Through Stone and Sea - By Barb Hendee & J. C. Hendee Page 0,10

whom Wynn had named Lily, during the journey through the Farlands’ Elven Territories. Majay-hì communicated via memories transmitted while touching. Wynn called it “memory-speak.”

Shade had inherited a mix of her kind’s memory-speak and her father’s memory-play, though not his ability to “speak” with Wynn via thought. Shade had her own twist on her father’s gifts. Not only could she dip rising memories, she could send her own to Wynn when they touched. To Wynn’s knowledge, no other majay-hì and human could do this.

Memories of city life called up by Shade made Wynn want to offer comfort to her young companion.

“I know . . . you don’t like crowded places,” she said gently, “but our search begins here.”

Rising, she spotted her pack and leaning behind it by the door was the staff, its long sun crystal hidden beneath a protective leather sheath.

She fumbled in her pocket, making certain the protective spectacles made by Domin il’Sänke were still there. These pewter- rimmed glasses were essential once the staff’s blinding sun crystal was ignited. The lenses would darken, protecting her eyes but allowing her to see.

Reticent to leave her other belongings, she almost opened the pack to check its contents, but her things were safe here.

Wynn stepped toward the door—one step only—and stopped.

The staff’s sun crystal was irreplaceable, her only weapon against the Noble Dead. But carrying it about in the temple would only draw questions. Wynn forced herself out into the corridor, leaving the staff behind, and held the door until Shade followed.

Chane’s door was still closed, and he would “sleep” until sunset, so she didn’t disturb him. He and his belongings would also be left in peace, and Chane carried another of their most important possessions within his cloak’s inner pocket.

As he’d left the library where she’d found the texts, he stumbled upon an old tarnished case containing a scroll. It was the very one that Li’kän, one of the oldest vampires to walk the world, had tried to make Wynn read. More baffling was that Wynn wouldn’t have been able to read it at all.

The scroll had been painted over with black ink.

When Chane had later caught up with her in Calm Seatt, she’d glimpsed bits of the scroll’s content with her mantic sight. A long passage of verse in obscure metaphors had been recorded in the fluids of an undead, written in an old dialect of Sumanese. She’d managed a partial and flawed translation of glimpsed fragments that told them nothing at first. But she and Chane both suspected the scroll was linked to whatever the wraith had sought.

And why would an ancient Noble Dead write something in its own fluids and then cover the words with ink? Why not just destroy it, if in afterthought, the content should not be read? And why had Li’kän wanted Wynn to see it?

Turning down the corridor, Wynn pushed aside such questions and forced herself back to the task at hand. Her present peace suddenly felt unnatural, even wrong, amid trying to locate the confiscated texts. And she had very little to go on, only one word overheard in Domin High-Tower’s study. . . .

Hassäg’kreigi . . . the Stonewalkers.

Two black-clad warrior dwarves had visited the dwarven sage in secret. One, the younger, had called him “brother.” By the conversation, both visitors belonged to this unknown group. If she could learn of them, perhaps find this brother through High- Tower’s family, she might find a clue to where the texts were hidden. For as much as the wraith had killed for folios of translation work, and had been able to pass through walls at will, why hadn’t it simply gone after the original texts? The answer was obvious.

The texts weren’t stored on guild grounds.

Apparently, they were always available for a day’s work by the chosen few and then removed each night. And two black-clad dwarves had appeared in High-Tower’s study, but no one had seen how they came or went. Stonewalkers—that one word—was all Wynn had to work with, and in a dwarven seatt her scholarly training in research was nearly useless.

Dwarven tribes, clans, and families possessed few documents of personal or group value. For the most part, they relied upon their orators—poets, troubadours, keepers of history and tradition—and memory of things deemed worthy to preserve. She would have to practice new methods of seeking.

Wynn found the curving passage around the temple proper, pausing as she reached its outer main arch. The wide and round chamber within was still aglow, sunlight transferred