“Their public library was open, so I took a look, for the sake of it. Sometimes things don’t get put back where they belong, out of sight.”
This was the Wynn that Chane knew, never leaving any possibility unexplored.
“Did you find anything?” he asked.
“No.” She laid the journal on her bunk and began turning pages. “But I copied bits of an old map. It’s crude, but might be useful. I don’t dare ask for a scribed copy, or request to take it off grounds for the work to be done elsewhere. I’m probably being watched.”
Chane got up to join her, standing to one side as he looked down at the journal. It was a simplistic line sketch of the region at large. It showed general areas south all the way to the nearest part of the Sky-Cutter Range separating Numan nations and free territories from the southern desert. Wynn pointed to a blank vertical strip between columns of inverted wedges for unnamed mountains.
“This is called the Slip-Tooth Pass,” she said. “It ends at the northern side of the range. It isn’t enough to go on, but if I can’t gain some hint to Bäalâle Seatt’s whereabouts, it’s the shortest and clearest path to the range.”
Chane shook his head. “That range is at least a thousand leagues long, probably much more. It would take a year to search even that nearest part of it. We must get into the archives.”
Shade hopped off the bed, rumbling in agitation as she squatted. Perhaps she understood and did not care for Chane’s suggestion.
“How?” Wynn asked. “I’ve gone over everything I can think of, including you drawing the guards off for me. All notions lead to you getting arrested ... and all of us being expelled.”
“Ore-Locks could slip through one of the walls.”
Wynn shook her head. “I don’t think stonewalkers can pass through wood—only earth and stone, maybe metal. And Ore-Locks isn’t as skilled as his elders. When I was taken to the texts in Dhredze Seatt, he stood guard, but he had to wait for another to retrieve me.” She paused. “Besides, I don’t trust him in there on his own.”
Chane scowled at this. He trusted his own newfound instinct for deceit, though of late, it seemed to vanish at times. But at their first real meeting with Ore-Locks in the Chamber of the Fallen, his sense of deception had been acute. Chane had not sensed a lie when Ore-Locks had denied Wynn’s insinuation that the dwarf served some traitorous ancestral spirit.
Ore-Locks had his own agenda, unknown as it was, but the wayward stonewalker was the closest thing they had to an ally with necessary skills. Any help should not be so quickly dismissed.
“Show me where the guards are,” Chane said. “Perhaps we—”
A quick, triple knock sound at the door.
Chane heard Wynn’s breath catch, and she rose and hurried over, not yet opening it.
“Yes?”
“Journeyor Hygeorht?” called a light voice outside. “A message for you.”
Wynn pulled the door open as Chane approached behind her.
A metaologer in a midnight blue robe stood outside. Chane had seen few elves in his life before coming to this continent. Even he was a bit startled at the sight of her.
Stunning, even for an elf, she was like something out of his land’s fables and folklore. She was so slight she might break under a strong breeze, and so beautiful she couldn’t be real. She smiled and held out a folded and wax-sealed sheet of paper.
“Who is it from?” Wynn asked as she took the message.
The young woman simply shook her head, as if she did not know, then turned and walked away. Wynn closed the door, flipping the message in her hand.
The cream paper was thick and of fine quality, its folded edge locked down with a green wax seal impressed with the shape of an ivy leaf. Wynn broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and revealed a sharply stroked script. Chane assumed it was Elvish.
Wynn dropped her hand so fast the paper crackled, and she jerked the door open, rushing out to look down the passage.
Chane leaned out, looking both ways. “What is it?”
Wynn pushed him back, stepped inside, and shut the door. She stood staring blankly at the sheet of paper.
“It’s a pass ... into the archives,” she answered without the slightest relief or joy.
“Who would send you this?”
Wynn shook her head and studied the letter again. “It’s unsigned, but the council seal makes it official. I just show it to the guards and ... and I’m in.”
Chane distrusted sudden changes of fortune, and it was clear Wynn had equal doubts.
“I don’t care who sent it,” she said firmly. “We go now, before someone finds out and takes it back. Shade, come!”
This time Shade growled more sharply.
If the dog truly understood what had happened, Chane could not disagree with her warning. But what choice did they have?
Sau’ilahk rose from dormancy and materialized after dusk on the plain bordering the Lhoin’na forest. He had sated himself after finding the caravan before the previous dawn, and now brimmed with consumed lives. He would need that power tonight.
Drifting nearer the tree line, he kept to the road, shying from those little domes of velvety white flowers and whatever lay beneath in the earth that had filled him with painful cold. He stopped when he felt the slight tingle of the forest’s presence reaching out to find him.
Sau’ilahk looked down on the road’s stone-packed bare earth at a spot that would serve his need. There he crouched. This time, he would use the externalized trappings of ritual to aid his conjury.
Solidifying one hand, he scraped a double circle in the hard earth with one black, cloth-wrapped finger. Once he had filled that border ring with sigils, he rose and shut out the world to focus his thoughts on that pattern.
The lines in the earth began glowing with pale chartreuse in his sight.
Sau’ilahk drew upon his stores of life. He formed a clear image of a small creature in his mind. In a long existence, he had learned of many things, even of creatures that lived in places from which he was barred. He shaped that image, seeing that creature as if it stood there in the circle. Lost in the summoning, he did not notice it leave the forest until grass along the tree line rippled in its passing.
It broke from the plain’s grass and bounded up the road.
Sau’ilahk immediately shifted focus, and the luring image in his sight vanished. He looked on the animal as it halted within the circle. No common beast would serve his purpose as well as this one.
About the size of a common barn cat, it had a ferretlike body as well as some of that animal’s coloring. A stubby tail, darker than its bark-colored fur, quivered once before it rose on its hindquarters. Large, round brown eyes peered around a pug muzzle in a face masked with black fur. Twitching, wide ears made the tufts of white hairs on their points blur in vibration. But most useful of all were those tiny forepaws.
Almost like small hands, their stubby digits ended in little claws. A tâshgâlh—“finder of lost things”—stood mesmerized before Sau’ilahk.
A natural-born thief, the tâshgâlh possessed dexterous paws that exceeded a raccoon’s for getting at whatever it became obsessed with. A trilling coo vibrated from its throat, for it was still entranced by the summoning; it did not actually see him yet. Tâshgâlh were found only in elven lands. Wherever he sent it, no one would give it notice other than to hide any shiny baubles that might catch its attention.
In a smooth flash, Sau’ilahk solidified one hand and snatched the tâshgâlh by the back of its long neck. Its trance broke, and its pigeonlike purr became a squealing, screeching chatter. He let it thrash, its tiny rear claws hooking nothing as it tried to tear at his incorporeal forearm.
It was the most perfect selection for a familiar.
With this beast Sau’ilahk could hunt for Wynn Hygeorht within a land forbidden to him.