Of Truth and Beasts

The massive, sculpted cavern could have held a sizable village, perhaps a town. He walked forward slowly, looking around in wonder. At this depth, he was standing in an architectural impossibility. Enormous, crumbling columns some ten or more yards in diameter held the remnants of curving stairways on their exteriors. Three of eight columns were still fully erect, reaching to the high, domed ceiling perhaps sixty to seventy yards above.

There were several massive cracks in the ceiling, though the light of Ghassan’s crystal was not strong enough to fully illuminate those heights. Walkways ran around the walls at multiple levels, and broken landings at certain points showed where causeways had once spanned between the columns.

He passed the ruins of a great stairway that had once led upward into stone. Perhaps it had joined to levels above connected to the tiers of walkways. Losing all sense of time, he strolled on until he came to his senses at another huge archway on the cavern’s far side.

With no wish to leave yet, he climbed one of the countless piles of broken stone to the top of a column fragment lying on its side. In frustration, he crouched and looked about.

So far, Ghassan had found nothing of significance to explain Wynn’s desperate trek here—besides the astonishing fact that this place was not a myth. But she was not seeking some archaeological wonder.

Something about this cavern offered him comfort. He could not place his finger on exactly what until he realized that it was the only place he had seen that reminded him that other people had once lived and breathed here. Even the calcified, tragic skeletons scattered about served as reminders. Some appeared to have been too wounded or trapped by falling rubble to have escaped.

Poor souls. He could not imagine what horrors had happened in this place.

He looked around from his vantage point, still in awe of his surroundings. This seemed a good spot to wait—the only one, really. This was not only the heart of the seatt ... this was the seatt, or all that was left of it. Whatever path Wynn traveled, it would lead her here.

He had earlier sat in meditation to track her position. She was closer, but her speed had slowed, possibly stopped, and he wished he knew why. He still had not decided what to do when she arrived. Should he join her on the pretense of offering aid, or simply give her complete freedom and then follow to watch what she did?

The first option offered more control. No doubt he could convince her that he had learned enough from the part of scroll he had translated to find her here. Wynn did not trust many people, but she trusted him, to a degree. He alone had helped her when no one else in her own guild branch would. He had made the sun crystal staff for her and fought at her side.

But joining her meant she would be guarded in her actions. Perhaps the second option was the one to more quickly uncover her secrets.

He was so deep in self-debate that at first he did not notice the disturbing sensation creep over him. Like an uncomfortable tickle, when it broke through, he knew he had felt it before. He slipped over the column’s far side, crouching on the rubble he had used to climb up.

Darkness in one far archway shifted suddenly, as if those shadows awoke to life.

A black figure drifted from the opening, garbed in a flowing robe and cloak. Both garments shifted and swayed, though the cavern’s air was still and stale. Ghassan saw only more darkness inside its voluminous, sagging cowl where there should have been a face.

It raised its arms in some sort of silent salutation or in triumph, and its sleeves slipped down, exposing thin arms, hands, and fingers all wrapped in black strips.

Ghassan did not want to believe his eyes. He and Wynn had burned this thing to nothing in the streets of Calm Seatt.

And yet here it was.

Sau’ilahk rematerialized in the tunnel before a huge archway at its end. He slipped through to find himself in the half-destroyed remains of a great cathedral cavern. Its immensity left him startled, as did its depth beneath the range.

Column fragments larger than cottages and piles of rubble lay everywhere. There were fewer remains here than in the tunnel. He suspected some dwarves on this level had made it to the trams and escaped before whatever had happened that shattered and burned this place. The bones on this side of the cave-in must be from stragglers trapped by the catastrophe that had come.

He looked up, imagining the crushed levels above. Judging the seatt’s possible population by this central cavern’s size and the openings around it, tens of thousands must have perished up there. But Sau’ilahk gave them no thought.

His shifting, incorporeal form wavered, as if shivering with excitement as he raised his arms. At least Beloved had not lied in this. He was inside Bäalâle Seatt, and after all these centuries, he would find his heart’s desire.