engine used against the seatt. Whatever it was, it seemed the Stonewalkers had aided in this. But other parts took more time to connect, and when they did, it was so much the worse.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Wynn whispered, and then quickly went silent.
The rituals of Khalidah . . . the trio with their whispers of thought . . . consuming weak earth-born minds . . .
Wynn understood what Sâ’yminfiäl, the Eaters of Silence, meant. They were sorcerers.
A trio of them had been part of the siege upon Bäalâle Seatt, along with Vespana and Ga’hetman.
Chane had deduced that the wraith was a conjuror, so it couldn’t be one of them. That meant this Khalidah wasn’t the wraith. One more name had now moved to one of her three known groups, but it still left too many others unclassified. She had nothing to truly support her notion, but she felt more and more certain that the wraith had served among the Reverent.
For whatever reason, it—he—was obsessed with seeking where the thirteen Children had gone. But also, much as she was now, had it been seeking what had happened at Bäalâle Seatt?
She was onto something, but what?
Wynn returned to Häs’saun’s text, struggling with an ancient dialect she hadn’t mastered. Almost as cryptic and secretive as the hidden writing in Chane’s scroll, what little she fathomed was often condensed. She opened her journal to entries of names taken from the translations.
Jeyretan, Fäzabid, Memaneh, Creif, Uhmgadâ, Sau’ilahk.
The wraith had to be one of them. She didn’t know what use might come of knowing its name. Perhaps it was just the need to know anything, any scrap concerning her enemy. But it might also help her understand any other references to the Reverent, anything they’d done . . . anything the wraith knew.
She read on, catching only every third word and doubtful of her translation, but she used these to guess at the others. She came upon a strange series of fragments that seemed connected.
. . . by the priest’s jealousy of us . . . prayers like begging . . . with Beloved’s three-edged boon . . . the joy of his petty vanity . . .
It was the closest she could translate, though she could be wrong. From Domin il’Sänke’s comments concerning the scroll, it might be Pärpa’äsea rather than Iyindu, or even some other tongue. But it seemed that one of the Reverent had made a bargain with his Beloved to fulfill a vain wish.
What could an ancient Noble Dead have that anyone would envy for the sake of vanity? And why had Häs’saun claimed the boon was “three- edged”?
The metaphor of “two- edged” was part of almost any culture. It referred to a benefit that could be a downfall as well. “Three- edged” implied something worse, as if deficit outweighed any gain twofold.
. . . by beauty . . . frail the high priest was and is . . . his wish fulfilled . . . cheated with eternal life . . .
Wynn went cold in the pit of her stomach.
Not just one of the Reverent, but their very leader had asked for and received eternal life, but it didn’t make sense. How could one be “cheated” by such a gift? And the Children were not alive; they were undead, Noble Dead.
And “was and is”? When had Häs’saun written this? How could he know what had happened, or would happen, to Beloved’s high priest, considering Häs’saun had gone off with Li’kän, Volyno, and the orb?
. . . not mortal . . . not in young eternity . . .
Wynn sighed. That translation couldn’t be right. She closed her eyes, reworking the phrases in her mind.
. . . never immortal . . . never eternally young . . .
“Three-edged” and a high priest’s “vanity” began to connect. He hadn’t just been after eternal life but eternal beauty. So why wouldn’t eternal life provide that?
. . . Beloved’s vain first [something] knew not what he would lose . . .
Whatever trick had been played on the high priest hadn’t come to pass at the time of the siege.
. . . eternal being, Sau’ilahk shall never be . . .
Wynn came to a frantic halt.
She had found the name of the tricked priest, the last one among those identified as part of the Reverent. But it wasn’t enough, and the rest of the page wasn’t readable. She flipped to the next, but it started with an account of something else. There was no mention