"No." She tried not to sigh. "The ending is like the V in your language, but the lips close on its termination, like a B."
"So which is it?" Leesil snapped. "B or V?"
"Just"-Wynn started to snap-"listen carefully... suv' suv'."
"That's not your Elvish word for your bisselberries," Leesil sniped.
Wynn gritted her teeth. "It is a general reference for any type of berry."
She carried his pack slung over her good shoulder. He paused ahead of her without turning and shifted the lashings holding the chest of skulls to his back, trying to resettle his burden.
Wynn did not like that vessel constantly before her eyes.
"Everything in Elvish," she continued, "has its root word to be transformed to noun, verb, adjective, adverb-and so on. But there are general terms for things of like kind."
"So, 'eat a berry' is..." Leesil mumbled, trying to remember. "La-hong-ah-jah-va... soob?"
Wynn clenched her teeth. "Only if the berry is eating you!"
"Leesil, please," Magiere growled behind Wynn. "Enough! You're not going to learn it like this. Just leave the talking to Wynn, if... when we find the elves."
He glanced over his shoulder with the cold lamp crystal held high like a torch. Its light turned his glower into a misshapen mask that would frighten small children. Wynn did not care.
They had traveled downward for more than a day, perhaps two. And yet they had stopped only three times. She was cold and hungry all the way.
Leesil sidestepped a twisted angle in the passage, and a jagged outcrop caught his shoulder.
"Valhachkasej'a!" he barked.
Wynn stiffened, then grabbed the shoulder flap of his hauberk and jerked him about.
"Do not ever say that around an elf!" she snapped at him. "Or is profanity the only thing you can pronounce correctly?"
Leesil blinked. "It's something my mother said. You've heard me use it before."
"Your mother?" Wynn's voice rose to a squeak.
The last thing they needed was Leesil's ignorant expletives offending someone, especially one of those bloodthirsty Anmaglahk.
"Smuan'thij arthane!" Wynn snapped at him. She pushed past as Leesil wrinkled his brow in confusion.
Chap waited out in front and stared at her with his ears ridged in surprise. He cocked his head, glanced at Leesil, then huffed once in apparent agreement with her outburst.
Wynn was too miffed to even feel embarrassed that Chap understood exactly what she had called Leesil... though it hadn't been half as offensive as his own utterance.
"Time for another rest," Magiere said.
"No," Leesil said, his expression cold and pitiless. "We keep moving."
She ignored him and unstrapped her pack to drop it with the saddlebags she carried.
In their early days, Wynn had never seen such a look on Leesil's face. Lately she had seen it too often. Hardness overwhelmed him from within whenever he was pushed any way he did not want to go. And he did not wish to stop this journey for anything.
Chap padded back up the tunnel and plopped down. Clearly outvoted, Leesil sighed and lowered the chest off his back.
Wynn dropped too quickly in exhaustion and got a sharp pain for it in the seat of her pants. She let Leesil's pack slide off her shoulder in a heap as Magiere dug out what remained of their rations. The last of the bisselberries were nearly gone, and they had discovered no more such gifts along the way. Magiere held a few crumbling biscuits and a handful of venison jerky strips.
"That cannot be all of it," Wynn said.
Magiere uncorked a water flask and dropped down beside her. "We'll find more once we're out of this mountain."
Wynn divided the biscuits and tossed a jerky strip to Chap. He caught it with a clack of his jaws. Leesil muttered to himself as he inspected the chest's rigging. Wynn turned her eyes from the grisly vessel.
"What was that Elvish you just said?" Magiere whispered.
"It was... nothing," Wynn whispered back. "I was tired and irritated."
"Yes, I got that." Magiere rolled her eyes and bit into half of a dry biscuit, still waiting for a better answer.
Wynn dropped her head, voice hushed even more. "It means something like... 'thoughts of stone.' "
Magiere coughed up crumbs and covered her mouth. "Rock-head? You called him a rock-head?"
A flush of shame heated Wynn's cheeks, but the look on Magiere's face cooled it with surprise. She knew Magiere well enough to gauge her dark moods and acidic nature. The tall woman was often caustic even at her friendliest. But this expression was almost something new.
Was Magiere trying not to grin?
"I'll remember that one," Magiere whispered back.
"I heard that," Leesil growled.
He sat on the chest with his back turned to them, like some monstrous guardian statue perched the wrong way upon a castle parapet.
Wynn quietly ate her half biscuit and two berries. She pulled a tin cup out of Magiere's pack and poured some water for Chap. When she set the water flask down, it teetered on the tunnel's uneven surface, and she made a grab for it. She tried to settle it more firmly, but something grated beneath its bottom.
She felt the tunnel floor beneath the flask, and something soft shifted beneath her fingertips. When she took hold with a pinch, it felt light as a feather. She lifted it up into the light...
It was a feather.
Mottled gray, it was longer than her outstretched hand, with downy frills at its base. It seemed familiar, and that was unsettling, for she could not think why.
Where had she seen it before?
Chap's rumble startled her. He glared intently at the feather and then lifted his muzzle high to gaze about overhead. Wynn cast her own gaze upward and saw nothing but the uneven tunnel roof.
"There's a quill in the making," Magiere said, and reclined on the cold stone. "All you need now are ink and paper. Get some rest while you can."
She rolled onto her side, eyes open, watching Leesil perched upon the chest.
Wynn lay back as well with Leesil's pack as a pillow. She rolled over to face away from him and Magiere. Chap lay with his head on his paws, but he was not trying to sleep either. He studied the feather in her hand, but without the talking hide, she could not ask him why.
Cuirin'nen'a... Nein'a... Mother...
Memories flickered through Leesil's thoughts as he followed the others down the passage. He hadn't slept during their last pause, even after the crystal waned and went out. How long did he sit in the dark before waking the others to move on? It had been hard to meet Magiere's eyes when he finally shook her by the shoulder.
She might see him for what he really was. It hadn't been long since he'd realized it himself.
Guilt for long ago abandoning his parents didn't drive him anymore. Nor was it just sorrow in returning the remains of his father to his mother. Longing was still part of it, remembering a mother's gentle touch and firm lilting voice, and how these made his first life bearable for a while. But it had taken the memories that Chap stole from Brot'an in Darmouth's family crypt to make Leesil face much of the truth.
Darmouth had used him. And Brot'an had wielded him like the bone knife Leesil gouged deep into Darmouth's throat. If that moment had been the end of it, he might have put those bloody events behind him. He'd done it before.
But he began to see the pattern of his life, to understand the reason for his existence.
His life had been engraved by the scheme of a grandmother he never knew-Eillean. Even his own father must have had a hand in it, for Gavril had gone along with Nein'as insistence. Leesil couldn't escape what he was-what his mother had made him.
A weapon.
He wanted to look her in the eyes and know the reasons for all she'd done to him, everything she'd trained him to be.
Wynn stumbled along in front of him. Beyond her, Magiere now led the way with the renewed crystal in hand. Somewhere farther on, Chap tried to sniff their way out, for the trail of berries had ended far behind them. Too far to turn back with no food left. Leesil hoped they had made the right decision following Chap.
The tunnel forked again.
Chap shifted anxiously between the mouths of the two passages. He sniffed the stone floor, staring down each in turn. The dog stood silent for so long that Leesil came out of his own dark thoughts, and then Chap trotted off down the right fork without looking back.
"I hope he knows what he's doing," Magiere muttered.
They moved on, and time dragged in this place without day or night. Leesil's shoulders ached from the chest's ropes biting into them. He'd sunk into himself once more when Chap suddenly stopped.
"What now?" Leesil asked, and peered around a too-silent Wynn.
Magiere felt cold inside standing behind Chap in tense silence. But it wasn't from the tunnel's chill. She resisted looking back at Leesil. He'd driven them hard with his desperation, but he drove himself even harder.
Their food was gone, and they'd been on half rations for longer than she could reckon. Their situation was dire, and they all knew it.
Chap lowered his head with a growl.
Magiere dropped her pack to the tunnel floor. She reached over her right shoulder and gripped the falchion's hilt where she'd strapped it to her back.
"What is it?" Leesil demanded in a hushed voice.
Chap let out a whine, then snorted as if some scent in the air had clogged his nose.
"Chap?" she whispered.
His ears pricked up, and he whined again, but it sounded more disgruntled than alarmed.
A light scratching carried up the tunnel from below.
"We are not alone," Wynn whispered.
Magiere drew her falchion, holding the crystal out with her other hand.
Beyond the light's reach, a pair of shimmers appeared in the dark. They bobbed up and down as the soft sound of claws on stone came nearer. The paired shimmers rose slightly from the floor. The dark shape of a small creature formed around them.
No larger than a house cat, its body was elongated like a weasel or ferret. A stubby tail, darker than its bark-colored fur, twitched erratically as it sat up on its hindquarters.
Around its eyes and down its pug muzzle spread a black mask of fur. Wide ears perked up with small tufts of white hairs on their points. Its strangest features were its tiny forepaws. Less like paws and more like small hands, they ended in stubby little fingers with short claws.
"Oh no!" Wynn breathed out.
Magiere had to look back. The astonishment on Wynn's features melted to loathing.
Chap shifted to the tunnel's side opposite the little beast.
"What is that?" Magiere asked.
"Tashgalh!", Wynn said. "And Leesil can swear at it all he wants!" said. "And Leesil can swear at it all he wants!"
"Is it poisonous or something?" Magiere asked.
Wynn wrinkled her nose. "No, it's not-"
Chap growled, but he didn't close on the creature. He snapped his jaws threateningly and it dashed straight up the tunnel's side wall to the ceiling.
Magiere shoved Wynn back and held out her blade at the animal.
It clung there as if standing upside down on the tunnel's craggy roof. With one quick hiss at Chap, it turned its attention back toward Magiere. It began to coo at her, like a dove, and swayed slightly as its head bobbed with excitement.
Magiere carefully aimed the cold lamp crystal for a better look, and its black, glassy eyes followed the movement.
"Oh no, not on your mangy little life!" Wynn yelled, and ducked around Magiere to snatch the crystal. Then she scooped up a loose stone and threw it at the creature. "That is mine!"
Chap scurried back as the stone went wide, bouncing from one tunnel wall to the other.
The tashgalh tashgalh hopped sideways across the ceiling, trying to regain sight of the crystal. Wynn pulled the glowing stone behind her back with a groan. hopped sideways across the ceiling, trying to regain sight of the crystal. Wynn pulled the glowing stone behind her back with a groan.
"We will never get rid of the little beast."
"What is it?" Magiere demanded.
"Its name means 'finder of lost things,' " Wynn answered. "A rather polite wording. They are nothing but incorrigible little thieves. It will follow us and dig through our belongings the moment we are asleep... now that it has seen something pretty that it fancies."
Chap jumped at the tashgMh tashgMh, his barks filling the tunnel with echoes.
"You see?" Wynn shouted over the noise. "Chap knows the trouble they make."
"Quiet down, Chap," Leesil yelled.