Wynn flattened her hands upon the disk and leaned out to look into the center depression. Before Chane could jerk her back, she lurched away.
"Lhärgnæ!" she whispered.
"What?"
Wynn scrambled to her feet, turning unsteadily as she looked to all of the basalt figures. She darted around the chamber, examining each oblong panel, finally stopping at one tomb.
"Sundaks!" she exclaimed.
"What are you reading?"
"Avarice … one of the Lhärgnæ," she answered. "Oh, dead deities! They've locked us in with their Fallen Ones!"
"What does that mean?"
"Their devils, their demons … cursed ones! Those who represent vice—and worse—by dwarven culture."
"So, religious representations?"
"No," Wynn answered. "They were once real, at least as much as the Eternals, though their names were stripped away. They bear only titles, chosen for their singular disgrace."
"These are not true tombs," Chane countered. "They do not open. There are no bodies here."
"Then why bother? Why the disk in the floor? Is that something of the magic discipline … conjury perhaps?"
Chane looked again at the great brass disk.
Mages did not call upon deities—or saints—in their arts. Formal religions were more widely spread in this part of the world than in his. Most peasants of the Farlands clung to superstitions of nature spirits and dark influences. Some practiced forms of ancestor worship.
He knew of priests—and others—who claimed to be gifted by higher powers. They had their grand ceremonies and contrivances to dazzle the ignorant.
"Some priest's supposed ward against the damned," he replied. "It is nothing more than trappings to appease the masses … to control them through their fears."
He was about to expound further when Wynn rounded on him. "Do the Stonewalkers look like a pack of charlatans to you?"
"You are a scholar," he answered. "Do not believe in this."
"Then why did you hesitate when we first entered the temple of Bedzâ'kenge?"
Chane was struck mute.
"Yes, I figured it out," she said. "You were afraid of entering a sacred space. We both know there are things beyond reason we never wanted to believe, and still …"
Chane looked about the chamber. She was alluding to theurgy, the supposed gain or use of power from higher spiritual forces. That was only more priestly aggrandizing—was it not?
His skin began to crawl, aggravating his nagging hunger. Had he finally stepped into a true sacred space? Was this a prison for a people who believed their ancestors, saintly or otherwise, resided in this world and not some separate realm of the afterlife?
Chane strode past Wynn to the chamber's only opening. It was too dark to see into the space beyond, until light grew behind him. Wynn approached with her crystal and its light filled a small round chamber.
One lone fake tomb of basalt stood at the back. Why was this one kept apart from the others?
Chane backed up—until he bumped into Wynn and pivoted.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked.
"Besides being locked up?"
"Yes."
He could not meet her eyes or give her the answer. "I will check the wall for any more openings, as well as back along the stairs and landing."
Chane walked away, heading along the wall behind the silent basalt forms. He was not about to tell her of his hunger. They both had enough fears for the moment, and he would not add to hers concerning himself.
But they had to escape this place, soon.
Wynn watched Chane walk away and couldn't stop worrying about his colorless eyes. She'd never seen them this way for so long. Something was wrong with him—more than just this disturbing place. But she couldn't force him to tell her.
She stepped into the small chamber, wondering why this one tomb was kept isolated. And a phrase or two surfaced from the back of her mind.
Chârmun, agh'alhtahk so. A'lhän am leagad chionns'gnajh.
She remembered Chuillyon's whisper.
Chârmun, grace this place. Fill me with your absolute nature.
What did it mean? Why had he whispered of the tree called Sanctuary at the heart of First Glade, and as if it might answer … his prayer?
Wynn hadn't forgotten Magiere's revelations from wallowing in the memories of Most Aged Father. Aside from hearing mention of the fall of Bäalâle Seatt, Magiere had relived far more through the decrepit leader of the Anmaglâhk.
Most Aged Father, once called Sorhkafâré—Light upon the Grass—had been alive during the time of the mythical war. As a commander of an allied army, he'd fled with straggling remainders of his forces before a horde of undead slaughtering everything in the night. They'd rested each day and run in the dark, being picked off all the way to First Glade. Less than half of them reached that place, where they discovered that no undead was able to follow.
Wynn had always known of First Glade and its great tree, Chârmun. Few people that she knew had ever traveled to see it. She certainly hadn't … yet. No one ever realized that it had been there since the time of the Forgotten History itself, always present; neither the Lhoin'na nor their branch of sages had ever mentioned this.
It didn't seem possible that they didn't know that First Glade had existed before the war. And this elf with the duchess, dressed like a sage in a robe of no order's colors, had whispered the name of the tree called Sanctuary.
And its name, which had always been known, took on a greater meaning by what Magiere had told her.
Wynn pushed such mysteries away as she faced the lone tomb in the small chamber. She wasn't certain she truly wanted to know more of this place, but she couldn't ignore an opportunity to fathom the ways of the Stonewalkers. Not if she had to work through them, and the duchess, to get to what she needed.
She raised her crystal close to the figure's oblong panel and traced its markings with her finger. It was an epitaph of sorts, but not the kind placed on the marker of a loved one or ancestor. She struggled to decipher archaic patterns constructed entirely in round dwarven vubrí.
… outcast of stone … deceiver of honored dead … ender of heritage … the seatt-killer …
The last one almost stopped her cold, and then she reached the bottom and a final vubrí. All of the others she'd worked out made it easier to decipher.
Thallûhearag.
As with the tomb of Sundaks—Avarice—and the others, the title was written at the bottom, not the top, as was customary in almost any culture. It was the same term she'd first overheard spoken in High-Tower's chamber, when Cinder-Shard and Ore-Locks had visited and then vanished. All that Wynn had read in the epitaph's archaic Dwarvish clarified the meaning of that title.
She jerked her finger from the cold black stone, wiping it down her tunic.
Thallûhearag—Lord of Slaughter.
Dwarves used that final term differently than in other culture's languages. It referred to killing the defenseless versus carnage or execution of food animals. She tried to understand the few earlier phrases.
"Outcast of stone" could mean an outcast of the dwarven people. "Deceiver of the honored dead" implied deceased thänæ, and perhaps even their caretakers, the Stonewalkers. "Ender of heritage" was too obscure, but "seatt-killer …"
Something horrible had happened at Bäalâle Seatt during the war.
Wynn backed up one step. "Lord of slaughter …" she whispered, "… seatt-killer …"
She suddenly felt as if she were being watched.
Wynn looked to the tomb's faceless dome of a head, which was visually gagged by its raised carving of a riveted band. Everyone in that forgotten seatt, including enemy forces, had been "lost," though no one knew how or why. She realized her first translation of epitaph's final symbol lacked the true meaning, for "heritage" was everything to the dwarves.