to know. Now, finish your supper, perhaps walk that beast of yours—outside, please! Then focus on your biography of High-Tower. Only the Eternals know if something useful will come of it.”
Wynn knew that in his kindness, Mallet had no idea how condescending he could be. She’d pushed the limits of good judgment with her questions, but who knew when she would be granted his undivided attention again? She rose, halting him before he left.
“Shirvêsh, forgive me, but one more question. In all your remembered tales, do you recall anything of a place called Bäalâle Seatt . . . and someone named Thallûhearag who—”
A rushing pallor flooded Mallet’s wrinkled features, and Wynn stiffened in silence.
He looked as if her words had struck him ill. Revulsion spread across his broad face. A long moment followed before his calm finally returned. Wynn grew frightened under his silent scrutiny.
Mallet glanced sidelong over his shoulder, but none of the other shirvêsh had looked up. Either they hadn’t heard or they didn’t know what Wynn spoke of. Mallet turned on her, leaning into her face as he whispered through clenched teeth, “Where did you hear that title?”
It was so sharp and abrupt that she flinched as she struggled for an answer. She could think of only one.
“Domin High-Tower must have mentioned it to me.”
Mallet settled back.
“I am disappointed in my former acolyte,” he said. “No one, especially one so young as you, should be told of such a thing . . . let alone seek it out! It is all but dead in my people’s memories, and lives on in fewer by the years . . . I will not resurrect it!”
The meal hall had grown too quiet.
Barely a murmur passed among the others at the far table. Wynn found herself the object of blank and puzzled stares. She was an outsider who’d given some serious offense.
“Thank you for the meal,” she said quietly. “I should check on Chane.”
Wynn backed away under Mallet’s intense scrutiny, passing her hand over Shade’s head to bring the dog along.
“We’ll head to the station tonight,” she added, “and take the tram to Sea-Side, as you suggested. We might not return for a couple of days.”
“You are always welcome,” Mallet answered calmly.
But as Wynn hurried toward the main corridor, she grew obsessed with his reaction. Mallet had said nothing of Bäalâle Seatt, and she wasn’t about to ask him again anytime soon. But as to Thallûhearag . . .
Mallet had called that a title, not a name—and a thing not to be remembered. That was a serious condemnation for an oral culture, where loved and honored ones lived on in remembered stories. Why was he so repulsed at the mention? He even wished to deny its immortality in memory . . . yet whatever, whoever, it was had been given a title, raising it above the common.
It was all very confusing, and try as Wynn might—and she’d done so before—she couldn’t decipher the term. Perhaps it was some older form of Dwarvish, one of the most changeable languages known to her guild. As Wynn rounded the temple chamber, her thoughts drifted to Chane.
She and Shade weren’t the only ones who needed sustenance. Chane’s “food” wasn’t pleasant to consider, but she couldn’t just let him go hungry. It was unkind, if not dangerous. Wynn looked down, uncertain how much to share with Shade.
Wynn spun about and hurried to the front marble doors.
“Come, Shade. We have an errand to run before dusk.”
Chane opened his eyes to a dim glow escaping through slits in the iron pot’s lid. A moment’s disorientation passed, and as he sat up, the previous night came back to him. He was in a room in the temple of a dwarven “Eternal,” and he had fallen dormant while still dressed, creasing and rumpling his clothing.
Rising, he tried to brush out his attire. Without even thinking, he went to check his cloak’s inner pocket.
The old scroll case was still there. This action had become a nervous habit.
Deciphering the scroll’s mystery was what had brought him to Wynn. It had given him a justifiable reason to seek her out. Losing it would be like losing any chance to stay within her world, aside from the puzzle it held.
His other worldly possessions sat on the floor where he had dropped them, including his cloak and sword. Both packs were lightly stained from a night two years ago when he and Welstiel had abandoned a sinking ship and swum for shore. His own pack