The Will and the Wilds(26)

I look back to him. Pull my sleeve over my bracelet. “I can try.”

The man fumbles for a clean sheet of paper—it’s very fine, which means it’s very expensive—and turns it toward me. He has a sharpened pencil at the ready.

Eyeing Runden, I crouch at the table, moving closer to the younger scholar so as not to block the lamplight, and do a loose sketch of a vuldor, just as I had in my notes. I’m sure it’s not perfect, but Maekallus had seemed to think it accurate enough. When I’m finished, I write, Vuldor, below it—admittedly, if only to prove that I can write and I’m educated—and step back. The scholar picks up the paper and examines it, adjusting his glasses as he does so. Runden continues to ignore me.

“Fascinating. What did you say your name was?”

“Enna.” Excitement twirls in my chest. A real scholar is asking my name! He is impressed by my knowledge! “Enna Rydar, sir.”

“Call me Jerred.” He extends his hand. I grip it firmly, hoping to impress. Hoping he doesn’t notice the reddening scar across my palm. “You’re local?”

“A day’s ride away.” A day, I remember. I have only hours to find the information Maekallus and I so desperately need. Bother! Why am I presented such an opportunity to talk to well-studied men when I cannot take it? I feel my heart flake and crumble, like mud dried too quickly beneath the summer sun.

“And you cannot tell us more?” Jerred presses. He means my source, most likely. And I cannot tell anyone about him.

Swallowing a sob of frustration, I say, “I’m sorry. I have research of my own to do and only a short time to do it. But . . . good luck, with your studies.”

I duck away, hurrying to the shadows between the shelves. I can’t give Jerred, or even Runden, opportunity to respond, for they’ll draw me into the fantasy of their academia and I’ll never accomplish my task. I need not remind myself that my soul and my life are more important than my study.

Once I’m away, I take several breaths to reorient myself and begin scanning the shelves again. Force myself to concentrate.

Fate grants me mercy, for I find the first book on my list quickly and pluck it from its shelf.





I read for a long time. Long enough for the guard shift to change. My mind grows fuzzy, but I shake myself, forcing attention. I may only have today to search for an answer, but as I look at book after book and return to the index again and again, I fear that no amount of time will be sufficient, merely because the knowledge I seek is not to be found in the Duke of Sands’s library.

There is little on mystings as a whole; my grandmother’s journal is more precise than these volumes written by scholars. I’ve learned a great deal about herbs I now desire to plant in my garden, as well as various theories on the creation of the realms and what many call the “War That Almost Was” between the people of Amaranda and a horde from the monster realm—the very war my father fought in twenty years ago. But nothing mentions binding spells, or goblers, narvals, or even mystiums. Nothing mentions antidotes. None of these authors have traveled into the monster realm, and none, I believe, have ever seen a mysting with their own eyes. All the more reason to, someday, publish my own useful findings.

I do discover a scrying spell in a skinny book, its pages filled with tight, nearly illegible script. I jot it down, though I would need something of the person or being I want to find to activate it, and I’ve nothing of the gobler who bound Maekallus to his demise, and me alongside him. I’m near tears, a headache pulsing down my neck, when a hand grabs my shoulder.

I gasp and jump from my chair, a book on forest phenomena dropping from my lap to the floor.

“Easy, Enna.” Tennith pulls back his hand. He frowns. “You don’t look well.”

“I . . .” I realize I’ve not eaten, though I have dried fish and bread in my sack. Glancing out the window, I determine it must be the end of the afternoon—time to set off, if we want to reach Fendell before the dark swallows us.

I pick up the book on the floor, tempted to rip out its useless pages. Even if I could neglect my father and convince Tennith to stay another day, I don’t think it would be fruitful, and then there would be the gossip. Curse this world, for how it runs on rumor! All I have is the scrying spell folded in my pocket.

“I forgot to eat.” At least I can be honest about that. “I can do so as we ride. Did you find your cow?”

He nods. “A fine young lady with eyes like sunstones. Got a decent price on her, too. But she’s not fast, so we’ll need to set out . . . Are you sure you’re well?”

“Yes, quite,” I lie. I leave my books on my chair to be sorted later. “Let’s go. I—”

I wince and hold up my hand. The very center of the scar has opened, the cut thin as baby hair and short as my pinky nail, but the musty library air makes it sting.

“That’s a nasty scar.” Tennith reaches for it, but stops himself. “Where’d you get it?”

I pull my hand away from his line of sight. “A while back, playing with one of my father’s swords.”

“Your father was a swordsman?”

It surprises me that Tennith doesn’t know this, given the stories spun about us, but I suppose only the oldest in Fendell would, and the best things about people always get forgotten beneath the worst.