When he turned to examine the pine straw, Laedron caught a glimpse of something beneath a shrub. He bent and pulled out a dense, heavy bone almost two feet long. “What do you make of this?”
“It’s a bone,” Brice said.
“I can see that, Thimble.” Laedron tugged at his collar, then tossed the bone over to Brice. “Sorry. Can you tell anything about it?”
“I’ve never been a student of anatomy, I’m afraid.”
Valyrie took the bone and examined it from every angle. “Looks like a femur, the big bone behind the thigh. Human.”
He felt uneasy. Do they dissect corpses in the university? Pulling the shrub from side to side, Laedron said, “Here’s the rest of him. A skull and several other pieces, but no clothes, no weapons. Must’ve been here for quite some time.”
“The blood didn’t come from this body. What is going on here?” Marac kicked a stone, sending it flying into one of the big pines. “What else do you see, Thimble?”
“Just the drag marks leading off that way.”
“Keep going, then. It didn’t end here.”
Following Brice as if he were a bloodhound, Laedron tried to block the sinister thoughts racing through his mind, but he couldn’t. What had killed that man? And the blood in the straw? Whose blood is it? Who drew it? What lurks in this wood, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce?
Every attempt to preclude his imagination met with another vibrant vision of their torture, their pain merely a means to an end, a small part in the machinations of some dark sorcerer hidden amongst the pines. And if we encounter an evil mage, will this scepter be of any use? Even with Ismerelda’s rod, he had been unable to defeat Andolis Drakkar in a duel of magic, and the fact that it had failed during his last spell worried him. How powerful could a Zyvdredi master become if allowed to sit and brood in this wilderness for centuries?
Laedron nearly tripped over Brice, not noticing when his friend squatted to examine the earth. “Sorry.”
Seemingly unfazed by the knee in his back, Brice stared at the ground, touching it with his palm several times. “It stops here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said.” Standing, Brice dusted off his knees. “No more trail. No more tracks.”
“Impossible.” Marac turned in a circle. “It can’t just stop here.”
“Well, it does.”
Laedron shook his head and threw up his hands. “Where are they, then? If they stopped here and went nowhere else, they would still be standing right here.”
“I’m simply telling you what I see. The prints go no farther from this place, Lae.”
Valyrie held her hair back and bent forward. “Any wheel tracks? Hoof prints? A cart or horses, perhaps?”
“No, nothing.” Brice held up his hand, his index finger and thumb spread about an inch apart. “Wagons and carts leave deep marks when they move through dirt. Especially under these circumstances, I would have seen something.”
Laedron spun and scanned the trees. “Keep looking. There must be something we’re missing. Spread out.”
Brice and Marac tied the horses to some low limbs, then searched the ground for more tracks. Valyrie checked the brush and shrubs, and Laedron, without much to go on, followed the bases of the trees to see if anything had fallen around the exposed roots.
Laedron pointed at the bark when he spotted something odd. “Look at this. Over here!”
Valyrie got to him first. “Found something?”
“Carvings.” Laedron ran his finger along the grooves cut into the tree. “Shapes of some kind.” His jaw dropped, and he leaned toward the cuts. “Writing. It’s writing!”
“Writing? Not like any I’ve seen. Can you read it?” Brice asked.
“I think so.” Concentrating, Laedron studied the writing, then shook his head violently. “It can’t be. No, it can’t-” He stepped back.
“What is it?” Valyrie took him by the arm, halting his retreat. “What, Lae?”
“Zyvdredi writing…” He turned away, rubbing his hands together. “Here? Zyvdredi… she said this was an Uxidin city. Did she lie? She seemed sincere. How can it be?”
“Lae?”
“To find Zyvdredi here? In the middle of Lasoron? They shouldn’t be here. They can’t be here-”
“Lae?”
“Could they be new markings? Something recent? Perhaps they’re not as old as this place. Wanderers who came upon this broken city-”
“Lae!”
He turned to her. “Sorry. You were saying?”
Sighing, she asked, “What does it say?”
“If those ruins are what’s left of a temple, the writing seems to discuss it. It’s some kind of blessing or a prayer.”
“Written in Zyvdredi?” Brice inspected the symbols, but his grimace told of his confusion. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Laedron nibbled at his fingernails, searching the horizon for answers and not finding any. “We had better-”
The movement of shadows in the nearby brush gave him pause. No shaking of the earth. That crystal thing? Here? No, we would’ve heard it. A thing that large can’t move with stealth. Could there be a Zyvdredi master watching us, waiting for the opportune moment to strike?
Valyrie’s face contorted with worry. “Lae? Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes. I thought I saw something there. I guess my mind’s playing tricks on me.”
“Where to from here?” Marac asked. “Are there any directions written there? A set of instructions?”
“No, nothing.” Laedron, though his hand trembled, traced the words with his finger. “It reminds me of something I saw in the city of Azura.”
“How so?”
“Remember how every building, every storefront, and every home in Azura had inscriptions of saints? Azuran stars? Inside most of the buildings and above the main entrance, they had carved verses from the Azuran scriptures. Prayers for protection, blessings on those who entered, and so on.”
Brice crouched and poked at the bark. “Does the shape have any meaning?”
“Shape? What shape?”
“The words have been carved in a big arch,” Brice said, using a finger to follow the inscription to the base of the tree. “See here? It starts near the roots.”
Laedron started at one end and followed the carvings all the way to the finish, but the text-even in its entirety-told him nothing more. Scratching his chin, he pondered the writing. This must be the key, but what does it mean? Why, of all the trees in the forest, would they put writing on this one? A marker of some kind? But what were they marking?
“Perhaps it’s a dead end.” Leaning on his shoulder against the tree, Marac lowered his chin and sighed. “Maybe we don’t have enough to unlock its secret.”
Unlock its secret. Laedron took a few steps back to observe the arch in its entirety. “It can’t be. Can it?”
“Can’t be what?” Valyrie asked, obviously eager to hear any possible solutions.
“A door? An entry of some kind?”
Brice picked at the bark near the writing. “No seams. If it’s a door, I can see no way of opening it.”
“If it was made by the Zyvdredi, it wouldn’t have a handle or locks in the same way with which we’re accustomed. Stand back.” Laedron produced his scepter.
Marac put his hand on Laedron’s shoulder. “What are you going to do? Blast your way through?”
“No, I intend to walk in.” Speaking his incantation and waving the rod, Laedron watched his body become transparent, starting with his hands and enveloping his whole body after a while. Then, he walked into the side of the tree.
At first, he couldn’t see anything through the dense wood fibers, but once he had passed the bark and wood, he found himself in a hollow within the tree. The area was about fifty feet in diameter, and wooden steps, which seemed to have grown inside the tree that way, led down. He stepped backward, then released the spell when he was completely out.
“There’s a space inside. And a staircase. Come close, and I’ll cast the spell on each of you so you can enter.” Noticing a tremor in the ground, Laedron gasped. “Quickly. That monster approaches!”