of the elves’ guild branch sometimes visited the one in Calm Seatt, yet not one had ever mentioned the great age of First Glade. At its mention, Chuillyon had feigned ignorance, according to Chane. Why would they keep this a secret?
Wynn needed to know. If the undead could not enter the glade, then such a place, such a haven, might be indispensable in days to come.
“Why do you hesitate?” Ore-Locks said. “Is something missing?”
Wynn realized she’d sat too long doing nothing. “No, I’m deciding where to begin.”
“Were the texts not in your possession for some time? Did you not study them on your journey home?”
“Not enough,” she whispered. “My domin, Tilswith, suggested I wait to rejoin my peers—more experienced cathologers. It made sense . . . because I was a naive girl! But I don’t think even he expected the texts to be confiscated.”
As soon as her mouth closed, she regretted telling him anything.
Yes, she’d perused some of the works on that journey. Curiosity had gotten the better of her more than once. But events in the Farlands had been fresh in her mind, along with losses. Some days of the journey, the texts had been too much of a reminder of what their acquisition had cost.
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