In Shade and Shadow

She opened the journal, scanned the scroll's copy page, and pointed to a brief string of ancient Sumanese, perhaps Iyindu and Pärpa'äsea. Her finger traced one haphazardly translated phrase.

"Can you guess at this at all?" she asked. "What is 'chair of a lord's song'?"

With a tired breath, Ghassan took the journal from her.

If Wynn's hasty strokes were accurate, the script indeed appeared to be Iyindu, both an old dialect and a writing system little used anymore in the empire. Fortunately it was not Pärpa'äsea, which was more obscure. But he did make out one error.

"You have the last of it wrong," he said. "It is not prepositional but an objective possessive adjective, a form not found in Numanese. The first word is not 'chair' but 'seat, so it would read…"

Ghassan paused, studying Wynn's attempt at translation, and then he looked down to the corresponding Iyindu characters. The word "maj'at" meant "seat," but the final character of Iyindu script had been doubled. Had Wynn copied it wrong as "maj'att"?

"Fine," Wynn said, "so what does 'seat of a lord's song' mean?"

"Seatt," il'Sänke whispered, adding the sharpened ending of the last letter.

Wynn straightened, craning her neck, but she could not see and so scrambled up to peer at her scroll notes.

"Seatt?" she repeated. "Like in 'Calm Seatt'… or Dhredze Seatt, the Dwarvish word for a fortified place of settlement?"

Ghassan frowned. "Possibly… but the other part of your translation needs correction as well. Iyindu pronunciation changes according to case usage, though the written form of words remains the same."

Wynn huffed in exasperation.

"You translated based on 'min'bâl'alu, " il'Sänke continued, "which is not just a song but an ululation of praise for a tribal leader. In this case, and declination, the spoken pronunciation would be "min'bä'alâle."

Wynn stiffened, as if in shock.

Ghassan wondered if she was all right. Before he asked, a breath escaped her with a near-voiceless question.

"Bäalâle Seatt?" she whispered.

Ghassan had no idea what the truncated reutterance meant.

The phrase kept rolling in Wynn's mind.

"Do you know this term?" Domin il'Sänke asked. "Something you have heard?"

Oh, yes, she'd heard it twice before.

She'd never seen it written, except when she recorded its syllables in Begaine symbols within her journals of the Farlands. Even then, she knew the first part of the term wasn't Dwarvish as she knew it. If il'Sänke had read that one brief mention in her journals, he wouldn't have remembered it among the stack she brought home.

The first time Wynn heard of Bäalâle Seatt was from Magiere.

They'd reached the glade prison of Leesil's mother in the Elven Territories, and Magiere lost control of her dhampir nature. Most Aged Father had somehow slipped his awareness through the forest and into the glade's trees. He witnessed everything. At the sight of Magiere, appearing so much like an undead, terror-driven memories surged upon the decrepit patriarch of the Anmaglâhk. Magiere lost her footing amid the fight and touched a tree. Through that contact she'd slipped into Most Aged Father's remembrance.

Lost in his memories, Magiere heard one brief passing mention of a Dwarvish term.

Most Aged Father, once called Sorhkafâré, had been a commander of allied forces and alive during the war of the Forgotten History. He received a report of the fall of one "Bäalâle Seatt," and that all the dwarves of that place perished, taking the Enemy's siege forces with them. But no one knew how or why.

Wynn peered at the scroll. Here was that place-name again, hinted at in the obscure hidden poem of an ancient undead.

And the second time she'd heard the name of this forgotten place was far more recent.

A pair of black-clad dwarves—the Hassäg'kreigi, the Stonewalkers—had spoken of it as she eavesdropped outside of High-Tower's office. Then they were simply gone when she entered to speak with the domin.

And the wraith had come at her twice, wanting this scroll as much as any folio it had killed for.

"I need more!" she demanded. "You have to finish translating what I copied so far!"

"Wynn, no," il'Sänke said. "We finally have a moment's peace. This can wait until tomorrow, after we—"

"Now!" she insisted. "I need more so I can go to High-Tower for assignment. Something happened among the dwarves during the Forgotten History, and I'm going to Dhredze Seatt across the bay. It's the only place to begin and to find out what happened, or where…"

Wynn trailed off, for il'Sänke was shaking his head.

"In the morning," he insisted, but by his following pause, she knew there was something more.

"We both go before the premin council—in the morning," he explained.

Wynn had nothing to say to this. What could one say when one's way of life was about to end? They were going to cast her out.