by Barb Hendee
Journeyors were scarce at the guild, as most were off on assignments, but neither did Wynn note any domins nearby. After supper initiates were supposed to be in their quarters if not in the common hall.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Two apprentices turned eyes on her. As they shifted aside Wynn saw Miriam, a stocky apprentice with a cloak draped over her gray robe. Another cloaked apprentice shivered beside her as if they’d both just come in from outside.
“Oh, Wynn,” Miriam said, as if glad to see someone—anyone—of higher rank. “Domin High-Tower sent us to Master Shilwise’s scriptorium to retrieve today’s folio . . . and Master Shilwise wouldn’t give it to us! He said the folio was too intricate, and his scribes hadn’t finished. He wouldn’t turn over unfinished work.”
Wynn was stunned. Nothing sent by the guild was ever to remain overnight. That much, if nothing else, was well-known concerning the translation project.
“What about the drafts?” she said.
Miriam shook her head. “He said they would finish first thing in the morning, and he kept the whole folio. He shooed us out and locked up his shop! What is Domin High-Tower going to say? I don’t want to tell him this!”
Wynn rubbed her head again, a persistent ache now growing. First Nikolas’s belated confession and now this?
She’d never heard of even one folio left out overnight. The domins and masters sent out only one per day to any of the five most reputable scriptoriums. They seemed paranoid about too many pieces of the texts in the same outside hands or beyond their control for too long. And no one scriptorium should grow entirely dependent upon the translation project—which would end at some point—and thereby build a stronger relationship with the guild than the others had.
Domin High-Tower handled all the arrangements and had made it clear to all that folio contents delivered in the morning must be returned with the final scribed versions that evening. What was Master Shilwise thinking?
“I can’t tell Domin High-Tower!” Miriam nearly wailed. “He’ll be so angry. He’ll blame me.”
“No, he won’t,” Wynn said, but her words did nothing to calm the girl. “Very well, I’ll inform him.”
“You?” Miriam sniffed, wild relief filling her eyes.
High-Tower was already displeased with Wynn. Aside from the usual, he hadn’t cared for finding her unsupervised in the company of Captain Rodian.
“Yes,” Wynn answered wearily. “Now, you two take off your cloaks. Nikolas, take them to the common hall and get some tea.”
Without waiting for a reply, she headed off for the north tower.
When she finally climbed the curving stairwell to the third floor and approached High-Tower’s study, the heavy door was shut tight. He did this only when he preferred not to be disturbed. Wynn grasped the iron handle anyway.
Muffled voices rose beyond the door.
She didn’t want to disturb whatever was going on inside, but if she waited the domin would be even angrier at not being told straight off. She’d barely raised a clenched hand to knock when someone inside half shouted—in Dwarvish.
High-Tower’s home was Dhredze Seatt, the dwarven city across the bay on the mountain peninsula. The journey wasn’t long, but she’d never known him to have visitors from home before. And whatever she’d heard passed too quickly for her to translate.
Wynn stood in indecision. She couldn’t leave, but she shouldn’t stay and listen either.
“You will stop!” someone roared from inside—or so Wynn thought. And the voice had a strange quality, like gravel being crushed under a heavy boot.
She read Dwarvish quite well, but their written terms didn’t change as much as their spoken words. Unlike Elvish, even the old dialect of the an’Cróan, pronunciation of Dwarvish mutated over generations. Yet the dwarves never faltered in understanding one another. When she was a young girl, Wynn’s tutor in the language had been High-Tower. She’d enjoyed attempting conversation with him, much as he smirked at her diction.
“It is not within my power!” High-Tower shouted back. “And unfair of you to ask.”
“Sages—such foolish scribblers!” the first voice declared. “You will exhume our ruin!”
“Knowledge is not the enemy,” High-Tower shot back. “And translation will continue.”
“Then you risk betraying your own, to shame and remorse,” a third voice shouted, “if you let others know what you find.”
Wynn wasn’t certain she understood it all correctly, but it was the best she could make out. And that new voice was so much different from the other. More somber and reserved than the first, though equally passionate, it held a strange warning. The first voice demanded that High-Tower put a stop to translating the ancient texts, but the other one seemed less resistant, so long as what the sages learned was shared with only . . . whom?
Footsteps pounded toward the door’s far side.
Wynn scurried down around the stairwell’s bend. She heard the door jerk open and held her breath as she peeked carefully around the inner wall’s rising arc.
A dwarf stood in the open doorway, head turned as he looked back into High-Tower’s study. Wynn caught only his profile.
Wide features, with a dim undertone of gray, were deeply lined as well as flushed in rage. He was old, though he stood strong and tall, at least as tall as Wynn but over three times her bulk. At best guess he had to be well over a hundred years old, as dwarves often made it past two hundred.
He swallowed hard, trapping anger down. And his attire was . . . stunning—like that of no dwarf she’d ever seen.
Over char-gray breeches and a wool shirt he wore an oily black hauberk of leather scales. Each scale’s tip was sheathed in finely engraved steel, and two war daggers tucked slantwise in his thick belt had black sheaths with fixtures to match.
Then another face appeared over his shoulder. Armed and armored like the first, this dwarf had hair of a reddish hue and he was clean-shaven. Something about his face looked familiar to Wynn, though she knew she’d never seen either of these two before.
As the second visitor came up, the first turned back toward the stairwell.
Wynn ducked away, but not before she glimpsed something more.
They both wore thôrhks.
Those heavy, open-ended steel circlets rested upon the collars of their scaled hauberks. Each end knob flanged to a flat surface that bore an intricately etched symbol. Wynn couldn’t make it out from a distance, but she couldn’t help remembering a thôrhk of ruddy metal given to Magiere by the Chein’âs—when Magiere and Leesil had visited “the Burning Ones” on the last run to find the orb.
Magiere’s open-ended circlet wasn’t the same in make as what the dwarves wore. But it had been close enough that “thôrhk” was the only term by which Wynn could describe her absent friend’s device.
Thôrhks were gifted only to thänæ, those among the dwarves most revered for their accomplishments. They were also worn by the leaders of the tribes and sometimes clans, and a few others of social status. These two dressed like warriors, but skills in battle weren’t all that the dwarves found virtuous. And most warrior thänæ took service by their own choice, swearing no allegiances and serving wherever they saw need.
Wynn heard the study door slam shut.
She held her place for a few shaky breaths and then peered around the stairwell’s turn. No one stood upon the landing, though she heard voices again inside High-Tower’s study. The three spoke too softly, so she crept up the stairs, crouching low near the narrow space between the floor and door to listen.
“The war happened!” High-Tower growled in Dwarvish. “You know it . . . we know it. But now we have the means to prove it. And something that—”
“You will not find it in those rotted texts!” the gravel voice roared. “All you will find is ruin and—”
“And the shame of the Hassäg’kreigi?” High-Tower finished.
A moment of silence followed, but Wynn was already los
t in confusion.
She couldn’t make out that final word. Was it some kind of name or a dwarven clan or tribe? She struggled to think of root words from which it had been formed.
The root chas’san, if she recalled correctly, meant “passage,” and hassäg sounded like a verbal noun in the vocative. Something about “passages”—no, someone making passage or using a passage—a “walker”? And chregh—“stone”—she knew well enough. In the vocative plural it might be pronounced kreigi.
“Stonewalkers?” Wynn whispered.
Then she flinched at her own voice, but no one inside seemed to have noticed.
“Even some of our own people are sick of your secretive ways,” High-Tower growled, “especially the rare few who still know the myth of Bäalâle Seatt.”
“Watch your tongue, brother!” the younger voice countered. “Thallûhearag was no myth!”
Wynn’s eyes popped wide. High-Tower had a younger brother? That was why the younger visitor had looked strangely familiar.
“Spare me your misguided faith!” the domin answered. “And don’t speak to me again of that thing. I do not share your belief. I do not accept you or it. You do not even know that false abomination’s real name . . . and no one should, if he ever existed!”
“I believe,” the same voice answered.
“Faith that denies fact is fanaticism,” High-Tower spit back. “Not faith at all, when it tries to hide from truth. I will find truth. If you have no stomach for it go back to praying in your crypts.”
Dead silence trailed on. Wynn finally rose to her knees, leaning an ear close to the door.
“I said get out!” High-Tower shouted.
Wynn recoiled in panic. With no time to gain her feet, she scrambled down the stairs on all fours. One hand slipped and she tumbled over.
Wynn flopped and slid along the stairwell’s downward curve until her trailing knee smacked a step. She yelped before she could stop herself, and her back hit the outer wall. Finally at a stop, she rolled to sit up and dropped another step. Her rump hit stone as she grabbed her aching knee. Panic-stricken, she bit her lip and stared up the flight of steps, waiting to be caught.
No one came down. She never even heard the study door open. And another tense moment passed.
Wynn finally found the courage to rise and limp upward, but not as quietly as she wanted. She paused, listening at the study’s door, but heard no voices.
“Yes?” High-Tower growled from within. “Well, come in or be off.”
With everything else she’d done to lower the domin’s opinion of her, the last thing she needed was to be caught snooping about. She gently gripped the handle and slowly opened the door.
Domin High-Tower sat behind his desk, scribbling on a scrap of paper, as if merely at work. But his rough features were flushed, and perspiration glistened upon his brow beneath the wiry tufts of his gray-streaked reddish hair.
Domin High-Tower was alone.
Wynn looked about the room. Where had the other two gone?
The only way out of the room was the door. Even so, no one had come down, and the other way led up to the tower’s next level—which was the top. Had they slipped out, and gone up, and she hadn’t heard them? But why and to where?
She stepped in, still uncertain if she’d been overheard outside.
It was uncommon for High-Tower’s people to join the Guild of Sagecraft—and some even considered it an unworthy choice. He was the only dwarf among sages that she’d ever known. High-Tower never spoke of this, but Wynn guessed he had suffered over the decision of his chosen path. He finally looked up and let out a growling sigh.
“Well, what is it?” he asked.
Perhaps he’d been so caught up in arguing with his visitors that he hadn’t heard her outside.
“News that couldn’t wait,” she answered quickly. “Today’s folio wasn’t returned. Master Shilwise’s scribes didn’t finish, and he refused to turn over work to our messengers . . . he kept the drafts as well.”
High-Tower stood up. “What?”
“There is nothing you can do,” Wynn said, but he was already rushing for a cloak thrown over the spare chair. “The shop has been closed and locked for the night.”
“Closed?” High-Tower’s black pellet eyes widened as he set his jaw.
Wynn had no wish to upset him more than he already was. Neither did she care to be the only target available for his ire.
“All the scribes have gone home,” she added quickly. “But the drafts should be safe for one night. Master Shilwise’s shop is in a good neighborhood.”
High-Tower’s gaze drifted—not to the stairs or the door, nor did it wander about the room. It fixed upon the study’s northwest side, and Wynn followed it.
Through one deep-set window, she saw the keep’s northwest wall. But upon a second check she found High-Tower wasn’t looking out the window. He was staring at the study’s curved wall to the left of it—in a direct line with that outer wall.
“Fools and fanatics!” he hissed to himself.
He seemed to come to his senses, glancing at Wynn. His voice rumbled like a distant sea storm closing upon the city.
“This is the last work Shilwise will ever see from us! I must tell Sykion.”
High-Tower headed for the study’s open door, sidling sideways to get through it, and Wynn felt his heavy steps through the floor stones. She was lost in her own jumbled thoughts as the domin vanished down the curving stairs.
Thallûhearag . . . Hassäg’kreigi . . . Bäalâle Seatt . . .
That last was a myth that the world had forgotten, though Wynn knew better.
During travels in the Elven Territories, Magiere had seen the distant memories of Most Aged Father, reaching all the way back to the “mythical” war. The Enemy’s forces had laid siege to a dwarven stronghold called Bäalâle Seatt. Both sides had perished, though no one then ever learned what happened there. The place itself was forgotten as much as any of the Forgotten History.
But within the domin’s chamber had been two who knew it. And what of those other Dwarvish terms?
Wynn studied the wall to the window’s left, whispering again, “Stonewalkers?”
Where had High-Tower’s two visitors gone?
Chane Andraso woke from dormancy with a start. Dusk had fallen, and he had not even stirred at the eighth bell marking the end of the day. He should gather his cloak and head fast for the Gild and Ink, the scribe shop of one Master Shilwise.
It had not taken him long to map out the pattern of the scriptoriums being utilized. The guild had hired five shops and rotated them on the same daily basis: the Upright Quill, the Gild and Ink, the Inkwell, the Feather & Parchment, and Four Scribes in House. But as he sat up in his shabby bed, his mind still lingered on the previous night.
He had seen Wynn for the first time in well over a year.
His existence had once been so intricately connected with hers that he knew every line of her face. Back in Bela, when she had joined the journey of Magiere, Leesil, and Chap, Chane had reluctantly accepted a kind of servitude to a Noble Dead named Welstiel—Magiere’s half brother. And the two of them had secretly followed Wynn and her companions across entire countries, seacoasts, and mountain ranges, all in search of Welstiel’s coveted “orb.” But in the end, only Magiere could find and retrieve it. And Welstiel lost his head in the ice-trapped castle of the Pock Peaks, his body dropped into the misted depths of a molten fissure.
But Chane survived.
Running a hand across his face, he rose, looking about the faded walls of his small attic room.
When he had first arrived in Calm Seatt, with little money, he had taken the cheapest accommodation he could find. It was a run-down inn called Nattie’s House on the outskirts of the city’s poorest sector, which the locals had dubbed “the Graylands Empire.” Over time he had acquired coins from his prey and could have afforded better lodgings, but he did not care enough to make the effort. Remaining in this obscure, little-noticed
shambles suited his needs.
Chane went to crouch before his belongings, all piled in the corner where the ceiling rafters slanted down to the streetside eaves. He reached for the nearest of two packs, opened it, and removed an aged tin scroll case. With this in hand he closed his eyes, drifting back to the night Welstiel had taken his “second death.” The same night Chane had walked away from Wynn in the library of the ice-bound castle.
He hated dwelling on the past, but it was not the first time or even the hundredth that his thoughts slipped to events that led him down this current path. . . .
When he had left Wynn in the library of that castle, which housed one ancient undead, he had stumbled out alone onto the snowy plain.