Through Stone and Sea - By Barb Hendee & J. C. Hendee Page 0,59

end.

Shade faced the other way, growling as her whole body shook in rage. And Chane . . .

He stood a pace off, holding one hand with his other as he glared at the dog.

Chane must have tried to pull Shade off, and she’d bitten him!

“Both of you, stop it,” Wynn whispered, and looked to Chane. “She wasn’t trying to hurt me.”

Chane acknowledged with a quick glance toward Wynn, but Shade wouldn’t budge.

“Shade,” Wynn whispered. “No . . . no more.”

Shade pivoted about, growing quiet. Inching closer, she lowered her head, though she was still so tall she looked Wynn straight in the eyes.

Wynn stared into those sky blue crystalline irises and hesitantly reached out, running her fingers down Shade’s neck. She felt the persistent shudder in Shade’s whole body.

Shade whined, a pitiful sound, full of uncertainty.

“You didn’t know,” Wynn whispered. “You didn’t know you could do that . . . with me, did you?”

“What is going on here?” someone demanded.

The sharp tone made Wynn jerk upright where she sat.

Shirvêsh Mallet stood over her, his hands on his hips.

“This solemn occasion is not the place for such behavior!” he growled, and his outrage turned on Chane. “Your presence is a privileged consideration. Do not take it lightly!”

Wynn cringed, searching for a plausible lie to explain all this away, but Chane cut in.

“What about he-air-va?” he asked Mallet. “What ‘slaughter’ were you talking about?”

Mallet went slack-jawed and backed up a step.

“Chane, watch your manners!” Wynn warned. She’d been so overwhelmed by Shade that she’d forgotten what Chane had somehow overheard.

“My apology,” Chane said, though his civility sounded forced.

Mallet was still stunned speechless, but the shock in his expression quickly vanished.

“I see no need to answer to a thief!” he snarled, “who steals words not given to him.”

Wynn quickly got up. Mallet’s choice of words implied something worse than eavesdropping, considering he was an elder monk of a poet Eternal in a culture of oral tradition.

“Please, shirvêsh,” she pleaded. “There’s no time for formality. What happened in the shattered passage? How did Hammer-Stag die?”

Mallet turned renewed astonishment on Wynn. The obvious unspoken question was how did she know that? But there was no time to cover up her blunder.

“It could be very important,” she said. “We need to know.”

The old shirvêsh eyed her as if he had indeed caught a thief in his temple.

“Nothing is certain,” he finally answered, “only that a vicious battle took place. Passersby found him and alerted the local clan guard. No one knew what to make of what they found. His ax lay just beyond his hand and . . . and as you said, the passage was shattered all around him. Yet no blood . . . as if not one of his blows had struck true on his opponent, and there were no wounds on him. He was just . . . pale, eyes still open . . . as if his heart gave out in an instant and all blood drained from his face.”

Wynn grew colder with every word that Mallet uttered. Hammer-Stag was renowned as a warrior. In that narrow tunnel that Shade had shown her, how could he not have struck his attacker even once?

A thunderous beat echoed about the amphitheater. Any low sounds among those present died instantly. Four more beats of an unseen drum echoed around the high curved walls, and Mallet spun about.

His eyes roamed the stage and then fixed as she heard him inhale. Wynn forgot everything as her gaze followed his.

From out of the far square opening upon the platform came six dwarves, all dressed in black and dark gray. The drum kept on, its thunder matched to their steps. Wynn barely caught that two of them were women, dressed exactly like the men, before she focused entirely on their leader.

Black, steel-streaked hair framed an old face with a broad nose over a mouth rimmed by a cropped and bristling steely beard. Like all the others, he wore char-gray breeches and a shirt beneath a hauberk of oily black leather scales that glinted strangely. In the low light, it took a moment to make out those sparks. Polished steel fixtures covered the tips of each scale upon his armor.

Wynn had seen him once before in the doorway of Domin High-Tower’s study. As much as his attire, she remembered that face, that bearing. If Death personified stepped into the path of this one, the grim dwarf would walk right through him without acknowledgment. Or Death would scurry out of