Without turning, she asked, "Has the duchess ever been down in the Chamber of the Fallen?"
Ore-Locks's shifting steps stop, instantly.
"No, not down," he answered. "Your presence there … was unprecedented."
That brought some relief. Aside from royal involvement in suppressing the texts' existence, perhaps they didn't know about Ore-Locks's true calling.
"What do you know about Bäalâle Seatt?" she asked.
A long pause followed.
"Only the lie that Thallûhearag … Deep-Root … was its final bane."
Wynn glanced over her shoulder, wishing Chane were here to confirm Ore-Locks's lies.
"I once heard that everyone there was lost," she said carefully, watching his eyes begin to widen. "It was under siege in the war … and even the enemy's forces didn't escape."
Ore-Locks tensed, until a vein stood out upon his left temple.
"Heard?" he whispered, as if he couldn't get a full breath. "Where could you have heard anything of that place?"
Again, she wouldn't give him any more than she had to. Turning back to Volyno's text, she began reading aloud.
"‘ … of Earth …' " she began, then tried to fill in, " ‘beneath the chair of a lord's song … meant to prevail but all ended … halfway eaten in beneath.'"
That last part didn't make sense, but she read onward to what truly mattered.
"‘… even the wéyelokangas … walk in Earth … failed Beloved's will.'"
At Ore-Locks's puzzled expression, she explained.
"Beloved is how the Children referred to the Ancient Enemy, the one your master calls Kêravägh."
His brow furrowed. "What is wéy … lok … ?" he began, faltering on the word.
"It's Numanese, my language," she returned, "but so old that few would recognize it. It means ‘war lockers' or ‘war sealers.'"
Still she saw no understanding in his face.
"Traitors!" she snapped. "Oath breakers who change sides amid a war, giving advantage to the enemy. And they walked in earth … or stone!"
"Lies!" Ore-Locks breathed, as his face flushed in anger.
"They were Stonewalkers!" Wynn shouted back, though obviously he understood. "Your precious Thallûhearag … was Hassäg'kreigi … like you!"
Ore-Locks took a quick thundering step toward her as the sea man rose in the pool, leveling his spear. Wynn was frightened, but she'd never let it show.
"Don't even think of threatening me," she warned. "I'd wager Cinder-Shard doesn't even realize all that you are … not by the way he went after the wraith, one of the enemy's own."
Ore-Locks held his place only an arm's length away. He could kill her quickly enough, but he wouldn't.
She was playing a dangerous game, one Leesil or even Magiere might have tried: Make an enemy afraid of being exposed for worse than anyone suspected. Wait for him to make a mistake he couldn't erase in the sight of others—and finish him.
But just how would she do that when the time came?
"Cinder-Shard is waiting for me," she added coldly. "As is the duchess."
Ore-Locks paled, anger draining.
Wynn began to worry. Did he know what she was up to? Then he raised his hand toward the being in the pool.
That one settled once more, immersed to his slitted throat, just watching her.
"Return to work," Ore-Locks breathed.
Wynn stood her ground, not breaking eye contact, until he finally stepped back. Her hammering heart made it almost hard to breathe as she turned away. She was careful to take every step slowly, as calmly as she could, until she knelt before the chest.
One more question remained, concerning Ore-Locks's brother.
High-Tower had left home—after his brother—to take service at the temple of Feather-Tongue. In the end, that hadn't been enough for whatever drove him. It obviously wasn't some spiritual calling. He'd abandoned that place for a life in the guild—the life of a "scribbler"—a peculiar choice for any dwarf steeped in oral tradition.
Wynn looked at the second codex, written entirely in High Tower's hand.
Certainly others had been involved in its listed translation work, but all under his direction. Was he trying to find the truth of a tainted ancestor—or hiding his family's shame from anyone outside of the guild's walls?
Wynn returned to Volyno's writing, hoping an ancient Noble Dead could speak across centuries to give her answers. It took longer before her hands stopped shaking, so she could turn to the next plank.
Sau'ilahk wallowed in dormancy, drained and beaten down until night came again. Awareness slowly returned, as did memories of recent events.
He had felt his body—as if unwillingly manifested in full—when the dwarf had forced him into the wall. Stone's crush had sent him into terror, and he instantly fled into darkness. But Beloved had been silent amid Sau'ilahk's dormancy, offering no words of assistance or rebuke.
Those black-clad dwarves—Stonewalkers—had power he did not understand. They had power over him!
Sau'ilahk wanted to wail his anger, his fear, to rend and tear those who reduced him to cowering flight. He wanted to make Wynn Hygeorht suffer for this. How had she breached the underworld at all?
He could go nearly anywhere, anyplace he knew of and could remember. She was a witless, confused young woman, even with her staff and its crystal. Impudent Wynn Hygeorht saw herself as his opponent, his equal.
These Stonewalkers would die soon enough. He would find a way to kill them one by one. But Wynn would be last. Let her watch every ally fall before her eyes. She would die alone, slowly enough to remember the faces of the dead around her.
A soft hiss entered his thoughts.
Do not expose yourself—us—and give the sage's rants credence. Remain hidden … keep all in the dark.
Sau'ilahk's awareness fell to cold stillness at Beloved's words, so filled with new urgency. Was there something more beneath them, as if his god were … panicked?
He waited to see dormancy's darkness break with the appearance of stars. Each point of light would turn to a glint upon black scales, until those rolled and twisted all around him in turning coils of his Beloved's presence.
But not a single glint appeared.
True consciousness began to tingle and stir inside him. With it, rage reawoke. He quickly focused upon memory of the underworld's cavern, trying to scratch together its details and shapes. He had to remember … he had to return there and nowhere else.
And when chance comes … sever the kin from the sea!
Beloved's final words pierced Sau'ilahk, flooding his whole being. With them came a wave of hate that drowned his own anger for an instant.
Sau'ilahk materialized, quaking—and Beloved's fading hatred left only confusion.
He tried to fathom those last words, but he needed to hunt, to put an end to these centuries of searching—to put an end to that sage. And he found himself at a sudden loss.
He looked across a deserted cavern of tall and wide dwarven columns—the marketplace. He stood somewhere at its rear, where he had followed the duchess to the hidden entrance into the mountain's depths. He was not in the underworld.
Sau'ilahk had awoken in Sea-Side!
With an angry hiss, he turned down the rear tunnel. Why had he returned here? Had he not remembered the underworld cavern well enough—or had Beloved done this? What had his god meant by … sever the kin from the sea?
Those words worked upon him as he glided along dim passages. Did it mean "kin of the ocean waves"? But the only Âreskynna here was the duchess, and she bore the name by marriage, not blood. She was not truly one of them.
Rumbling voices carried from ahead, and he slowed. At the passage's branching, he slipped along its left arc, sinking halfway into the wall. Everything dimmed for an instant, almost taking him to the blackness of dormancy.