Through Stone and Sea ndst-2

by Barb Hendee

  Sometimes, she missed him, thought of him. But when his face rose in her thoughts, somehow, Chane's always did so as well—even when she didn't want it to.

  Wynn sat there on the floor, looking down at Chane's smooth, pale features and red-brown hair, wishing… .

  Things could be different, if he weren't undead. But he was, and nothing could change that.

  She finally reached out and touched his shoulder, stiff under her fingers.

  "Chane," she said softly. "Wake up."

  He didn't move. The sun's rhythm shouldn't affect him down here. Was something wrong? She grasped the side of his shirt, trying to shake him, and the effort made her stomach worse.

  "Chane!"

  His head lolled. That limp movement was almost frightening, as if he were truly dead … or no longer undead … dormant … whatever.

  Chane's eyelids snapped wide.

  Wynn jerked upright, but not before his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.

  "Oww! Stop!"

  Before she pulled against his grip, he whirled over and pinned her to the floor.

  "Chane, stop it!"

  He sat halfway up, staring down at her, and then recognition spread across his twisted features. He rolled off of her in sudden shock and closed his eyes as he flattened onto his back again, as if exhausted.

  Wynn sat up, watching him cautiously as she rubbed her wrist.

  "Don't go back to sleep," she urged. "We need to catch the tram and return to Bay-Side."

  This time, Chane opened his eyes and truly looked at her. "Wynn?"

  "Of course," she answered, but the question left her worried about his state. "You have to get up. We've lost too much time already."

  She felt as if they'd lost whole days because of her blundering.

  "Tonight …" Chane slurred. "We can … go … tonight."

  If they waited until dusk, it would be the middle of the night before they reached the temple. Mallet would be asleep, and she didn't know if anyone else would be up to let them in. Who could say when she might catch the shirvêsh at another opportune moment?

  Wynn took hold of Chane's arm. "Get up! You can sleep on the tram."

  "I do not … sleep!" he snarled. "That is for the living."

  Wynn froze, but she didn't have time to ponder his strange comment. With a mix of coaxing and bullying, she got him on his feet, and they gathered their belongings.

  Without Shade, Wynn didn't know how they would've managed. The dog's perfect memory led them back to the tram station, though in the end, Wynn had to wrestle a groggy Chane and a stubborn Shade on board. At least it distracted her from her own reluctance for the ride.

  Chane collapsed on a bench, and Shade growled as Wynn shoved the dog's rump to get her into the tram. Wynn settled on the bench's end near the aisle.

  The long ride back began, and soon, the sickness she'd felt upon waking became nothing compared to the return to Sea-Side. Somewhere along the way, she forgot everything but her misery.

  The car was sparsely populated, and she leaned forward, bracing against the back of the next bench. She tried hard not to retch, but Shade lay under her bench making enough pathetic noises for both of them. Only Chane remained still and silent.

  Time passed too slowly in the tram's endless rush. Trying to think of anything besides her suffering, Wynn found herself wondering …

  Was there something more Chane had meant about sleep being "for the living"?

  "Chane," she whispered with effort. "Do you … do Noble Dead dream … when they sleep … I mean, go dormant?"

  At first he didn't answer. He finally twitched, straightened, and then fell back against the rail wall before catching himself.

  "Wynn?" he rasped, his eyes half open in confusion. "Where are we? Are you all right?"

  He seemed himself again, and in part, she was relieved to have him back. The sun must have set outside the mountain, though it was always dark as night in the tram tunnel. He frowned and reached for her, trying to help her sit back.

  "No," she managed to say. "I'm not all right. Just let me lean here."

  They returned to silence beneath the chatter of the tram's wheels in the tunnel's steel-lined ruts. Wynn was barely aware when those wheels began to screech and finally slowed.

  Bright lights from huge crystals in the walls illuminated the Bay-Side station platforms.

  Chane tried to help her up. She pulled away, grabbing her pack and staff.

  "I can walk."

  When they reached the market cavern, Wynn balked at the noise of lingering vendors and customers hammering at her aching head. She couldn't remember ever feeling this ill before, not even the morning after Magiere and Leesil's wedding feast. Chane led them out through the cavern's enormous mouth.

  Wynn later remembered stepping into the cold night air and seeing the back side of the way station's crank house. She remembered Shade trotting up the street of great steaming orange crystals, and Chane taking hold of her to follow. But the rest remained a blur.

  She forgot about speaking with Shirvêsh Mallet and barely recalled passing through the temple's tall brass arch bell and the wide marble doors. Even these details didn't come back until she found herself in a small room, dimly lit in red-orange, and she crumpled upon the hard bed. Chane pulled a blanket up around her chin.

  He held a cup of water to her lips, but she could take only a sip.

  "I will check on you before dawn," he whispered.

  The little world of that room grew dark, but not before Wynn again wondered … Do the dead dream?

  It wasn't the best thought with which to fall asleep.

  Chane slipped from Wynn's room under Shade's cold stare and quietly closed the door. He was hungry and dazed. Rarely had his dormancy been interrupted, and he felt something like what he remembered of going without sleep in his living days.

  It made him feel even weaker … and hungrier.

  Worse, when he turned about, Shirvêsh Mallet came bustling down the corridor. Chane was not up to polite conversation.

  "I was told young Wynn is ill," Mallet blurted out. "Does she need care?"

  Chane tried to stand straight. The blunt question was welcome, as all he could do for Wynn was give her water and let her rest.

  "She drank dwarven ale … too much, in a Sea-Side greeting house," he rasped. "It has affected her badly."

  "Oh, good grace!" the shirvêsh exclaimed. "What was she thinking? And you moved her? What were you thinking?"

  Chane bit his lip in restraint. "She insisted on coming back," he answered politely. "I could not refuse."

  Mallet's wrinkled face softened. "I will fetch purifying herbs for tea to clean out her blood. She will be shaky for a few days." He shook his head, white hair swishing over his shoulders. "Dwarven ale is not for such a tiny Numan … someone should have stopped her!"

  Indeed, Chane thought.

  "Get some rest yourself, lad," Mallet added.

  Nodding, and surprised at his own gratitude, Chane stepped into his own room across the way, but only closed the door to a crack. He waited long enough for the shirvêsh to trundle off and then slipped along the passages and through the roundabout circling the chamber of the dwarven Eternal. No one seemed to notice him, even as he exited out into the night. He paced the mountainside's winding streets, his thoughts twisting inward.

  Wynn's ignorant gift of goat's blood made him wonder about feeding on livestock. Mules used at the crank house's turnstile had to be stabled nearby. Or could he solve the mystery of Welstiel's arcane feeding cup?

  The beast with hands, chained down within him, lunged at its bonds, howling to be fed.

  Neither cup nor livestock appealed to him. Yet he had to find a way to survive, while keeping his feeding to a minimum. He wandered down the mountain's street, poignantly aware that he was alone and unrestrained. To protect Wynn, he needed the strength of life—and she need never know how.

  Chane slowed.

  Directly ahead lay the lift's way st
ation, crank house, and the huge glowing maw of the market cavern's entrance. He had not even thought about where he was going, yet here he was. Or had that other part of him known? Had the beast pushed him here, already hunting while he was distracted in thought?

  Chane looked from the way station to the cavern's entrance. People were still about. A few even passed him on the street, giving him little notice. He could not risk feeding upon someone who lived here—someone with a clan and a tribe, as well as family, who would notice one of their own gone missing. His brief encounter with Sliver emphasized Wynn's warning against matching strength with a dwarf.

  He needed a visitor, a traveler … a human.

  Chane stepped away from the pylons' crystals and slipped into a darker path between buildings at the settlement's cliff side. He took little notice of the structures' back sides as he moved quietly down the short-walled cobbled walkway along the cliff. When he neared the row's end, close enough to see the way station, neither a cargo nor a passenger lift was currently docked. He peered over the retaining wall and along the sheer mountainside, but did not see any lift crawling up the steep stone road.

  Chane leaned against the wall and looked upward. He had to shift along the path to see between the buildings. It was the same above, where the empty stone road continued toward the mountain's top, perhaps all the way to what Wynn had called Old-Seatt.

  Sudden voices made him duck away from the wall and against the last building's back side.

  Chane peered around the corner toward the night chatter's source. Four humans in the attire of the well-to-do rounded the crank house. One sounded as if he were chuckling at his own wit. The others merely smiled or nodded, and only the last responded, too low to hear. But the first boisterous one …

  Chane knew what to look for.

  The small group separated as three headed off toward the lift. But the talkative one, so amused with himself, waved a hand in parting and turned up the street along the pylons.

  A lone merchant in a foreign settlement.

  Chane sped along the cliff-side path behind the buildings. When he reached the next alley back to the main street, he crept out near its end to watch. Searching the street's far side, he could not find the man—not until he looked along the frontage of the cliff-side structures.

  There was his quarry, strolling along, but Chane held back, remaining still in the shadows. Beyond the merchant, a pair of dwarves in matched attire trudged the street's far side. Both appeared armored in hauberks of hardened leather scales. Each carried a long oak staff, used like a walking stick, not that they needed such. They glanced about with no serious interest, yet they were clearly some kind of night watch.

  Chane ran his tongue over his teeth and backed deeper into the alley until the two dwarves moved on, out of sight. Then he flattened, still and quiet at the sound of approaching footfalls.

  The merchant strolled right past the alley's mouth.

  Chane stepped out and dropped his coin pouch.

  It landed on the street with a clinking thud. An old but simple trick, used many times before—because it always worked.

  "Sir," he called in Numanese. "You dropped your purse."

  The merchant started at the sound of Chane's maimed voice and spun too quickly, stumbling for an instant. When he spotted Chane in his long brown cloak and well-made boots, he calmed, and then quickly checked the small bulging pouch tucked into his belt. He was more stout and solid than Chane had first noticed, with a large brown mustache hiding his upper lip.

  "Thank you," he said, "but I have mine."

  "Are you certain?" Chane asked. "I thought I saw it fall in your passing."

  The man clearly had his purse, but he walked back toward Chane with an expectant expression. Either he too wondered who had lost it, or he thought it was just a lucky find that he might share in. He never had the chance to express either notion.

  Chane lashed out.

  His right hand closed over the man's mouth and jaw, and he spun back into the alley. The merchant flailed in surprise, his feet twisting under him. Before he could set his heels, Chane jerked him further into the darkness and slammed him hard against one building's stone wall.

  On impact, the merchant shuddered and slumped.

  Chane held his unconscious prey pinned as his senses widened.

  He smelled warm flesh, heard a quickened heartbeat. His jaws ached under shifting teeth as his canines elongated. Somewhere within him, that beast clawed the floor of a dark cell, trying to break its chains and reach for the promise of blood. Its snarls mixed with screeches of hunger that shook its whole body.

  Chane began to shake as he stared at the merchant's throat.

  A thunder crack jarred him into sharp awareness, and he whipped his head around.

  Far beyond the alley's end, across the wide main street, the two dwarves had turned back on their patrol. Their wooden staves rose and fell with every other step, cracking out the rhythm that had seemed so near in Chane's heightened hearing.

  Chane rushed down the alley, dragging his prey along the wall. When he reached the end, he pinned the man against the short wall above the cliff, and clamped his other hand around the merchant's throat. He glanced back for an instant.

  The night watch passed up the main street beyond sight.

  Chane wrenched the merchant's head back. His jaws widened at the sight of a distended throat. The beast within him went still, panting in anticipation—until Chane paused, frozen as well.

  Reason crept in—he had to think.

  This moment promised ecstasy … and consequences. Among Numans, the humans of these lands, and perhaps dwarves as well, undead were nearly unknown. If Wynn heard of a corpse with its throat torn, who else would she think of but him?

  Could he cut the man's throat, not even kill him, and make it look like a common assault? He could still drink, and the blood as a conduit would carry a bit of life into him—just enough to sustain him for a while.

  The beast snarled, howling denial.

  Chane wanted … needed this moment … this kill. He could do this and simply heave the body over the precipice. Days, or even a moon, would pass before it was found, if at all. No other hope of bliss was his in this existence… .

  Except a small place in Wynn's world.

  A howl vibrated deep inside Chane.

  He released the merchant's throat, still gripping the man's jaw, and reached for his sword. It would take a deep but careful slice, enough to be life-threatening but not fatal.

  The merchant awoke, and his hands latched onto Chane's wrist.

  Even muffled beneath Chane's palm, the man's shriek rang in his ears.

  Panic—or a rush of delight—smothered all reason.

  Chane jerked the merchant's head aside and clamped his jaws onto the man's throat. Fatted flesh tore in his teeth and he swallowed blood as starvation took over. Life filled him, coppery and salt-laden and vibrant with a prey's horror. It had been so long since he had given in. Even in feeding in Calm Seatt, he kept himself distanced from the pleasure.

  There was no beast. There was no Chane. There was only painful hunger to smother and drown. He remained fastened to his prey's throat until the man's thrashing weakened beneath him. He heard—felt—the final heartbeat.

  Chane raised his head, swallowing blood that welled back up his throat into his mouth. He languished, wavering slightly in regained strength and release from hunger. When he finally opened his eyes, he gazed up at one string of stars barely shining through a cloud-coated sky.

  To him, those points of light were as brilliant as full moons. The stars, like a writhing path in the blackness, reminded him of …

  Something he thought he had glimpsed once in dark dormancy … and a question.

  Do Noble Dead dream?

  Memory of Wynn's voice made every muscle tighten, and Chane heard a muffled crackle.

  Bone shifted beneath the flesh clenched in his left hand. His gaze dropped instantly from the night sky.
<
br />   The merchant's jaw had shifted sideways in his grip, broken and disfigured. Even then, the beast settled in glutted contentment, and Chane dared not close his eyes or he might see Wynn staring at him.

  Do Noble Dead dream when they sleep … I mean, go dormant?

  Chane shuddered, suddenly cold inside.

  Perhaps they did—or he did—but not always. When had that first started? At times, as his limbs and eyelids grew heavy and he slipped into that vacant darkness, he had been thinking of her.

  He would remember her in the library of the old converted barracks in Bela. Or he imagined her in a castle far away, searching through a great library of books, tomes, and scrolls that stretched beyond sight's reach. In this last day's dormancy, he had been remembering her small room back in the guild at Calm Seatt—a place he had seen only once.

  Wherever he imagined, always at night while he lay dormant for the day, she was there with him. But there was someone … something … else?

  Now and then, something had moved in a dark corner or under a table beyond the reach of a dreamtime Wynn's cold lamp. Something like stars—or glints upon a black reflective surface—that coiled and rolled. But whenever he looked, nothing was there.

  Always just before he rose at dusk, or when he roused too early for the tram back to Bay-Side. Wynn had been pulling at him and …

  The beast's eager rumble made Chane convulse and then turn rigid.

  Had he lunged at her? Pinned her beneath himself? No, that could never happen.

  Chane jerked his hand from the corpse's dislocated jaw and let it drop. None of this mattered. It was just the power of his desire, like that of the hunt. He needed her so much that it breached the vacant time of his dormancy. That was all.

  He remembered the sight of her standing in his doorway, an urn of goat's blood in her arms. What she must have endured to get it for him. He would never let her suffer that again. Now he was strong, his thoughts clear and sharp, and she need never know how.

  Chane crouched to seize the body, pausing long enough to wipe his face off on the man's cloak. He heaved the corpse up and out. It cleared the wall and fell down the mountainside.