Chane stood looking at her in frustration while one Suman argued fervently with his dwarven companions. Finally, Chane boarded, stepping in next to Shade, still wishing he could somehow demand an answer. Dockworkers loaded up the platform, piling bales and barrels and crates to such width and height that Chane grew nervous about the weight. He glared down at Shade.
Had she found anything or had she given up, insisting on returning to Wynn?
Amid the fuss her presence too often caused, he had no way to find out. He would have to bear the ride up before this belligerent beast gave the answer to Wynn.
At the first bell past supper, Wynn sat on her room's floor holding the scroll's case in both hands. The duchess wasn't going anywhere tonight, and she felt at loose ends.
For two seasons at the guild she'd often sought little more than privacy. Being alone was her only relief. But a third night on her own in the seatt suddenly left her lonely. She felt strange, even incomplete.
With some reluctance, she admitted to herself that she missed Chane and Shade, that she worried for them in finding their way among the dwarves. Chane didn't even speak their language. And Shade …
Wynn began to feel spiteful again.
She had some choice words for that troublesome adolescent. There would be no more stubborn nonsense about words where Shade was concerned. Loneliness didn't break under righteous anger, but it felt like a weakness or a fault within her. She had a purpose to fulfill at any cost, even alone, if need be.
Wynn grasped the scroll case's cap but hesitated at pulling it off.
In the ice-covered castle atop the Pock Peaks, the first time she had seen this scroll, Li'kän had nearly ripped it off the shelf of the decaying library and shoved it at her. Wynn had thought Li'kän simply wished for her to read it aloud. Now she knew that was impossible.
That deceptively frail white monster had some other intention, considering the scroll's black coating over its writing. But Wynn hadn't seen inside the case that night. Li'kän dropped it, and later, Chane had found and taken it.
Why had Li'kän tried to give her this scroll case?
Wynn pulled off the pitted pewter cap and removed the contents.
The scroll itself was an ancient piece of hide, made pliable once more by Chane's painstaking efforts. But it was unreadable—at least by normal means. The inner surface was nearly black all the way to the edges, covered in ink that had set centuries ago.
Wynn carefully flattened it on the floor.
The words beneath the coating had been scripted in the fluids of an undead. Though ink and hide retained traces of the five Elements of Existence, those fluids would always be devoid of, or the negative aspect of, one—Spirit. Through her mantic sight, she could see what was missing as much as what was there. She'd already once glimpsed the ancient Suman characters beneath the coating.
This was how she'd begun her translation work back at the guild, memorizing as many of the Sumanese Iyindu characters as possible before her sight made her too sick. With Chane's aid, she'd jotted down those phrases and translated what she could. Domin il'Sänke had later assisted with corrections.
Reaching for her pack, Wynn pulled out her journals, her elven quill, and a small bottle of ink. If tonight would be spent in more solitude, she might as well do something useful. The poem hidden on the hide had been written by one of Li'kän's companions, either Häs'saun or Volyno. More likely Häs'saun—a Suman name.
Wynn reviewed her notes on the few phrases she'd glimpsed in the scrolclass="underline"
Children … twenty-six steps
To hide … five corners
To anchor amid … the void
Consumes its own
Of the mountain under … the chair of a lord's song
Domin il'Sänke had corrected her translation of min'bâl'alu—"of a lord's song." What she'd thought was prepositional was actually an obscure Iyindu syntax with no comparison in her native Numanese. By context, it was pronounced differently than what was written, sounding like "min'bä'alâle." As well, the term maj'att—"chair"—should actually be translated as a general "seat" of any kind. Stranger still, its correct spelling didn't end with a doubled "t," as found in the scroll. The combined changes produced a startlingly familiar though all-but-forgotten Dwarvish term approximated in an ancient Sumanese dialect.
Min'bä'alâle maj'att … Bäalâle Seatt.
At the guild, she'd been given one day's access to translations so far completed. Through a very long day, and later realizations, she had uncovered other possible hints of meaning behind the poem's strange metaphors.
"Twenty-six steps" didn't refer to a distance but rather thirteen pairs of feet, thirteen individuals traveling. Wynn still didn't know what "five corners" meant, but she'd learned who the thirteen had been … or were.
Ancient vampires, perhaps the first Noble Dead of the world, called in'Ahtäben—the Children—had numbered thirteen. They'd served their Hkàbêv—Beloved—another term for the unknown being or force in the war of the Forgotten History. She knew other terms in varied Suman dialects for this forgotten enemy of many names, such as in'Sa'umar and il'Samar… .
The Night Voice.
Wynn had also uncovered names for at least five of the Children of Beloved. Li'kän, along with her missing companions, Häs'saun and Volyno, were among them. She only hoped, considering the white undead's long, inescapable isolation, that the latter two were somehow gone from this world. But there were others to account for, including a pair named Vespana and Ga'hetman.
So far, "to hide" what wasn't clear, but the Children had scattered near the end of the war. In the frozen castle an "orb"—for lack of a proper term—had been discovered. But where had the other ten Children gone, if any still existed, and why hadn't they accompanied Li'kän and her companions? What had "consumed its own" beneath lost Bäalâle Seatt? And more immediately, why had the wraith committed murder for the translation folios?
The wraith had attacked Wynn on several occasions, after Chane had brought the scroll to her. Had it known what was hidden therein?
Perhaps she'd overlooked something in her one brief glimpse of the scroll's content. But attempting to see the poem again meant raising her mantic sight. Tonight, she didn't have Domin il'Sänke or Chap—or even Shade—to help rid her of the sight, should something go wrong.
Wynn sat there, staring at the scroll's blackened surface and teetering between sensibility and overwhelming desire. As usual, curiosity tipped her one way. She set the scroll aside, extended her right index finger to draw a mental circle upon on the floor, and—the door burst open.
Chane rushed in behind Shade. Both halted at the sight of the scroll and Wynn's finger poised over the floor stones.
"What are you doing?" Chane demanded. "Are you trying to summon mantic sight all alone?"
The odor of the sea filled the room from her returned companions. Chane's clothing was stained in faint white shadows of dried salt, though much of him still looked damp. His hair was a mess, as was Shade's crusted charcoal-colored fur.
Shade crept over, sniffed the scroll, and wrinkled her jowls. Her glittering eyes narrowed on Wynn—the suspicion there was too much like what Wynn remembered from Chap.
She searched her companions' faces, caught between relief and trepidation over their venture.
"Did you find it?" she blurted out.
Chane scowled, matching Shade's disapproval over what they'd caught her doing.
"Maybe," he answered, and glared at Shade.
Wynn went numb. "What does that mean?"