Of Truth and Beasts

Chane stopped pacing. “How soon do you think we can leave?”

“I can’t even guess, but we’ll make use of our time while we wait.”

He stood there a little longer, debating his next words. An uncomfortable concern had nagged him since returning from Dhredze Seatt. Wynn had more than enough burdens, but with another journey ahead, he could no longer put this off.

“Then we should discuss safeguards,” he said carefully. “Once we leave civilization—”

“I know,” she broke in tiredly. “I’ll be away from so many other mortals, and we’ll be traveling through isolated places where the Fay might try to seek me out.”

At that, Shade raised her head, rumbling softly into Wynn’s face.

This was going to be harder than Chane thought. Before Wynn or Shade could start in about the Fay, Chane cut them off.

“Whenever possible on the road, I need to keep my ring off.”

Chane wore a brass ring that he called his ring of nothing, which had been created by his old undead companion Welstiel Massing—who was now truly dead. The ring protected Chane against anyone sensing his nature as an undead. But it also dulled his own heightened senses, including his awareness of the living and the undead.

Wynn blinked at his reference to the ring. It had nothing to do with the Fay hunting her because she was the only mortal who could hear them, spy upon them whenever and wherever they manifested near enough. And then realization of what he truly meant finally spread across her oval face.

“Oh, Chane,” she said. “Sau’ilahk is gone. I burned him to nothing down in the sea tunnel.”

“You burned him once before in the streets of Calm Seatt,” he countered. “And yet—”

“This time was different,” Wynn insisted. “I destroyed him, and that’s the fact.”

Perhaps ... but this was the point of contention. It was not a fact, as there was no proof of it.

In the underworld of the dwarves, Wynn had used her only weapon against the undead—her sun crystal staff—to vanquish the wraith. It was true that this time she had had powerful help. Cinder-Shard, the craggy-faced master of the dwarven Stonewalkers, those who guarded the remains and spirits of the dwarven honored dead, had somehow been able to seize Sau’ilahk’s incorporeal form with his massive bare hands. And that sardonic elf called Chuillyon, dressed in white robes like a false sage, had held the wraith at bay with little more than serene, smiling whispers.

Those two, along with the other Stonewalkers, had hindered and bound Sau’ilahk. They had given Wynn time to burn the wraith with her staff, its crystal emitting light akin to the sun.

She was convinced the wraith was gone.

Chane was not.

“Compared to the wraith, I am a common vampire,” he countered.

He could hear himself shifting from his normal, voiceless hiss to something more raspy, grating, and heated. He tried to sound calmer, more rational. “Yet you watched as Magiere severed my head from my body.”

This was also how his voice had been permanently maimed.

Wynn fell silent, glancing away.

“Yet here I am,” he finished quietly.

He hated feeling forced to bring this up. Watching him die his second death had been more than difficult for her. He still had no understanding of how he had later managed to come back. All he remembered was waking up soaked in blood and covered in freshly killed bodies in a shallow-earth hollow. He was whole again—and Welstiel had been looking down at him, as if waiting.

“I traveled with Magiere, Leesil, and Chap for a long time,” Wynn finally answered. “They—we—destroyed vampires who did not come back.” She gestured toward her desk, at the stacks of journals piled there. “I’ve recorded it all, regardless that my superiors have no interest in the truth.”

Chane glanced at the journals. Another notion resurfaced, one that he had mulled over in recent nights. He had never even seen those journals until Wynn managed to steal them back.

But she had written everything in them about her travels with Leesil and Magiere, about her experiences with the undead and the an’Cróan, the elves of the Farlands. If he could read them, he might better understand her ... comprehend her true drives, goals, hopes, and fears. Even if she had not recorded events literally, he knew her well enough to read between the lines of her script.

His one task was to protect Wynn, including from herself. This gave him purpose, and to do so, he needed to understand everything she had been through.

“May I read them?” he asked, nodding at the stack.

Wynn turned pale.

“I wrote them in the Begaine syllabary,” she blurted out. “You won’t be able to.”

“I read a little of your guild symbols.” He stepped closer. “And you can help me. Studying your works will teach me to follow the script.”

Wynn started to say something more but it never came out.

Chane did not understand her reluctance. He had already strained her patience by pushing his point about Sau’ilahk, but now that he had made the request, he would not stop.

“The information in those journals could help me—us—in the journey to come.”