No, over and over, but when his lips silently parted, Wynn flinched.
Chane clamped his mouth shut, hiding the change in his teeth.
The barest creases formed on Wynn’s brow over her narrowing eyes. There it was again—that fear in her face, backed by wary anger. The same as on the night she had seen him emerge from a scribe shop’s window behind the wraith.
“Wynn . . .” he rasped, but did not know what else to say.
Shade circled wide around him, taking a position in his way, as Wynn crouched to retrieve her crystal.
Chane gazed into its light, causing pain in his widening sight. He wished it would sear him.
“I did not come to harm you.”
Chane twisted back at the deep voice.
Ore-Locks stood between two tombs before the opening. The red- haired Stonewalker was dressed in a hauberk of steel-tipped scales, with two wide black-sheathed blades lashed to the front of his belt. He did not advance but only watched those before him, as if waiting for a response.
For an instant, Chane wanted to vent all his anguish on this one.
This dwarf had frightened Wynn, caused her to cry out . . . caused Chane’s momentary loss of control. The beast inside him began to wail, and he ground his jaws, beating the monster into submission.
Chane stood shuddering as he glared at Ore-Locks.
“No one has ever breached our underworld,” Ore- Locks said, fixing on Wynn. “So you are not what you seem. Did you guide that black spirit here?”
“Of course not!” she answered.
Chane knew something of what had passed between these two in the Iron-Braids’ home. Ore- Locks would hardly consider Wynn a friend.
“But it followed you,” Ore- Locks stated.
Chane waited, but Wynn did not answer immediately.
“I’ve nothing to say to you,” she answered. “Not with what I know. Not with what you worship!”
Ore-Locks’s eyes narrowed, but Chane was confused by Wynn’s words. What did she mean?
The dwarf lifted his chin, teeth clenched between barely parted lips. Chane set himself, watching for Ore-Locks’s slightest move.
“That thing in there,” Wynn went on. “Somehow, he was responsible. . . . Whatever brought down Bäalâle Seatt . . . that mass murderer did it.”
“No!” Ore- Locks snarled, and took a step.
Chane instantly shifted into his way.
“Then why is he here?” Wynn demanded. “Why else would Thallûhearag’s representation be put aside, separated even from the Fallen Ones?”
Ore-Locks’s jaw muscles clenched in mute outrage, and Chane understood what was in that small chamber. He remembered all Wynn had told him concerning Bäalâle Seatt and a forgotten title feared by the few who knew of it and wished to forget it.
Chane tried to calm himself. He needed to wash his thoughts clean if he were to have any chance at sensing deception in the dwarf’s words. Letting go of everything, trying to ignore hunger and how he had recklessly injured Wynn, he closed his eyes.
But the only thing he could find to soothe him was a memory.
There had been one brief moment when he had sneaked into the guild’s library with Wynn. With her so close, guiding him into her world, he had stopped and looked upon all of the volumes placed so orderly upon the shelves.
“He is not one of them!” Ore-Locks shouted. “Not as claimed by the few who remember only his title . . . and not his name. I have known him since I was a child, though I did not understand until later who touched me—called me through blood. He cannot be what they claim . . . not as my ancestor!”
Chane remained placid in that quiet memory of the library, letting each word pass through him. Though the beast moaned at his complacency, no discomforting twinge rose within him. He opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on Ore-Locks.
The dwarf was not lying—or at least he believed his own words. Chane turned his head enough to glance at Wynn. He nodded at her, hoping she understood.
Wynn blinked at him, her brow wrinkling slightly.
“Now you owe me—in barter!” Ore-Locks said. “What do you know of the black spirit that followed you here?”
Wynn hesitated.
“Only that it is an undead,” she answered. “One form of what is known in the Farlands as the Vneshené Zomrelé—the Noble Dead . . . though it isn’t physical, like the type more commonly dealt with.”
“Physical?” Ore Locks repeated.
Wynn shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. . . . We’re dealing with a powerful spirit, which can become corporeal in part or whole for brief periods. We believe it is