Barb Hendee: Through Stone and Sea

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.

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.