'Adira,' rumbled Jedit, just as sopping as the scaly water-dwellers. 'Please accept their aid. The merfolk can swim us ashore. I'll go ahead to build that fire.'
Shocked speechless, Adira nodded numbly. Beckoner caught the pirate queen's arm. 'Tell your peo-ple we mean no harm. Some may think we drown them.'
'Oh, y-yes. Sail me 'round to the others.'
Beckoner nodded. Two merfolk latched onto Adira and gently drew her into the surf. It was near freezing, but Adira was too numb to feel. Keeping her chin above water, the swimmers deftly maneuvered her from one tiny rock to another. Murdoch she found alone, shivering, as terrified of drowning as of the ominous green lights. Breathless, Adira explained he'd be towed ashore by friends. Towed on, she passed word to more of Edsen's sailors, Heath, some corsairs, and Jasmine.
Hands like coral branches bore Adira toward the beach through the chop. Waves smacked her face. A flicker of yellow light beckoned. Before Adira realized her danger, she was plunged headlong into pounding breakers that sucked and tugged and tried to drown her, then she was yanked free of the water's clutch by the agile merfolk. Propped on a rock festooned with seaweed, the quaking pirate discovered the light was fire. Though the cliffs were sheer as a castle wall, portions had fractured and tumbled. Here a deep cleft formed a shelf jammed with driftwood. Grass and seagrapes and other bracken hung down from the forest floor above. Jedit had cleared a spot and kindled a fire. Adira had never seen so blessed a sight in her life.
With his keen vision, Jedit spotted the pirate queen and jumped to her aid. As frigid hands propped her from below, Jedit snagged her arms and hauled. Adira tried to crawl toward the fire, but collapsed, too stiff to move. Gently, Jedit persisted. Within minutes Adira was naked as a baby bird, propped against dry bracken and warm stone, with her wet clothes hung as a screen against the wind. Soaking in the wondrous warmth of the campfire, Adira cried unashamedly, grateful to be alive. Jedit bounded back and forth, fetching people and feeding the flames. Soon Adira's reduced bodyguard and fourteen Buzzard's Baymen were huddled around a fire so close they risked scorching bare feet.
Once more Jedit returned with his arms full, this time with a huge tail-flapping tuna. The tiger broke its neck, sliced flesh with his black claws, and speared white steaks on spits to sizzle.
That done, Jedit loomed over Adira, amber-green eyes glowing. 'Beckoner lingers to speak with you, Captain. She can't approach the flames.'
'Oh, y-yes.' Shuddering to quit the fire for frosty air, Adira nonetheless borrowed Heath's drying shirt and minced on swollen feet to the edge of the stone shelf.
Beckoner and her court perched on icy rocks, calm as cormorants. Adira could see them now, skinny as pikes, the women flat-chested, all naked but for scales wrapping their torsos almost to the armpits. With dead-white skin tinged green and gills fanning at their necks, they looked like drowned corpses returned to haunt whoever slashed their throats. As shaman, Beckoner wore the tribe's treasure, necklaces and bangles of coral beads, bronze trinkets, and wire-wrapped rubies and sapphires.
'Thank you for saving our skins,' stammered Adira. 'Again. After you banished the river at Palmyra, Johan's army was beached, and we defeated them in the desert. Barely.'
'Is no-thing.' Reckoner waved a lank hand, a gesture adopted from humans. 'A pact struck with our clan lasts as long as the sea, and car-ries to our child-ren's child-ren's spawn. Glad we could save you. Merfolk have no friends a-mong land-walk'ers.'
'You have friends forever,' said Adira, feeling gushy and solemn and foolish. 'The river creeps back to Palmyra slowly. Anything you need, any help, just mount the docks and ask. We'll grant it, I and all my citizens. So I swear. But, please, tell me. How did you find us? How did you reach us so quickly? We last saw your tribe frolicking in the Bay of Pearls on the Sea of Serenity. How got you here, five hundred leagues or more?'
'We heard cat man thrash in waves,' squeaked Beckoner, again waving a hand. 'Sound like no-thing else, e- ven far off. We swam through wa-ter weir.'
'Water weir?' asked Adira. 'A fish trap?'
'Eh? No. Pipe? Tun-nel?' The narrow face frowned seeking the right word. 'All the world's wa-ters are one. To swim in one o-cean is to swim in all. To cross wa-ter, we swim down and twist, and find selves far a-way. See you?'
'No,' admitted Adira.
'Odd.' Beckoner was truly puzzled. 'All merfolk know it. Else how cross long stret-ches of wa-ter that is emp-ty?'
'I wish I knew,' marveled the pirate. 'If I could twist my tail in the water and naturally shift to some spot a thousand leagues distant, I'd be the fattest merchant in Dominaria!'
Beckoner tilted her head, still unsure, but dismissed it. 'We go. We shall vi-sit your docks once char-fish spawn a-gain. Un-til then, fare-well.'
'Fare-' But Adira waved at nothing. Like a school of salmon, the merfolk dove as one into the frigid booming surf. Shuddering, Adira scampered back to the circle of life-giving fire.
The first thing Johan noticed was the library was well lit. Too well lit.
Plodding up circular stone stairs, he cursed both Shauku and himself. But silently, for the sorceress climbed behind, her blue skirts sweeping the steps with a silken rustle.
The harsh light in the tower's top room came not only from four tall windows, but also through the roof. A jagged hole big as a tabletop let in sunshine, fresh air, and whiffs of wood smoke. Johan saw swallows' nests wedged under roof boards.
Like the rest of Shauku's palace, the library was ruined. Rain, snow, and bird droppings had wreaked havoc. Directly under the roof hole stood a shelf of antique books. Despairing, raging, near weeping for the first time in centuries, Johan crunched across rotten wood, dry leaves, and broken roof slates. The first book he touched wore a red leather binding with gold letters. As Johan plucked the book from the shelf, the pages fell out in a mildewed heap that splatted on the floor. Silver insects scurried from the light.
'Please pardon the mess.' Shauku's lyrical apology seemed genuine. 'I inherited the library in this state and fear it's beyond my powers to preserve.'
Steaming, Johan's red-black hands flexed to strangle the woman. Black eyes bulging, horns quivering, he gargled, 'Near three hundred volumes? An untold fortune in antique lore? Likely most one of a kind? You their guardian, and you couldn't even patch the roof, nor shutter the windows, nor exterminate mice nor silverfish?'
'I am sorry.' Slim and lithe, Shauku held up her skirts with one hand lest they be sullied by debris. 'It's hard to keep up a castle, a woman alone.'
Silence reigned as Johan fumed, then gradually calmed.
Lady Shauku seemed so helpless and frail, he couldn't bring himself to strike her. Yet part of his mind suspected everyone. Surely she concealed some fact.
'What was it you desired?' The sorceress peered about the ravaged room. 'Knowledge of cat warriors?'
'Yes!' The word leaped from Johan's throat. Unwilling to show weakness, he hedged, 'That is, I've discovered a small enclave that might aid a minor campaign.'
'I remember.' Lady Shauku touched a finger to her lips. 'They were integral to the prophecy of None, One, and Two! Of course, how silly I am. Let me see.'
Wanting to scream, Johan waited while his host traced a delicate golden hand along a tilted shelf. Plucking forth a slim volume, she offered it with a smile. Johan started. The book was bound in tiger skin.
Hands trembling, Johan flipped open the book, eyes devouring the pages. In careful but crude sketches, tiger-warriors lurked amid tea trees, walked on two legs and all fours, and worshipped at the altar of a brazen big-mouthed god.
Johan gibbered, 'This is the source! These secrets I need, but-I can't read the runes!'
Unknown characters seemed to taunt the mage. None he'd ever seen, and he'd learned dozens in centuries of study. Hurriedly he muttered one spell, then another. If the runes were magically scrambled against casual viewing, the counterspells should decipher the mystic mask. But the crabbed text remained stubbornly illegible.
'So close! So close!'
'Perhaps I can help, if you'll allow it.' Delicate in all her movements, the sorceress took a bottle from a shelf,
