The young warrior hesitated, but Ezraan finished the thought easily.
“A raving madman?” he asked, throwing back his head and laughing again. “There’s still a little of that in me, I guess,” he reflected when his bout of mirth had subsided. “But, I’m better than I was.”
“Certainly,” Khollo agreed.
“For the last ten years, all I’ve had to look forward to is being alone amidst the ruins of my ancestors,” Ezraan explained. “Nothing but musty books and scrolls for company, wild beasts all around me. It’s enough to drive anyone to madness. The library helped. I read everything I could on dragons, and searched the valley constantly, hoping that maybe I would find a hidden dragon egg and I could raise one of my own, restart the Keepers.”
“I can only imagine what those days were like,” Khollo murmured.
Ezraan laughed again. “Thank goodness for that! The thing is, when you arrived, I was a little jealous and my mind was not quite whole after being on my own for so long. I had not thought of the Sthan Kingdom much over the last ten years and when you mentioned Janis and the vertaga . . . well, it brought the worst parts of my life back to the surface. It consumed me for a time, I’ll freely admit that. But, eventually, I realized that maybe I could do a little good. I’d come and see how I could help you, see who my son was.”
“Only problem was, I got a mite belligerent when we didn’t see eye to eye the other day,” Ezraan continued. “Okay, more than a little,” Ezraan amended in response to Khollo’s skeptical expression. “But these last few days . . . they’ve been lonely and I didn’t have anything to do or enough to eat and drink but I was able to sort things out. The past won’t change, no matter how much I brood on it. But the future is . . . flexible, changeable. And I’d like to think that I can make it better.”
“You can,” Khollo said quickly. “Father, your knowledge can help Kanin and I. We need to get back to the Sthan Kingdom and you’ve seen the maps. We need to learn to be Keepers and you know the ways of the ancients. You’ve read everything on the subject!”
“Yes, I have, haven’t I?” Ezraan mused.
“Don’t you see, these last ten years weren’t wasted,” Khollo said, jumping to his feet and pacing back and forth. “This is your chance to change the course of history. Kanin and I can’t change the tide of this war without you.” He paused and turned back to face Ezraan. “But with you . . . the vertaga won’t have a chance.”
Ezraan nodded slowly. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I can do this.” He looked up at Khollo, a fierce, and somewhat crazy, grin on his face. “We will do this. We start tomorrow.”
Chapter 32
The next morning, Kanin flew Ezraan and Khollo to the library, landing in the courtyard beside the central well. It had rained during the night and the ground was still soaked, the sound of the waterfalls louder than usual.
“Where do we start?” Khollo asked as soon as they had dismounted.
Ezraan began striding purposefully towards the stairs. “We start with those maps you were looking for. That’s the first thing.”
Khollo followed Ezraan into the library, then down to the first level. Water was spilling from the opening in the ceiling, dripping down into the fountain and filling the building with the sound of thousands of falling drops of water. It was a peaceful noise, and oddly relaxing.
The two researchers circled the fountain, and moved along one of the rows of bookshelves that filled the circular space. Ezraan ran his hands over the scrolls, murmuring to himself.
“Somewhere around here . . . about eye level . . . to the right maybe . . . it was a newer scroll, not yellow and crumbling like some of these . . . ah!”
The older man delicately pulled one of the scrolls from its place and unrolled it. A smile stretched across his face and he turned the scroll so Khollo could view its contents as well. “That should help find the way back, shouldn’t it?”
Khollo spread the scroll on the floor and studied it curiously. The continent was mapped in stunning detail, from the snowy wastes in the north to the Fells in the south. In the middle of the map were the plains and forestlands that made up much of the kingdom. The Furnier Sea was larger on this map than on those that Khollo had at the West Bank, but the water level could have fallen off at some time in the past. South of the Fells was the icy peninsula where the Orell had made their last stand, and beyond that a region marked as the frozen sea.
“This is where we are,” Ezraan said, jabbing a finger at the southwest quadrant.
There, surrounded by sea in every direction, was a small, teardrop-shaped island. A tiny dot centered the southern portion of the island, and a name was written to one side.
“Ethgalin,” Khollo said, trying the name out.
Ezraan smiled. “Good, isn’t it? Sounds powerful, noble. Full of ancient history.”
Khollo nodded. “Three days of flight north and west would get us to Narne?”
“Looks that way,” Ezraan agreed. “Depends on weather, how much weight the dragon is carrying, a few other things. If the weather turned nasty it could be bad. No safe landing places for a long way.”
“I’m stunned that a dragon could fly for three days straight,” Khollo muttered.
“Normally, they couldn’t,” Ezraan agreed. “But, in some of
