Of Truth and Beasts

“Even if you find such a thing,” Chane went on, “we are not wandering down some tunnel beneath mountain after mountain, with little food, nothing to hunt, and only hope of fresh water. If we travel for days and nights and reach only a cave-in, do we walk back out, only to find ourselves worse off than before?”

Chane crossed his arms tighter.

“Pohkavost!” he hissed, anger making him slip into his own language.

Wynn didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t wrong in calling it “lunacy.” Everything he’d said was valid, but he was not in charge here.

To make matters worse, Shade normally growled if Chane took that kind of hostile tone. She hadn’t, and instead she got up and sat right in front of Chane, glaring at Wynn.

Ore-Locks remained crouched in silence. Wynn didn’t need to glance back to know he was waiting for her to end this rebellion.

She was tired, hungry, filthy, and had no wish to fight with the two companions she trusted—and she certainly had no wish to side with Ore-Locks.

It suddenly occurred to her that while Chane and Shade had both remained at her side, aiding her, the more she gained hope in her purpose, the more reticent they’d become. Did they want her to fail, to abandon this desperate task and just go home—to be the dutiful little sage, finally obeying her superiors?

“If we found a passageway on this side,” she said calmly, “we would not even have to search for the seatt. It would lead us right there.”

Chane took a step forward, his mouth opening to argue, but she stood up in the same moment.

“We have to try,” she told him. “We have to at least look. It’s better than facing another moon or more wandering in the mountains, trying to find the remnants of a lost seatt on the edge of leagues and leagues of desert.”

The words building in Chane never left his parted lips. Maybe now he would finally accept that no matter what, she would still follow her own path.

Shade rumbled at her softly and began walking over. Wynn wasn’t about to tolerate a heated argument of chopped memory-words, either.

“No,” she said, holding out her hand. “We’re doing a search. Maybe I’m wrong and there is no passage, but these ruins, this place, existed for a reason.”

She turned away, facing south, though it was too dark to see the foothills of the pass’s end, let alone the mountains. Then she looked down at Ore-Locks still crouched at the base of the exposed wall’s remains.

It felt wrong to hurt those close to her by turning to him, but whatever his motivations, he was the only one willing to help. If she could find a passage built by the ancient dwarves that led directly into the seatt, half this battle would be won.

“Well?” was all she said to him.

Ore-Locks simply nodded.

Ghassan il’Sänke was no closer to finding a way inside the seatt. He had given up counting days or nights. He searched the lower reaches of the headless mountain until exhaustion took him, and he simply dropped where he was to sleep. When the rising sun, or a sharp wind, or the night’s chill woke him, he searched again.

A small voice in his mind began to taunt him. Could he be wrong? Was it not possible that this mountain had eroded on its own?

Perhaps there had once been a high lake up there, and it had simply dried out and filled in. Who was he to claim otherwise? A natural disaster, such as a volcanic eruption ages past, could have collapsed the top once it had cooled. Even that would have fit the legend of the mountain’s head returning as fire. And again, nature would have taken care of the rest over centuries.

But Ghassan denied his self-doubts.

What natural disaster could collapse an entire mountain from the inside? A volcano would have blown the top outward, leaving sharp, pocked stones, if not hardened paths of cooled lava, in the aftermath. Many small ravines would have formed following the erosion of softer material. But it was not so.

The seatt was in there, beneath the headless mountain. He had only to find his way in before Wynn reached it. But he was no scout or guide, wise to these barren wilds. He needed to start relying on his strengths.

He was a metaologer.

Movement caught his eye where he lay exhausted on a gravel slope. At first he did not bother to look. It would be another tiny dust twister kicked up by wind curling through the peaks. When it came again, he heard gravel tumbling overhead.

Ghassan rolled his head, raising a shielding hand, and looked upslope.

It was only a barrel-chested lizard skittering away as a few specks of gravel tumbled down. The creature’s scales were mottled brown and gray. Perhaps it had been there all along, blending with the landscape. He lowered his hand, too tired to even hunt it down for food.

But his mind came fully awake.