in the workshop’s back wall.
Sliver looked up, turning her back to Chane. An old dwarven woman with wild white hair and a long, dull blue woolen robe stepped out of some well-lit back room. Sliver hunched her shoulders as she spit out a curt string of Dwarvish.
The old woman stepped closer, and her wrinkled face twisted into desperation. She gripped a table’s edge and uttered a reply so pained that Chane was riveted, wishing he understood the words.
Sliver scoffed and turned away from the old woman. Perhaps it was to hide the sudden doubt that crossed her face.
A domestic dispute was clearly in play. Chane wondered, considering it came so close behind their visit, if the two events were connected.
The old woman’s next utterance was sharp if not loud, and Sliver straightened. So did Chane at the sound of one word—say-gee.
Could that word have been “sage,” garbled by the old one’s accent?
Sliver turned angrily to face her elder, her back to the outer door.
Chane took the opportunity and reached in for Wynn’s pack.
Sau’ilahk hung motionless at the intersection as Chane scurried across the smithy’s doorway. He had tried to follow all three of his quarry, but the cursed dog had picked up his presence. On some level, Chane had seemed to “feel” him as well. Sau’ilahk had been forced to slip into dormancy, vanishing quickly from either’s awareness.
He waited in that pure darkness as long as he dared, then awakened once more in the same dark spot inside Limestone Mainway’s end chamber. At the sound of footsteps in the upward-bound tunnel, he followed and watched as Chane hid Wynn in a doorway and turned back.
Sau’ilahk was pleased, even as he blinked away once more to let Chane pass by. He now had the chance to pull closer, to see and hear what Chane sought in this dingy, forgotten smithy. He focused on a point farther down the side tunnel, slipped into dormancy, and reappeared at that place.
Beyond the smith shop, Sau’ilahk listened to two female voices arguing within. Dwarvish was one of many tongues he had picked up over the centuries. He ignored Chane and focused on their words.
“Go back inside the house, Mother,” said the first, low and bitter.
The other cried out in an age-broken voice. “If the shirvêsh of Bedzâ’kenge assisted the sage, there is good reason she seeks Meâkesa . . . and you sent her away! Why did you not help her to find your brother?”
Sau’ilahk knew from his servitor eavesdropping on Wynn that these people must be High-Tower’s family. “Meâkesa” translated as “Ore-colored Hair.” Wynn sought the Stonewalkers through a link between them and a son of the Iron-Braid family—High-Tower’s brother.
“Why should I help her?” the first voice returned. “He abandoned us long ago . . . as did Chlâyard! Neither of them even returned when Father fell ill. Tell me, Mother, how should I have helped? We do not even know where he is!”
“It is a sign,” the creaking voice wailed. “The coming of a human sage is a sign. Do you not see? We are to be rejoined with Meâkesa. Help her!”
The smithy fell silent, and Sau’ilahk saw Chane stealthily reach inside the open door. An instant later, he pulled back, holding a faded canvas pack.
This was what he came for—a forgotten pack?
Sau’ilahk mulled over the conversation.
Wynn had come all the way down here and been sent away. She had been seeking a connection to the Stonewalkers, but it seemed she had gained no lead. But that connection was here, waiting, and only an old woman seemed to care that it was fulfilled.
Sau’ilahk had little knowledge of these Stonewalkers—little more than rumors of the sect from centuries ago. At the least, they were hidden guardians of the dwarven dead. He had never had a reason to learn more.
In Calm Seatt, he had searched the guild grounds for many nights. Rumors passed on by his informants had called him to the king’s city of Malourné after Wynn’s return. But other than translation folios sent to scribe shops, he found neither trace nor hint of where the original texts were hidden. If the Stonewalkers knew their location, as Wynn seemed to suspect . . .
Then why had some cult of the dead become involved with the texts?
Sau’ilahk grew impatient with the inept sage. Wynn should be gaining information much faster! All the trouble she had caused him so far left him seething and indignant in even allowing her to live.
Chane rose, his attention no longer