Konrad

With Stendhals permission, Konrad dove into the history columns. It had only been a few weeks since he had learned the skill of reading from Avram, and he drank in the stories recorded in stone by the dwarves like a boy dying of thirst. Finally, after many hours of searching, Konrad found what he had been looking for in a dark corner of the Rose Hall. Lifting an oil lamp to an ancient carving, he let a satisfied smile spread across his face.

A mythical garden covered the entire crater of a dormant volcano on the northern shores of Parthanea. The garden was neatly split into two, with the plants on one side verdant green and the other vibrant red. In the center stood two gigantic trees in a pool of shimmering water.

One of the trees was a graceful willow, while the other was bold and strong, its trunk made of elegantly twisting wood; it was a Lyran tree.

A great city flourished at the base of the mountain, its prosperity drawn from the healing power of ancient trees.

The stone relief then described the mysterious disappearance of the population of the city, as if overnight. The gardens were gone, and where the trees stood, now there was only a cube of black stone.

He ran his hands frantically over the carved stone, but there was nothing more—no explanation of what had happened to the people of the city, no reason why the trees had been encased in stone. The answers lay to the north, and he was determined to uncover them.

After his study in the Rose Hall, Konrad was escorted to a fine house near the top of the mountain. Inside, he passed a snoring Rolo, sparing a few moments to scratch Spirit behind the ears. He found Alice at the rear of the house, sitting on a chair, gazing out at the sunset.

"Did you get what you wanted from Stendhal?" she asked.

"I got most of what I needed; there’s a lot of history there."

"There’s more than you know; they have some kind of chamber at the back full of the real secrets."

Alice read Konrad's expression and punched him hard on the arm.

"Ow, what was that for?"

"You went in there, didn’t you?"

"I just had a look."

Alice flopped back down onto her seat, her arms crossed and a dark expression on her face. "Stendhal wouldn’t let me anywhere near it."

"She doesn’t seem to like you much," Konrad ventured.

"She was never happy about letting me look at the relics; I think she was just insecure that she couldn’t figure them out. So what’s the big mystery anyway?"

Konrad hesitated; it had nothing to do with wanting to keep information hidden from Alice, but he knew that the protection of the dwarves' mysterious chamber was unlikely to extend up here.

"If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine; I imagine that you have some important champion-only work you're doing," Alice sniffed.

"It’s not that. As soon as I can tell you, I will."

Perhaps Stendhal would let him use the Lathorok chamber so that he could speak to Alice and Rolo and explain what he had learned.

"Why doesn’t Stendhal like you anyway?"

"Stendhal is the Master Wright of the Archives, and she controls the Rose Hall. It should be her job to look for the truth, but instead she chooses the more convenient lies."

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This didn’t sound anything like the woman Konrad had met; in fact, Stendhal practically went out of her way to show him the truth about the gods.

"What sort of things has she hidden?"

Alice rapped her knuckles smartly against the rock wall that wrapped around the terrace. "Take this, for example: all of this work to make the mountain a home. You think the dwarves did this?"

Konrad recalled the history column that charted the origins of the dwarves. "It was already here."

Alice wore a satisfied smile. "Now, knowing what you do about the gods, do you think it likely that they built this place and just gifted it to their followers?"

"Now that you say it, it does seem unlikely," Konrad admitted. Cloda’s powers would not have been much use if she only had a handful of dwarves following her.

"So what other group of powerful creatures can you think of that might have built all of this and then just abandoned it?"

Konrad recalled his discussions with Briarstone weeks ago on the deck of Elena. "You’re saying the Faelen built this?" Konrad said.

"I wouldn’t say it to Stendhal, unless you want to be banned from the Rose Hall, but yes, I think that this place was a Faelen city. They’re the ones that helped to lock Rhendra away, and they’re the ones that left behind most of the artifacts."

"A Faelen city; I wonder what else they built?" Konrad mused.

The two of them shared the silence as they stared out at the ocean. The clouds parted to reveal a half moon, and its light reflected brightly on the rippling waves far below.

"Searching for Faelen history, how about we make that our next adventure?" Alice asked, her eyes lighting up.

"You said that Rolo came to you because I was in danger, so I don’t think—"

"If you think you are going to tell me that it's too dangerous and I should go back to Fallow Vale, then you have another thing coming. I’ve let you go on for long enough having fun without me," Alice interrupted.

It was exactly the response Konrad had hoped for. As much as he didn’t want Alice to get hurt, there was no way he wanted to see her leave. Now he knew that Alice and Rolo would be with him, half-formed ideas coalesced into a firm plan in his mind. He’d had enough of stumbling around and following orders blindly. Everything he have been told to believe is turning out to be full of lies and half truths.

"We could track down dragon hoards or secret tombs of the master arcanists? Whatever it is, it better contain at least one flying citadel," Alice said with a grin.

Konrad didn’t want to lie to Alice, but he couldn’t risk telling her his real reasons for what he wanted to do. The gods had disappointed him at every turn, and the ones he trusted clearly held secrets. He needed to know once and for all if there was any good to them at all.

"I have a small quest, but it probably wouldn’t interest the Grand Archavist. I just have to search for a lost civilization and unlock the ancient power of one of the old gods."

"And you don’t think I would be up to the challenge?" Alice countered, a look of mock consternation on her face.

"In all seriousness, where I’m going could be dangerous." Alice didn’t have Serena’s magic, Rolo’s strength, or the daring of Renau.

"Tread carefully, Konrad; you don’t want to join the long line of men who have underestimated me. You might have powers, but I have a few tricks of my own now. We leaving in the morning, I'm off to pack."

Alice returned to the house, and Konrad remained on the terrace alone, waiting. He had sensed a presence approaching like a sigh on the wind, and he turned to see Lyran in the air before him. The small god's face was made of finely woven branches that resembled human features, and right now her expression was especially wooden.

"I see you chose to defy me; you’ve put all of us in danger now. Casovan’s going to be furious."

For a moment, Konrad thought that Lyran was talking about her own secret of the empty city and the garden in the volcano, but he realized she was referring to the information he had learned about Cloda.

"I told you I was going to find out what happened to her; I made a promise," Konrad replied.

There was a silence in which Konrad met Lyran’s steely glare.

"If you know what happened," Lyran said carefully.

"I do," Konrad replied.

"Then you should keep that information to yourself. You can see how it would be bad for our health—yours and mine. Can you also see why I didn’t tell you?"

"I can," Konrad admitted.

"And what do you plan to do with this information?"

"I promised someone I would find out what happened, that’s all."

Lyran clicked her tongue. "Very well, I feared for a second that you would run off on some kind of crusade of vengeance. It would be a classically human thing to do. Take my advice and lie to your friend; tell them you found nothing."

Lyran seemed considerably more content than the last time they had spoken. "Dare I ask what you are planning to do next?"

"I’m going to do my job; you said there is a way to access more of your power, and I’m going to find it. Of course it would help if I knew where to look."

"I can see that you are quite determined to do this, but I won’t help you. I sent a champion up there once, a long time ago, and never heard from her again."

"Anything else?" Konrad asked as Lyran began to fade.

"Don’t die."