Hawthorne was more than happy when they finally left Habag, none too soon for her taste even if they’d only been there a night. While the gnomish contraptions that filled the city didn’t bother her, the noise was a problem. She could hardly sleep at all until Sedder cast soundproofing spells on their rooms, by which point she thoroughly had a headache that didn’t completely go away until they were well away from the city.
The group piled into a train car, hauling along all their books with them. Hawthorne was glad that they hadn’t run into too much trouble sailing over here, minor explosions aside. While the books would probably have been undamaged if dropped in the ocean, or indeed, even a volcano, given the amount of protective enchantments on them, it would have been incredibly inconvenient to retrieve them, not to mention obnoxious to save the others from drowning. She wasn’t sure her Wind Magic was up to the task of covering all of them with magical breathing spells.
Along the way, Keolah perused the book Sedder had acquired for her and shared with Hawthorne the gist of it. It spoke of how the trolls had once been great wizards, but had dared to oppose the evil necromancer, Arkavellet. For that, he had cursed them to be unable to channel mana. The book was unclear as to just how or why Arkavellet did this, especially considering plenty of other people had opposed him and none of them had experienced similar curses. Unless one counted the elves losing their longevity. The book did mention in passing a comparison. Hmm.
The Valley of Gal appeared to be not just a large, round valley next to a volcano, like Hawthorne had originally assumed, but the volcano itself. She gaped out the window as the train rolled past the rim of the mountains and into the valley.
“This place is full of colorless mana,” Keolah said quietly.
“Like the Witchwood?” Hawthorne asked.
“Positively saturated,” Keolah said. “Very nearly as much as in the Witchwood, if not even more.”
“At least that might provide some good reason why so many gnomes and elves had decided that it was a good idea to set up shop in the middle of a volcano,” Hawthorne said with a snicker.
“So, Calto…” Keolah said slowly. “Are there any… particular dangers to the Valley of Gal that we should be aware of?”
Calto shrugged. “Not really.”
“The volcano is perfectly safe?” Keolah asked with a smirk.
“It’s totally dormant,” Calto said. “It hasn’t actually erupted since the end of the League of Wizards.”
Keolah grimaced. “Calto, remind me that if I should ever wind up traveling through time somehow and wind up in the League of Wizards era, to avoid the Valley of Gal.”
“Ah, but it would have been glorious to see what it was like before the eruption,” Calto said.
“So long as you’re good on your timing of getting out of there…” Keolah said.
“Tell me this whole place isn’t built over lava,” Sedder said. “I can’t see the window from here. It would be just my luck to complain about Habag being built over water, to leave it and wind up somewhere built over lava instead.”
Calto snickered. “No, it is not built over lava. As I just got done telling Keolah, the volcano is dormant. There isn’t anymore lava. Well, I guess there might still be some magma deep underground somewhere, but really, we’ve got some skilled volcanologists here. They’d notice if the volcano was gearing up for another eruption decades in advance.”
“You know, at this point, I’m just going to take your word that this volcano hasn’t erupted in millennia and if it does explode just because we happen to set foot in it, then clearly the Trickster is having a good laugh at me and there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.”
The train came to a halt at a large building of shiny chrome and glass, gracefully curved and spacious. This wasn’t the train’s last stop, and not everyone still on the train was getting off here. The tracks wound on to the north, curving a little northwest, and the train directory said that its next stop was in Tregas Valley.
Gal looked drastically different from Habag. It exhibited elegance, where Habag was haphazard. Vendors along the railway concourse offered snacks and beverages both hot and cold. People hurried from one place to another, some of them jostling at the pile of books the group was hauling along and uttering quick apologies without stopping. Most of the people here were gnomes, elves, and goblins, along with the occasional dwarf and even a small group of humans chatting next to a drink stand.
Yennik made a low whistle. “Would you look at this place.”
“There’s goblins here?” Hawthorne raised an eyebrow.
“Of course,” Yennik said. “Why wouldn’t there be?”
“I dunno,” Hawthorne said. “I guess after seeing the ones in western Rízán living in hide yurts, I didn’t expect to see them hanging out somewhere so… modern.”
Yennik snickered. “They live in yurts because they’re comfortable, not because they’re primitive, Hawthorne.” He gave a sweeping gesture. “This is the greatest center of magic in Zarhanna. Maybe even on all Lezaria. I don’t know. Do you have great centers of magic in Kalor?”
“Not really,” Delven said. “I’ll not argue if you want to call it the greatest center of magic on Lezaria.”
“Right,” Yennik said. “At any rate, goblins might not train as many mages as the elves do, if only because we don’t train everyone in magic. But that doesn’t mean we don’t still have plenty of mages.”
“You called yourself a shaman,” Hawthorne said. “What’s the difference between a mage and a shaman?”
“A shaman is a kind of mage,” Yennik said. “It means I work with spirits.”
“What, like ghosts?” Hawthorne said.
“No, no,” Yennik said. “Elemental spirits. Earth spirits, in my case.”
“Your golems,” Sedder said.
“Exactly,” Yennik said.
The party headed out to locate an inn. There was one situated just outside the train station, but at Calto’s recommendation, they passed it over and continued on further into the valley. instead, they came to a larger inn named the Seven Foxes, whose decor included a much larger number of foxes than seven.
“Why foxes?” Hawthorne wondered. “Are foxes magical?”
“The owner is a kitsune,” Calto whispered.
“A what, now?” Hawthorne asked.
“Fox shifter,” Calto explained.
“Oh!” Hawthorne said. “Cool!”
A gnome woman with red-orange hair greeted them. “Hello, and welcome to Seven Foxes. I am Miko, the proprietor. What can I do for you?”
“Just Miko?” Hawthorne asked.
Miko sighed. “My gnomish name is Miko Damnfoxwhatareyoudoing.”
“I’m sorry,” Hawthorne said.
Miko waved it off. “Are you looking for rooms? We have plenty available at the moment.”
They acquired a small suite consisting of three bedrooms around a central common area, brought in their books and other belongings, and set up shop inside. That done, they split up for the moment to explore the city a bit before nightfall. The area was glutted with shops, libraries, and practice halls. While Keolah went straight to the nearest library, Hawthorne decided to go check out the shops instead.
“Hey, what are those potions over there?” Hawthorne asked, pointing over to shelf with several elixirs in different colored bottles. “Does that one say ‘change’? I think that says change.”
“It does,” Calto said. “That one can be used to turn you into what you want to be.”
“Great!” Hawthorne said. “We can just use those to disguise ourselves. Wait, they aren’t permanent, are they?”
“They’re permanent,” Calto said. “And they don’t work like that, either.”
“What do you mean?” Hawthorne asked.
“They’ll turn your body into what your soul thinks it should have been,” Calto said. “Like if you should have been a man, or if Sedder over there should have been either a pure-blooded elf or human. They’re for people who have gotten reborn into the wrong body. It happens a lot.”
Hawthorne made a face. “That’s not nearly as useful as I was thinking, then. Well. I suppose someone who felt like they were in the wrong body would disagree. But not useful for what I had in mind.”
“I’m perfectly happy being a half-elf, by the way,” Sedder interjected. “And I’m not sure that I want to know whatever it was that Hawthorne had in mind.” He paused. “Weird seeing Change Magic used so openly here, though, but I guess without the Fall of Albrynnia hanging over your heads, things are different.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of people who felt like they’d been born into the wrong body,” Hawthorne said. “Never heard of them trying to use magic to fix it, though.”
“People take a dim view of that sort of thing in Kalor,” Sedder said.
“Don’t see why,” Hawthorne said. “I mean, sure, getting stomped by monsters probably wasn’t fun, but it’s not like that was fault of any current shifters or anyone that knows Change.”
Sedder shrugged. “Prejudices rarely make sense. And some are more founded than others.”
“Like how the people in Dorgada hated me because my ancestors were nobles?” Hawthorne said with a snort.
“Exactly,” Sedder said. “And sometimes people get after me for being a half-elf.”
Hawthorne raised an eyebrow. “Not sure why anyone would care about that, either.”
“I reiterate, prejudices rarely make sense,” Sedder said.
“Like your aura color, for that matter,” Hawthorne added.
Sedder made a face.
“Why’s that?” Calto said. “What color is your aura?”
“Hawthorne, you weren’t supposed to mention that,” Sedder mumbled.
“Oh, right,” Hawthorne said.
Calto raised an eyebrow. “Well, don’t worry about me. I don’t care what color your aura is.”
“It’s dark gray, almost black,” Sedder hissed. “That’s why we were so eager to get out of Dorgada.”
“Oh, I see,” Calto said. “I dunno, I always thought Death Magic was pretty interesting. Academically speaking, that is.”
“I’m not a necromancer,” Sedder grumbled. “I’m an Illusionist. You’ve seen this yourself.”
“Or not seen, as the case may be sometimes,” Hawthorne said.
If Keolah had been impressed by the library of Scalyr, she was overwhelmed by the libraries of the Valley of Gal. It seemed at a glance like half the city was made up of libraries, with entire buildings dedicated to certain kinds of books and written in different languages. She passed over the libraries of snow elven, goblin, gnomish, and dwarven, and located one with books written in song elvish. Sadly, the translator amulets only covered spoken language. She was out of luck for written language. She wondered if the enchantment came as translator spectacles as well.
She hardly knew where to begin. languages, she supposed. For starters, she went to see if she could find anything on ancient Astanic, but she definitely kept an eye out for Tinean and any other obscure, little-known languages. But given the sheer volume of works in the libraries of Gal, it was going to take her forever to get through it all. And she was purely delighted at the opportunity.
Hours passed. Days passed. excitement turned into endless frustration. She found out things about the ancient mountain troll wizards that she kind of wished she hadn’t. While The Wizards Who Were took a distant, purely curious look at their history, from what she read here, they were possibly among the worst elements of the wizard wars. No one in the world was as skilled or experienced with Death Magic and demonology as the trolls. Not just propaganda, either, considering at least one of the books that discussed this tendency spoke of it in outright admirable tones. If anything, losing their magic had not made them worse people. It just prevented them from continuing to do horrible things. Far worse things, in fact, than mere slavery. While she’d originally believed Death Magic to be primarily raising zombies, one of its nastier uses had been a spell called the Living Rot. A disease that caused the victim’s body to putrefy from the inside out, never realizing what was wrong until it was too late. Sometimes, they would even trap a person’s soul in order to torture them further, repeatedly resurrecting them just to cause them further pain. Even the frost trolls and forest trolls were disgusted with them. Keolah’s stomach churned at the things she read and the detail at which they were described, and only hoped that some of them were exaggerated.
“That’s some interesting subject matter you’re reading there,” said a squeaky female voice from under her elbow, originating from a yellow aura.
At first Keolah thought a gnome had snuck up behind her, but a look at the woman’s oversized ears and yellowish-brown skin indicated that she was a goblin.
“So you are here,” Keolah said. “I’m Keolah.”
“Paka,” the goblin woman introduced herself. “What are you doing? Maybe I can help. I know a lot about the old troll wizards.”
Keolah looked at her warily. The last time a goblin had claimed that, he was lying in order to get himself out of a bad situation. Not that she really blamed him for it, mind you.
“I was hoping to find something on their language,” Keolah said. “The version of Astanic that the trolls spoke before they lost their magic. I found something I wanted to try to translate.”
“Oh?” Paka said. “Can I see?”
Keolah had brought a single book along with her in order to compare with whatever she might find, currently laying on the desk in front of her. She put a hand on it and began, “No, I’d really rather not—”
Paka grabbed it off the table and flipped through it, green eyes widening like saucers. “Wow, this is really old. You weren’t kidding.”
Keolah nodded. “I have so far found very little on the ancient Astanic language. I suppose finding a dictionary would have been too much to hope for.” She reached over to take it back, but Paka pulled it away.
“Well,” Paka said. “You don’t need to worry about it anymore.” With a wink, she vanished before Keolah’s eyes.
Keolah blinked. Motion Magic? Damn it, the goblin was a Traveller. She couldn’t have gotten far. Most people she’d met capable of teleportation couldn’t go further than a mile, if that, before they had to rest and replenish their mana. Scanning the area, Keolah frowned deeply. It was difficult to concentrate and pinpoint any particular aura with this sort of saturation of colorless mana on top of all of the enchanted objects.
“Damn it, you goblins are trying to make me racist,” Keolah muttered.
She headed up to the front desk and approached the gnome woman working as a librarian. The name on the desk read simply Inga, without bothering with a surname.
“Can I help you?” Inga asked.
“Someone stole my book,” Keolah said.
Inga raised an eyebrow. “Took a book you were reading?”
“No, a book that belongs to me,” Keolah said. “I’d brought it into the library hoping to translate it. She took it from me and teleported away.”
Inga frowned. “I’ll call the guards.” She reached under her desk, touching a pink weave of mana, which flared to life for a moment in Keolah’s eyes.
Shortly after, a uniformed gnome with a cyan aura arrived at the library and approached the desk. “Officer Brajan, at your service. Is there trouble?”
“Thank you for coming, officer,” Keolah said. “My name is Keolah. Someone stole a rare book from me that I was trying to translate. A goblin woman, called herself Paka. Yellow-brown skin, black hair, green eyes, yellow aura. She grabbed my book and teleported away. This was only a few minutes ago. She couldn’t have gotten very far.”
Brajan groaned. “Her again?”
“You’ve had trouble with her before?” Keolah said.
Brajan nodded. “Never been able to catch her, though. You saw her aura. Are you a Seeker?”
“Inborn, yes,” Keolah said.
“Think you can find her again if you knew where to start?” Brajan asked.
“Absolutely,” Keolah said. “It’s hard to read past the ambient mana and enchanted objects, but if I can narrow it down, I can probably find her.”
“Let’s go, then, if you’re willing,” Brajan said.
Keolah nodded. “Of course.”
Brajan led her out behind the library and into a more rundown and ramshackle part of town. “Wish we had more Seekers in the force. It would make our job a lot easier. You ever consider a career in law enforcement?”
Keolah chuckled. “I’m afraid I have other aspirations.”
“Didn’t think so,” Brajan said. “This isn’t a good part of town. Want me to put wards up, or would that interfere with your divination?”
“That would make it harder, yes,” Keolah said.
“Alright,” Brajan said. “I’ll throw them up in an instant if there’s trouble, though.”
Keolah peered about, trying to spot Paka’s wild yellow aura. There she was! Keolah only got a glimpse of it, moving away and behind an enchanted wall, but now she had an idea of where to look.
“That way!” Keolah pointed, stepping up her pace.
She’d lost the aura, but she raced to where she’d last seen it, Brajan keeping close to her. They clambered through narrow alleys through tiny wooden buildings of gnome-sized apartments, around a corner, and down a flight of stairs. People in shabby clothes lined the streets and sat on street corners, many of them with handwritten signs that she mostly couldn’t read.
“The old mines?” Brajan said. “Why in the Abyss would she come here? There’s too much magical interference to teleport out.”
“That was probably the idea,” Keolah said. “Also too much interference to Seek her, either.”
Flecks of magically charged crystal lined the walls of the tunnels, making it impossible for her Seeking to penetrate them. The two of them wound their way through the mines as Keolah squinted to try to make out anything. A surprisingly large number of people huddled in the tunnels that they had to weave around and step over. Filthy dwarves with scraggly beards snored on makeshift bedrolls in niches along the walls. Deaf gnomes tried to signal to them in handtalk as they passed. Pale elves warmed themselves around a small blue fire.
The crystal cover wasn’t universal, and some of the interior walls were unobstructed. She caught glimpses, here and there, of a yellow aura, and used that to keep her bearings as best as she could. Then she lost the aura again for a while, but caught the distinctive weave of enchantments on the book itself. Maybe the goblin had dropped it? She relayed this to Brajan.
“Maybe she stashed your book somewhere in hopes of coming back for it later,” Brajan said, not the least bit surprised that a rare book might have enchantments on it.
“That’ll make it easy to retrieve, then, but not so helpful for actually catching her,” Keolah said.
“Let’s just focus on finding your book for the moment, though,” Brajan said.
Keolah nodded, and made her way through the tunnels toward where the book, now stationary, lay. Somewhat below them and to the left. It took some circling around to reach that point, but when they got there, it was not alone or stashed anywhere. It lay on the ground, partially underneath Paka’s motionless body. Without an aura, she was clearly dead.
“Paka?” Brajan said, hesitantly approaching the body.
“She’s dead,” Keolah said.
“wonder what happened,” Brajan said. “Did she just trip and break her neck or something?”
Gingerly, Keolah bent down to pull the book out from under the corpse. Jostled, the goblin’s mouth open, and out fell a clump of writhing maggots. Keolah jumped back in surprise and disgust.
“What in the Abyss?” Brajan hissed.
Keolah fought down nausea and reached in, burning some of the maggots away around the book with a gout of green flame, and grabbed the book quickly. She could not stop watching what was happening to Paka’s body. She wanted to look away as maggots devoured the body from the inside out. She practically held her breath as they left nothing behind except a pile of coins and some jewelry.
“By all the gods and demons…” Keolah uttered.
She channeled more fire to char the maggots into ash before they could do anything else. Freaking out as much as she was, the flames went everywhere, and Brajan had to take a step back to avoid her outburst. One by one, the maggots popped under the heat, letting out wisps of smoke as they withered into blackened husks. Breathing heavily, by the time Keolah released her Fire Magic, there was nothing left of the maggots, and the goblin, but a black stain on the ground. Whichever of those poor people they’d passed who felt bravest could claim the valuables. She wasn’t going to touch them. Neither did Brajan seem inclined to collect them as potentially stolen goods.
“Keolah,” Brajan said quietly after a minute. “Was this book you had… cursed?”
“I don’t know,” Keolah said, turning away, hands shaking. “It’s enchanted, that’s for sure, but even I can’t decipher what all the weaves on it mean.”
“From the looks of it, it definitely has an illegal curse attached to it,” Brajan said. “I’m going to have to ask to confiscate it for quarantine and analysis.”
“Officer Brajan,” Keolah said, not looking at him. “If it’s cursed, then it triggered on Paka stealing it from me. If you take it from me, it may well trigger on you as well.”
Brajan made a face. “Point. Where did you get it?”
“In the old tower at Kadabi-Gharatik,” Keolah said.
“Kebab-de-Garateck?” Brajan said. “No wonder, if you were poking around the Cursed Tower. Though how did it not trigger on you taking it, then?”
“I don’t know,” Keolah said. “Although I would assume, as one of my companions pointed out, it is not stealing if its previous owners are dead.” She started to make her way out of the mine, hoping she could remember the way they’d come in, or at least find the way back to the surface with Seeking somehow.
Brajan kept close behind her. “It might not trigger if you voluntarily were to place it down on a table and no one were to touch it, at least.”
“I’m going to go take it back to my room at the Seven Foxes and put it down there,” Keolah said. “And I will ensure that it does not leave my room again until I leave the Valley of Gal. If you wish to have someone come to carefully analyze it, by all means, but I’m not going to take the risk of triggering that curse again.”
“I can’t hold you liable for causing the death of the would-be thief, as you didn’t realize you were carrying a cursed item,” Brajan said. “And being unable to confiscate it without triggering the curse, I can only ask that you remove it from my city.”
Keolah sighed. “Fine. I understand.” She didn’t care to argue about it. She really didn’t want to risk another — well, she couldn’t really say innocent, in the case of Paka — person getting killed by a curse like that. No sleep was going to be coming tonight. That was an image she wouldn’t be able to get out of her head for quite some time.
Hawthorne flopped down in the seat across from Silver with a mug of ale brought in from the common area, puffing out a hard sigh. “She’s spending all her time reading again.”
Silver shrugged. “It makes her happy.”
“I just kind of wish that I would make her happy,” Hawthorne grumbled.
Silver grunted, and took a long drink of his own ale.
“Haven’t you started snogging Sedder yet?” Hawthorne asked.
Silver, mid-swig, almost choked on his drink.
“Is that a yes or a no?” Hawthorne asked.
“Do you have no tact or sense of propriety?” Silver wondered, between coughing.
“Sure, I just choose not to use it,” Hawthorne said.
Silver made a disgusted noise and wiped his face off. “Honestly, Hawthorne, right now I’m more likely to sleep with you than with Sedder.”
“Would you?” Hawthorne said. “Maybe if I come home pregnant, my mom will shut up about me marrying my cousin.”
Silver put his face on the table.
“Not that I’m really keen on raising a kid,” Hawthorne went on. “But if she wants grandkids that badly, she can take care of them herself.”
“Have you any siblings?” Silver wondered.
Hawthorne shook her head. “Considering how much she seems to love children, I guess she couldn’t make any more herself after she had me. So, hey, that means I got all the attention.” She made a face. “I wish I’d had a sibling or two. Maybe then she’d have left me alone more.”
“It was my understanding that you spent quite a lot of time having ‘adventures’,” Silver said.
“Well, yeah,” Hawthorne said. “I spent every moment I could get away with outside the home. Why do you think I did?”
“Because you’re the sort of person who has to be going on ‘adventures’ and getting herself into trouble constantly.”
Hawthorne snickered. “Guess I can’t really argue with that. But still, not like that was the only reason.”
“Having siblings isn’t necessarily a reprieve, either,” Silver said. “If you think your parents nag you, and you have a sibling who agrees with your parents’ nagging, all you wind up with is an additional person to be nagged by.”
“Aeris’ tits,” Hawthorne muttered. “I take back everything I said about wishing I had siblings.”
“Of course, I’d imagine that’d be another matter if they were on your side,” Silver grumbled, adding barely audibly, “Not that I’d ever know what that felt like.”
“Seriously, though,” Hawthorne said. “I’m sure you’ve seen the way Sedder looks at you.”
“Yes,” Silver muttered. “I’ve seen.”
“So…?” Hawthorne prompted.
“What?” Silver said.
“Do you like him?” Hawthorne asked.
“That’s a complicated question,” Silver said.
“It’s complicated?” Hawthorne said. “You’re practically married already, then.”
“My ex had him stalking me,” Silver said.
“Well, yeah, I guess there’s that,” Hawthorne said.
“Besides,” Silver retorted. “I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t,” Hawthorne said.
“So why do you care if I’m snogging him or not?” Silver asked.
Hawthorne shrugged. “Because you’re looking depressed all the time.”
“I am not,” Silver said. “Why do you care if I look depressed, for that matter? Do you have an awkward crush on me, too, now?”
Hawthorne snorted softly. “Because it’s annoying to look at, that’s why.”
“That’s the only reason,” Silver said flatly.
“Totally,” Hawthorne said.
Silver took another drink of ale.
The door to the suite opened, and Keolah strode inside, looking like she’d seen a ghost. “Hey, guys. Guess what? Turns out the books are cursed, and we need to get them out of town now.”
Yennik blanched, and dropped the book he was looking at like a cobra.
“Wait, books?” said a uniformed gnome, coming in behind her. “You have more than one of these things?”
“We have thirty-seven of these things,” Keolah said.
“Oh, gods,” the gnome groaned. “Yes, please get them all out of my city.”
“Just how are they cursed, exactly?” Hawthorne asked warily.
“Anti-theft enchantments,” Keolah said. “Deadly ones.”
“Ugh, I knew it,” Yennik muttered.
“I’d still like to do more research here,” Keolah said. “Any chance you guys could take them out of the city for me?”
“Didn’t you just say they had anti-theft spells on them?” Hawthorne said. “Don’t you think they’d trigger for us too?”
“Um,” Keolah said. “We were all involved in retrieving them, except for Yennik, and it hasn’t triggered on him yet.”
“You were the one who claimed them, though,” Hawthorne said.
“What do you mean?” Keolah asked.
“Taking them with us was your idea,” Hawthorne said.
“If anything, they should be yours, though, since you were the one who broke into the room with them,” Keolah said.
“Well, I’m not taking the chance on cursed books by taking them away from you,” Hawthorne said. “And I’m not leaving you, either.”
Keolah made a sound of frustration.
“Oh, good day, Officer Brajan,” spoke the voice of the innkeeper, Miko, as she glided through the open suite door. “Is there trouble?”
“Ah, Miss Miko,” the gnome guard, presumably Brajan, said. “Sorry for having to intrude upon your establishment. I’ve just discovered that some of your patrons are keeping some dangerous magical artifacts here, and I need to request them to get them out of the city, since they are too volatile to be confiscated.”
“Really?” Miko said, coal-black eyes running over the party before fixing themselves back on the gnome guard. “Come now. I’m certain that my patrons would never do something like that.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem like they realized the artifacts were dangerous, so I’m not arresting them at the moment or anything,” Brajan said. “Unless, of course, they refuse to cooperate and continue to put others at risk.”
Miko smiled demurely at him. “Now, now. My patrons have been very cautious and well-behaved. They will not cause you any further trouble. Why don’t you just forget about this and go back to your duties?”
Brajan blinked a few times as Miko continued to stare evenly at him, then turned around and left the room without another word.
Hawthorne raised an eyebrow. “Well, that was weird.”
“You mind controlled him?” Keolah said quietly once the door to their suite had closed again.
“I didn’t control him, exactly,” Miko said. “I just modified his short-term memory and gave him a little nudge.”
“Now that is a handy ability,” Hawthorne said.
“Yes,” Yennik agreed. “How much is this going to cost us, exactly?”
Miko cocked her head, fluttered her eyelashes, and said sweetly, “Oh, nothing. Just a favor.”
Keolah chuckled and gave her a bow. “Thank you for the assistance, Miss Miko.”
“Just be more careful with your artifacts, please,” Miko said. “The Trickster may not smile upon you next time.”
“He certainly wasn’t smiling on that goblin who tried to steal my book,” Keolah said, making a face.
Miko bowed to them and smoothly left the room.
“A favor,” Yennik said quietly. “I don’t envy you owing a kitsune a favor.”
“It was ‘us’ a few minutes ago, now it’s ‘you’?” Hawthorne said. “You threw your lot in with us, did you not?”
Yennik groaned. “I don’t want to owe a kitsune a favor! Also, for the record, I’m not going to steal your books.”
“They so far haven’t shown any sign of caring about you guys handling them,” Keolah said.
“You could have all died horribly taking them out of the tower in the first place,” Yennik said. “We didn’t call it the Cursed Tower for no reason. I wouldn’t have voluntarily set foot in that place, never mind touched anything.”
“Is that so?” Hawthorne said. “I seem to recall you saying something about needing to ignore superstition to check the place out.”
“Well,” Keolah said. “The alternative to going inside was being skewered by trolls. The ward at the door stopped non-mages from entering.”
“Okay, good point,” Yennik said.
“Heh heh,” Hawthorne chuckled. “We went into the skewer to keep from being skewered.”
“Still, if it were me, I would have been huddling in there as far from touching anything as I could and still not be skewered by trolls,” Yennik said.
“They probably left us alone after that because they thought we’d die horribly from curses,” Silver said.
“So… what sort of favor do you suppose the kitsune will want?” Keolah asked hesitantly.
“There is absolutely no telling,” Yennik said. “I never thought I’d actually meet one. Although, I may have met plenty of them and just never knew they were shifters. But they’re probably the shiftiest shifters out there, according to legend.”
“She’s probably eavesdropping,” Silver said with a shrug.
Keolah snickered. “No, I’d have noticed her pink aura outside the door.”
“I still wouldn’t count it out,” Silver said. “She helped us once, but don’t trust her. She could as easily modify our memories and mind control us if she wanted to. Except for Hawthorne and Sedder, at least.”
“Why me?” Hawthorne asked.
“You’re an inborn Warder,” Silver said. “Even though you have no training in Mind Magic, that will still grant you some innate magic resistance and keep anyone from easily breaking into your mind without you noticing.”
“Anyway, right,” Keolah said. “Books don’t leave this room until we’re getting out of town. Seeing as they haven’t triggered any curses on us yet, let’s just assume that they will continue to refrain from triggering, and definitely not pretend to fight over them or any stupid childish thing, just to be on the safe side.”
“Who here would do something like that?” Yennik asked.
All eyes turned to Hawthorne.
“What?” said Hawthorne innocently.