Through Stone and Sea ndst-2

by Barb Hendee

  Tristan and Chuillyon crouched upon the pool's rear ledge, holding down Frey's limp form.

  "Release him," she said.

  Chuillyon quickly raised his head, glaring sternly at her—something very rare for the old one. The captain's expression mimicked the elf's, with a more frustrated anger.

  "Highness—" he began.

  "Do it!" Reine ordered.

  With a grimace, Tristan took his hands away, as did Chuillyon. Frey's haunted eyes roamed about the chamber.

  "Frey," Reine whispered gently, "come."

  His gaze lifted beyond her, fixing upon the gate, the tunnel, or whatever waited there.

  "Frey!" she said more sharply, and held out her hand.

  He scrambled over the ledge's lip, slipping into the water with barely a splash.

  Danyel and Saln were still in the pool, along with Wynn and her tall guard. Both half turned, trying to keep their captives in sight. Like her, they tensely eyed the rippling form beneath the water as it slipped along the pool's bottom.

  Saln swallowed audibly, but Reine kept her eyes on the approaching shadow. Tristan dropped into the pool to follow, but she raised a hand to warn him off. She hoped Frey would heed her.

  The wavering shadow of her husband reached her feet.

  Frey surfaced, rising tall above her. His aquamarine eyes stared over her head at the gate—at the visitors waiting beyond it.

  Reine reached up and touched his cheek.

  "Send them away," she whispered, but it came out pleading rather than firm. "Frey, you must … please."

  He blinked in confusion, and the hurt in his eyes flooded through her. She didn't know if his pain came from her request or realizing he'd forgotten her amid mad obsession.

  "Please," she repeated.

  Frey closed his eyes. His head dropped until it rested heavily against her hand. He submerged, and Reine's hand followed upon his shoulder into the water. She forced herself not to clench his shirt and hang on. She didn't need to turn, to look into the tunnel. She knew the visitors had sunk beneath the water as well.

  Faint pulsing tones rose in the pool. They filled the chamber dully, as if coming from somewhere far off.

  Frey had once tried to describe whale song and the utterances of dolphins. She still didn't know how he'd learned of such things. She felt the sounds through her legs and through her hand upon his shoulder. Any ignorant unfortunate who heard them would've thought them beautiful, like horns and reed flutes blown beneath the sea amid rolling staccato clicks.

  Every tone made the pool's surface shiver subtly.

  Every sound made Reine cringe, knowing they came from her beloved Frey.

  He rose up before her, his eyes vacant, and stepped slowly toward the tunnel. Tristan waded forward, poised to grab him, but Reine shook her head.

  There was nowhere for Frey to go, now that the gate was shut and the visitors were gone. Cinder-Shard called them the Dunidæ—the Deep Ones.

  Only the Stonewalkers knew of their existence, along with the reskynna and a few others trusted with such a secret. They appeared only here, or where the ocean crept in beneath the mountain to meet the underworld. No one knew why, and it happened only after one of the reskynna "vanished"—like Frey. As with his ancestors, perhaps the change in him at the highest tides was what summoned the Dunidæ.

  Every generation was tainted with this "sea-lorn" sickness, but there was always one who suffered worst. The last had been Frey's aunt, King Leofwin's sister, Hrädwyn. To public knowledge, she'd died of a fever at fourteen.

  Hrädwyn had lived past twenty-three, though she'd never left this place in those nine years. Sea-lorn madness had finally killed her. And from what Leofwin had told Reine, Frey was more afflicted than his aunt, though it had set upon him later in life.

  Reine clamped a hand over her mouth, refusing to cry.

  Without the comb with its hidden droplet of white metal, Frey could never open the gate or the door. She'd become his prime jailer—for his safety, for the future need of him, like some tool or weapon harbored in secret for fear of a long-forgotten enemy.

  Unless the Dunidæ let him out, and that would happen only if he asked for it.

  How many times would his love for her keep him from doing so?

  "Danyel!" Tristan barked, shifting toward Wynn and gesturing across the pool. "Make certain the gate is locked."

  Reine came to her senses.

  Danyel was nearest to Wynn, but when he began moving, the wolf snarled and clacked its teeth at him. He stopped, raising his sword for a thrust at the animal. Wynn reached up quickly and clamped her hands over the wolf's muzzle.

  Danyel took a step closer to the sage.

  "Get away from her!"

  Reine and Tristan both turned at that maimed voice.

  Wynn's guardian stood with Saln's sword point pressed against his chest. Pale skinned and pale eyed, the tall man bore a scar that ran completely across his neck. Some old battle wound had taken his true voice forever. More disturbing was that he never even glanced down at Saln's sword.

  What had Wynn called him—Chane?

  He ignored the weapon as if it weren't there. But the expression on his face, as he looked between Wynn and her captors …

  Reine read it clearly, like a finely inked letter. She caught his tone beneath the written words. Chane was no mere guardian. And if she knew one thing intimately, it was the pain of impossible love—and the lack of awareness to escape it before it was too late.

  Again, it made everything worse for what had to be done.

  Reine turned on Wynn as the sage shook her head at Chane, warning him off. It didn't matter. At the slightest flinch, Saln or Tristan would kill him without hesitation.

  But then, Master Cinder-Shard's massive form appeared in the doorway, and Wynn's wolf spun, snarling at him.

  He ignored it, demanding, "Who opened the tunnel gate? Where is the prince?"

  "I opened it," Chuillyon answered. "We have visitors… and not the usual ones."

  Cinder-Shard's eyes fixed on Reine and then drifted beyond her. He relaxed just a little upon spotting Frey, but his expression darkened when his gaze fell upon the young sage.

  "Princess …" he began, turning his cold eyes to her.

  "Highness?" Tristan asked.

  The captain stood halfway to Chane with his sword poised. Danyel and Saln waited as well.

  Reine knew what was expected. They held back only for her command to confirm it. Suddenly all she could think of was Frey, somewhere behind her.

  No one must ever learn he was alive or where he was. But he would never approve of what she had to do—for his sake and the family's ancient secret, for a world's hope—or for all that was hinted at in Wynn Hygeorht's damnable texts.

  Reine looked up to Chuillyon standing on the pool's rear ledge.

  The elder elf took a visibly hard breath. He dropped his eyes, as if whatever he might say wouldn't matter. No trace of sly humor remained on his old face.

  "Your order, my lady," Tristan said, and it wasn't a request.

  Reine retreated one step. A few quick sword thrusts and it would be over. Then her back bumped into someone, and she dropped her saber. As it sank in the pool, she whispered too faintly to be clear.

  Tristan's eyes widened. "Highness?"

  "Arrest them," Reine said clearly, anger rising to choke off fear. She spun, wrapping her arms around Frey as the captain's voice grated in her ears.

  "My lady, we cannot—"

  "Do it!" she ordered, and buried her face in Frey's back. "Get them out of here!"

  Amid splashing, barked orders, and the wolf's growls, Reine slid her hands around and over Frey's chest. She felt one of his hands settle over hers.

  "It'll be all right," she whispered. "It will pass … again."

  But those weren't the words filling her head, the ones that made her small fingers curl in his wet shirt until the fabric began to tear.

  Don't you ever leave me!

  Sa
u'ilahk slid slowly down the lift's shaft wall, pausing often to listen and peer into the depths below. He waited until any light at the bottom faded before he completed his descent.

  The duchess, her entourage, and their Stonewalker guide were gone, but she had led him far enough. That assistance was all he required, for he was here, in the underworld.

  By all Wynn's bumbling efforts to locate this place, the texts had to be here as well. What would be safer for the guild than to hide them in the hands of the Stonewalkers?

  Ahead … and see!

  At his command, the stone-spider clicked down the passage's roof.

  As he waited, he called the stone-worm out of the wall, making certain it had kept up. Once the spider returned, confirming that the way was clear, he slipped onward. But when he came upon a three-way branching of the passage, he halted to study each path.

  He could not linger long enough for his servitors to scout all three. There was no knowing when someone might come back or the lift would be called for others to descend. Before long, the outer guards' bodies would be discovered.

  Straight ahead, down the main passage from the lift, he spotted a faint glow.

  Sau'ilahk turned full circle, examining all ways, and finally pushed on toward that dim light. Finding just one lone Stonewalker seemed the only way to learn what he needed. Soon, the rough-hewn tunnel spilled into a natural cavern.

  Aside from the dull glimmer of phosphorescent minerals in glistening walls, there were smaller, steaming orange crystals dotting the cavern. Their light broke upon merging stalactites and stalagmites. Shadows cast every which way made the place a maze of dark columns. He could just make out other black openings to other places.

  The underworld looked—felt—so different from what lay in the seatt far above.

  Less excavated, it was a realm of natural spaces rather than those expanded and formed to meet the will and need of the dwarves. Some might have found the place unnerving, but it left Sau'ilahk melancholy with its sense of permanence. As if it had been, would be, always here—like him.

  He drifted in a straight line, slipping through natural columns toward one opening better lit than the others. The hollow beyond was smaller than the main space, and only dripping stalactites hung from its low ceiling. Some had been broken off for clearance, and the floor had been cleared and leveled. In its center stood a stone rectangle chiseled perfectly smooth. In repose, atop it, lay the corpse of a warrior thänæ in full battle dress.

  Sau'ilahk slipped in, briefly lingering over Hammer-Stag's body.

  The dwarf had been washed and dressed in clean clothes and a polished hauberk, but his pallid features still held a trace of his last moment of fury and agony. Strangely, his eyelids were open. The great ax that had given Sau'ilahk moments of trouble was clutched to the thänæ's chest in his large hands.

  A stone trough filled with murky water rested against the platform's side.

  Sau'ilahk spotted a pallet leaning against the far wall, made of a wood frame and interwoven leather straps. Four long iron bars leaned near it. He was familiar with dwarven cairns for their dead, but he had no notion what was taking place here. Did Stonewalkers immerse their dead before final burial? Were they preserving the body?

  He needed a live Stonewalker, not a dead thänæ. And whoever had been preparing the body, where had they gone? He returned to the main cavern, but had barely reached its center when a thunderclap rolled through the underworld.

  Sau'ilahk froze as it echoed off of stone.

  Between glistening natural columns he spotted a hulkish dark shadow. It stood in one of the far openings and stepped into the main cavern. Orange light caught on the dwarf's thick red hair and glinted upon a thôrhk around its neck.

  Sau'ilahk rushed at it, straight through the wet columns.

  The dwarf drew a wide dagger from his belt. His other hand swung wide and slapped against the cavern's wall.

  Another thunderclap rose from stone.

  Sau'ilahk halted upon hearing a grating beneath the noise. At a shift of shadow, he whirled to see the cavern wall bulging.

  Darkened stone formed into a wide face and a body that followed.

  A second Stonewalker emerged straight out of the cavern wall.

  Wynn tried to regain her wits as she was herded down the passage. She held on to Shade's scruff and glanced back for Chane. One young Weardas flicked a sword point at her in warning. Beyond him, Chane was disarmed and driven forward by the other bodyguard and the captain.

  And the captain held her staff.

  Wynn panicked for an instant. To use the staff, she needed her pewter-framed glasses. Her thoughts scrambled back over the wild struggle at the gate before the sea tunnel. She dug into the pocket of her elven pants, and when she felt the rims of her spectacles, she drew a minor breath of relief that she hadn't lost them. Hurrying on, she looked back once again.

  A glimpse of white at the rear told Wynn the elf followed, but she couldn't tell whether the duchess was there. The only person ahead of her was the master of the Stonewalkers.

  Wynn was lost as to what had happened in the pool chamber. She'd blundered into more than just the hiding place of her texts. A dead prince was locked away in the Stonewalkers' underworld, and Duchess Reine was with him. Foreign beings had risen in the tunnel's water, clearly having some affinity for Prince Freädherich. And the prince had submerged to utter unimaginable sounds.

  Whatever it all meant, Wynn realized that none of it was intended for the world outside. And the only reason she still lived was because the duchess had faltered.

  Even if she was left alive, she'd be locked away where no one would ever find her. There would be no charges, no trial, no chance to justify how and why she'd forced her way in here. Wynn Hygeorht would simply disappear.

  She still couldn't get it all straight in her head.

  The duchess had nearly stood trial for her husband's disappearance and assumed death. If she'd known he was alive, why hadn't she spoken up at the time? The answer was partly here, but how was the prince connected to those beings in the tunnel?

  A single memory lingered in Wynn's mind. It complicated all other questions.

  Half a world away in Droevinka, Leesil had uncovered a hidden chamber beneath the keep near Magiere's home village. There, Ubâd had engineered her unnatural conception and birth. In that chamber, they'd found the remains of those slaughtered for the ritual.

  Elves and dwarves were known, one of each present among the desiccated bones. But the others were like no beings Wynn had ever seen—until later. A séyilf, one of the Wind-Blown, had appeared at Magiere's trial before the Farlands' elves. In the search for the orb, Magiere, Leesil, and Chap had been taken into the depths before the Chein'âs, the Burning Ones.

  The Úirishg—five races associated to the Elements—were only a myth.

  But not to Wynn—not after all she'd been through in the last two years. Elves and Dwarves, Séyilf and Chein'âs races stood for Spirit and Earth, Air and Fire. That left only Water. Even knowing the other races existed, the impact of what—who—she'd seen in the pool chamber's tunnel was more than she could take in.

  Wynn had seen the people from the sea, the last race of the Úirishg.

  But right now, she had to focus. She, Chane, and Shade were in deadly trouble, and not from the undead or the agents of a long-forgotten enemy. They'd stumbled into a tangled secret, one the duchess seemed ready to kill for to keep hidden.

  "Where are you taking us?" Wynn finally asked.

  No one answered.

  She glanced back at Chane and scowled as a Weardas tipped a sword at her face. Chane looked coldly unconcerned. That didn't worry her as much as his eyes.

  His irises were still colorless, glinting like crystals. She still didn't fully understand why and how that happened, except that it occurred just before he did something unnatural—something undead-like. He was waiting for a moment to attack and get his hands on a weapon.

  Wynn shook her head
at him emphatically. Injuring or killing royal guards would only make things worse. When he didn't even blink in acknowledgment, all she could do was move on, watching the master Stonewalker's wide back.

  Then she thought she heard thunder.

  Shade halted, lurching Wynn to a stop. The bodyguard behind her stumbled and cursed. Master Cinder-Shard grew still in the passage ahead.

  "What was that?" Chane asked.

  Shade snarled loudly, and Wynn stroked the dog's back. Instantly, her head began to ache. A memory swelled, nearly bloating the passage from her sight.

  A black shadow coalesced like a column of night in a street sparsely lit by lanterns. The wraith stood between Wynn and the guild's keep. It was the night she'd first gone to meet Chane.

  Wynn took a sharp inhale.

  Cinder-Shard glanced back, one hand on a sheathed blade at his waist. But Wynn teetered as Shade called up one memory after another—always of the black wraith.

  It burst out through a scriptorium door… .

  It escaped the Upright Quill with a folio… .

  It tore out a city guard's chest.

  "No!" she whispered sharply. "You're wrong. I saw it ripped apart … like smoke. It's gone!"

  Shade clacked her teeth, snarling so loudly it reverberated.

  Cinder-Shard's craggy features filled with suspicion.

  "Wynn?" Chane called.

  Another boom like thunder rolled down the tunnel, and the master Stonewalker whirled about, facing the path ahead.

  "What is it?" the captain barked.

  Cinder-Shard took off at a run, his heavy boots hammering the passage floor.

  "Stop!" Wynn shouted.

  "What is he doing?" Chane hissed.

  "Shut it!" the captain ordered, and then shouted, "Cinder-Shard?"

  Wynn turned toward Chane but faltered. Still gripping Shade's fur, she looked down. Shade stood rigid, hackles raised. A mewling rumble began pouring between her bared teeth.

  Wynn still didn't want to believe. She shriveled inside, trying to hide from Shade's truth. If that thing had survived, after all it had done to get the folios, there was only one way it could've known to come here.