by Barb Hendee
First Glade . . . Bäalâle Seatt . . . Thallûhearag . . . Ore-Locks . . .
“It’s too much to consider,” Wynn finally said. “More answers must be found.”
And she had to face it all without the texts.
Reine shook her head. “In the few years since Frey’s ‘death,’ we learned nothing more concerning the family’s heritage, though Lady Tärtgyth Sykion has kept watch for anything to help me . . . to help Frey.”
Reine turned, and in two quick steps, she hung over Wynn, her voice a harsh threatening whisper.
“And you will do the same!”
A snarl rose in the dark. Shade closed, head low and jowls quivering in warning.
Reine’s gaze never left Wynn, and Wynn quickly waved Shade off.
“You will keep watch for anything to help,” Reine went on. “Whatever you do, wherever you seek, this as well as your silence is what your life depends on. You owe your people . . . you owe my husband . . . you owe me!”
Reine walked away, never looking down as she passed Shade.
Wynn sat in the dark, listening for the sound of Chane’s footsteps.
The following night, Wynn walked through the gates of the Guild of Sagecraft with Chane and Shade.
She’d sat up late the night before upon the ship, waiting for Chane, but then she grew tired and went to a cabin that Captain Tristan had assigned. It wasn’t until the next day that she learned Chane had finally arrived at the ship just before dawn. Perhaps it had taken longer for him to find blood than she’d imagined.
At least he’d arrived and taken cover on board before the ship sailed.
Now . . . they were back in Calm Seatt, back at the guild.
The guild courtyard was empty, but by now her superiors might have heard she was returning. If they hadn’t, at the moment she had little desire to tell them herself. High-Tower would want a word with her—and she with him concerning the second codex. He would be more than relieved that she was leaving again soon, and less than pleased that she would expect more funding.
Shade trotted straight to the door of the southeast dormitory. By the time Wynn shut the door of her old room, Shade had bounded onto the bed and dropped in a huff.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” she said. “We’re not staying long.”
She’d barely leaned the staff in the corner as Chane set their packs by her desk, when someone knocked at her door.
Wynn almost groaned. Someone had spotted them and told High- Tower or Sykion. She wasn’t ready to face either but opened the door just the same.
A young man stood in the passage wearing the midnight blue robe of the Order of Metaology. He thrust out something flat, wrapped in plain brown paper.
“I was ordered to place this directly in your hands,” he said, already turning to leave.
Wynn took the package. There were no markings upon it, and she leaned out the door.
“Wait . . . ordered by whom?”
The messenger had already rounded the passage’s far end and gone down the stairs. Wynn stepped back and shut the door. Considering the messenger’s robe color, she wondered if this was something from Premin Hawes, head of Metaologers. But that didn’t make any sense.
“What is it?” Chane asked.
“I don’t know.”
The flat, flexing square hadn’t been bound with twine, but every edge of the paper wrap was sealed with glue. Its contents were completely enclosed. With no name or hint of the sender, she carefully tore one corner until she could unwrap it safely.
Inside, atop a folded parchment sheet, was a note—from Domin il’Sänke.
Wynn, if you are reading this, it means you are still alive. A relief, I am certain, though a surprise to me, considering your nature. . . .
Wynn wrinkled her nose at this poor humor.
The enclosed may be of interest in your pursuits, though it is incomplete. I can do nothing more, since I have not seen the whole of the original from which it is translated. Make of it what you will, and as always, keep your secrets.
With hesitation and affection, Domin Ghassan il’Sänke, Order of Metaology Guild of Sagecraft in Samau’a Gaulb, il’Dha’ab Najuum
In the brief days she’d been gone, he couldn’t have returned home, let alone sent this all the way back. He must have left it before he departed, with instructions for its delivery if and when she returned. Wynn unfolded the parchment, and there was il’Sänke’s scrawl upon it.
The Children in twenty and six steps seek to hide in five corners
The anchors amid Existence, which had once lived amid the Void.
One to wither the Tree from its roots to its leaves
Laid down where a cursed sun cracks the soil.
That which snuffs a Flame into cold and dark
Sits alone upon the water that never flows.
The middling one, taking the Wind like a last breath,
Sank to sulk in the shallows that still can drown.
And swallowing Wave in perpetual thirst, the fourth
Took seclusion in exalted and weeping stone.
But the last, that consumes its own, wandered astray
In the depths of the Mountain beneath the seat of a lord’s song.
Wynn recognized some phrases. But the impact of what she read, yet didn’t understand, overwhelmed everything but her academic nature. She knew nothing of Suman poetry, let alone whatever ancient forms it took on. Likely the translation had broken much of its structure.
“This here . . . and that,” Chane said, pointing at the parchment. “Those are close to phrases you already translated.”
Wynn hadn’t even realized he was reading over her shoulder.
Compared to what she’d worked out, incorrectly or not, il’Sänke had revealed much more. She’d have to check her journals, but his translation appeared to be all of what she’d blindly copied from Chane’s scroll. Even il’Sänke had stumbled over the few phrases she’d first shown him. He must have worked furiously trying to finish the rest before he left.
“Eternals bless you!” Wynn whispered.
After all she’d been through, all the damage she’d done, she desperately needed something of worth . . . something to guide her next steps. Certain phrases upon the parchment began to nag her—like ants in her skull searching erratically for something she’d forgotten. . . .
Something right before her—something she unconsciously hadn’t wanted to recognize.
“What are the five corners?” Chane asked. “It is a lead phrase, connected to the thirteen Children. You told me they divided . . . and here are five cryptic entries.”
“Destinations,” Wynn whispered absently.
Chane was silent for a long moment.
“Why?” he asked. “Your white undead and her companions took the orb into the Pock Peaks. Where did the others go? I cannot even tell which one of these nonsense lines relates to her or that place.”
And Wynn scanned each line again.
. . . the fourth took seclusion in exalted and weeping stone.
Did “exalted” mean “honored”? Was “weeping stone” like wet walls . . . natural columns . . . ages of mineral deposits built upon the erected bodies of the honored dead? Was it a reference to the Stonewalkers’ underworld? Then Wynn remembered Leesil’s tales of what had happened in the orb’s cavern.
High in the Pock Peaks, the orb had rested over the cavern’s molten depths. Rising heat warmed the place enough that perpetual snow and ice above seeped downward—“weeping” along the cavern walls. When Magiere had mistakenly opened the orb, Leesil claimed all the moisture in the cavern began raining inward toward the orb’s burning light.
Could “exalted” merely be a metaphor for a high and lofty place?
But what of . . . swallowing the Wave in perpetual thirst . . .
Wynn scanned again. Her eyes caught the words that il’Sänke had capitalized. Those had to be vocative nouns. Among them were five that made her think upon the domin’s lecture in a
seminar she’d overheard.
Each of the Elements was represented three ways, according to the three Aspects of Existence. Spirit was also known as Essence and . . .
Tree . . . Flame . . . Wind . . . Wave . . . Mountain . . .
There were five places hinted at by reference to the Elements, but that fourth kept sticking in her head.
. . . swallowing the Wave . . . like an orb consuming a cavern’s dripping moisture.
She connected the physical Aspects in the poem to their corresponding mental . . . intellectual terms of the Elements.
Spirit . . . Fire . . . Air . . . Water . . . Earth . . .
Wynn felt a wave of drowning fatigue as she stared at the first lines—to hide in five corners the anchors amid Existence, which had once lived amid the Void.
These were not just destinations, and she knew why the Children had “divided.”
Wynn sank upon the bed’s edge next to Shade and began to cry.
Chane knelt before her, his pale face filled with concern. He touched her hands still holding the parchment.
“What is wrong?” he asked.
She couldn’t take another burden like this. The weight was too much.
“Five . . . not one,” she answered weakly. “Not just the destinations . . . there are five orbs.”
Chane’s brow wrinkled. He carefully slipped the parchment from her fingers, his eyes shifting back and forth as he read it again.
“What are they?” he finally asked. “What are they for?”
Wynn slowly shook her head and couldn’t even guess. The orbs must be something the Ancient Enemy had once coveted, perhaps used to some purpose in the great war or before it. The only line that made any sense was the last, its ending reference having a far different meaning.
In the depths of the Mountain beneath the seat of a lord’s song.
Il’Sänke had worked out the written ancient Sumanese word for “seat” and found it had been misspelled with a doubled ending consonant—as in “seatt.” And “a lord’s song” was an old Suman tribal ululation for a leader, but the word was spoken differently by context versus the way it was written. When spoken, it gave the name of a lost place.
In the depths of the Mountain beneath . . . Bäalâle Seatt.
Another thread, another chain, pulled Wynn toward that place, where Thallûhearag’s treachery had claimed uncountable lives. Beneath a long-lost seatt lay another orb, the one of “the Mountain” . . . the one of Earth.
Shade rose up, rumbling. Wynn tiredly raised a hand to quiet the dog.
The wall’s stone beside the door began to bulge.
“Chane!”
She tried to lunge off the bed for her staff in the corner, her mind filled with one screaming thought. It can’t be happening . . . it can’t be. . . .
A black hulk took shape, and Chane shoved her back toward the bed’s head. He jerked out his broken sword as Shade leaped over the footboard, circling in on the invader’s far side.
Wynn clutched Chane’s side, ready to push him out of the way . . . but she stopped and stared at . . . not at the wraith.
Ore-Locks stood glowering before the wall.
Dressed in a dark cloak and a plain black hauberk with no steel-tipped scales, he still had two wide battle daggers lashed to the front of his belt.
Wynn was about to order him out and alert anyone nearby. Then her attention caught on what he held in each hand.
One sword was longer, narrower of blade, while the other was short and wide, suitable to his own kind. Both had the mottled gray sheen of the finest dwarven steel. Wynn knew where she’d seen them—in Sliver’s forge room.
“Why are you here?” Chane rasped.
He tensed, raising his tipless blade as the dwarf held up the longer sword. Ore-Locks snapped his arm straight, opening his grip in the last instant.
The sword clattered at Chane’s feet.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
“My barter,” Ore- Locks growled, and looked to Wynn. “I know where you go next, and I come with you.”
Wynn went mute in the room’s silence. Somehow, he’d known what she would do next. She was going to find Bäalâle Seatt. And this worshipper of the worst of the traitors intended to follow her to the bones of his cursed ancestor.
Wynn stood there, staring into Ore- Locks’s hard, black-pellet irises.
EPILOGUE
Darkness . . . awareness . . . dormancy . . .
These realizations came, each one feeding upon the previous.
Sau’ilahk wanted to wail out the horror he had swallowed at the moment of his second death.
So why was he now aware of anything at all?
Over a thousand years had passed since his first death and the anguish it had taught him. He would linger forever without flesh—without beauty. For an instant, that remembrance tore away relief amid confusion.
Death is not punishment . . . enough.
Sau’ilahk’s fears welled as he felt Beloved’s presence.
It is release . . . it is freedom.
He found himself standing in a desert night. Uncountable stars glinted in a clear black sky. He shielded his eyes, as if every point of brilliance shone only upon him.
And he saw his hands.
No longer wrapped in black cloth, they were whole and tan, as they had been in life. But this was not real. It was only to torment him.
Why should an impudent servant, my priest, gain freedom so easily . . . when his god remains the first slave of all?
Sau’ilahk watched stars fall.
They struck dark dunes, and he whirled, about to run, but they were all around him. Great mounds of sand shifted, growing black beneath pinprick glints . . . like a glare reflected upon black scales. Beloved’s roiling coils turned endlessly around him, closing as they twisted tighter upon themselves.
Sau’ilahk had failed in the one task given to him. He had disobeyed a warning. And more of his god’s enemies knew of his existence. But surely his destruction had erased that transgression. Surely that was enough for leniency, if his god had saved him.
“Pity, my Beloved!” he cried out with the memory of a voice he had raised in supplication a thousand years ago. “Forgive . . . I beg you!”
The wall of coils closed, blocking out the sky, as he heard them grinding the dunes.
You remain my tool, like all who step beyond life yet linger, dead but not dead.
One black scale, as large as a mounted rider, caught the edge of Sau’ilahk’s cloak. It dragged him into those coils as the fabric tore and shredded.
You will serve. . . .
Sau’ilahk screamed as flesh tore from his remembered bones.
Your release comes only when Existence ends . . . and I am free.