Zarfensis turned to see Xenir standing over a crude, but mostly complete, replica of the map Sleeper had drawn for them.
“It’s real,” Xenir whispered. “It’s real and we know where to look for it.”
Chapter Eight
“This is it?” Tia had tried to keep the disappointment from her voice. She knew Wynn was excited to bring her here, but somehow, she had expected something much more impressive.
The gate room was small, nondescript, and much plainer than Tia would have imagined. Maybe fifteen feet square, the only remarkable feature of the room was the gate itself. A ring of standing stones about waist high and twelve feet in diameter. A wizened old man sat on a bench in one corner of the room, wiping down a tin bucket with a scrap of cloth. Wynn looked hurt and Tia felt a stab of contriteness. She had asked to come, the least she could do was be polite.
“I’m sorry, Wynn.” Her grin was sheepish. “I was just expecting something a little more…”
“Something more magical and sparkly?”
Tiadaria laughed. “Yes, something more magical and sparkly.”
“Well, when someone is coming through, it gets a little more interesting. Then you might find it appropriately impressive.”
“Is Blackbeach the only other place with a gate?”
“That I know of.” Wynn nodded. “Although, I’m told that the order wanted to put one in Dragonfell, but the king wouldn’t allow it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.” Tiadaria wrinkled her nose. “Heron is a great man and a good friend, but he has some strange notions about quintessentialists and magic in general.”
Wynn stared at her for a moment before he was able to speak again. “So you’re on a first name basis with the One True King?”
“No.” She faltered when he quirked an eyebrow at her. “Well, yes, but it’s not like that. We, uh, found ourselves thrown together by circumstance.”
The look Wynn gave her seemed to say that that particular circumstance was just about as likely as a dragon popping up in the gate room, but he said nothing.
“So,” Tia continued, filling the awkward silence. “If there is near instantaneous transport between Blackbeach and Ethergate, why didn’t Faxon tell me about it?”
“I suspect he probably would have, had you not taken it into your head to run off on your own.” Wynn frowned at her. “When Faxon says something, it's usually for a good reason.”
Tia sighed. If she had to endure one more of Wynn’s lectures on logic, reason, and responsibility, she was going to scream. The first day or two of their recovery, he had been almost normal, happy to be alive. It hadn’t taken long for that to wear off and for the apprentice to return to his stubbornly rational ways.
There was a commotion in the hallway outside the gate room and Tia and Wynn turned toward the door. Cabot, looking much disheveled, stumbled into the gate room, fumbling with the buttons of his doublet. One of his boots was untied and his travel pack was half open, threatening to spill its contents over the floor at any given moment.
“Oh, Tia, Wynn. I’m glad to see you. You’re both looking well, by the way. I knew a couple of days in the capable hands of Ethergate’s healers would set you right.” His voice cracked and he hastily cleared his throat.
“In a hurry to get somewhere, Cabot?” Tia was curious what would have the normally imperturbable young man so out of sorts.
“I’ve been recalled to Dragonfell. I was hoping to catch the gate back to Blackbeach and shave some time off the trip.” He looked expectantly at Wynn. “What do you say, Apprentice Wynn?”
Wynn looked at Cabot, then glanced at Tia, silently pleading for her to intervene. She shrugged.
“I don’t know the gate ritual,” he finally said to Cabot. “I wish I could help.”
Cabot looked crestfallen. A shadow of something flickered behind his eyes so quickly that Tia was sure she had misread his expression. “I understand. Thanks anyway, Wynn.”
The young man turned to leave and Tia laid a hand on his shoulder. He stiffened and for a moment, she thought he was going to turn on her.
“Cabot?” she asked quietly. “What’s going on?”
“I just need to get back to Dragonfell.” He took a deep breath. “Harold. My father. The innkeeper. He died this morning. His injuries were just too severe.”
“Oh Cabot, I’m so sorry.” Tia’s eyes were suddenly wet. She could still see Harold sprawled on the common room floor.
“Yeah. I need to go. Maybe there’s a wagon heading east.”
Cabot all but ran from the room, leaving Tia and Wynn standing in silence. Tia wiped her eyes and turned to Wynn. She was surprised to see that his eyes were just as moist as hers.
“Wynn?”
“I’m fine. Harold looked after me for a while after Faxon brought me to Ethergate. He was…important to me. When Cabot came to see you in the infirmary, I knew he was familiar. I just now realized why.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. So let’s get to the library and find this relic before anyone else has to die.”
Tia chose to ignore the bitterness in his voice as they made their way out of the gate room and across the city toward the reliquary. The wall in the lower library had been repaired, the lightness of the new stone a telltale sign of the recent construction. The tunnel beyond had been collapsed with charges of flashpowder. Never again would Ethergate by breached by way of the old Xarundi bolt-hole.
Although the wall had been patched, no one had been in to set the library right. Shelves were still toppled in all directions and books and papers were strewn about without a care for their age or fragility.
“You’d think a city full of quintessentialists would be more concerned about their books.” Tiadaria was collecting the oldest tomes from the floor and piling them on the nearest desk.
“We all seem to have different priorities these days,” Wynn said absently. He was leaning against a fallen bookshelf, flipping through a small leather-bound journal. “I think I’ve found something, Tia.”
The excitement in the young apprentice’s voice was enough to draw Tiadaria to his side.
“What is it?” The prospect of a clue in their elusive quest for the relic had set her all aquiver.
“Alveron’s journal. I didn’t even know it was here. It must have been tucked back in one of the bookcases.”
“But I thought you said Alveron never returned?”
“He didn’t. There’s an inscription in the front that says it was returned to Ethergate with the rest of his personal effects.”
“Returned by whom?”
“Clan tradesmen, it says.”
Tiadaria snorted. “Probably the only time the clan ever did anything so selfless.”
“I doubt it was selfless,” Wynn replied with a wry grin. “The order pays well for artifacts returned. The clans probably account for about eighty percent of the bounty we pay out.”
“Figures. So what does it say?”
“Skip what it says for now,” he said and before Tia could wonder what he meant, he tipped the journal toward her so she could see the pages he was looking at.
It was a map, a detailed map of the area west of Ethergate. There was a series of notes and annotations in a scrawl that Tiadaria couldn’t decipher. What jumped out at her was a symbol scrawled far to the north on the map.
“What does this mean?” She tapped the symbol with her finger, daring him to dispute what she already felt.
“That’s our relic. Or rather, what Alveron thought was the relic’s resting place.”
Tia let out a low whistle. After so much anticipation, it seemed almost anti-climactic to have a neatly labeled map laid out before them. She scrubbed her palms on her thighs, trying to work off some of the nervous energy.
“So what do we do?” Even as she asked the questions, part of Tiadaria wanted Wynn to come up with some other plausible theory.
“We do what we were instructed to do. We stay put and wait for Faxon to arrive. When he does, we’ll turn over all this information and let the order take whatever action they see fit.”