Of Truth and Beasts

At first, he had allowed Wynn to work with him, helping him interpret so many symbols he could not follow. The further he traveled within her stories of the Farlands, the more he wanted to study and absorb her writings by himself. He later took to struggling alone in his own room with copious notes made in her company.

Doing so without her assistance was daunting, but he began to grasp the syllabary’s premise of compressing and simplifying multiple letters into symbols of fewer and fewer continuous strokes. These were combined with special marks to account for pronunciations and special sounds in any language. It was all elegant, concise, adaptable, and so much could be condensed within a single page.

Fascinated as he was by each of the experiences he wrested from the symbols, something odd began to trouble him. Soon he stopped paying attention to actual events, paged backward, and focused on her accounts of the Noble Dead, most specifically the vampires.

She wrote of Toret—Chane’s own maker—once called Rat-Boy, and of Sapphire, Toret’s doxy. There were many passages concerning Welstiel Massing, Magiere’s half-brother, and Li’kän, that ancient undead now trapped beneath the castle in the Pock Peaks’ frozen heights. Wynn wrote of the feral monks Welstiel had created to fight his battles as they had raced for that castle. She even recounted meeting a vampire boy named Tomas in a decaying fortress outside of Apudâlsat in Magiere’s homeland.

Chane paged faster, but some of Wynn’s encounters with the undead that he knew of were missing.

At times, he had been an intricate part of her life—of her stories. But she had omitted how he had protected her from an undead sorcerer named Vordana, simply noting that Vordana escaped to be later destroyed by Leesil. She omitted how he had saved her from two mindless undead sailors in those same swamps and marshes. The account of Magiere severing his head was missing entirely.

As for the orb’s discovery, guarded by the deceptively frail Li’kän, Chane found only a mention of “another undead” in Welstiel’s company. And, that in the end, one of Welstiel’s “servants” had betrayed him. That one was never described, let alone named.

It had been Chane himself. There were so many holes in the tales, and he felt as if he were falling through all of them at once into nothing.

Chane Andraso was not mentioned once in the journals of Wynn Hygeorht.

Standing in the guest quarters’ silence, he could not bear to pick them up again. As if touching them would make the truth all the more real. Wynn had written these journals as if he never existed. All record of him had been blotted away from later becoming a reminder to anyone, especially to her. Chane did not need to ask why.

He was a thing not suitable for her world.

That realization—that intentional omission of him—cut him worse than Magiere’s falchion severing his head. Yet he could not leave Wynn.

His place was at her side for as long as she would allow him. He swallowed the pain and locked it away, but he still could not touch those journals again.

Chane left the guest quarters, heading out across the courtyard to the old barracks that served as a dormitory, trying not to let himself think. As he reached the dormitory’s second floor and Wynn’s door, a part of him did not want to see her. But he always went to her just past dusk. He stood there for a while before he could finally knock.

“I am here,” he rasped.

Chane heard Wynn’s quick footsteps within the room trotting closer to let him in.

Chapter 3

The following afternoon, Wynn sat in a deep alcove of the archives with Shade on the floor beside her. She was searching for anything to help locate Bäalâle Seatt, but her efforts gained her little.

She’d found an older map of the western Numan lands, all the way to the Rädärsherând, the “Sky-Cutter” mountain range blocking the southern desert and Suman Empire beyond. Paging through a sheaf of obscure dwarven ballads, she found one that mentioned something called the gí’uyllœ. It didn’t pertain to what she was after, but stuck in her head just the same.

The dialect was so old that the meaning was only a guess—something like “all-eater(s)” or “all-consumer(s).” At first, it seemed some ancient reference to goblins, but the verse hinted at massive size.

Wynn tried to keep sharply focused, but her thoughts kept wandering.

Last night, Chane had acted more strangely than ever when he’d finally arrived. He’d paced about, barely speaking to her. When she’d asked him again what was wrong, he wouldn’t answer. She’d tried talking to him, but pushing him harder seemed to make things worse. And for the first time, he hadn’t mentioned the wraith—Sau’ilahk—even once. After only a few moments, he’d left early on more errands.

So what had he been worried about?

Wynn felt quite alone in the world except for Shade and Chane, but he was making her nervous about the journey ahead.

Shade’s ears suddenly perked. She raised her head to peer at the alcove’s archway.