Flinc offered her his bed, but she refused. She would not take advantage of his hospitality that way, she told him. She would sleep on the floor instead, rolled up in blankets that he provided her. What she did not say was that the very thought of being back in that bed sent shivers up her spine. Maybe it was the memories of him having kept her in it before, when he had drugged her. Better that she avoid reliving them even if they were only memories now and safely in the past.
They worked all through the next morning on the books, and they were more than halfway through when the forest imp suggested they go for a walk to clear their heads. Tarsha was quick to agree, anxious for a break from all the reading and ready for a little sunlight. She was troubled by the fact they had not yet found anything useful in their search, and she wanted to postpone the prospect of having failed for as long as possible.
To her surprise, the day was indeed filled with sunshine and the woods were alive with birdsong and late-winter flowers growing in small, bright patches. They made their way along trails and now and then off them, for Flinc was entirely familiar with the forest and in no danger of getting lost. Tarsha found herself thinking of her brother as she walked, remembering their times in the forests of Backing Fell, working with the magic of the wishsong, attempting to discover what it could do. She had done so alone at first, the magic still a closely held secret. But later, when Tavo had discovered it existed in himself as well, she had worked to help him master it.
She wondered if she had helped or hurt him by doing so. The magic had never worked in the right way for him, and he had never learned how to manage it as she did. She experienced a deep uncertainty as she remembered. How much responsibility did she bear for what had happened to her brother? Perhaps she should have seen the inevitable result even then. Perhaps she could have divined how it would all end and done something more to prevent it from happening. She didn’t like to think so, but she had been a realist for so much of her life that she couldn’t deny the possibility.
“Have we walked long enough?” she asked, suddenly impatient with her lack of progress. “I think we should get back to work.”
Without a word, Flinc swung off the settled path and took them through the forest in a different direction. Tarsha didn’t have the least idea of where they were or where they were going, but the forest imp seemed to know his way instinctively.
“Something occurs to me,” Flinc said abruptly. “I noticed several places in the russ’hai’s book where he made marginal notes—references to something he called the Druid Histories. Does this mean something to you?”
Indeed, it did. “What it means is that I might have to go to Paranor. I had forgotten the Druid Histories. Each High Druid recorded, in his or her own time, information about the events and magics involved in their service. So things that were not particular to Drisker’s books might appear in the more comprehensive Histories.”
“I will show you when we are back at my home,” the imp offered, looking pleased.
Tarsha nodded. The trouble was, if she had to go to Paranor, she did not know how to get inside. You had to be a Druid or be invited in by a Druid in order to enter. The Guardian of the Keep waited for those who lacked proper status, and she had no wish to encounter that particular creature. Clizia Porse had discovered what could happen if you contravened this rule—and she was a Druid.
Tarsha could think of no reason she would be allowed in, or allowed to find the Druid Histories, which were locked away—let alone be able to understand them sufficiently to find the help she was looking for.
Once back at Flinc’s home, they settled side by side at the table while he paged through the book he had been studying to show her the writings in the margins. Tarsha remembered seeing similar notes in her book as well, but hers was the newer of the two and possessed fewer entries—a consequence, she thought, of all the earliest recordings having been entered in Flinc’s older copy.
As Flint had said, there were passing references to the Druid Histories in both books, but none that gave her any further information.
Nor was there anything that specifically referred to a magic that could help her find someone who was missing. Or at least, not anything new. There was mention of the scrye waters and the scrye orbs—both of which she was familiar with—but nothing else.
She thought at first, when considering the possibility of returning to Paranor, that she could locate Drisker by using the scrye waters. But then she recalled that it only showed uses of magic within the Four Lands, not the identity of those who used it, so she didn’t see much chance of any help there.
What she really needed was a scrye orb of the sort both Drisker and Clizia possessed. Then, perhaps, she could summon Drisker and speak with him as he had done with Clizia. But to obtain a scrye orb, she had to find Clizia and take or steal hers away. Her hatred of the witch was sufficient to drive her to try, but reason suggested she should think twice. Clizia had bested her and Tavo and Drisker together, so how would she manage such a feat alone? And if she failed, what would become of Drisker then? No one but Tarsha and Clizia knew what had happened to him. And even Tarsha wasn’t sure. If she died, the only person who wished to restore him to the Four Lands would be gone.
The urge to act on any of these possibilities was maddeningly tantalizing, but none of them offered a reasonable path to finding the Druid. Enraged as she was at what Clizia Porse had done to Tavo, she knew she could not abandon the Druid. She had to help him before she could think of revenge on the witch.
Tarsha and Flinc went back to studying their respective books, and the hours passed away and the day with it. By nightfall, they were just finishing the final pages when the forest imp—apparently paging ahead in expectation of finishing and wanting to see how much was left—gave a puzzled grunt.
“What in haist’s name is this?” he muttered, almost to himself.
Tarsha set down her book and moved to the other side of the table to peer over his shoulder. She was surprised, when she bent down, to find how small he seemed. Earlier, she had thought him much larger. But you couldn’t just grow and shrink at will.
Or could you, if you were a Faerie creature?
“See?” he asked, pointing to the margin of the page he was reading.
This time, it wasn’t writing he had discovered; it was a drawing. It was right at the end of the book and didn’t seem to refer to anything on the page. It appeared to be a sort of box with a series of small circles at its center, several dozen in number. Most of the circles were blank, but eight of them had numbers written inside, going from one to eight in random fashion. She stared at it in confusion, in part because there was something familiar about it. She read through the writing on the page, but it was something about nature’s secrets and concealments, and she could not make a connection.
“What is it?” Flinc asked her.
“Don’t know,” she replied. “But there is something…”