Of Truth and Beasts

Hawes’s eyes narrowed as she stamped the floor and lashed out with an open palm.

The echo of High-Tower’s steps seemed to vibrate in the floor, and Chane wobbled, as if about to topple, his eyes widening.

The floor beneath his feet suddenly lurched. Its stones rolled like a wave rising on a tidal beach. He fell backward through the open doors and toward the passage’s far wall. Hawes swept forward to stand before the opening, her back to Wynn.

“Why are you doing this?” Wynn asked, and jerked forward, but she couldn’t break High-Tower’s grip.

The two attendant sages grabbed the door handles, pulling the great oak doors closed. Hawes raised one hand before the narrowing gap.

“Wynn!” Chane rasped, trying to scramble to his feet.

“Wait for me in my room!” she called.

The doors slammed shut, and he was gone from her sight.

Hawes swept her hand down with another sharp utterance.

Wynn went limp in High-Tower’s grip as the doors’ aged oak began flowing together along the passing of Hawes’s hand. The gap blended downward along the seam. In an instant, the twin doors became one solid barrier, the wood’s grain now looking as if it were cut from one piece.

Premin Hawes laid her fingertips on the wood, cocking her head as if listening.

Wynn stared numbly at the barrier as High-Tower released her. Even Chane would be hard-pressed to break his way through from the other side. More than once she’d heard Domin Ghassan il’Sänke’s innuendos about this branch’s metaologers compared to his own. During his visit from the Suman Empire’s guild branch, he’d made plain how little he thought of even Premin Hawes’s skill as a thaumaturge.

Il’Sänke had been very wrong.

Everyone within the room remained silent for the longest time.

Premin Hawes finally turned and nodded to the others. She glided toward the long table’s right end, and the rest of the council turned to follow. But her gaze fell upon Wynn as she passed. There was no malice or anger there, merely a cold and calculating study.

Council members began taking their seats, and Wynn turned to face what awaited her ... alone.

Hawes settled silently in one of the smoothly crafted, high-back chairs at the right end of a long, stout table that stretched across the room’s rear. All the chairs were now filled with the five robed members of the Premin Council.

Premin Adlam, in the light brown of Naturology, sat at the table’s left end. Next, on High Premin Sykion’s left, sat portly Premin Renäld of Sentiology in cerulean. Sykion, as head of the council, sat at the table’s center, dressed in the gray of Cathology—Wynn’s own order. On her right, Premin Jacque of Conamology had his elbows on the table. His fingers were laced together, and he rested his high forehead against them, hiding his face.

And Hawes at the far right end still studied Wynn, almost without blinking. Her hazel irises now seemed the color of the walls’ gray stones.

Wynn stood straight, meeting that gaze, but then she couldn’t help glancing at the sixth person present.

As with the last time she’d been called here, Domin High-Tower, her immediate superior in Cathology, returned to standing beyond the table. He wouldn’t even look at her and stared out one of the narrow rear windows. He’d once been a beloved teacher, but was now her fiercest, most open opponent, trying to hobble her efforts at nearly every turn.

“Journeyor Hygeorht,” Premin Sykion began slowly, “I hardly know where to begin.”

Wynn shifted her gaze.

“Lady” Tärtgyth Sykion, once a minor noble of the nearby nation of Faunier, was an aged but tall and straight willow of a woman. A long silver braid snaked out of the side of her cowl and down the front of her gray robe. Beneath her usual motherly and temperate veneer, she was as untrustworthy as the rest. Tonight, there was no nurturing care in her expression.

Strangely, that took away all of Wynn’s shame and fear.

She wasn’t about to give them the slightest chance for a long recitation of her offenses. She wouldn’t subject herself to more subterfuge hidden beneath righteous indignation, no matter her guilt.

“I request to go south,” she said immediately, “to the Lhoin’na, and our guild’s elven branch.”

Sykion sat upright, like a willow suddenly revitalized in resistance to an autumn gale. Her eyes barely betrayed shock, but not so for Premin Jacque. He lifted his head from his laced fingers, his broad mouth gaping for an instant.

“You are not here to request anything!” he said. “You are here to answer for your actions.”

Wynn clenched her jaw.

Sykion lightly cleared her throat and straightened a stack of papers. The topmost appeared to be a letter of some kind, but Wynn couldn’t make out its contents from where she stood. Then she spotted the sea green tie ribbon lying beside the stack. She grew sick inside, thinking of a royal wax seal that must have bound the ribbon enclosing that letter.

“Journeyor Hygeorht,” Sykion began again, “it has come to our attention that a number of journals secured with the texts are missing.”