Of Truth and Beasts (Noble of Dead Saga Series 2 Book 3)

by Barb; J. C. Hendee

  Chane had never truly cared what Ore-Locks wanted here. It had sometimes seemed the dwarf simply wished to know if the seatt was just a myth or if anything could be learned of his long-dead ancestor. It had not occurred to Chane that Ore-Locks might also be seeking the orb.

  If so, Wynn was in more danger than Chane had thought. His first instinct was to take her from here, by force if necessary. But she would never forgive him.

  “If he knows . . . anything,” Wynn continued, “all the more reason to follow him, since I don’t know where to look.”

  Shade growled in obvious disagreement, but Wynn turned and headed toward the effigies.

  Chane checked both his swords for a smooth draw before hurrying after her. At the first sign of treachery, he would take Ore-Locks suddenly, killing the dwarf before he could react. That would end this foolish exploit.

  “Ore-Locks,” Wynn called.

  “Here.”

  They rounded the last of the statues, the only female among them, and Ore-Locks stood before another archway. The dwarf’s expression had altered, filled with relief or satisfaction. Then Chane took a better look at the archway.

  Set deep between the thick frame stones was a panel of old, marred iron with a worn seam down its middle. The panel fully filled the arch, slipping into the wall on either side through a thick slot. It would be at least an inch thick, with two more like ones behind it. There was no lock, handle, or latch, nor brackets for a bar, and there would not be on the other side, either.

  Chane knew those panels would open only for a certain set of individuals. His hand dropped to his sword hilt as he eyed Ore-Locks.

  This portal matched the same impassable barriers they had once faced in Dhredze Seatt. One way or another, all black iron portals led to the underworld of the Stonewalkers.

  Wynn became more suspicious of Ore-Locks by the moment. He was looking for something specific down here—and it wasn’t effigies of the Bäynæ. His steady progress was beginning to border on manic, and he appeared to know where he was going, as if he had been here before.

  “This must be opened from the other side,” Ore-Locks said.

  Wynn remembered how Ore-Locks’s superior, Cinder-Shard, had passed right through such a portal. The master stonewalker had opened it by manipulating a series of rods in the wall on the other side that functioned as a complex lock. And Ore-Locks knew very well how these doors worked.

  Panic hit Wynn as she realized he was about to pass through the wall. What if he didn’t unlock the portal? The look of satisfaction on his broad face could only mean he was getting close to whatever he sought here. What if he just abandoned them and went on alone?

  “Take Chane with you,” she said. “You don’t know what you’ll find, or even if you can unlock it. You may need him to help force the portal open.”

  “I am not leaving you alone,” Chane argued.

  Ore-Locks turned his head, looking at Wynn. “No one could force a portal . . . it would take a dozen warrior thänæ, and even they might fail. If I cannot open it . . . I will return.”

  His tone dared Wynn to challenge his word. She didn’t trust him, and he knew it. She tried to think of another way to stall him until she came up with something, anything else they could try.

  Ore-Locks stepped straight into the iron and vanished.

  “No!” she cried, slapping her hand against the portal, sending a thrum through the great hall. “Chane, why wouldn’t you go? Now there’s no one watching him, and we cannot follow.”

  “I am not about to be trapped on the other side, away from you.”

  How could he be so calm? Then another thought occurred to Wynn.

  The locks for these portals had a combination for which rods were pushed or pulled into differing positions. Cinder-Shard, as master stonewalker of Dhredze Seatt, had likely set those combinations himself. How could Ore-Locks possibly know the combination here, set by a master stonewalker a thousand or more years ago?

  She realized he’d never intended to bring her through, and panic threatened to overwhelm her. Had she come all this way to be left behind?

  A rumbling grind of metal on stone made her lurch back.

  The iron panel split, its halves slowly grating away into the frame stones on either side. The noise increased as the second, and then the third panel followed.

  The portal was open, and Ore-Locks stood dead center, looking out at Wynn.

  CHAPTER 23

  Chuillyon led the way through the decaying, empty tram station and into a tunnel. He saw an archway ahead but was unprepared for the sight beyond it—a domed cavern as large as a small town.

  “Oh, my,” Hannâschi breathed.

  Chuillyon stared up at the remnants of walkways that had once stretched between remaining columns as thick as some old trees of his people’s forests. Column fragments and the ruins of huge stairways lay piled and scattered everywhere.

  Even malnourished and exhausted, Hannâschi’s awe and wonder were plain to see. Shâodh, however, appeared singularly unimpressed. He stepped through the rubble, glancing once at a skeleton still wearing a thôrhk.

  “Fewer bodies here,” he noted dispassionately.

  Chuillyon almost winced, thinking of the grim fate of these lost dwarven ancestors.

  “Did Wynn come through here?” he asked.

  Shâodh paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. His exhale thrummed briefly in his throat, and Hannâschi crouched beside a set of broken bones.

  “So much death,” she said quietly. “What happened here?”

  “No one knows . . . as yet,” Chuillyon answered.

  She looked up, but her long hair and cowl covered half her face.

  “This is the greatest archaeological find of our time,” she went on. “Bäalâle is no myth. If there is evidence here—amid all of this—then we will have proof the war did take place . . . that it was not, is not, some overblown legend.”

  Shâodh’s eyes opened, and he looked down at her with the barest frown.

  In truth, Chuillyon had so single-mindedly followed Wynn that he had forgotten this possibility. But Hannâschi was only half-right.

  “Such information must be kept from the public,” Shâodh stated before Chuillyon could express the same notion.

  Hannâschi rose and turned to Shâodh with her mouth set tightly. Clearly, she did not need his reminder, and seemed about to tell him so. This was not the time for a spat—although one might come later. Chuillyon decided not to mention it yet, but, in truth, even few of his peers at the guild could be told of this place until he understood more himself.

  “Did she come through here?” he asked again.

  Shâodh nodded once. “But we have another problem. I sense three distinct lives. The journeyor’s protector cannot be one of them, and the majay-hì’s presence is different. That leaves her and the dwarf.”

  “And so?” Chuillyon asked.

  “Someone else is here, either with her or near her.”

  This was all Chuillyon needed: one more unknown variable. “Which way?” he asked.

  Shâodh pointed south. “Do we follow?”

  Chuillyon fought an urge to snap at him for that same tiresome question. Did Shâodh think they were going home to announce their great find and bathe in glory? They were here to learn what Wynn was after.

  When Chuillyon did not answer, Shâodh held out his hand, helping Hannâschi over a pile of loose rubble. He kept hold of her hand as he led the way across the cavern. Chuillyon never missed these small familiarities between them. Neither had he ever commented on them. But that might have to change.

  They passed more crumbling stairways and fragmented columns . . . and more remains of the long dead. After a good distance, Shâodh slowed, but he did not sink into meditation again. He gestured toward an archway at the cavern’s south wall.

  Just inside of it lay a small pile of blankets and canvas bags.

  Chuillyon hurried over to see inside the tunnel.

 
; Chane stepped through the portal last, finding himself in a narrow passage. Ore-Locks walked to an open recess near the door that held the grid of metal rods exposed by a sliding metal panel.

  “No,” Chane said quickly. “Do not close the portal.”

  Ore-Locks eyed him in surprise. “It will bar any pursuit if we are still followed.”

  “It will also lock us in. If we are forced to flee, we may not have time to stop and open it. Leave it open.”

  The dwarf did not appear convinced, but Chane had no intention of allowing him near those rods. Should Ore-Locks close the panel, he could leave them entombed and trapped.

  Wynn held up her cold lamp crystal, illuminating the passage. “Chane’s right. There’s been no sign of followers since the vibrations on the tram tracks. Ore-Locks, what if you get hurt . . . or worse? The rest of us will be trapped with no means to get ourselves . . . or you out.”

  Her argument was rational and logical, and far less accusatory than what Chane was thinking. Ore-Locks finally nodded. It must go against his training and nature to pass through a portal without closing it. With the decision made, the strange, dark focus returned to his face, and he headed down the passage at a quick pace.

  Shade rumbled low in discontent, watching him, and Chane shared her concern over the dwarf’s shifting moods. He was obviously looking for something.

  Wynn trotted after Ore-Locks. “Come on.”

  Within a few paces, Chane detected the floor’s slight slant. They were going deeper again, and he tried to gauge their descent. When he reckoned they were about two levels lower, Ore-Locks stopped before a side passage. He turned his head, cocking it, as if listening.

  Ore-Locks suddenly turned into the side passage, as did Wynn. She seemed to be just blindly following the dwarf.

  “Wynn,” Chane rasped, but she had already stopped.

  Another iron portal blocked the passage’s end. Ore-Locks did not even pause, but walked straight through the iron and vanished.

  “No!” Wynn cried, rushing to the closed portal.

  The smallest hope flickered inside Chane. Perhaps this time, Ore-Locks truly had left them. Without his obsession feeding Wynn’s drive to go deeper, Chane might yet convince her to turn back. To his surprise, Wynn closed her fist around her crystal and pounded on the portal.

  “Ore-Locks!” she shouted. “Open these doors now! Do you hear me?”

  The words echoed loudly along the narrow passage, but Wynn only pounded harder.

  Chane stood waiting, hoping, for her to finally halt in exhaustion.

  Sau’ilahk drifted from the hall of the Eternals and through the open portal into a smaller passage. From a distance, he saw light down its gradual slope. The light suddenly dimmed by half and then spilled out of what might be a side passage. When the illumination faded from the passage’s mouth, he followed carefully.

  The sound of Wynn shouting and pounding rolled out of the side passage and toward him in echoes. He stopped and slipped close to the main passage’s wall, prepared to sink into it. He had not caught her words—something to do with the dwarf—but she sounded more distressed than angry.

  Something had gone wrong.

  Sau’ilahk fled back to the open portal into the hall of the Eternals. He feared being sensed by the dog, and he could not move until certain of which way Wynn might go next.

  A grinding sound rose in the narrow passage, rumbling all around Wynn, and she stopped pounding. When the last of the iron triple doors rolled away, Ore-Locks stood in the opening, but this time he looked angry.

  “Do not disturb the peace of the honored dead,” he ordered, and then looked to the crystal in her hand. “Close that in your fingers, and allow only enough light for sure steps.”

  With that, he turned away, heading inward beyond the portal.

  Wynn glanced back at Chane and Shade, and then hurried after, entering a natural cave beyond a shorter passage. It all looked alarmingly familiar.

  She walked a wide, cleared path between calcified, shadowy forms. A hulking stalagmite rose from the cavern floor, thick and fat all the way up to head height. Others were joined at the upper end by descending stalactites, forming natural, lumpy columns that glistened with mineral-laden moisture. But in the dim phosphorescence of the walls, some forms looked too big and bulky to have been made only by calcified buildup. To an unknowing observer, they might have been boulders at one time, now buried beneath decades of crust.

  Wynn knew exactly what those protrusions were. She stood in the chambers of the honored dead, as she once had in Dhredze Seatt. This was where dead thänæ were entombed in stone, to be tended in eternal rest by the Stonewalkers of this lost seatt.

  Ore-Locks glanced at only a few of the lone stone protrusions in this first cave. He moved to a nearby opening and stepped off the open path and into the next shadowed forest of such formations. Wynn followed, watching as he examined each one with a kind of mania before rushing for the next.

  “What is he doing?” Chane asked. “Has he gone mad?”

  “Shhhh,” Wynn said. “Those aren’t just mounds of calcified stone.”

  She didn’t know why the Stonewalkers wouldn’t allow bright light in these caves. They seemed to think it would disturb the dead they cared for. Wynn spread her fingers, letting just a little of her crystal’s light seep out.

  “Look,” she told Chane, and he leaned in.

  The top of one glistening stone protrusion narrowed over rounded “shoulders” to a bulk like a “head.” This one had melded to the tip of a long, descending stalactite. The hints of features, like the face of a sculpture roughly formed and left unfinished, were barely visible in the light of Wynn’s crystal.

  The long-dead thänæ’s eyes seemed closed, but there was no way to be certain.

  Wynn couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Its clothing was nothing more than the barest ripples in the glittering layers of minerals. The buildup had turned its hands into lumps. She glanced at other dark shapes about the cave’s silent stillness.

  “Honored thänæ, taken into stone,” she whispered. “We are standing among the dead of a forgotten time.”

  No coffins or crypts. The Stonewalkers—the Hassäg’kreigi—entombed their most honored in stone itself. Left here for a thousand years or more, they became one with the earth their people cherished.

  Chane backed up, looking all around without blinking.

  Wynn knew he didn’t fear the dead. He too had stood in those caves in Dhredze Seatt.

  Chane’s eyes suddenly widened. “One has been shattered!”

  He rushed off the path.

  When Wynn caught up, he was crouched over fragments at the base of one form. She froze at the sight of this desecration. From the size of the pieces lying all around, the dwarf had been large—tall—and the broken bits had been there long enough to bond to the cave floors.

  She shook her head in sadness. Who would do such a thing, and why? There was no way to know, and she gripped her crystal tighter, peering about for Ore-Locks.

  He still wove between the lumpy columns, studying every calcified thänæ he could find.

  “What are you doing?” Wynn called to him.

  Instead of answering, he broke into a jog and ran into the cave’s wall.

  Wynn stiffened, and then heard his heavy footfalls echoing through the caves. Shade took off toward another opening.

  “Ore-Locks!” Wynn cried, following Shade’s lead.

  The next cave held only a few calcified forms. Ore-Locks was already running for another wall, his face twisted in urgency. Wynn started after him, but Shade barked.

  Still moving, Wynn glanced back in frustration. “What?”

  “Perhaps she has dipped into his memories,” Chane said.

  Wynn stopped cold, though Chane went on to peek into the next cave.

  Shade padded closer, and Wynn dropped to one knee. She touched Shade’s face, feeling bad for having snapped at the dog. In her own mania to catch Ore-Locks,
she’d forgotten Shade’s ways.

  “Sorry,” she said softly, closing her eyes.

  An image of darkness filled her mind instantly. One of her own memories began to return....

  She held a cold lamp crystal out before a figure of stone, carved almost like an upright coffin, but with an engraving inside a raised, oblong panel about chest level. She traced the engraved markings with her finger.

  . . . outcast of stone . . . deceiver of honored dead . . . ender of heritage . . . the seatt killer ...

  She reached the bottom—a final vubrí.

  Thallûhearag—the Lord of Slaughter.

  Shade had taken her back to the Chamber of the Fallen at Dhredze Seatt, those counterparts to the dwarven Eternals. Reviled for their rejection of dwarven virtues, their faceless effigies, chiseled in the form of iron-banded coffins, were locked away in the deepest place. One was worse than all others, and secreted in a small chamber of its own.

  Inside the memory, Shade began to snarl.

  In her crystal’s light, a shadow of that lone effigy appeared to move upon the wall behind it. A baritone voice rose as if from the black basalt form.

  “His true name was Byûnduní . . . Deep-Root.”

  Ore-Locks stepped from the shadows, his hand stroking down the effigy. He raised his eyes to where the head would be, as if seeing more than the mute form’s representation. He placed both hands flat on the oval plate of its engraving, as if trying to blot out the epitaph.

  “He does not belong here,” Ore-Locks whispered.

  The memory ended as abruptly as it began.

  Wynn opened her eyes, still holding Shade’s face, and realized what Shade was trying to tell her.

  “Deep-Root?” she breathed.

  Did Ore-Locks actually hope to find his traitorous ancestor among the honored dead of Bäalâle?

  “What did she show you?” Chane asked.

  “I know what Ore-Locks is looking for, and he will not find it here.”

  Rising, she ran into the next cave, and then the next. The farther in she went, the more the entombed forms became indistinguishable from the cave’s glistening stone. She found Ore-Locks inside the fifth and last cave. He looked pale and stricken, down on his knees. When he saw her watching him, he stood up, his expression hardening.