Then she remembered something she and Chap had chosen.
Wynn stood up, searching the shelves. When she couldn't find it, she dug in the chests. In the second, she found a flat volume, its two hide-coated wood covers held on with gut-thread lacing grown brittle with age.
Wynn looked more carefully at it.
Someone had removed the old lacing and rebound the volume with fresh, waxed hemp string. The cover had been rubbed with something that had revivified the leather, though it was still terribly marred by age. When she and Chap had chosen this one, she hadn't yet known about the scroll.
Ore-Locks appeared at her side, apparently unable to stay out of her way.
"Why that one?" he asked.
Like Cinder-Shard, he opposed the guild's project, but now he showed quite a bit of interest in the texts themselves.
"Because it may have been written by one called Häs'saun," she answered. "Another forgotten minion of a forgotten enemy. He was part of a group called the Children—all vampires, another kind of Noble Dead besides the wraith. In Calm Seatt, the wraith seemed especially interested in folios concerning them."
Ore-Locks watched with intensity as Wynn opened the thin volume. She'd tried for so long to tell her superiors the truth of these texts. She felt dull surprise that Ore-Locks didn't even question her words.
"What was Häs'saun's reason?" he asked.
High-Tower would've roared for silence.
"Three vampires," she said, "along with followers, took what we call an ‘orb' all the way to the Farlands. In its highest desolate range, the Pock Peaks, they built a castle. Their purpose seemed to be guarding the orb."
"For what? What does it do?"
"We don't know."
Her denial was true. Magiere, Leesil, and Chap had all offered varying accounts of what happened in the underground cavern that held the orb. But when Magiere had accidentally activated or "opened" it, the orb had consumed all free moisture within reach.
Water dripping upon the cavern's walls, bleeding down from ice above being heated by the cavern's fiery chasm, had rained inward all around into the orb's burning light. And Li'kän had been there for centuries, in a place with little or no life to feed on. The orb had somehow sustained her.
Ore-Locks frowned. "If only three went to these Pock Peaks, what of the others? You said there were thirteen of these … Children. Where did they go?"
"That may be what the wraith wants to learn."
Just as she did, especially since it had taken a furious interest in Chane's scroll.
"Now let me read," she said.
Ore-Locks folded his hands behind his back and turned away in silence.
Wynn closed the third chest. Using it as a makeshift desk, she placed Häs'saun's text upon it. She retrieved the second codex, for if what she suspected was true, she needed to know if other translations came from work noted in the first one. Again she found references to sections in numbered volumes, but how was she to know which ones those were?
She idly flipped through Häs'saun's thin text, until she spotted an inked note on the upper inner corner of its back cover. It was marked as volume two.
Turning back to the second codex, and opening the thicker first one as well, she scanned both work schedule listings. Volume numbers between the two schedules were erratic, so the codices weren't sequential. In fact, dates of work overlapped all the way back to the first moon in which she'd arrived home. Some unknown criteria had been used to determine what translation work was entered into which codex.
Wynn didn't need to check further. They'd hidden the second codex from her. Translations she'd already seen wouldn't include those from volumes listed in it.
She immediately began pulling texts off the shelves, saving the fragile ones in the third chest for last, and searched for work entries or more volume marks. There were unseen translations to go through, but she wanted the originals at hand as she did so. She looked once to the sheaf of hide pages between old iron squares.
A tip of a parchment strip peeked out of its far side.
Wynn tugged it lightly, until its end was visible, showing it was marked as volume seven. She remembered that reference from the first codex and the translations she'd already seen. Then she came to a bundle on the second shelf wrapped in brown felt cloth. Upon unwrapping it, she remembered it well.
Atop a short pile of petrified wood planks was a strip of parchment marking this collection as volume one. It made sense that this text had been worked on early. She carefully placed the slats on the chest beside Häs'saun's thin volume. She'd chosen them, having identified the author as Volyno, the last of Li'kän's trio.
Each of the seven planks was a forearm's length and two handbreadths wide. They were covered in faded ink marks she'd recognized when she'd found them. Volyno often wrote in Heiltak, an ancient writing system and a forerunner dialect of contemporary Numanese. Wynn was most familiar with it.
She set aside the volume marker and gently separated the top three planks. The first was ragged at the ends, decayed and disintegrated long ago. She scanned what remained, searching for anything that caught her eye. Halfway down the third plank she spotted one oddity—a Sumanese term rendered in Heiltak letters.
Sâ'yminfiäl—the Eaters of Silence.
"What?" Ore-Locks asked.
Wynn hadn't realized she'd sucked in a breath too quickly. "Nothing," she answered.
She traced backward from that term and came upon mention of "thirteen" and "Children." She cracked open ink, dipped her quill, and started reading again from the plank's rotted top.
Too many parts were faded, worn, or darkened with age. She'd find those same missing pieces marked in the translation with dots for obscured words or strokes where the count couldn't be guessed. About to check the second codex for what volumes had been worked on in conjunction with this one, she paused upon a sentence fragment.
… âv Hruse …
It literally meant "of the earth" or "of earth," but the capitalization meant something more. Was it a reference to Earth, as in one of the five Elements? The sentence's first half was unreadable, as was a short bit that followed. Then she saw something more easily translated.
… chair of a lord's song.
It was the same phrase as her own mistaken translation from a term in Chane's scroll. And here it was again, with the same mistake, but written in Heiltak. Il'Sanke's correction had rendered her translation into a reference to Bäalâle Seatt!
Wynn scanned the second codex and found listings for work complete on volume one—sections one through seven, likely referring to the seven planks. Why this was recorded in the second codex and not the first that she'd been shown?
Something else nagged at her. She looked between both codices at the handwriting rather than the entries. There were variations in the first, different people recording scheduled or complete work. But the second was written in one hand only.
It was High-Tower's.
The implication was clear. He'd been the only one to decide on the work she hadn't seen. How many others, even those involved in the project, were unaware of whatever he was doing—and why?
Wynn slammed the first codex shut, keeping only the second, and stared at the third plank. The decayed part between the two fragments wasn't long, but she couldn't be certain they were both part of the same sentence. Digging out any completed translation wouldn't help.
It wouldn't give her useful information to feed Cinder-Shard and the duchess, but she was too obsessed to turn away. When she read onward, other fragments made her neck muscles tighten. Somewhere behind her, Ore-Locks paced intermittently.
Wynn straightened where she knelt, still second-guessing what she was about to do.