by Barb Hendee
No, not with other groups mentioned. Those ancient Noble Dead might have been seen as holy, but by mere title, the more likely “priests” were the Reverent. So which of the other names belonged to the third group—the Eaters of Silence? And who or what had they been?
Wynn bit her lower lip in frustration and turned the page. It was the last one in the stack.
She dug through the piles, checking volume numbers for any section that followed, but she never found one. Further work on volume seven hadn’t been completed yet.
In the end, she had a list of seventeen names and nine blanks as possible names where the writing systems were unknown to the translators. Of the former, five were the Children of the Beloved—Li’kän, Volyno, Häs’saun, Vespana, and Ga’hetman.
Wynn swallowed hard and then started at a grumbling whine.
“Young Hygeorht!” Tärpodious croaked from the outer room. “If that animal has an accident in my archives, you’ll answer for it! It is late for supper already.”
Had an entire day slipped by again? Wynn glanced down.
The female looked up, not even raising her head from her paws, and a wave of guilt hit Wynn. Her new companion hadn’t gone outside all day.
She restacked all the pages as best she could and gathered her things. About to close her journal, she glanced once more over the names there. The majay-hì finally raised her head and sat up, peering over the tabletop.
“Names and more names.” Wynn sighed, carefully stroking the female’s head, remembering the day she’d haphazardly named Lily. “And I still don’t know what to call you.”
A quick chain of images shuffled through her thoughts—Chap alone, then with Lily, their heads touching, and finally the old wolfhound.
Wynn groaned. “Stop that. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
But it didn’t stop. The images merely slowed in repetition.
She saw Chap leaning into Lily, slowly sliding his head along hers, as the majay-hì did in memory-speak. This time, when the wolfhound’s image rose in Wynn’s mind, it flickered with the image of a charcoal-colored pup tussling with her siblings.
Again, and again, until the image of Chap speaking to Lily faded into the mother’s memory of a dark-coated daughter—now sitting beside Wynn. That last memory wasn’t Wynn’s own.
Wynn slipped from the chair, kneeling before Chap’s daughter. She had no experience in memory-speak, so it had taken time for the meaning to finally sink in. Another instant of looking into the female’s yellow-flecked eyes finally brought clarity.
Wynn didn’t need to find a name.
Chap had already supplied one, taught to Lily, and through her to their daughter, in a way without words. A name called from his own memory of an aging wolfhound, honoring a simple animal who’d once saved him.
Wynn carefully put her hands around the face of Chap’s daughter.
“Shade,” she whispered.
The dog didn’t respond in any way. Wynn relaxed all conscious thought to let her own memory of the wolfhound rise. As an answer, she received a warm, wet lap of tongue across her face.
It was going to take time and effort before they understood each other better.
With that, she gathered her things to leave, and Shade followed her into the outer chamber.
“Master Tärpodious, will everything be kept as I’ve arranged it? I didn’t know if the materials would be secured for the night or left out for me.”
For a moment his wrinkled face softened, perhaps at the concern and diligence of her studies. He was an archivist, after all, dedicating his life to the catalogues of knowledge. Then he scowled at the “wolf’s” presence.
“I’ll return it myself . . . to its safe place,” he said. “But I’ll pay heed to your arrangements when it is brought back out tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Wynn said, but she wondered where the translations were being kept.
“Come, Shade,” she said. “We’ll have to hurry if you’re going out to the gardens before the portcullis closes for the night. I don’t think anyone would appreciate your relieving yourself in the courtyard.”
She hurried for the stairs, and Shade trotted beside her without being urged. As they neared the side arch of the common hall, Wynn began to fret. Better to take the main passage around to the front than go through there again. Before she even passed the entrance, Domin High-Tower came thumping down the passage from the other way.
“Oh, perfect,” Wynn grumbled, quickly grabbing Shade’s scruff.
No doubt the domin had heard about her new companion and came to put an end to such nonsense. But High-Tower barely glanced at Shade. His brow wrinkled, and he seemed agitated.
“What?” she asked.
“Nikolas is awake and . . .” High-Tower didn’t finish, and his frown turned to a frustrated glower. “Captain Rodian has arrived . . . but Nikolas is asking for you.”
CHAPTER 15
Rodian followed a brown-robed apprentice through the guild. As they reached the hospice ward, he spotted High-Tower and Wynn hurrying down the corridor behind him. High-Tower only nodded in greeting, but Rodian barely noticed. He was staring at the tall, leggy wolf beside Wynn.
It looked exactly like the one from the fiasco outside the Upright Quill.
“Back to your studies,” High-Tower told Rodian’s escort, and the apprentice scurried off.
Rodian turned his attention to Wynn. “You are a never-ending source of complications.”
“I’ll explain later,” she said quickly. “I’m here to see Nikolas first.”
Wynn pushed through the door before he could object, and the wolf stayed at her side.
Rodian followed. Indeed, Wynn would do a great amount of explaining at the earliest opportunity.
High-Tower was last to enter the long room with four narrow beds. A small table stood pushed against the back wall, with shelves above filled with glass vessels of herbs, powders, and other concoctions. Nikolas was in the first bed, and an aged man with bony features and a brown robe leaned over him. But the attendant straightened when he saw the visitors.
His astonished gaze fixed on the wolf, but at a shake of High-Tower’s head, the other sage said nothing.
“Captain,” Wynn said politely, “this is Domin Bitworth. He has been caring for Nikolas.”
Rodian merely nodded and looked down at the young man lying on the cot, conscious at last.
Nikolas’s hair was slightly laced with gray strands, but some color had returned to his face. He looked thin and haggard. Wynn settled on the bed’s edge.
“I’m glad to see you awake.”
The wolf paced over beside her, sniffing the blanket. To Rodian’s surprise, no one stopped it. But Nikolas’s eyes widened in fright. He weakly pulled up his legs beneath the blankets, shrinking back against the short headboard.
“It’s all right,” Wynn assured him, placing a hand on his arm. “This is Shade. She’s a majay-hì, not a wolf.”
Rodian didn’t know what she was talking about, but he noted Domin Bitworth’s stunned side glance at High-Tower. Typically, the dwarf just scowled and sighed.
Nikolas remained in retreat, but panic faded from his sickly expression.
With that, Wynn placed her hands beside the wolf’s face and gazed into its eyes. The animal froze and then turned its head toward Nikolas.
Terror returned to Nikolas’s expression as he noticed everyone in the room, particularly Rodian.
“They won’t tell me anything,” he said to Wynn. “Where are Miriam and Dâgmund?”
Color drained from Wynn’s face as she glanced at High-Tower and Bitworth. High-Tower swallowed with difficulty, and Wynn finally looked to Rodian.
“I’m sorry,” Rodian said to Nikolas. “I couldn’t reach them in time.”
Nikolas stared up, expressionless. He doubled over, sickened again, as if whatever had taken his strength in the alley assaulted him once more.
Rodian felt responsible.
No matter wha
t the premins and domins had done—or not done—it was his duty, as captain of the Shyldfälches, to keep the citizens of the king’s city from harm. And he could have, if the sages had informed him that they’d sent out another folio.
“The captain brought you to us as quickly as he could,” Wynn added.
“Enough,” Bitworth warned, stepping closer.
The wolf shifted away from him toward the bed’s head with a growl.
“He has only just awakened, and you’ll wear him out,” Bitworth warned.
“Yes, yes,” High-Tower intervened, and looked down at Nikolas. “Are you up to talking a little? The captain needs to know what you remember from that night.”
Nikolas was still shaken by the loss of his companions. His brown eyes shifted so erratically that Rodian couldn’t tell what the young man was looking at or for. Domin Bitworth gently waved High-Tower aside and stepped around the bed. He helped Nikolas take a sip of water from a mug.
“Anything might help,” Rodian urged, feeling harsh for doing this so abruptly, but the sooner the better.
“Tall . . . big . . . so black,” Nikolas whispered, and his haunted eyes looked only at Wynn. “A cowled robe . . . and a cloak that . . . moved . . . climbing the walls. It chased us into the alley . . . then Miriam started screaming . . . like Sherie.”
“Sherie?” Wynn whispered.
Nikolas didn’t seem to hear her. He trembled, staring blankly at nothing. Suddenly the frail apprentice cowered and pressed his hands over his ears, trying to block out a sound no one else could hear.
“Who is Sherie?” Rodian asked quietly.
Wynn shook her head slowly, still watching Nikolas in wary puzzlement. When Rodian looked to High-Tower, the domin shook his head as well. Bitworth knelt beside the bed.
“Nikolas,” he whispered, “try to focus on the alley, nothing else.”
The young man’s eyes wandered. “I tried to keep her in front of me as we ran away, but it . . . he . . . was everywhere . . . in front . . . behind . . . everywhere in the forest.”
Bitworth sighed. “He is slipping again. Some other memory keeps intruding.”
Rodian only half understood. Ignoring mention of a forest, he kept his voice calm but firm.
“Nikolas, you weren’t far from the scribe shop when I found you. When did you first notice the black-robed figure following you? Did it say anything?”
Nikolas blinked, awareness perhaps sharpening again. “We were walking, and it was just there in front of us, in the street . . . not moving, not a sound. We turned back, and it was there again, but closer. It reached for Miriam. Dâgmund jerked me back and shoved me into the alley. . . . I ran . . . and heard Sherie scream.”
Again, some other name in the place of Miriam’s.
“It got so cold . . . between the trees,” Nikolas whispered. “And the black . . . it grabbed Sherie, and she stopped screaming. Karl tried to reach her . . . but his father grabbed the folio. That hand . . . fingers all wrapped in black cloth . . . it went straight through her and closed on the folio.”
Rodian exhaled in exhaustion. Unknown names kept bouncing around in Nikolas’s head in place of Miriam and Dâgmund, along with someone’s father cast as the black figure.
Bitworth rose and stepped to the bed’s foot.
“I’ve heard pieces of this before,” the healer whispered, “when Nikolas rambled in his sleep. It happens sometimes when the mind suffers a severe trauma. Some other overwhelming past event can become mixed with the more recent one. Until Nikolas regains his will and full awareness, he cannot separate the cause of one trauma from another of the past.”
Rodian rubbed his forehead. The splinter of a headache felt like it would cleave his skull in half. Wynn looked at Nikolas in sympathy, with her hand on the wolf’s head, and Rodian stepped back.
He needed information to catch a murderer—or murderers—and all he’d gotten was more senseless confusion. Sykion and High-Tower wouldn’t face up to what was happening, or they tried to get around him in their own scheming. Bitworth’s assessment of Nikolas was no help.
And now Wynn brought a wild animal into the guild, and no one seemed to object.
Rodian pulled his hand down his face. May the Blessed Trinity of Sentience preserve him, for he was standing in a madhouse.
He couldn’t go to the royals with more nonsense, but when he looked down, Wynn was glaring at him. The anger in her face sparked his own resentment.
She couldn’t possibly expect him to believe there was anything of note in Nikolas’s rambling. High-Tower appeared just as uncomfortable with Nikolas’s account as he was.
“Did Domin il’Sänke leave the guild at all that night?” Rodian asked.
High-Tower lifted his head, puzzlement disturbing his scowl, but Wynn cut in first.
“Why do you keep asking that?”
“Was he here the whole time?” Rodian demanded, ignoring her, and High-Tower hesitated. The pause was the only confirmation he needed, but the dwarf finally answered.
“Domin il’Sänke was handling a private task for me that night. It has nothing to do with what happened, but I can attest that he was engaged in guild business.”
Rodian clenched his jaw—more evasions. He would get no rational help from these sages, even to save them from themselves. He started for the door but halted at another sharp rumble from the wolf.
Pawl a’Seatt stood in the hospice’s doorway. Small Imaret peeked around his side, bearing an ink smudge on her brown cheek. Master a’Seatt’s expression was flat and cool, but he was intently fixed upon either Wynn or Nikolas.
“Forgive us,” the scribe master said. “Imaret wished to see how Nikolas fared.”
The wolf’s rumble shifted into an open growl, and Rodian glanced back.
Wynn reached for the animal. “Stop that,” she said to it. “These are friends.”
But the wolf remained tensely focused on the doorway, still growling.
Rodian followed its gaze back to Pawl a’Seatt, who now watched the wolf in turn.
High-Tower cocked his large head, and Bitworth’s face filled with alarm. Even Wynn grew concerned. She raised a hand before the wolf’s face, perhaps commanding it to stay. The animal held its place, its noise lowering to a rumble.
Pawl a’Seatt’s brow wrinkled only slightly.
“What are you doing here?” Rodian asked bluntly. The shop’s scribes had been laboring all day inside the guild, but masters didn’t engage in the general work.
“I came to check on my staff,” Pawl answered calmly. “And to see them safely home.”
“I’ve already assigned men for that,” Rodian replied.
“Forgive me, but your guards have not always been effective.”
Rodian’s throat tightened. He couldn’t argue with that, though he failed to see how a scribe master could do better. Something else was wrong here. If a’Seatt overheard any of Nikolas’s jumbled recollections, what had caught him so much that he’d stood silent in the doorway without announcing himself?
“Come, Imaret,” Pawl a’Seatt said. “We must gather the others. Perhaps your friend will be better tomorrow.”
Rodian almost stopped the scribe master, but he could think of nothing specific to ask. And would he receive an honest answer? Hardly. Truth had become as intangible as the black figure murdering sages for folios.
“That is enough for today,” Bitworth said. “Everyone out. Nikolas needs rest.”
High-Tower nodded agreement and gestured toward the door. Rodian shook his head in frustration and stepped out. But he had one other matter to address.
Wynn must have seen her coveted translations by now.
“Walk me out,” he said as she stepped into the passage, and his tone implied that it wasn’t a request.
“She’s not had supper,” High-Tower growled.
Rodian wasn’t deceived by false concern. The domin simply wanted to keep Wynn away from him. He didn’t care.
“I’ll return di
rectly,” Wynn said, and then glanced back through the door at Bitworth. “Thank you for caring for Nikolas.”
The wolf stalked out behind her, passing High-Tower with a quick snort. The dwarf rolled his eyes, grumbling under his breath as he stomped away. Rodian gestured down the hall as he stepped onward.
“How did you come by that animal?”
Wynn fell into step beside him. “She found me,” she answered, as if she’d told him all that was necessary.