynn felt the stonewalker falter as he—she—looked at his brother.

Cling to me alone.

She sensed no true comfort in those words, and they gave her none. That leaf-wing voice didn’t speak to her. It spoke to him, the owner of this memory. She heard it, felt it, only because he did.

Wynn began to doubt even more.

Those words couldn’t have come from the monster in the tunnel. They were just part of this memory. What was it that had come to this place? What spoke to this stonewalker?

“By our blood, remember me,” she—he—whispered. “But once you leave here, never speak my name again. By our blood, I bind you to this ... let me be forgotten by all.”

Shock rose on the brother’s face as he shook his head in disbelief. The instant he opened his mouth to speak, the stonewalker turned.

Wynn saw the wall coming at her as he raced toward it, into it. She remembered why that first, suffocating blackness felt like it had entombed her. Stonewalkers could move through anything of earth and stone. But even that didn’t silence the gale whispers inside of him, inside of her.

She didn’t want to see anymore. But as he raced through open tunnels, passages, and chambers, she couldn’t look away or close her—his—eyes.

He never paused, always running for the next wall, but Wynn saw things ... heard things. Between the silence and blackness of each dive into stone, wails of manic fear and rage echoed in every space.

Two dwarven women tore at each other until one ripped the other’s throat open with her bare hands. She’d barely let the body fall when she whirled toward a male with his back turned. She threw herself at him, her stained hands reaching around to tear at his face.

A young female shoved an old man aside as they both tried to get through a door. She slammed it shut in his face, though he pounded on it as the sound of heavy boots closed upon him.

A red-spattered warrior beat upon the fallen with his mace, shrieking at them to get away or he would kill them all. They were already dead, mangled beyond recognition, yet he wouldn’t stop.

A silent dwarven child felt her way along a wall. She couldn’t see because of the blood running out of her hair and into her eyes.

At the center of a large chamber filled with tables and stools, an elder male crouched upon a greeting-house dais. He rocked slowly, whispering to himself as if in prayer ... and then he laughed in hysteria as his gaze flitted about at nothing.

The blackness of stone came again and again. Each time, Wynn wished it would be the last.

Let her stay in that cold, encasing darkness, where she—he—would see nothing ever again. She didn’t want to know more of the madness, the whispers, waiting with each return of dim light. When it came again, she would’ve whimpered if she’d had her own voice.

And the stonewalker halted.

It was darker here than any other place, even more than the home of his brother. It was almost quiet, except for a pounding in his ears. Wynn didn’t want him to turn around, but he did.

A great archway filled her sight. Its double doors were shut, sealed with an iron bar that rotated on a rivet larger than her arm. It wasn’t broken like the last time she’d seen it. The muted rumbling of thunder reverberated through those doors.

There were people out there, on the other side, pounding to get in.

“What are you doing?”

At that menacing whisper, the stonewalker grabbed for both blades on his belt. As he twisted around, Wynn saw immense, dark forms in the hall. Great silhouettes of statues reached toward a ceiling lost in the pitch-black heights. Three each lined the hall’s longer walls, and Wynn knew where she was. She was still in Bäalâle, in its hall of the Eternals, but not as she’d found it. It was whole, as if from another time, long ago. A flickering light caught her eye, and she—he—watched an approaching flame.

That torch’s light illuminated the bearer’s reddened face of broad features and gray beard. His eyes were so wide, the whites showed all around his black-pellet irises. Firelight glinted on the steel tips of his black-scaled armor.

The old one was another stonewalker.

“You would let them in!” he accused.

“No ... not anymore,” Wynn answered in the deep, masculine voice.

“Liar!” the other hissed, and his free hand dropped to a dagger’s hilt. “Where have you been? To your prattling brother?”

Wynn didn’t answer, but felt her—his—grip tighten on the hilt of his battle dagger.

“Is that how it started?” the old stonewalker whispered, creeping forward. “All of them turning against us, once the siege began. What deceits did you spit into the people’s ears ... through your brother?”

And the whisper gale rose again.

... no one left to trust ... never turn your back ... they are coming for you ...

His hand slipped from the dagger’s hilt. Wynn felt pain as the young stonewalker slapped the side of his own head. The leaf-wing rose instantly, its voice too loud over the gale of whispers.

Listen only to me—cling only to me.

Its crackling skitter smothered all thoughts from Wynn’s awareness.

“No ...” the young stonewalker moaned. His other hand slapped his skull as he shouted, “Leave me be!”

“Leave you be?” hissed the elder, almost in puzzlement.

Wynn realized the old one hadn’t heard the leaf-wing.

“Why would I?” the elder went on. “You—you did this to us, traitor. You and your brother ... made them come for us!”

“No,” he groaned. “My brother has no part in this.”

“More lies!” shouted the elder, jerking his blade from its sheath.

Do what is necessary and come to me.

At the sound of that leaf-wing, the young stonewalker closed his hands tighter on his head. And the elder dropped his torch and charged.

“Keep your treachery,” the old one shouted, raising the dagger. “Byûnduní!”

Do not listen. Come to me.

The young stonewalker squeezed his skull ever tighter, trying to crush that voice from his head. But Wynn didn’t feel the pain. She only shriveled within upon hearing his name.

She tried frantically to escape once more to the real world, to escape this memory of Byûnduní—of Deep-Root—of Thallûhearag, the Lord of Slaughter.

Sau’ilahk raced down the tunnel, following a conjured servitor of light to break the darkness. The tunnel began to intersect with smaller, branching passages, but he kept to the main one, always heading downward into the mountain’s depths.

His servitor shot into a small cave, and Sau’ilahk halted at the dead end.

Upon seeing no breaches, passages, or another way in or out, his frustration threatened to boil over into rage. Where could he look now? How many narrow tunnels had he passed along the way? The orb had to be here somewhere!

Then he saw the bones.

There were so many, and they were so old that they blended with the loose stones and rubble on the cave floor. Some were still embedded at the base of the far wall, and he wondered how this could be. Had the rest that were lying about been dug up? Curiosity quelled frustration as his thoughts turned to what little he knew of this place.

Beloved’s forces had breached the seatt, and then a catastrophe struck. The mountain peak had collapsed, killing both sides during the siege. He had wondered over the centuries what could have created such devastation.

Sau’ilahk had seen no more bones along the tunnel, but he was deep down now, and the bones here were numerous. Something had happened here, something had been ... dug up? Turning one hand corporeal, he began digging, scattering loosened debris and bones. Then his fingers scraped something hard and dense.

Calling up his reserve of consumed life, he turned his other hand corporeal and began tearing away more loose rubble and dirt. He kept clawing and scraping on something hard as stone. The more he dug around it, the more he felt it was too round and almost smooth.

He frantically brushed the dust from its gritty surface.

It was a globe slightly larger than a great helm, made of dark, near-black, stone. Though faintly rough, its rounded surface was too perfect to be natural. The large, tapered head of a spike protruded atop it. When he rolled it slightly in the rubble, he saw the spike’s tip sticking out through the globe’s bottom. Spike and globe were one, chiseled from a single piece.

Waves of joy inside him mixed with an unexpected outrage.

Made by his god, by Beloved’s own will, the orb ... the Anchor of Spirit had been left like forgotten rubbish among dirt and bones. Perhaps the catastrophe had caught the Children who had brought it. That they had been buried among Beloved’s minions, his tools, brought some satisfaction to Sau’ilahk. And the anchor had remained where it had fallen in a long-forgotten time, waiting for him to claim.

He would be beautiful again and forever young. The promise made to him so long ago would be fulfilled. This time, he had not been betrayed.

Beloved, he whispered with his thoughts.

Through that whelp of a sage, his god had led him to his own salvation. Drawing deep on his reserves, he turned his whole body corporeal and picked up the heavy orb, finally, after a thousand years. As his cloth-wrapped arms closed around it, he just stood there, and relief made him almost wearier than anything else.

He looked down at what he held and went numb inside.

In those ancient days, he never actually touched the anchors. Only the Children were so privileged. He had seen one on rare occasions when one of them carried it out for a purpose his god had commanded. But he knew of them, all five, each one an anchor binding one Element of Existence. Each one enslaved a different primal component for his god’s bidding.

Although the orb lay dormant in his arms, he should still be able to feel its essence. Through his Beloved, through his own nature as an eternal spirit, he should feel the core of its elemental nature and the spark of Spirit trapped within it.

The spark was not there.

Sau’ilahk stared at the orb in his arms. He sensed something from it, but its presence felt deeply ... grounded? There was nothing within it close to his nature as a pure, undying ... spirit.

He looked about the cave. Anguish returned, swelling into horror.

Those reptilian creatures must have dug into this place in the seatt’s bowels. The state of the bones suggested something else had happened here. Beloved’s forces must have tried to dig in under the seatt, to come in from beneath before anyone here realized. But in the end, they must have been discovered.

Something had gone horribly wrong. Beloved’s forces had died here, buried under the mountain along with their enemies. And here was the orb.

But what would the orb of Spirit be worth in this place? Nothing, now or then. This was not the orb of Spirit. It was one of the others, perhaps the orb of Earth? He had been following Wynn all this time ... only to find the wrong orb.

At that truth, Sau’ilahk began to moan.

Dust and dirt stirred as conjury-twisted air gave a voice to his pain. He began weeping, and his growing rage turned into a wail. His shrieks filled the deadend cave with so much wind that pebbles scored the walls and bones rattled across the floor.

Sau’ilahk screamed, Betrayer!

He had been cheated again by the half-truths of his god, as he had a thousand years ago with the promise of eternal life.

A hissing whisper rose in his thoughts. Do not despair.

Sau’ilahk was beyond caring if he offended his god, and he screamed back, Wellspring of lies ... of deceits!

He dropped the orb. Rubble and bones crackled under its weight, along with a metallic clang. Hope of beauty and eternal youth withered, and the pain of renewed loss was too great to bear. He screamed at his god once more.

The sage is dead, burned to nothing! What would you have me follow now!

The hiss assailed him again.

She lives ... but if you choose to no longer obey, servant, then seek on your own.

Sau’ilahk’s shrieking wind died. If Wynn lived, why would his treacherous god allow him freedom to do as he pleased? What could he do that he had not tried already in a millennium of searching? He was done with this place, and his misery made him wish to be gone.

That whisper like reptilian scales sliding over sand tore at him again.

Every anchor has its chain, its handle, by which to haul it, just as every portal has its key by which to open it. Did you not hear the key speak?

He was too anguished to care about more taunting hints, but Beloved went on.

Since you no longer hear me, servant ... perhaps you will remember having heard it.

Sau’ilahk stood still, suspicion growing within him. What was this nonsense about chains, handles, or keys ... for the anchors of Existence?

He looked down at the one he had dropped.

The orb just lay at his feet, but there had been a sound when it fell that was wrong. Not the dull crack of stone upon stone, or even bones, but a metallic clank. He crouched, forcing one hand corporeal again, and shoved the orb aside.

In the depression its bulk had made was a spot of ruddy golden hue.

Sau’ilahk quickly slapped away dirt and dust until it was fully revealed. Before him lay a thick and heavy circlet of a rusty-golden metal, neither brass nor gold. Its open ends had protruding knobs pointing directly at each other. Its circumference was covered in engravings, though he could not read those marks.

Sau’ilahk remembered seeing such an item before. Once when he had witnessed one of the Children departing with an anchor, an orb, it had worn just such an open-ended circlet about its pale neck.

He glanced toward the orb and saw something more in the tapered head of its spike.

There were grooves about the right size for the circlet’s knobs. Was this key, this handle, how an orb was truly used? Even so, what good was it to him? This orb was not the one he desired.

I need no key to a place I do not wish to go, he projected. Nor a handle for something I do not want.

This time, no answer came—and Sau’ilahk heard the footfalls echoing down the tunnel.

There was more than one pair, and both were too heavy to be Wynn. If one of them was Chane, Sau’ilahk was too weak to deal with that irksome undead.

Frustration made him hesitate, and then he snatched up the circlet. He had no way to carry it without remaining corporeal, so he turned to the cave’s rear wall.

The last of his energies fueled one final conjuration as a maw opened in the stone.

Sau’ilahk shoved the circlet in, to be retrieved later.

As the maw closed, leaving only raw stone, dormancy took him completely, and he vanished. For now, he was done with this place ... this tragically disappointing place.

Wynn was lost in loathing inside the memories of Deep-Root. She was shaken back to awareness when the elder stonewalker’s furious cries were suddenly cut off. The blackness of stone enveloped her again, and all she heard were the gale of whispers inside Deep-Root.

... they are coming ... not one but many ... soon they will find you ...

A dim glow rose all around as the leaf-wing pushed the whispers down once more.

Ignore them, and hear only me.

Wynn—Deep-Root—stood in the dim phosphorescence of the caves holding the honored dead, but he didn’t move an inch. He kept twisting his head rapidly, looking about, and the glimmering walls and shadows whipped too quickly in Wynn’s sight.

She didn’t understand what had happened in the hall of the Eternals. How had this mass murderer escaped the insane older stonewalker?

Deep-Root took a slow step, placing one foot carefully, and then another. He was trying to be silent. Then he crouched amid the calcified dead, placed his hand on the cave floor, and grew still.

Wynn felt—heard—distant sounds, as if his hand could pass them directly to her ears or her thoughts. She—he—was listening through stone, as Ore-Locks had in the tram tunnel.

Running boots pounded, and Deep-Root twisted to his right.

Wynn saw only a crushed wall beyond columns made of joining stalactites and stalagmites. More footfalls sounded, more running feet, and Deep-Root twisted farther around.

The sound suddenly cut off as he looked to the wall he’d come through.

“Honored Ones,” he whispered. “Give me sanctuary!”

Wynn wanted to scream at him for such a plea, but she had no voice. The leaf-wing came instead.

They cannot. Cling to me against the madness.... Come to me.

“Silence!” he snarled. “You are nothing but more of this plague upon my people.”

I am only with you since my coming. I hold this piece of calm, of silence, anchored within you.

“Get out!” he shouted, forgetting all caution.

I am what gives you this respite, free of what eats at all others. You already cling to me for this.

“You are the worst of what has come! Leave me alone!”

The leaf-wing seemed to fade, but not completely. It was still there, somewhere, holding off the gale. But the moment of near silence left Wynn lost as to what any of this meant.

Then kill me ... if you can.

That one crackling utterance smothered Wynn’s despair and stoked fear in its place. What was that voice trying to do in goading Deep-Root? Then she heard a loud, wet smack.

Deep-Root whirled about as a thrum rose through him from the cave floor. Wynn felt it as she spotted the shadowed form of another stonewalker in the next cave opening. He had just slapped his hand against the stone.

She’d seen that before in the underworld of Dhredze Seatt, but she’d never known how the Stonewalkers’ signal for alarm truly worked. It was like a rapid quake running through her, and she could actually follow its sound through stone to its origin.

Heavy boots struck the cave floor, and Deep-Root turned again.

Yet another Stonewalker rushed at him from out of a cave wall.

I wait beyond the farthest place to fall. Can you live long enough to reach it?

Deep-Root bolted, and Wynn heard the shouts of his pursuers echoing through the caves of the Honored Dead. He ran straight through calcified columns and walls of wet stone, swerving each time he reappeared to leap into another wall. And then one time, the blackness of stone didn’t pass in a wink—it went on and on.

Wynn felt her lungs might rupture before she—he—took another breath.

What was the “farthest place to fall”? Or was it truly a place one could go?

Besides Deep-Root, there was one thing lower than this worst of traitors; that was the enemy—Beloved, il’Samar, the Night Voice. Was it speaking to him, toying with him through a false protection from the madness that ate through this seatt amid a siege? Where were those other whispers coming from?

Blackness broke, and Deep-Root exhaled, though not with the exhaustion Wynn suffered in the stone. It didn’t affect him at all. Perhaps it didn’t affect any Stonewalker. He turned in the near dark, feeling along the wall.

His hand settled on something made of crisp angles and smooth surfaces, and he stroked it once. Amber light rose all around.

Wynn looked upon the Chamber of the Fallen.

Deep-Root’s eyes locked on something that was wrong in this place—or was wrong to him. A great gash showed in the hall’s far end—exactly like the one Wynn had found. But he hesitated, stiffening, as if he had never seen it before.

“I am coming for you!” he threatened, walking slowly, watchfully, toward the gash. “I will tear you out of my head.”

And I have been waiting ... since I came for you.

Wynn didn’t want him to go anywhere near that gash. Something inside there was trying to use this murderous traitor for its own purpose. One malevolent force was manipulating another in this place, and she could do nothing to change it.

Deep-Root leaned through the gash, looking up and down the tunnel beyond it.

A heavy footfall echoed through the chamber, and he began to turn.

“Hiding among the Fallen?” someone shouted. “Running to your own ... you traitor!”

The pound of their boots echoed like war drums. Three stonewalkers charged down the hall between the great basalt coffins.

Deep-Root fled into the gash, at first turning left. But something there glowed in the dark, like coals heating up under a harsh breath. He whirled and ran the other way down the raw tunnel—the direction that Wynn had gone herself.

She heard the footfalls and shouts of the others now in the tunnel. Deep-Root halted, listening to them coming nearer. He took a step toward the rough sidewall.

A soft, red glow rose in the tunnel’s distance behind him.

Wynn heard a crack like breaking stone echo down the tunnel. Again and again it came, faster and faster, as it drowned out the pounding echoes of heavy boots. Three silhouettes of stonewalkers up the tunnel halted and looked back.

A hissing roar hammered Wynn’s—Deep-Root’s—ears and made the stone vibrate. Deep-Root sucked a breath as flame erupted up the tunnel.

It engulfed those three silhouettes before he could shield his eyes against the glare. Screams rose and were quickly smothered by crackling fire, and then the roar faded. Wynn saw one broad form aflame throw itself at the wall. It didn’t pass through but toppled back, crumpling like the other two. She watched them come apart like cinders under a hot blaze.

The blast died away, and the only light left came from burning bodies and the scant flickering flames clinging to the floor, walls, and ceiling, as if they’d been splashed with oil. Beyond the dwindling flames, something came striding forward. The tunnel shuddered under its heavy, rhythmic steps.

Its head appeared, its jaws widening slightly.

Deep-Root looked up into the black orb eyes of a gí’uyllæ, an all-eater.

This was the all-but-forgotten word of his people for these winged reptiles. Wynn had other names for it, equally little known among other races, like ...

Wêurm ... thuvan ... ta’nên ... dragon.

This one was so much larger than the one Wynn had faced. Its back scraped the ceiling, grinding off bits of rock. Deep-Root reached for the tunnel wall as he lunged.

No, not this time.

His hand rammed painfully into stone and did not pass through. He didn’t look back, but ran down the tunnel, away from the burning remains and deeper into the dark.

Wynn hadn’t expected this place to be so similar to what she’d found, no matter that this beast was even more futile to fight. A part of her wanted it to catch her—to catch him—even if this was only a memory. Whatever happened, it would change nothing.

But if it did catch him, it wouldn’t know of her. If he died would she die with him while locked in this memory?

Deep-Root slammed hard against stone in the dark. Wynn lost all feeling from his body for an instant. When awareness returned, he groaned upon the tunnel floor, reaching for his face. Touching his head only brought more pain.

Frail red light slowly lit the tunnel’s dead end.

Deep-Root rolled over, scrambling up as he drew both daggers. Wynn didn’t need to feel anything from him to know how much fear filled him now.

There was the dragon, filling the whole tunnel as its spittle dripped flames upon the stone floor. It just stood there, watching her—watching Deep-Root—as the chaos of the gale whispers grew to a storm.

Listen!

That leaf-wing crackle barely lessened the gale. At first, Wynn heard nothing, and Deep-Root wouldn’t turn his back on the creature. Even if he were foolish enough to attack, his blades could do nothing to it.

They come. Listen ... hear them and know ... all here are lost.

The voice took away the gale’s edge, making its cacophony of whispers grow distant, as if pushed back beyond the rough walls. Wynn felt a vibration beneath her feet.

Deep-Root hesitantly crouched, keeping his eyes on the dragon. He laid down one blade and flattened his hand on the stone. That vibration grew stronger, echoing through him. To Wynn, it was like listening to stone crack under some tool; it kept cracking and breaking and tearing without pause.

Something was coming up through the earth below the seatt.

She had seen the madness spreading here, but if enemy forces outside had blocked all entrances, why dig underneath, and why so fast? Surely they could hold this place until everyone within perished.

Yes, all will be lost. This is written in stone. But in death, what might come if you can kill me?

Deep-Root stared into the dragon’s eyes, glistening with fire flickers like polished obsidian orbs. His blades were but slivers against an enemy of such size. The beast let out a rumble that made Wynn want to cover her ears. Deep-Root rose and backed against the dead end.

The dragon began retreating up the tunnel, its bulk too wide to turn about.

Stay here in the dark, listening and unseen at your end ... or follow me. Either way, you will die, as written in the stone of your bones. But what purpose will death be remembered for, one day to come? Choose.

Its spittle no longer flickered with small flames, and the tunnel grew dark. Only the sound of the creature’s steady retreat marked that it was still there, until it backed over the charred remains of stonewalkers. Blackened bones crackled under its clawed feet.

Wynn didn’t know what she would’ve done in Deep-Root’s place.

He took one hesitant step and then another as he followed. Once the dragon backed up to the breach into the Chamber of the Fallen, it turned about, heading up the dark tunnel’s other way.

There were too many turns in the dark where unseen side ways could be felt in the walls. Wynn had long past lost track of where she was. But each time the way branched, Deep-Root followed the scrape of the beast’s movement against the tunnel’s stone, until he stopped at the sight of flame flickering in its maw.

It turned into a wide passage that sloped steeply downward. Again he followed. A long way down, it emptied into a vast cave, and the air of the place choked him. Wynn felt suffocated, as well, for the stench rose from a large, long pool of viscous fluids that filled most of the cave’s bottom.

Soft light flickered red-orange. To one side of the cave, on a slope of rock, the dragon dripped ignited spittle that burned there well away from the large pool.

Sheath your weapons. Do not create even one spark in this place, or we perish to no purpose.

“What is this place?” Deep-Root choked out. “What is in that pool?”

I have eaten and disgorged all of this, weakening myself without true sustenance since my arrival. I am now prepared to die, if you can kill me. First, listen ... and hear them.

The dragon lifted its head, looking to the cave’s distant rear wall.

Deep-Root hesitated, but the beast merely stood waiting. He sheathed his blades and crept around the pool, never taking his eyes off the dragon. It watched him in turn. When he reached the cave’s wall, he placed a hand on its stone.

At first he barely heard anything.

Higher.

At that command, he tried to find purchase in the wall for his foot. He reached upward, and the farther he went, the more he felt—heard—the same sound of endlessly breaking stone as in the dead end.

Deep-Root stretched as high as he could, until his thick fingertips touched where the wall curved into the cave’s ceiling. The whisper gale rose to a roar in his head, as if he’d stepped into the storm’s heart.

Wynn lost all awareness in that torrent.

When it finally faded, she was looking toward the pool, but it was sideways and low, as if Deep-Root lay on the cave’s floor. She was sick with dizziness. Deep-Root moaned and pushed himself up as the leaf-wing voice came again.

They call themselves the in’Sâ’yminfiäl, the masters of frenzy. To the few who have ever escaped them and yet never have seen them, they are known as the Eaters of Silence. They have driven the peace from your people’s thoughts—and driven them mad. Nothing can stop this now.

Wynn knew of whom the dragon spoke. She’d learn of these sorcerers, once in service to the Ancient Enemy in the forgotten war. If she’d had her own voice, she could’ve asked so many questions. But she was only an observer, reliving all this through Deep-Root’s eyes and ears.

Your blades are worthless. Something greater is needed to breach my bowels, once I ignite what is left within me. And then ...

The dragon looked to the pool, and Wynn went numb.

She didn’t understand why it needed to be impaled, but it intended to somehow ignite all of the fluid it had disgorged. This place would collapse in an explosion, pulling down those who were right above, digging their way into the seatt. And she knew it would shatter this whole realm.

There is little time, for I cannot prepare all this again. Even now I fade in starvation. That is why I have made certain that what is done here is enough to reach them, no matter the cost.

Every question Wynn wanted to ask vanished as Deep-Root’s breath caught.

The way out through the range will become their way, if they take this place—and they will. It is what they seek to gain as quickly as possible, at any price.

Wynn envisioned the map she’d sketched in her journal, looking for what lay just to the north of here.

But the price to stop them is even higher. To halt those who would breach this place, all here must die by our choice ... though they would be lost just the same.

Wynn began to see the choice the dragon offered; it was no choice at all. Sacrifice an entire people to slow or cripple the enemy’s advance, but with no certainty that it would bring ultimate victory. Or wait and hope that more of the dwarves here might yet escape this place of madness, but at the cost of the enemy achieving an unstoppable advantage.

She knew the path the siege forces would secure, for she had traveled it, and then nothing could stop more of them from following. The Slip-Tooth Pass would take them into the north, unseen until too late. The very tram tunnel that she had used would lead them right to it.

Unlike the horde of undead buried by time in the plain beyond the Lhoin’na forests, nothing would stop an invasion of the living from swarming over it, even into First Glade. Perhaps that was what they were after most of all, that one place the undead couldn’t go. And then what would become of the Numan nations? Without First Glade, there would not even be a fragile sanctuary for the few who could reach it.

There is no more time. Either believe or not. If so, go and find what is needed. But if you die before it is your time, all is lost.

Wynn shrank in self-recrimination for all that she’d thought of Deep-Root in the passing season.

He turned and fled into stone.

Wynn choked for air, still immersed inside the memory.

Over and over Chuillyon prayed until the rise of Chârmun’s presence within him grew into a pure silence, as if he were alone and all that was left alive in this world—as least for one more moment.

And that moment lingered on and on ... too long.

Chuillyon clung to Chârmun’s presence as he barely cracked open his eyes.

He stood there ... alone ... staring toward the dark breach where il’Sänke had madly thrown himself to his death. Even the flickers of fire on the stone had died, leaving only trails of smoke filling the air.

Where had the creature gone? Why would it leave him alive? For an instant, he wondered if his prayer to Chârmun had affected it, but that was a foolish thought.

From the moment Hannâschi had fallen, he had barely had the wits to think or feel anything. His gaze drifted to her, lying on the floor, and then continued onward, stopping at the charred pile that had been Shâodh.

Chuillyon quickly looked away from that unbearable sight, and it shook him from complacency. Only moments before, he had been ready to face death. He walked to the hall’s end and dropped down beside Hannâschi. With a touch of his fingers, he found she still breathed weakly.

“Hannâschi?” he said softly, but her eyelids did not flutter.

Chuillyon picked up her fallen crystal, still bright with her warmth, and he looked into the breach beyond her.

He had no idea how or if Wynn had managed to pass the trap in the tunnel wall, nor how to do so himself. For that matter, Wynn would fare no better than Shâodh if the beast had gone her way.

His curiosity, his pride and arrogance, had cost Shâodh’s life. Hannâschi was poisoned and might yet follow her loved one. And someone still had to survive to tell of this place, of what happened here ... of what waited here.

Chuillyon lifted Hannâschi’s frail form, which weighed so little in his arms. He realized he would not be able to pump the cart by himself all the way back beneath the range. They were nearly out of supplies, and they would not survive. He needed to get Hannâschi directly out of the seatt, into the open air, beneath the sky, where he could find food and build her strength before starting the journey home.

“Chârmun, be with me,” he whispered. “Guide me out.”

Ghassan lay stunned at the shaft’s bottom. He had not been able to slow his descent enough and had hit hard. Afraid of moving too quickly and injuring himself further, he carefully drew his legs up toward his stomach, feeling for any sharp pains. His need to move on overrode fear of injury, and he pushed himself up.

Flashes of pain in his back and right leg nearly made him fall again. He fought them, and his arms did not give way. None of his bones seemed broken, but he was bleeding from multiple cuts and scrapes. His clothing was torn and shredded in many places.

Once he gained his feet, he found himself at the head of a downward-facing tunnel, though he had no idea where he was or how deep he might be. He took his first steps forward, and then a shrieking blast of wind rushed up the tunnel. It made the tatters of his cloak rise and thrash.

He knew that sound. He had heard it when facing the wraith in the streets of Calm Seatt.

Ghassan stumbled along the wall, following that wail.

Chane and Ore-Locks kept running, down and down. Chane had sheathed his short blade and pulled out the crystal Wynn had given him to light the way. All he could do was trust that Ore-Locks might guess the correct passage to keep descending.

The dwarf stayed in the main tunnel, never turning aside into smaller ones. Wynn believed the orb would have been guarded someplace deep in the seatt. This was all Chane had to go on in trying to fulfill her desperate plea.

He tried not to let himself think and kept running.

If you love me ... then go, for me.

Was this the only way to prove his love? If so, then love was unfair.

Without warning, a shrieking wind tore up the tunnel.

Ore-Locks stalled, wide-eyed, and Chane darted around him without a pause.

“What is that?” Ore-Locks huffed from behind.

Chane did not answer, though he knew that sound. Wynn had forced him to sacrifice her for the orb, and he would not let Sau’ilahk have it.

As suddenly as the wind and noise had started, it died.

This time, it was Chane who faltered. He stood, listening for anything, but all was quiet. He bolted onward, and there were no more side passages along the way. A dead end appeared ahead, and he skidded to a stop in a small cave.

Ore-Locks stumbled in after him, panting too heavily. The cave was otherwise empty, and the wraith was nowhere to be seen.

Chane began to panic as he looked back up the tunnel. Had Sau’ilahk already found the orb and faded away? No, even in Calm Seatt the wraith had only been able to carry off transcription folios by hand. It had not even been able to make one follow it as it slipped through a scribe shop’s wall.

“Look!” Ore-Locks said, panting. “What is it?”

Chane spun around and then froze at what lay in the back of the cave.

He and Welstiel had trailed Wynn and her companions seeking an orb secreted in an ice-bound castle in the frigid Pock Peaks. Magiere had found it on a pedestal, guarded and revered, in the center of a four-way stone bridge over a deep, volcanic fissure. Its resting place had been impressive ... intimidating. This one lay abandoned, covered in dirt and dust and old bones.

Chane stepped closer, looking down at the globe of a dark material with a tapered spike piercing down through its center. Suddenly, this all seemed too easy.

“Is that what she has been seeking?” Ore-Locks asked.

Chane did not care to explain. A hunk of carved rock was not worth her life. But he had found it, seemingly undisturbed, and so quickly.

“Take it,” he told Ore-Locks. “We go back now!”

The dwarf hefted the orb, appearing surprised at its weight, but he wrapped it under one arm while still carrying his iron staff.

“No!” someone snarled.

Chane whirled with his dwarven sword aimed point out. A tall figure limped into his crystal’s light. At first he was uncertain who it was, and then he shook his head, not believing his eyes.

“Il’Sänke?”

The domin was a torn and bleeding mess, bracing one hand against the wall at the cave’s mouth. He did not enter but stood there, blocking Chane’s way.

“Give it to me,” il’Sänke ordered, his voice low and hard. “Whatever it is, it must be protected. You and she are nowhere near capable of that.”

“Who is this?” Ore-Locks demanded, taken aback that Chane and the intruder knew each other. “What is this ... thing you all want?”

Chane kept his gaze locked on il’Sänke. His first instinct was to kill the man where he stood. But il’Sänke was more than a sage, perhaps more than a highly skilled metaologer.

For an instant, Chane almost considered giving up the orb. Even if he reached Wynn and found her still alive, after all she had suffered and all she had risked, how could he face her if he did so?

“Do not defy me,” il’Sänke said, his voice deadly cold. “There is more at stake than you understand.”

Chane tensed, ready to charge and strike.

Il’Sänke’s gaze turned on Ore-Locks. As his bloody right hand shot out toward the dwarf, he began to whisper unintelligibly.

Chane knew what was happening, had seen it before. He quickly sidestepped between the two, breaking il’Sänke’s line of sight to Ore-Locks.

Il’Sänke’s eyes widened. He shook slightly as anger washed over his dark-tan face.

Chane suddenly remembered something that il’Sänke might not know. They all had abilities, powers, not just the domin. They could do things most people could not.

“Ore-Locks, go!” Chane said. “Take it into stone!”

It was a desperate move, but he saw no other choice.

“Neither one of you leaves with that!” Ghassan shouted, losing his composure.

He pushed off the wall, limping forward and shifting left around the cave wall.

Chane shifted too, keeping himself between the domin and the dwarf. He was losing precious moments, and desperation broke his control. The beast inside him surged, struggling against the violet concoction he had taken upon heading under the mountains.

Chane whirled with a wild slash at il’Sänke and shoved Ore-Locks toward the cave’s rear wall.

“Go!” he rasped.

Ore-Locks started in surprise at the sight of him. Chane knew his eyes had lost all color, his features likely twisted into something feral. He did not care as long as Ore-Locks listened.

With one last glance, Ore-Locks backed into—through—the wall, and Chane turned on il’Sänke.

Ghassan’s breath choked off as the dwarf simply sank into the cave’s back wall and vanished.

Then Chane turned on him.

He couldn’t help stumbling back at the sight of Chane’s altered face ... colorless eyes, elongated teeth, and twisted features. Chane rasped like a snake or a voiceless, rabid dog as he thrust his sword.

Ghassan flashed a hand in front of himself, focusing on the steel.

The blade swerved slightly at his gesture, striking into the wall at his side. He tried spinning away before the blade slashed across at him, but sharp pain in his right knee made his leg buckle. Ghassan tumbled down along the cave wall.

Bloodied and weak, he could feel his strength ebbing. He raised a shielding arm and tried to scramble back before Chane struck him down.

The blade never fell, and he heard only the sound of running feet.

Ghassan peered over his arm at an empty cave. When he flopped over to look up the tunnel, all he saw was a form fleeing by the fading light of a cold lamp crystal.

Ghassan rolled back, his heart pounding, as he looked at the cave’s rear wall. None of this made sense. There was not even a hint of the dwarf’s passing ... and the orb was gone.

He had read Wynn’s journal accounts of what she and three others named Magiere, Leesil, and Chap had found in a castle among the highest icy peaks of the eastern continent. The description of their find matched what had been under the dwarf’s arm.

And where was Wynn, if Chane still ... lived?

Pieces of the poem tumbled through Ghassan’s head.

The anchors of the creation were the orbs. The poem was a puzzle, giving clues to their locations. Wynn had figured this out before he had.

There were others orbs hidden by the Children of the Ancient Enemy.

Ghassan struggled up, biting the inside of his mouth against the pain in his knee. What could he do now? Go after Chane, try to dip into his thoughts, and find where the dwarf might have gone?

That would not serve him. He had tried to hear Chane’s thoughts once before and found nothing, as if the man—the undead—was not even there. Even if he could find the dwarf ...

What if Wynn had sent those two on purpose, so the dwarf could take the orb? No one would know where he had gone, so that not even she or Chane would have knowledge of its new location.

Anxiety set in, and then a strange paranoia grew within Ghassan.

Had he underestimated her? Could Wynn be that devious? Did she know what he was ... what he could do? Did she understand he was more than some guild practitioner of thaumaturgy or even conjury?

Did Wynn even suspect sorcery still remained hidden in the world?

He put a hand to his mouth, smearing blood across his face in the process. Perhaps he had been reckless to jump down that shaft. His body now betrayed him.

The medallion against his chest suddenly warmed. Amidst his turmoil, he ignored it at first. He had no wish to speak with Mujahid, and he waited for the medallion to grow cold again. It would if he did not answer.

The warmth did not fade, and he finally grabbed it.

What? he demanded.

Return now. Make all haste.

It was not Mujahid’s voice in Ghassan’s head, though he recognized it. His thoughts cleared at her urgent words.

“Tuthâna?” he whispered. “What ... what is wrong?”

I cannot say, even in thought, for ... It has awoken and might hear.

Ghassan’s breath caught in his chest. How did this happen?

Hurry.

The medallion cooled in his grip. He plied his will upon it, crushing it in his hand as he tried to reach out for her.

“Tuthâna!”

No answer came, and he lingered, not daring to think of what his comrade’s warning might mean. Some part of him felt like he had been defeated by the seatt itself, but he could do nothing more here. He had been away from his kind for far too long, and it appeared the worst had happened in his absence.

He had to reach home ... quickly.

Ghassan limped up the tunnel, taking the side passage that led back to the shaft. He would have to crawl out the same way he had come in, the only sure path he knew.

If it had escaped, he could waste no time searching for another exit.

When Ghassan reached the shaft’s bottom, he closed his eyes and focused all of his will, and he began to rise through the dark.