Her stolen books became the most precious treasures she had ever found. A Study of the Old Ways made relevant commentary on ancient therianthrope tribal culture, although it made no comment on their magic. Wynas Serasaphi translated to ‘music of the wild’, providing notes on a musical notation very similar to those she had found with therianthropic spells.
And the last, the untitled book with the animal rune art, was the greatest treasure of all. Written in Old Antherian in a harsh, scratchy hand, it opened, ‘My name is Wylandriah Witch-feather, the last therianthrope of my time, and here written is a guide to my art, that future generations may know its power.’
Her voice shook as she read it aloud, looking up at Smythe with shining eyes. ‘We found it.’ She smoothed the open page with trembling hands. ‘She wrote it and we found it.’
‘You know — I think she could tell you would be the one to bring it back,’ said Smythe. ‘She risked a lot, leaving you with that key.’
Ree gazed down at the book, brimming with so many emotions that it was hard to identify them all. Again, she had that strange feeling of fate. Would Wylandriah have written this book if she hadn’t met Ree? If not, then it was a coincidence of cosmic proportions that the Lich had sent them back.
Or was this what her mother had meant, every time she had promised her that Morrin watched her with all-knowing eyes, and had great plans for her?
They pored over the books together, checking each other’s translations and writing up notes. Ree painstakingly copied it all into her journal, blotting away all the excess ink and keeping it concise and to the point. Her journal was the only modern study of therianthropy, and if she succeeded, it would hold pride of place in all the libraries of the crypt.
‘Did you include the note about Wylandriah?’ Smythe asked.
They were still sitting outside the archives, paper strewn around them in a semi-circle. Ree was cross-legged, her journal open in her lap; Smythe knelt with his hands flat on his legs, craning to get a look at her notes. She’d never done any of her research so publicly, but it no longer seemed wise to travel to one of the secret libraries when the Lich might still be holding a grudge against them. Besides, Smythe made it all seem so possible and admirable that it was difficult to be embarrassed.
A few feet away, Larry flapped her empty satchel, then scowled when nothing fell out. He flapped it a few more times, then started gumming the strap.
‘I’ve included the note. It’s only anecdotal,’ she said, worrying her lip with her teeth.
‘Some of the most important pieces of historical research are anecdotal,’ he said warmly. ‘And it’s more than anyone else in our era has ever seen.’
Ree’s cheeks heated and she looked down. Some of her hair had come unpinned, and fell into her face. ‘I think I’ve got everything. Could we collect the specimen now?’
‘Now?’
Ree nodded, avoiding his eyes. ‘I know we’ve been at this a long time, but there’s actually a tower not far from here which peaks above the surface. With any luck —’
Smythe stood up and stretched. ‘Of course we’ll go now. I was only surprised.’ Again, he extended his hand.
Something had changed between them, Ree wasn’t sure when. They had touched hardly ever before — and indeed, Ree had hardly touched anyone — but now it seemed that it was a thing that was meant to be normal — that Smythe could offer her a hand up, or touch her gently at the elbow, that Ree could brush her hand against his or squeeze his shoulder in support. It was happening more and more, with such regularity that Ree wondered if it felt natural to Smythe.
For her, it was still a breath-catching moment every time. She gathered her will and took his hand; he pulled her to her feet. For a moment, they just stood there, her hand in his, looking into each other’s eyes.
Then Ree pulled her hand free, gathered her notes, and tugged her pack from Larry’s grip. She shouldered it and headed off, Smythe falling into step with her. Behind them, Larry wordlessly — and loudly — lamented the loss of his chew toy.
She didn’t talk much on the journey, focusing instead on getting them safely through the crypt. She guided Smythe across a crystal floor that held encased corpses, near perfectly preserved. She encouraged him across a rope bridge with missing slats, and up a crumbling ladder that was barely more than a series of deep gouges in a stone wall. Smythe, though, kept up a near constant conversation, speculating as to how their research would line up with the reality of shapeshifting, exclaiming loudly about every new room or chamber they passed, and coaxing Larry across the more difficult terrain.
They encountered some unbound undead; a trio of lesser dead, a skeleton awakening from an alcove. There was such a concentration of death and magic in the crypts that it wasn’t uncommon for corpses to wake themselves up from time to time. Each time, Ree’s hands found her belt pouch, but it was unneeded. Though Smythe was a summoner and dealt primarily with spirits, his Craft was plenty strong enough to lay the undead back to rest.
All the while, Ree’s chest grew tighter at the thought of what awaited them. Daylight, which she hadn’t been properly exposed to in months. Fresh air. Magic, she hoped. Failure, she feared.
They finally rounded a corner into a narrow stone doorway, the walls carved with sprawling constellations. The Lovers, the Paladin, the Gentle Beast. All images that she knew better from books than from the sky.
‘This is it,’ she said. She looked over her shoulder at Smythe, who had Larry’s arm and was helping him up the step.
Larry tripped up onto the landing and Smythe dusted his hands. His eyebrows pinched as he took in the doorway. ‘This is the tower, is it?’ He walked over and ran his hands gently along the carvings, his fingers following the grooves. ‘Ethian stonework,’ he murmured. He raised an eyebrow at Ree. ‘Was it a temple? Or — perhaps an observatory of some kind?’
Ree held in a smile. ‘You’re the historian.’
‘I AM the historian, aren’t I?’ Smythe held nothing back. Sometimes she wondered how he didn’t actually light up whatever room he was in. His smiles could surely be harvested as an energy source. ‘But you’re the clever one. Well — the cleverer one, obviously I’m rather impressive myself.’ He chortled in a way that was only half self-deprecating.
Something loosened inside Ree. He was always saying things like that: that she was clever, that she probably knew better than he did. He was a highly qualified scholar (as he never failed to mention) but he still thought so highly of her. Nobody had ever had this level of confidence in her. It made her feel more confident in herself.
‘Well, I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘The furnishings were plundered years ago, and the upper levels have mostly crumbled. If I had to guess — observatory.’
‘Because it must have been at least somewhat open to the sky to have crumbled in a few hundred years?’
Ree smiled. ‘That, and I want it to be.’
Smythe laughed and straightened his glasses.
The interior of the tower was sparse. Some wood mulch that might have been from broken chairs and tables, bare stone floors, and a tight spiral staircase. ‘Stay here, Larry.’ She took the minion by the shoulders and stood him against the wall.
Larry grunted questioningly.
‘There’s daylight up there.’ Maybe whatever strange magic the Lich had imbued Larry with would protect him from sunlight, but she’d seen too many minions stripped of their unlife under those harsh rays to take the risk. ‘Just — stay here, all right?’
As she stepped away, Larry started to follow. She pushed him back. ‘No. Stay.’ She waved her finger, her expression stern.
Smythe clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Cheer up, old chap! We’ll be back before you know it. Hey! Enough of that!’ He snatched his hand away before Larry could bite it.
And then they were up the staircase, following a tight, claustrophobic spiral. She could feel the air warm as they ascended. A bubble of anticipation popped in her chest. She didn’t know how to feel. She only knew that it felt like something big was happening.
And then, she felt her darkvision fading. Colour seeped back into the world and she squinted her eyes against the brightness of it. Behind her, she heard Smythe heave a sigh.
The staircase ended on a wide platform. There were a few semi-destroyed columns of stacked stone; brightly coloured shards of glass littered the floor. But for Ree, her eyes immediately trended up, beyond the rocky mountainside, beyond the horizon and the distant hills, and up to a sky that was blue and cloudy and so bright it hurt.
Smythe stepped up beside her. She could hear his breath catch. He shaded his eyes, gazing at the long view of the upworld shrinking into the distance. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured. Then he closed his eyes and turned up his face to the sky. His curls tumbled back from his face. ‘I’d almost forgotten the feeling of sunlight. There’s nothing quite like it.’
‘No,’ said Ree. Since he couldn’t see, she set her smile free. They stood together a moment, just feeling the sunlight and studying the sky. It made Ree’s eyes water, but she didn’t much mind.
‘I can see what you mean,’ Smythe said. ‘About wanting this to be an observatory. I mean — it’s terrible scholarly method, but I see what you mean.’
Ree nodded and bit her lip in thought. She chased around for the words she needed. ‘It’s a place where the whole sky is cracked open. The perfect place to watch.’
Smythe glanced at her. ‘And you’ve a natural bent to observation.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well, I did catch you spying on me, the first time we met.’
Ree shook her head. ‘I’m pretty sure I caught you misidentifying organs.’
He smiled, then turned serious. ‘I suppose I owe you an apology.’
Ree turned her head slightly. ‘It’s fine, I didn’t really mind.’
‘No — not for the organs. For calling you an undead creature.’
He was looking at her so earnestly now. Ree’s cheeks were burning; she thanked the gods for the hundredth time that her blushes didn’t show. How many times had she obsessed over him mistaking her for a minion?
‘It’s fine.’
‘It’s not. I was surprised and — well, more than a little scared. But even then I thought you seemed — I mean, you were much more, um, attractive than I thought an undead would —’
‘Smythe.’ Ree’s face was actually on fire. Surely no amount of necromancy could hide this blush.
‘Right, right.’ He was blushing now, too, a faint pinkish-grey rising in his cheeks. ‘That … didn’t really come out right. I just felt I owed you an apology.’
Ree nodded, not sure whether it would be better or worse to meet his eyes. ‘Well, thank you. Apology accepted.’
‘Excellent.’
‘Great.’
Ree smoothed her robes and looked up and around. ‘So, according to our notes we need an animal.’ And now, up here, they had the entire upworld to search for one.
Smythe cleared his throat. ‘A bird.’ He gave her a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘You said you wanted to fly.’
She tried to keep her smile inside, but judging by the warmth in his eyes, she didn’t think she managed it. ‘You take the south east. I’ll take the north west.’
And they began their watch. Ree had thought her eyes would adjust to the sunlight, but it was so much brighter than even a torchlit room that she found her eyes still watering an hour later. She saw many specks of movement — distant birds of prey circling, and scurrying animals among the rocky brush, but for a long time, nothing really came close.
But animals were skittish. In the crypt, the only animals she’d really encountered were rats, spiders, and sometimes fish, but stillness seemed to be key in getting them to approach. So, like she was trying to coax a rat with a handful of millet, she sat very still, let her breath come deep and slow, and waited.
Surprisingly, Smythe didn’t speak. Whether he, too, knew to wait in stillness or he was deep in thought, she didn’t know. She resisted the urge to look over at him; staring at the back of his head would do very little to change the situation. But she wondered what he was thinking. She wondered if he was thinking of her.
‘You were much more attractive than I thought an undead would be.’
The words still made her blush, though whether more from pleasure or horror, she found it hard to tell. Certainly, it had embarrassed her, and yet she couldn’t stop reliving the conversation in her head.
Then: ‘Ree!’ The words were barely more than a whisper. He didn’t look at her; his eyes were fixed on a point in the sky. Ree followed his gaze up to a bird with a long beak and sweeping black wings.
The crow circled above them. It appeared to be alone, though she’d thought crows usually flocked together. It was a beautiful creature, glossy-feathered and sleek in build with splayed wingtips. It dodged and played in the air, looking down at them with beady eyes, so at ease in its element that Ree’s heart ached at the thought of killing it.
Not that she really knew how they might kill it, but before Ree could put that concern into words, the crow swooped in low to alight on one of the crumbling columns and Smythe threw out his arm. A flash of red-and-black magic arced from his hand to hit the crow in the chest. It immediately went limp and fell from its perch.
They both scrambled over to it. ‘It’s dead.’ Smythe looked up at her with wide eyes.
Ree held in a sigh. ‘Yes. You killed it.’
Smythe crouched down by the fallen bird. ‘I mean, I know that but — well, I’ve never killed anything before.’ He reached trembling fingers over to the fallen bird. ‘Still warm.’ He quickly retracted his hand. He looked greyer than usual, even as his power drained from him.
Ree hesitated, not sure what to say. He looked … smaller. Frailer, somehow. His shoulders sharp and pulled in, his eyes bleak as he studied the lifeless body of feather and bone on the ground. She settled for: ‘Are you alright?’ She studied him closely, anxiety pecking at her. ‘It can be a harrowing thing, to take a life. Some necromancers never do, not even animals.’
‘No, it’s — look, I’m fine. Really.’ He took a shuddering breath, meeting her eyes for the first time since the bird fell. ‘I just didn’t expect it, is all. Its life was sacrificed for a good cause.’ He smoothed the feathers on its wing. ‘What now?’
He didn’t look fine. He looked … she wasn’t sure. Shaken, perhaps. Alert. But if he wanted to move on, then they would move on. There was little enough time as it was.
‘Now, we skin it,’ she said. ‘I think my mother has a skinning knife. We can start with that.’