Chap wrinkled his snout briefly. He quickly sniffed at her as if check-ing for something, then barked twice for "no." It was low and breathy, like a whisper, and too quick and dismissive.
Perhaps it was that Wynn knew him well, for all the time they had spent together. Or that Chap was not a good liar when confronted.
"I saw you," she said, "and I heard… felt something. It made me sick and dizzy, like back in Droevinka, when you licked away my mantic sight. I heard whispers while I watched you. What were you doing?"
She hoped he would understand-trust enough to help her to understand.
Chap stood on all fours, dipped his head, and then leaned forward to lift his muzzle at her. His eyes locked on hers and a low rumble came up his throat. One of Chap's jowls rose slightly to expose teeth, and his crystal-blue eyes narrowed.
Wynn stiffened and leaned away.
He remained there so long in watchful silence that Wynn's shoulders and back began to ache from clenched muscles. She did not believe Chap would hurt her, but the questions had upset him more than she anticipated.
Chap swung his head down to the hide, his gaze leaving her only at the last instant. He pawed the symbols, and Wynn translated his words in her mind.
What did you hear?
She slowly sat upright. "Not words… and not in my ears, as no one else appeared to hear it. It was like leaves in a swirling wind and a flight of insects buzzing inside my head all at once."
Chap made no response by expression or movement.
"When they fell silent," she added, "a single leaf-wing answered back… What were you doing?"
Chap dropped on his haunches. He cocked his head again, and it remained there at that odd angle, his narrow eyes studying her.
Wynn felt naked under his scrutiny. Was she being judged?
Chap let out a rolling exhale, like a growl without voice. To Wynn, it sounded like a weary resignation. He pawed again, hesitating over the symbols he chose upon the hide. Some part of what he told her now was difficult for words.
Spiord… arn… cheang'a.
"Spirit… one-as-one, or collective… speech-no, communication?" Wynn whispered.
Beyond their differing dialects of Elvish, there was the more frustrating challenge that Chap did not think like mortals. At least not from what Wynn had reasoned out. Sometimes he grew frustrated in trying to express himself, while other times he was just reticent.
Elvish was a language of "root" words to be transformed into nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, as well as other elements of language. Chap now used pure "root" words, and perhaps transforming them could not render his full meaning.
"Spirit… as one of the five elements?" she asked.
Chap huffed twice for "no."
"Then spirit, as in spiritual… as opposed to physical or mental aspects of existence?"
He huffed once for "yes," then quickly added two more. Three total meant "maybe."
"Spirit… collective… communication…" Wynn rolled the terms together in her mind and drew a breath. "Commune? You were communing with the Fay?"
It was the closest meaning she could find. Instead of barking once, Chap nodded, but then pawed two specific Elvish words on the hide-"yes" and "no."
Wynn's translation was close enough but not completely what he meant or what she had "overheard" in her mind. And more realization came to Wynn.
To banish her mantic sight in the Droevinkan forest, Chap had touched her after all the flowing blue-white trails of mist had joined in his flesh. He had touched her while joined with his kin in some way that was even deeper than his communion at the Stravinan border. Something more had happened in that instant that even Chap could not account for.
His expression went flat, and he backed away.
"The mantic sight… it is still with me as well," she whispered. "I saw you a moment ago as I did that night in Droevinka."
Chap did not answer, but his crystalline eyes looked at her with a hint of sadness. Wynn realized that what was happening to her was a mistake that worried him. Still, a weight had lifted from her. She knew what she had heard at the border, and she held out her arms to him.
"I did not mean to… did not know, If you wish, I will not tell anyone of this. I promise."
Chap moved closer. Leaning in, he sniffed again as if testing her scent.
His tongue flicked out across her cheek, and Wynn closed her arms around him.
CHAPTER SIX
Magiere reached the inn's room she shared with Leesil and slammed the door behind her. Chap and Wynn were safely tucked away in their own room. Frustrated, she just stood in the dark.
"I know what I'm doing," she muttered, repeating Leesil's last words to her. "Yes, and it's nothing to do with sinking into your past… you witless mule!"
Each thing Magiere learned of Byrd raised more questions, more suspicions, and fewer answers. All of it kept coming back to Leesil, his parents, and Darmouth's keep. All of it centered on Byrd. Now Leesil sat, alone, waiting in the common room for someone he hardly knew.
She went to the small side table, struck the sulfur stick across its underside, and lit the candle lantern resting there. Placing the lantern's glass down around the flame, she settled on the bed.
Taking Leesil head-on was her first instinct, and it was a mistake. She didn't want to be one more weight upon him, shoving him over the edge of good sense.
Magiere unsheathed her falchion and rested it across her knees. She reached over the bed's end into the travel trunk and pulled out a scrap of soft hide permeated with oil. Within its folds was a smooth basalt stone, and she began cleaning and sharpening the blade.
She fingered the steel, from its wide curved tip to its cross-guard, and her gaze slipped down the hand-and-a-half hilt to the strange glyph en-graved in the pommel. She still didn't know what it meant, but the blade's power against the undead suggested much.
Magiere paused in her work and lifted the weapon in her grip.
Made by her half brother, Welstiel Massing, it had been wielded by three women of the same blood. First her mother, Magelia, had tried to defend herself against Magiere's father, Bryen Massing. Aunt Bieja had used it to defend an infant Magiere against a village elder trying to cast the misbegotten child into the wild. And lastly, Magiere herself carried it for her own defense… and for those she chose to defend.
It wasn't much of a heritage, tainted with bloodshed and suffering, but it was hers. As she stared at the blade, it gained new meaning. More than some arcane device made for a destiny she neither wanted nor understood.
Her own "parent," bad-tempered Aunt Bieja, had tried to keep her safe with this weapon.
Magiere settled the falchion on her knees.
There'd been no way for Leesil and his parents to flee together. She wondered if Nein'a and Gavril had even considered it. Leesil had been raised in his mother's ways. To Magiere, this seemed worse than what she'd endured as a child, and it begged a question.
Why had Nein'a done this to her own son?
An elf among humans, Nein'a had married one. That in itself was bizarre, from what Magiere had learned of this reclusive and dangerous people. Nein'a kept Leesil ignorant of her kind and her caste, and even her native language. It made no sense. It was a puzzle Magiere never heard Leesil mention himself.
Gazing at the steel wielded by three women, Magiere couldn't imagine why any mother would do that to her child. But for all Leesil now faced, she wouldn't put it in his mind.
Not yet. Not until they found Nein'a. If Leesil lived that long.
Magiere sat still and silent, and looked to the room's door as she listened intently. Not a sound reached her ears from anywhere in the quiet inn. Below in a dimly lit common room, Leesil waited blindly for a piece of his past to come for him.