Through Stone and Sea - By Barb Hendee & J. C. Hendee Page 0,42

later remembered stepping into the cold night air and seeing the back side of the way station’s crank house. She remembered Shade trotting up the street of great steaming orange crystals, and Chane taking hold of her to follow. But the rest remained a blur.

She forgot about speaking with Shirvêsh Mallet and barely recalled passing through the temple’s tall brass arch bell and the wide marble doors. Even these details didn’t come back until she found herself in a small room, dimly lit in red-orange, and she crumpled upon the hard bed. Chane pulled a blanket up around her chin.

He held a cup of water to her lips, but she could take only a sip.

“I will check on you before dawn,” he whispered.

The little world of that room grew dark, but not before Wynn again wondered . . . Do the dead dream?

It wasn’t the best thought with which to fall asleep.

Chane slipped from Wynn’s room under Shade’s cold stare and quietly closed the door. He was hungry and dazed. Rarely had his dormancy been interrupted, and he felt something like what he remembered of going without sleep in his living days.

It made him feel even weaker . . . and hungrier.

Worse, when he turned about, Shirvêsh Mallet came bustling down the corridor. Chane was not up to polite conversation.

“I was told young Wynn is ill,” Mallet blurted out. “Does she need care?”

Chane tried to stand straight. The blunt question was welcome, as all he could do for Wynn was give her water and let her rest.

“She drank dwarven ale . . . too much, in a Sea- Side greeting house,” he rasped. “It has affected her badly.”

“Oh, good grace!” the shirvêsh exclaimed. “What was she thinking? And you moved her? What were you thinking?”

Chane bit his lip in restraint. “She insisted on coming back,” he answered politely. “I could not refuse.”

Mallet’s wrinkled face softened. “I will fetch purifying herbs for tea to clean out her blood. She will be shaky for a few days.” He shook his head, white hair swishing over his shoulders. “Dwarven ale is not for such a tiny Numan . . . someone should have stopped her!”

Indeed, Chane thought.

“Get some rest yourself, lad,” Mallet added.

Nodding, and surprised at his own gratitude, Chane stepped into his own room across the way, but only closed the door to a crack. He waited long enough for the shirvêsh to trundle off and then slipped along the passages and through the roundabout circling the chamber of the dwarven Eternal. No one seemed to notice him, even as he exited out into the night. He paced the mountainside’s winding streets, his thoughts twisting inward.

Wynn’s ignorant gift of goat’s blood made him wonder about feeding on livestock. Mules used at the crank house’s turnstile had to be stabled nearby. Or could he solve the mystery of Welstiel’s arcane feeding cup?

The beast with hands, chained down within him, lunged at its bonds, howling to be fed.

Neither cup nor livestock appealed to him. Yet he had to find a way to survive, while keeping his feeding to a minimum. He wandered down the mountain’s street, poignantly aware that he was alone and unrestrained. To protect Wynn, he needed the strength of life—and she need never know how.

Chane slowed.

Directly ahead lay the lift’s way station, crank house, and the huge glowing maw of the market cavern’s entrance. He had not even thought about where he was going, yet here he was. Or had that other part of him known? Had the beast pushed him here, already hunting while he was distracted in thought?

Chane looked from the way station to the cavern’s entrance. People were still about. A few even passed him on the street, giving him little notice. He could not risk feeding upon someone who lived here—someone with a clan and a tribe, as well as family, who would notice one of their own gone missing. His brief encounter with Sliver emphasized Wynn’s warning against matching strength with a dwarf.

He needed a visitor, a traveler . . . a human.

Chane stepped away from the pylons’ crystals and slipped into a darker path between buildings at the settlement’s cliff side. He took little notice of the structures’ back sides as he moved quietly down the short-walled cobbled walkway along the cliff. When he neared the row’s end, close enough to see the way station, neither a cargo nor a passenger lift was currently docked. He peered over the retaining wall and along the sheer