Chapter Ten

EVERYONE WAS SUBDUED AS THEY FLEW BACK TO Drekhelm. At least they had one piece, Anders told himself. Even if the next riddle was even less clear than the first.

Rayna and Ellukka were both tired when they landed, transforming out on the mountainside in the setting sun, so the foursome could make their way up to the doors of the Great Hall and check that the coast was clear for them to creep inside.

“It wasn’t just wading through the cold water,” Ellukka said. “The weather was cold today as well.”

“I feel like I can’t think properly,” Rayna agreed. “Though it’s getting better since we got back here.”

Anders bit his lip as he climbed up to the doors. This had to be the effect of the Snowstone. Had Hayn run out of excuses? Had Sigrid gotten her hands on an augmenter? Once she had, she might be able to easily spread the cold they’d felt in Holbard as far as Drekhelm.

He stopped by the door, which was slightly ajar, and put his eye to the crack. He froze at what he saw, and held his hand up to bid the others keep quiet behind him. The Dragonmeet was assembled at the table at the top of the hall, clearly in the middle of one of their endless debates.

Saphira, one of the young members who’d come to their class yesterday, was speaking. “Well somebody lit those fires in Holbard, even if we don’t know who it was.”

Torsten snorted behind his big, bushy beard. “I’d congratulate them, if I could.”

Valerius shot him a quelling look, which surprised Anders—he’d thought Valerius and Torsten agreed on everything. Perhaps it was only most things. “We have reports from our spies,” he said. “They witnessed the fire at the port, and they say it was white and gold. It was dragonsfire.”

Mylestom leaned forward from his place beside Saphira. “Are we completely sure the spies didn’t light it?”

Leif answered, raising a sheaf of paper he held in one hand. “I trust them. There’s more bad news, though. I have here a new report of a small fire three days ago. It broke out in the warehouses of a mercher who supplies Ulfar Barracks and Academy with most of their vegetables. He stores his goods near the city, and the word here is that a white-and-gold fire was lit there three nights ago.”

“And our spies have nothing?” Valerius demanded. “No idea how this happened?”

“What matters more is that it did,” Torsten growled, sounding as fierce as an angry wolf. “The wolves need reminding that we’re not defenseless.”

Voices rose all around the table, as everyone began to speak at once.

“You can’t possibly—”

“We have to remember—”

“The wolves will—”

Leif raised both hands, and eventually it all died down. “Let’s adjourn for dinner,” he said. “We will hear everyone’s voice, but one at a time.”

The Dragonmeet left the hall in twos and threes, all twenty-five of them continuing the conversation.

As soon as they were gone, the children crept inside, Rayna last of all and pulling the door shut behind her.

“I’d better go find my father,” Ellukka said. “I’ll pretend I’ve been around all day, and I’ve been waiting for him for dinner.”

“We should eat too,” Lisabet said.

As she, Rayna, and Anders fetched food and went in search of Mikkel and Theo, Anders wondered if he should speak to Leif about his theory on faking dragonsfire. But he wasn’t even sure if it was possible on such a large scale, let alone whether it had happened.

They found the boys and filled them in on the day’s events while waiting for Ellukka in Anders and Lisabet’s room. Mikkel and Theo were more enthused than overwhelmed—they reminded Anders that the second riddle might be difficult, but that they’d already solved the first one, and that it hadn’t even taken them that long.

“I’m pretty sure Leif was suspicious today,” Mikkel said. “We both thought he knew we were covering for something, but he didn’t ask what.”

“We also think maybe he wanted us to keep covering,” Theo said. “Better than Torsten and Valerius finding out.”

“It must be hard for Ellukka to keep secrets from her father,” Rayna said.

“Better that than what’d happen to all of us if he found out,” Lisabet said, and nobody could disagree with that.

By the time Ellukka came to join them, they were trying to solve the riddle.

“He’s frustrated,” she reported. “They all are. Dragons might like to talk everything to death, but even the Dragonmeet knows it can’t go on forever. But nobody’s listening to anyone else. Where are we with the riddle?”

“Here,” said Mikkel. “It says through a mountain’s veil. A veil is something that covers you, right? So could it be clouds? It says as well that the veil is ice cold, and clouds are freezing.”

“So we have to fly straight through the clouds?” Lisabet asked, doubtful. “‘You’ll find this hiding place straight through,’ it says.”

“Sounds like it,” Theo agreed. “Hopefully without crashing into the mountain.”

“‘Light on the air,’” Anders said, running through the riddle in his head. “That sounds like clouds as well. Do you think it’s too obvious?”

“I’m not going to complain if it is,” Rayna said. “I wonder what this word, rót, means. I haven’t seen it before.”

“I think it’s another language,” Ellukka said. “Bryn will know. We can ask her in class tomorrow.”

Anders thought of the Finskól’s language specialist, who had always been friendly to him. If she knew what the word meant, perhaps its origin would give them another clue.

They made no further progress that night, though Anders lay awake later, turning the riddle over in his mind until he eventually fell asleep. He suspected the others were all doing the same.

The next morning, he copied the word rót onto a scrap of paper and sat down next to Bryn as soon as he arrived in class. But before he opened his mouth to ask her about the clue, he realized something wasn’t right. Her shoulders were rounded, her hands were tucked beneath her arms as she worked, and her light-brown skin was paler than usual. Usually she looked strong, but just now she was curled in on herself.

“Bryn, are you all right?” he asked.

His voice seemed to startle her, and she looked up with a blink, then tried for a smile. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just the cold, it’s bothering me this morning.”

A shiver went through Anders that had nothing to do with the temperature. “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked. “I could get you a hot drink?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem to make a difference. Truly, I’ll be all right.” She paused, though, and bit her lip. “I’m not worried about me, but my mother’s in the infirmary,” she admitted. “She came over all faint last night.”

“Pack and paws,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, I hope she feels better soon.”

The silence stretched between them, awkward—he hadn’t meant he was apologizing, but in a way, he was the one who’d let the wolves steal the Snowstone. And it was his kind who were doing this to hers. And though he knew Bryn didn’t hold him responsible, he still wasn’t sure what to say.

She was the one who broke the silence. “Did you come over to ask me something?”

He dug in his pocket for the scrap of paper. “I don’t suppose you can tell me what this word means?” he asked, showing it to her.

She leaned in to examine it, frowning thoughtfully. “It depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“On which language it’s in,” she said. “This word exists in more than one.”

“Oh.” Anders was crestfallen. “I have no idea.”

“Well,” she said, tapping her finger against the letter r. “In Allemhaüten, it means ‘red.’ Usually you’d have two dots over the letter o, instead of an accent, but that can just come down to handwriting, and sometimes in old-fashioned texts they use an accent.”

Anders couldn’t see how the word red helped solve the riddle, but more, he couldn’t see why his mother would have used a word from Allemhaüt. She was rumored to be from Vallen and Mositala. Then again, all Anders really knew about Allemhaüt was that Sakarias liked to buy pencils that were made there. “Do you know what it means in the other languages?” he asked Bryn.

“Hmm.” She paused so long he wondered if she’d forgotten he was there, and he fought the urge to fidget impatiently. If Bryn didn’t know, where could he possibly find the answer to this? “Yes,” she said suddenly, just when he was about to give up. “It could be a word in Old Vallenite. That’s what we spoke centuries ago.”

“Really?” Anders’s excitement jumped back to life. He only knew one word in Old Vallenite—barda, which meant battle, the word that had given him his name.

“Yes,” said Bryn. “I think it would mean root, like the root of a tree or a plant.” She frowned. “Or maybe a tooth? Maybe. But . . .”

“Thank you!” said Anders, trying not to hurry as he pocketed the scrap of paper. “You’re the best, Bryn.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, looking mildly surprised at his enthusiasm. “Old Vallenite’s really interesting, because the verbs . . . actually, that reminds me of something I wanted to look up.” A moment later she’d forgotten about him, shivering and turning up the collar of her coat, then pulling one of her books closer with an absentminded expression.

“Thank you,” Anders said quickly, hurrying back to the table where his friends were sitting.

He knew the answer to the riddle. He’d heard it on only his second day at Drekhelm.

They’d gone to the gardens in the cave that opened onto the mountainside, after he’d spoken to the Dragonmeet. Mikkel had said they were created by a dragon called Flic more than five hundred years before. A genius, who could make plants grow in the most unlikely of places.

Ellukka had said that Leif had taken her to see a waterfall once, with plants growing everywhere.

Everything in the riddle made sense.

From deep within and light on the air—the river feeding the waterfall could come from deep within the mountain, and the spray itself would be light on the air, wouldn’t it?

You’ll find this hiding place straight through / The ice-cold veil of a mountain fair—so the piece of the scepter would be hidden behind the waterfall itself, the white, watery veil falling down the side of the mountain. That was going to be cold. And wet.

Where rót meets rock, as it was taught to do—now he knew a rót was a root, it all came together. Where roots—plants—met rock, as Flic had taught them to do five hundred years before, planting them in unlikely places and keeping them alive.

He sat down with the others and started to whisper what he’d figured out—he was most of the way through when Nico and Krissin came to sit at their end of the table, forcing him to stop abruptly.

They never sat so close. Were they trying to overhear?

Everyone arrived except for Theo, who was in the archives pulling some books he needed, and the class settled into work. There was no lesson from Leif today, and no wonder, after the way the last one had ended.

Anders pretended to practice his reading, while turning over his newest problem in his head. How were they going to get to the Flic Waterfall? It was even farther from Drekhelm than Holbard or the Skylake had been, and they couldn’t keep sneaking out. Sooner or later, they were going to be caught.

But Rayna had always been there with a quick story when they needed it, and she didn’t fail him now. The class had been working for only a few minutes when she pushed back her chair with a scrape that gained everyone’s attention and stood up.

“Leif,” she said. “On behalf of the class, I’d like to apologize for our argument the day before yesterday. You were right to show us there are better ways to discuss our problems. It’s been a little difficult lately, but we shouldn’t have let that get the best of us.”

There was a round of blinking from most of the class, who had never heard Rayna speak about anything so humbly, and even Anders—who knew from her terribly sincere tone that she was up to something—wasn’t sure what was coming next.

“The apology is appreciated,” said Leif, in his usual calm manner. “And accepted. I understand the cool weather and recent events have made things difficult for all of you. Is there something I could do that would help?”

Rayna was ready and waiting.

“Flic Waterfall would be the perfect solution,” she said, without missing a beat. Anders had to stop himself from flinching—it felt like telling a secret, having their next destination mentioned out loud like that. But of course, nobody else knew that, which was what Rayna was counting on.

“Flic Waterfall?” Leif repeated, brows lifted in surprise.

“We need a break,” said Rayna. “Ellukka said you took her once, and that it was a wonderful, memorable experience.”

Easy, Rayna, Anders thought. Don’t lay it on too thick.

She was still going. “It’s also a place of historical significance. It has stories associated with it, it offers opportunities for science and art—there’s something for everyone there.”

At the next table over Bryn started to shift in her seat, ready to point out that there wasn’t really anything to do with languages that could be studied there, but Ferdie—who was in the same boat with medicine but clearly sensed the opportunity for some time off—discreetly elbowed her in the ribs.

Leif looked around the classroom, examining the students’ faces. Anders was pretty sure pleading was written all over his and his friends’. And as he snuck a quick look around, he realized almost everyone was giving Leif some version of big eyes and innocent expressions, even those who didn’t know the reason for Rayna’s request.

Leif nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. “It is a point well made. We will go as a class tomorrow and stay there overnight. If we bring a communications mirror, we can be contacted if we’re needed.”

Theo chose that moment to arrive from the archives, and he was startled to find himself walking into a room full of cheering Finskólars. He set down his books to join in the celebration willingly enough, letting Ellukka whirl him in a circle.

Once they all sat down again to work, though, with warnings from Leif about paying attention to their work ringing a little too cheerfully in their ears to be serious, Theo was quick to lean in and impart the news he’d brought back with him. “I saw Hayn,” he whispered.

Anders immediately leaned in closer. Theo hadn’t been able to get hold of Hayn the night before to tell him of their success—he’d found a quiet time in the archives, but Anders and Rayna’s uncle hadn’t been in his workshop so late.

“What did he say?” Anders asked.

“He says to hurry,” Theo whispered. “He thinks the Fyrstulf has other wolves looking for augmenters too, and no matter how much Hayn stalls, if one of the others finds one, the Snowstone could end up much more powerful.”

That dampened Anders’s spirits, and, as if to prove Hayn’s point, another wave of cold came through the classroom that day after lunch.

Everyone was weakened except for Anders and Lisabet, and Bryn was taken away to the infirmary by a worried Ferdie.

Anders could see from their expressions that they wanted to snap at one another or stop working and complain about the cold. But everyone behaved, because they wanted tomorrow’s class trip more than they wanted to vent their feelings.

After class Theo disappeared to the archives again, taking Mikkel, the Finskólar historian, with him, to look up as much as he could about Flic, her inventions, and her history, in case any of it was useful in locating the hiding place Drifa had chosen once they arrived at the waterfall. Lisabet would have been useful too, but as a wolf she was banned from the archives, so she did her best with a couple of books in their bedroom.

And Anders himself carried around the knowledge like a light in the dark: tomorrow they’d have the rest of the scepter.