"Sorry," Garrett said, "Thanks again!" he hurried down Max's front steps and waved goodbye. Caleb followed him stiffly.
Garrett made a mental note to search through the crates in the carriage house again for his winter coat when he got home. He couldn't remember seeing it when he had gone through the boxes before. After finding no mention of Lampwicke in the auction house ledger, he had torn through every crate, afraid that her cage might have been packed away like some knickknack among Uncle's other belongings.
After a half hour of walking, he arrived back at Uncle's manor house. He fumbled at the latch to the carriage house gate with cold-numbed fingers. The wooden door swung open, letting in the gray light of dawn, and he set to rummaging through the stacks of opened crates.
Digging through a particularly deep box, Garrett had to lean over with the rough edge digging into his midsection. He wormed his arm down under a folded stack of Uncle's old robes, hoping to find any sort of coat at this point. His fingers closed upon something soft and warm and heavy, and he tugged hard.
Bracing himself against the crate's edge, Garrett pulled with all his strength, and the stacks of old clothes heaved up like plowed earth. From below, he dragged the sparkling white shimmerfleece that Uncle had used in the raising of Caleb.
Garrett felt its unnatural warmth driving the chill from his fingers. He pulled the heavy fleece from its crate and held it against his chest. He sank to his knees and pressed his cheek against the sparkling, curly wool. He felt his body ache with the memory of summer warmth. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what the world was like before everything turned cold and gray.
Bright memories slipped away, almost there, then lost again. The boy he used to be was gone, somebody else that once lived in his body before it was burned and broken. Was he really all that different from Caleb after all?
Garrett's body shook as he wept, silently into the shimmerfleece.
"Garrett?" a raspy voice spoke from behind.
Garrett opened his eyes and turned to see Caleb silhouetted in the carriage house entryway, and, beside him, a gaunt man in dark robes. He carried a long staff, topped with a horned skull.
"Uncle?" Garrett whispered.
"Garrett," the old man said, "can you tell me why all of my books are on the wrong shelves?"
Garrett ran to him and gave him a crushing hug.
Chapter Eleven
Garrett watched as Uncle Tinjin reached for his teacup again. The cup clattered against the saucer as he lifted it from the table in Tinjin's study. The old man's hands were shaking.
Tinjin sipped from the steaming cup and set it down again, his eyes never leaving the ancient atlas that lay, cracked open on the table before him. Tinjin's eyes were sunken with dark rings of weariness beneath. He looked old now.
Garrett had always thought of Tinjin as an old man, but it was always a young man's eyes that looked back at him from his Uncle's face. Now...
"Pellian was a fool and a liar!" Tinjin spat. He turned his head away from the book, covering his mouth with his sleeve as another fit of racking coughs took his breath.
Garrett waited until the old man regained his composure. "Who's Pellian?" he asked.
Uncle Tinjin looked up and smiled. "The man who mapped the world, a long time ago... and, apparently, not all that well."
Garrett waited for him to explain.
"Here," Tinjin said, lifting the book and turning it so Garrett could read the old map. It slipped from his trembling fingers, and pages fluttered, spreading dry flakes of crumbling paper across the table.
The map showed an unfamiliar region of the world. Unnamed mountains and vast expanses of trees filled most of the map, and, running off the right edge, a great river. Garrett squinted, trying to read the cramped, handwritten script.
"Nest... Neshat? That's where you found Cenick isn't it?" Garrett asked.
Tinjin smiled and nodded.
"Where are we?" Garrett asked.
Tinjin pointed a bony finger at the upper left corner of the map and dragged it off the side. "Far to the northwest, across these mountains," he said, "That much I know for myself. I was a fool to take Pellian's word for the rest of it."
"What do you mean?"
Tinjin dragged his finger along the snaking course of the great river Neshat to where it disappeared into the mountains. "Many explorers," he said, "have tried to discover the headwaters of the river, myself included, at a much younger age. Too dangerous though. Most of the tribes near the mouth of the river, as you get closer to Zhad, are friendly enough. They won't kill you on sight, at least. As you go further into the jungle though... well, you have to keep your wits about you and trust to luck, or you'll likely wind up as a trophy for some ghost hunter."
"Ghost hunter?" Garrett asked.
Tinjin shrugged. "The river is the source of all life to the river tribes, so, they reason, any outsiders must be ghosts."
"But, if you can kill somebody, they couldn't really be a ghost though, right?"
Tinjin frowned. "Garrett, you will discover as you grow older that many people's most cherished beliefs are little more than an excuse to hurt others without feeling badly about it."
Tinjin's finger paused at a narrow point in the river where the water looped back around, nearly touching itself again on either side of a narrow peninsula of land. "That's about as far as I made it before the fever convinced me to turn back downriver."
"Fever?"
Tinjin nodded. "Fever is the Neshat's curse on all outsiders. Even the tribal folk are not always immune. I was fortunate though, it was a blood year."
"Huh?"
"Bleeding fever," Tinjin said, "You weep blood, have strange visions, sometimes your toenails fall off, but that might have just been riverfoot in my case. I was lucky. I had just missed a crawling fever summer. Many of the river folk I encountered on my way up had been crippled by it the year before. You never know what fever will be dominant each year.
"Bleeding fever is bad, but it passes quickly if it doesn't kill you. Still, I was too weak to continue... The fever had hollowed me of my resolve, and I gave up. I never really regretted that decision until now... to think what I might have done if I'd just kept on a little further..."
"What do you mean?" Garrett said.
Tinjin smiled and took another rattling sip from his cup. He nodded toward the shimmerfleece, folded neatly on the corner of the table. "That fleece came from farther upriver than I ever ventured. Some stalwart hunter carried it down from the mountains at the headwaters of the Neshat where such rams must live." He pointed at the nameless mountains in the center of the map.
"You were trying to find the sheep?" Garrett asked.
Tinjin shook his head. "I was trying to find what made them shimmer," he said, "Some powerful, natural magic is at work there... some source, untapped and unknown... at least I thought it was unknown."
Tinjin laughed and then started coughing again. At last, he dried his lips and sighed as he leaned back into his chair.
"I suppose every scholar wants to believe themselves the first to discover something wonderful," he said, "It blinds us to the possibility that we might not be the first... that someone else may have already found it out, and, perhaps, they don't care to share."
"You found something?" Garrett asked.
Tinjin raised his thin hand and pointed it to the backpack that lay, slumped in the corner of the room. "In my bag," he said, "all the way at the bottom... a small, leather pouch, sealed with lead. Bring it here."
Garrett jumped up from his chair and ran to Uncle's backpack. He unlaced the stained oilskin flap at the top and pulled the bag open.
He pulled out a tattered bedroll first, followed by three canisters of essence, two of them empty, one of which bore a long, silvery scratch across its metal as though it had served as a makeshift shield not too long ago. Then, there, beneath the crumbling crust of some kind of traveller's bread, he found a black leather pouch and pulled it out.
; The pouch felt warm to the touch, as though he had found it lying next to the hearth, and it weighed more than its size or even the lead seal at its mouth would account for. He carried it back to the table and set it down in front of Uncle Tinjin.
Tinjin smiled and nodded his thanks. He removed the teacup from its saucer and drained it in a gulp before setting it aside and placing the pouch onto the empty saucer. He took the pouch between his bony fingers and twisted it, trying to break the gray lead seal that held the pouch closed. The lead bent but did not break, and the old man's face twitched with consternation.
"Should I get something to break it?" Garrett offered.
"No need," Tinjin said. Then he pinched the seal between his fingers and whispered, "Kaalade."
The lead shattered like glass and fell away.
Garrett jumped back. "How did you do that?" he gasped.
"I am a sorcerer, Garrett," Tinjin sighed, "I know a little magic."
"But you didn't use any essence," Garrett said.
Tinjin looked at him, smiling wearily, and shook his head. "Some lessons," he said, "...some lessons I'm not ready to teach you yet."
"But I thought..." Garrett began to say.
"Garrett," Uncle interrupted him, "I'm trying to share the most profound discovery of my entire, long life with you and you alone. Please do me the courtesy of sitting down and remaining silent while I do so."
"Sorry, sir," Garrett said, sitting down in his chair again.
Uncle Tinjin upended the leather pouch over the empty saucer, and a shimmering cascade of sunlight poured out.
Garrett gasped.
Uncle tapped the base of the pouch, knocking the last grains of what appeared to be a glowing, opalescent sand out onto the small mound. Garrett looked at his face, and saw again the youthful gleam of discovery in Uncle Tinjin's eyes.
"What is it?" Garrett asked.
"Ter'akane," Uncle said, "or, in the language of the vampires, lake stone."
"You got it from the vampires?"
Tinjin chuckled. "I stole it from the vampires," he said, "I was able to grab a handful while Mrs. Veranu distracted them. If they'd seen me do it... well, we wouldn't be talking now."
"What does it do?"
Tinjin's eyes sparkled. "Amazing things, Garrett!"
"Wait... is Mrs. Veranu all right?" Garrett asked.
"Oh, yes," Tinjin said, "I think we were able to sort that problem out, at least for the next hundred years or so. It's the best I could do for them."
"They don't have to go back to the vampire city or anything?"
"The city is called Thrinaar," Uncle said, "but, no, they can stay in Wythr now, on certain conditions."
"Conditions?" Garrett asked.
Uncle nodded. "Marla's tutor will be arriving from Thrinaar soon. The Veranus are under the protection of an old friend of mine on the Council. She has... adopted Marla, so to speak."
"What does Marla need a tutor for?" Garrett laughed, "She already knows everything."
Uncle Tinjin frowned. "No one knows everything Garrett, and Marla knows very little indeed about the workings of Thrinaar. Her father wanted it that way."
"Then why does she need to know it now?"
Tinjin sighed. "Because she will need this knowledge to survive," he said, "Marla's father was... a good man, but he wasn't always a vampire. In the end, I think he was still what he was before they changed him... a doomed idealist. Marla cannot afford to follow his path, not if she wishes to survive the trials that lie before her."
Tinjin turned his face away, coughing violently for a long moment before regaining his composure. His voice rasped when he spoke again. "I swore to her father that I would protect her, but Marla was born a vampire, and she must know their ways... if only that she may know what she is rejecting, and what the consequences will be should she turn from them."
Garrett fell silent.
"And, once again, you have completely sidetracked me from the revelation of this, my greatest discovery!" Tinjin said with a wave of his hand.
"Sorry, Uncle," Garrett said.
Tinjin smiled. "Where was I?"
"Magic sand?"
"Lake stone," Tinjin corrected him.
"Lake stone," Garrett said.
"And why is it important that this powder is referred to as lake stone?" Uncle Tinjin asked.
"It... comes from a lake?" Garrett said.
"Exactly!" Uncle cried, grinning fiercely.
Garrett gave him a blank look.
Tinjin slammed the tip of his finger down in the center of the map on the table, making the saucer and empty cup clatter. "Here!" he said, "In these mountains, somewhere, at the headwaters of the great river Neshat, lies a lake... a lake where great shaggy mountain goats come to drink, taking in, with every swallow, trace amounts of the magical dust you see here before you. Eventually, year after year, the very essence of this magic builds up within them until it shines thick upon their coats."
"How do you know that?" Garrett asked.
Tinjin sat back and shrugged. "Its just a theory, really."
Garrett smiled. He opened his mouth to ask another question then suddenly froze, staring at the shimmering, daylight glow of the sand piled on Uncle's saucer. "Um, I think I've seen this before," he said.
"What?" Uncle said. Looking slightly ill.
****
"I've never been in this section of the Old City before," Uncle said, running his hand over the smooth stone of the ancient elvish tunnel, "You say Warren brought you here?"
"Yeah," Garrett said, "we kinda have to go around up here though, because of the spiders." He stared into the shadows cast by his witchfire torch, trying to remember which tunnel mouth lead to the house of Annalien the ghost.
"Spiders?"
"Really big ones. They took over a whole area, but you can see their webs and avoid 'em."
"I had thought..." Uncle paused, mid-sentence to lean on his staff, coughing, a long, ragged cough. He wheezed in a fresh breath and continued. "I had thought the Spellbreaker had leveled most of the elven city when he made it his citadel. I suppose he found it easier just to built on top of it."
"Are you sure you want to do this now?" Garrett asked, "I mean I can bring you back here any time. Shouldn't we wait 'till you're feeling better?"
Uncle waved his hand and shook his head. "I'm... fine," he coughed.
"All right," Garrett said, not really believing him, "We should go... this way."
A girlish giggle sounded from the darkness of one of the tunnels, making him jump.
Garrett held his torch between himself and the darkness, his mouth agape.
"You always pick that one," the girl's voice said, "but it's the wrong way."
Garrett cocked his head to the side, struggling to remember where he had heard that voice before. Then, a girl stepped from the shadows. She was about Garrett's height and dressed in clothing of plain brown fabric. Her hair and eyes were almost the same shade of brown. Her boots were of soft brown leather and her hooded cape as well. She smiled at him, her round face friendly and somehow familiar. A single violet flower, tucked behind her left ear added a little splash of color to her garb.
"A friend of yours, Garrett?" Uncle asked.
"Uh... I don't think so," he said.
The girl in brown smiled, looking at the floor a moment before she spoke again. "Who's this?" she asked, indicating Uncle Tinjin.
"Oh, that's my Uncle, he... do I know you?" Garrett said.
She giggled again and then shook her head.
"What's your name?" he asked.
Her eyes sparkled. "You have to guess," she laughed, "and don't say Macy again, that's wrong."
Garrett glanced at Uncle then back to the girl. "What?"
"Try to guess it," she said, a pleading note in her voice.
Garrett blinked at her and waved his free hand vaguely, "Ah... Priss?"
She pulled a face. "You think I look like a Priss?" she scoffed.
"I don't know,
" he sighed, "Who are you?"
The girl in brown frowned and kicked her foot in the dust.
"Sorry," Garrett said, "You want me to guess again?"
"No," she grumbled, "That was your one... maybe you won't be so stupid next time."
Garrett stared at her. "Anyway," he said, "my name's Garrett, and this is my Uncle Tinjin. We're going to visit a friend."
"I know," the girl said, "You're going to visit Annalien, but who is he, and what does he want with her?" She pointed at Uncle Tinjin.
"That's my Uncle Tinjin," he said, speaking slowly, as if explaining something to a small child, "He wants to meet Annalien and see her crystal."
"You told him about the crystal?" the girl in brown said, waving her hands in frustration, "Why don't you just invite everybody down here and charge admission?"
Garrett wagged his finger at the girl. "I know I know you from somewhere," he said.
Her face brightened. "Really? What do you remember?"
Garrett pulled his lips back over his teeth, concentrating. "Unh... do you work at the flower shop?" he guessed.
Her expression went suddenly stony. She reached up and yanked the purple flower from behind her ear and held it out, accusingly. "You think I got this at the flower shop?" she asked, "You really don't remember?"
Garrett shrugged, flustered beyond words.
She threw the flower down onto the tunnel floor and turned her back to him.
Garrett looked at Uncle Tinjin, but the old man was watching the girl, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. The fingers of Tinjin's left hand slipped inside the pouch on his belt where he always carried a small vial of essence.
A sound drew Garrett's attention back to the girl in brown. She was crying.
He cautiously approached her. At a loss for what to do, he knelt and picked up the flower that she had dropped and softly blew the dust from it.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
She sniffed loudly and stiffened her back.
He lifted the violet flower and laid it on her shoulder, still holding it by the stem. "Please take your flower back," he said.
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