Pathway

Slowly, Chang Chang turned to the bookshelves. Ladders fastened to a track on the highest shelves rested on wheels on the floor, allowing access to all the shelves, even the books she could barely see. No doubt they were covered with an inch of dust and served as a home for countless numbers of tiny eight-legged horrors. Chang Chang ran her hands absently over the spines. Many of the titles were in Dwarvish or languages she couldn't even identify, but she found others in Common. 

Was the Arcane Script Sphere hidden somewhere amongst them? Did king Laggarma expect her to tear apart the room in a mad search for an ancient artifact that likely had all sorts of magical means to conceal itself?

Yet the king said that if she were worthy, the sphere would find her. Did that mean she was supposed to stay here and wait while the sphere silently considered its decision? Bemused, Icelin imagined the great artifact watching her every move, looking for faults and failures in her character. Chang Chang groaned and thought, I'm doomed.

Pacing the room wouldn't help. She selected one of the ancient books—a history of the Wujin and the dwarves, similar to what Gallazza was reading—and took it to the long table in the center of the room. Maybe if she explored the library and cleared her head, inspiration on how to find the sphere would strike. It was warmer near the fire, but she wasn't eager to share the yaomo's company like that. Reading together in front of a fire had a certain unavoidable intimacy that she wasn't ready to experience. She opened the book, inhaled the scent of the scroll and age, and began to read.

Gallazza sat motionless by the fire, pretending to read his book while he watched the girl. Once she got over her initial nervousness and started reading a scroll, she seemed to forget he was in the room. She leaned over the book with her elbows propped on the table and pulled one of the magical lights closer. Every now and then she squinted at the text and mouthed the words aloud as she ran her fingers along the page. When she wasn't doing that, often she hummed to herself softly as she read. She had a steady, melodious voice, but that was the only compliment Gallazza willingly gave her.

His assessment of her physical features was that she was a small, but powerful thing. However, she was suffering from some forms of ailment. Thst much he could tell. Whether mystical arts or some other malady had taken its toll on her, he couldn't say, but if king Laggarma had wanted to threaten him, he'd chosen a poor creature as his hand.

He had to give the old dwarf credit, though. Laggarma knew how to scheme and deceive with the best of the yaomo. Gallazza couldn't believe the king had allowed him access to the dwarven library, and the introduction of this newest obscure element in the form of the girl was even more frustrating. What was the dwarf up to? Was the Arcane Script Sphere truly so hidden from him that he needed this little blood girl and a yaomo to locate it for him? This would have amused Gallazza no end had he not been so suspicious of the girl.

He knew she was a blood, but what was her true power? Was it something king Laggarma hoped to use against him? But the king had already probed his mind and raked through his memories. There were no secrets for this human child to uncover. If she could. Except the ones being kept from Gallazza himself. If king Laggarma's words were to be believed.

Gallazza clenched the scroll in his hands, resisting the urge to throw it into the flames. Knowledge and lore surrounded him, yet the answers he sought most were denied him. Who was he truly, and where did he come from? Had the oracle of yaomos altered him at the mother's comand? To what end? Was there some dangerous knowledge he possessed that the mistress mother had stripped from his mind in order to protect other things? But why deny him his own identity, unless she simply meant to toy with him?

Gallazza considered the girl. Frustration and rage made him tremble. He wanted to lash out, grab her by her slender throat, and demand her purpose here. He had already begun a search of the library for the sphere and turned up nothing. She would have no better chance than he had of finding the artifact, unless it somehow considered her a worthy recipient.

Perhaps that was what king Laggarma hoped. Was there something special about the girl's character that he hoped to exploit? Gallazza thought it might give him some satisfaction to try to root that information out of her, to play with the girl as he was being played, a pawn in some larger game. But who knew what artifacts the young girl had? Maybe, a heavenly weapon? She might not be worth the trouble, but she was a mystery and a distraction. Zollgarza enjoyed a good mystery, and he certainly needed the distraction.

She tensed and looked up from her book. Gallazza flicked his eyes to the page and pretended to read but continued to watch her out of his periphery. She pushed her chair back and stood up. Slowly, she walked to the bookshelves and began pacing in front of them, head cocked as if listening for something.

What was she doing? Gallazza wondered. He almost called out to her to ask, but he clamped his mouth shut. He didn't want to betray the fact that he'd been watching her closely.

"Do you hear that?" 

The girl asked, breaking the silence.

Zollgarza rubbed his eyes and adopted a weary tone. 

"I'm sorry. What did you say?"

"Just now, did you hear … I thought it sounded like voices … whispers." .... You heard nothing?

She asked, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if she felt a sudden chill. 

Gallazza listened, but all he heard was the crack and pop of the fire and the cave breezes coming down the chimney. The dwarves had a sophisticated ventilation system—he'd utilized it himself sneaking into the city—that kept the smoke emanating from the homes and forges from choking off all the fresh air in the city. 

"You're imagining things," 

Gallazza replid. He approached the fire and stood with her back to it, still listening for mischievous phantoms. His attention taken up by her, he didn't detect the movement out of the corner of his eye until a loud bang echoed in the library. Instinctively, Gallazza leaped from his chair and went into a crouch. Beside him, the girl tensed, but as she was in a better position to see the source of the noise, she was the first to relax.

"It's all right … I think." 

Chang Chang said. Cautiously, she strode across the room to the bookshelves, where a particularly large tome bound in green leather had fallen to the floor near the ladder. She bent to pick it up.

"I must have knocked it loose when I pulled my book off the shelf."

Before she could touch it, the cover of the tome flipped open by itself.

***

Ju Feng followed Abron, Obarn, and a contingent of dwarves past the forges to a smaller cavern on the eastern edge of the city. The first thing Ju Feng noticed was the overgrowth of the glowing silver lichen hanging from the cavern ceiling and in some cases growing in patchy carpets along the ground. The light it created was uneven and pained Chang Chang. No one had tended to the lichen in some time. Ju Feng soon learned why.

"We've evacuated these caverns." 

Abron explained as they marched along, joined at intervals by more dwarves, until Ju Feng counted their group at least a hundred strong. They were a mixture of warriors and clerics. If they were in a different world, a world of chi cultivation, they would have been powerful folks.

"The population was too thin on our outer fringes—we relocated everyone closer to the city to conserve resources. Water doesn't have as far to travel, and people don't have to feel saw the logic in the decision, but by Garn's tone, he knew the dwarf didn't like it. 

"It must have been difficult for so many families to leave their homes," 

Ju Feng said, and indeed, some of the stone dwellings looked as if they had not long been abandoned. Mushroom gardens still thrived around the fringes of the homes, and through open doorways, Ju Feng saw that much of the furniture remained in the homes, left behind as if their occupants anticipated that someday they would return.

Abron approached one of these open doors and pushed it open.

"A few dozen, maybe—they're around here someplace, but they won't show themselves while we're passing through. They're afraid we'll make them pack up and leave. I wouldn't do it for a dragon's hoard."