Once we had drunk our fill, we stood up and looked around us. Not far off, upstream, there was a flat grassy spot backed by twenty feet of nearly sheer rocky bank. We glanced at each other, smiling.
“That looks promising,” Amelia said, and I nodded. We would be entirely hidden from view there, unless someone came down to this exact spot. It was a safe spot to camp.
When we got there, we found that the stream had obligingly cast up lots of deadwood over the years, so I gathered this together to make a fire. Amelia had taken a small trowel from the wagon, and I used this to dig a bit of turf out and make a small hollow for the fire to sit in. A few river stones made an edge for my firepit. Amelia went down to the stream’s edge to fill the waterskins while I applied some carefully controlled magic to get the fire going.
I found that with concentration, I could direct a small amount of flame onto my hand and hold it there, carefully feeding a flow of Mana to power the spell. When it was time to finish the spell, I just had to withdraw the Mana back to my pool, and the spell winked out.
When Amelia came back, I had a welcoming little blaze going. The flames danced merrily in her large blue eyes as she stood smiling down at me.
“Shall we eat?” I suggested.
Amelia had found provisions in the wagon; nothing fancy, but very welcome all the same. There were sun-dried apples, chewy and incredibly sweet, and salty jerked beef. The trollmen seemed fond of a kind of hard biscuit with raisins through it, and though this took a bit of getting used to, it tasted very good to me after long days of stale bread rations while I had been a captive.
It was not a cold night, but it was pleasant having the warmth of the fire against our bodies as we sat and recovered from one of the most active days I could remember. Once we’d filled our bellies, we drank the wine we’d discovered in some of the skins in the wagon. Amelia had found two glazed ceramic cups in the wagon, and we filled these to the brim, enjoying the fruity taste and the heady feeling as the alcohol flowed through our veins.
The fire was giving off a strong heat, and I lay on my side, propping my head up on my arm and staring into the thick bed of glowing embers as I enjoyed the satisfaction of a full stomach and a cup of good wine. Amelia sat with her knees drawn up to her chest beside me, gazing into the fire.
“So,” I said after a while, “it seems pretty unusual for a scholar to be sent from Astros all the way out here. How did that happen?”
“I guess the Librarians chose me because I’m young,” Amelia said. “A lot of the other scholars are so old that they are barely able to walk the halls of the library now. And the Librarians are too busy with their experiments and things to go themselves. They sent me to investigate reports of trouble near the northern mines. They didn’t say it explicitly, but I’m sure they knew that there had been a monster escape.”
“Right, and we know what that’s about now. The monsters we saw today must have come from the mines.”
“Yes. I’m supposed to work out what has happened and report back to the Librarians.”
“Do they not trust whoever is in charge of controlling the mines?” I asked. I wasn’t sure who exactly ran the mines, but I knew they worked for the Arcanists of Astros.
“Well, whoever is in charge just let a whole lot of monsters out. I wouldn’t be surprised if an Arcanist were involved.”
I chuckled. “I guess the scholars and Librarians don’t get along with the Arcanists?”
“You could say that. The Arcanists believe only in arcane strength; they care little for scholarship or anything behind powerful enchanted weapons and those who wield them.”
I didn’t understand much about the politics of magic users in the Kingdom, but I was willing to trust Amelia. If she said the Arcanists were a bad bunch, then I’d believe her. After all, the stories I’d heard of them seemed to confirm this truth.
“If I were one of the Librarians, I’d be sending someone to investigate the monsters, too,” I said. “It can’t be good that the Arcanists aren’t willing to look into things. How are you going to go about getting answers?”
Amelia sighed. “I haven’t really figured that bit out yet. The mines are a long way from Astros. When I set out, I had no idea what I would find here. I guess I was just planning to show up and ask around a bit.”
“Well, you made it this far north, at least. Although I don’t suppose you expected to come half the journey in a slavers’ wagon.”
“No, I didn’t expect that.”
“Now that you’re free, can you use whatever sway the Librarians hold in the north to find us lodgings? You may not be a Librarian yourself, but you’re on a mission from them.”
“I’m afraid not. I was given strict instructions to be very careful who I disclosed the nature of my mission to. The Librarians might not be Arcanists, but they’re not well-liked in the north, either.”
“It sounds to me like someone sent you on a suicide mission.”
“Those were my thoughts, too.”
“Then why did you go?”
“Because I wanted to see the world outside the Great Library. Thousands of books fill its shelves, and they all speak of such great wonders. I wanted to see some of those wonders for myself. I didn’t care what
