The vicinity of the Apries Lake was just shaking off the short, morning rain. Water dripped from leaves and twigs, like tiny droplets of light falling to join the ones already covering the cleansed grass. Nature was still immersed in silence, every little sound, even coming from afar, reached the mansion clear and pure. The sun also started to peek into the windows, along with the scent of lilac and juniper.

"Good morning," Yasenka's warm greetings have never been as calming to me as in the past few days. "Thank you so much," she added upon seeing the breakfast me and Siaril brought.

"How are you feeling today?" Siaril sat down on the chair next to the night table. I chose the free space at the feet of Yasenka's bed, next to the napping Ertralia. The talisman made of Yasenka's scales rested on the bed sheets by her neck. It was made of two scales now, rather than one... Two others hung next to my sirath. The last one was safe under Siaril's shirt.

"Much better," Yasenka finished the careful brushing of her golden-brown hair.

A week passed since our encounter with Sharish. Yasenka was recovering quickly after this painful experience, thanks to the magic of her sirath and the care of everyone in the mansion.

She was very interested in how exactly we got rid of Sharish and his beasts after she fell into the lake, so I explained what exactly I saw, and Siaril what he felt. We weren't exactly sure why it was so important, since Canidralth already explained the reason for the sword's reaction, but today she seemed to have come up with some conclusion.

"Some theories have been loitering in my head recently..." she started, gratefully accepting the cup of tea from Siaril. "I think what we assumed from Canidralth's explanation wasn't exactly precise."

"Why?" I raised my eyebrows.

"The reason why Siaril's sword reacted the way it did wasn't because of two pieces of the same magic meeting after a long time. It was rather the magic that made the shard into a sirath and the magic put into the sword during its creation by the blacksmith. I mean, the one that created it had to know at least some magic if they combined crystal with metal in a way that survived centuries, right?"

"So Acamres forged it himself?"

"Probably. Or he asked one of his kin, or some elf, who knows. Anyway, just the two pieces of the old Ilmerast wouldn't have caused this reaction. If that were a thing, the two pieces of my sirath would be constantly messing around, wouldn't they?"

"Well, yeah... Wait, you think...?"

"I already know," Yasenka gave me a happy smile. "The appearance of the flame was possible thanks to the connection of two kinds of magic: the one placed in the sirath by the dragons and whatever new magic was put into the sword. They caused some sort of magical discharge, similar to a thunderbolt. And speaking of thunderbolts... aren't they able to set trees on fire even in rain?" She took the small bowl of water that she used to clean her wings this morning and took the sirath from her neck. She placed it below the crystalline surface but didn't pull her hand out. "Similarly, when the magic of the dragons meets the magic of an illathan..." she brushed the stone with her fingertips and suddenly a tiny flame appeared. Underneath the water. As if it was air instead of liquid in there.

The only reaction from me and Siaril was our stupid expressions, so Yasenka continued, her voice giving away an advanced level of amusement: "And no, it won't extinguish after a few fractions of a second, unlike trees set ablaze in the rain. The fire is protected and fed by the magic of the sirath directly, probably in some similar way to a dragon sustaining a flame when belching it at enemies..."

"So wait," I suddenly understood something, "does that mean it'll only work for you two? Because you carry two different types of magic with you?"

"Well..." Yasenka seemed to realize this just then too. She looked at me almost apologetically. "I guess that's true..." But before I could start feeling bad about it, she added: "There's no need for it though, you easily match us with just one type of magic."

"Maybe," I smiled a little before mistrustfully glancing at the small shard of the Sunrise of Earlindon, lying between us on the bed sheets.

"Regarding that," Siaril spoke up upon seeing my stare and put the cup back to the saucer on his lap. "Any ideas where we might find the other shards?"

For a moment, there was a hush in the room. The sudden silence made Ertralia open her eyes a little bit and start watching us.

"I'd think... in some places connected to dragons?" I suggested, carefully poking the crystal with my finger.

"Ah..." Yasenka perked up a little, slightly lifting her hand, a clear sign of some idea emerging.

"Yeah?"

"Could one of you be so kind and bring the Dracascarion from upstairs please?" she asked, sounding excited. "Maybe something about it is mentioned there. I didn't manage to read the whole thing just yet..."

I nodded and ran upstairs. As soon as I brought the heavy book, Yasenka started to leaf through it, skipping some pages almost completely, as if she already knew them by heart. Others she stayed on longer, analyzing the illathan letters and searching for some hidden meaning. Finally, she lowered the book a little, sighing in defeat. "I don't see anything about any crystals aside from the siraths here, but I was rushing now... I might need to read it all word by word, maybe even backtrack to the parts in draconic, before the creation of our siraths was even mentioned..."

"While you do that... maybe we should find some good hiding spot for this piece?" suggested Siaril. "We don't want to carry it around, do we? Canidralth carrying it with him made it wonderfully easy for Sharish to find this place..."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"And made our day wonderfully disastrous... Still, I'm conflicted about that part... Can we even find a good hiding spot for something so powerful? What do you think, Sig?"

I was silent. I watched the innocent stone lying on the bed sheets. I wasn't sure, but when Yasenka lowered the book a moment ago, and it came closer to the crystal, it seemed to me as if it reacted by lighting up with a short, hazy glow...

"Sig?" Yasenka repeated, but her question felt irrelevant right now. I gently grabbed the edges of the Dracascarion and took it from her hands. She didn't protest, just watched my doings with raised eyebrows.

I closed the book, took a closer look at it, then turned it around to the backside. There was an inlay of brighter beech in the dark oak of the back cover, forming an ornamental letter 'D'. A weird 'D' in draconic, but I knew the symbol because Yasenka told me a while ago. I brushed the peculiar shape with my fingertips, moved the book closer to the crystal again, but nothing happened.

"What is it?" Siaril asked, impatient.

"Shh," Yasenka silently told him to just let me play.

Frowning in frustration, I took the crystal and opened the book again, back on the page I held with my finger. Nothing. I started to leaf through it, page by page, until a small light awakened within the stone, like a ray of sunlight seeping through spring leaves.

Silence covered the room as thin strands started appearing between the lines of words, getting longer, connecting, forming letters... and suddenly we had a completely different text before our eyes, made of slender symbols, more delicate than should be possible using the thinnest of quills, written with black ink that turned reddish with the passing of time.

We almost stopped moving and breathing when Yasenka took both the tome and the crystal and quickly ran her slender fingers through the lines. Allowing her to do it in peace was almost strenuous. She turned the page of the book, then another. Then she returned to the one with the hidden text and went a few pages back, all the while holding the crystal in her hand. But no more bewitched words revealed themselves.

Finally, she carefully set the book down on one of the pillows and started to translate: "'We await you where we welcome sailors with a show of pearly light... We sneak through meadows during night... we breathe the earthly essence at dawn... and by noon, alas, we're gone... A piece of our enemy's power we shall give to you... so it may to the green summits of the disinherited monarch return...'"

We fell silent yet again.

"I know this is nothing new by now..." I started, staring at the symbols on the parchment, "but I don't understand anything as usual..."

Even so, I had the feeling that something stirred in my memory, as if I wasn't hearing those words for the first time...

"Why write it in riddles when only an illathan would be able to read it anyway?" Yasenka apparently shared my opinion. "I swear, the further into the forest, the more trees..."

"Maybe we should take a look at a map of Earlindon, see if that brings any ideas," Siaril stood up. "I'll be right back."

I escorted him to the door with my gaze. I wasn't sure, but it seemed to me that he got a little pale a moment ago...

When he brought the map from the library upstairs and carefully spread it out on the bed, all three of us leaned over it. Ertralia just kept watching sleepily, not interested enough to lift herself from the softness of the bedding. For a moment, we looked for a spot that could be suitable to start our search. We didn't find it.

"Maybe it's about an island?" Yasenka finally spoke up, pointing at an irregular shape surrounded by azure and bearing the name 'Vernet', drawn below the eastern edge of the Silivren Forest. "The sea is what I would associate pearls with..."

"Me too, but why would that 'pearly light' come at night and vanish by noon? This has to be some kind of metaphor..."

"Maybe it's about the capital?" I looked to the tiny drawing of the royal castle. "Some people were walking around there adorned with jewels like bushes with gooseberries. I'm pretty sure there were some pearls among those..."

"But that still leaves the issue of vanishing every day... or maybe it's about the trade in the capital, you know, trading goods for jewels?"

"There are too many of those 'maybe's'..."

I sighed and skimmed through the depiction of the land a bit further. I admired the meticulously drawn trees of the Silivren Forest, then my gaze slipped along the silvery coast of the sea towards the east, past the harbor of Leeshan...

"Something wrong?" asked Yasenka when I frowned and leaned closer to the parchment.

"Tacritia..." my finger rested on the name of a pretty big, seaside city further to the east. "Isn't that city sometimes called 'The City of Pearls'?"

Siaril raised his eyebrows. "I'm not sure, but I think I've actually heard of it... I have no idea why it's called that though."

"I read about it somewhere... yeah, I'm pretty sure it was one of those books that my tutor at the castle told me to put back to the shelf as meaningless and silly. It was about a traveling troupe that settled down in the area for a while and eventually decided to stay for good, which resulted in the founding of the city." I took a brief moment to recall the words. "'We never even noticed until sunrise came... it was like they used the night to sneak up on us. But once light greeted the world, they responded with a sparkle more beautiful than a royal treasury... It didn't last long, so we longed to enjoy it again... so we stayed for another night... and then another... and then we stayed for the rest of our lives...'"

"And such useful verses can be found while being captured in luxurious royal chambers against ones will?" Yasenka eyed me with amused admiration.

I laughed. "Thank Canidralth. He probably had no idea that thanks to his little prank I would familiarize myself with something that would put us on the right track now..."

"Instead of learning how to rule the land you mean."

"I never wanted to do it anyway, even when I still had no idea who I really was."

"But maybe we could use this somehow too," Siaril interjected suddenly. "After all, the king died 'childless' just recently, everyone thinks his 'son' shared the same fate or vanished forever. If he was suddenly found... maybe you could invoke your right to rule and organize some forces that could stand against Sharish and whatever he's still about to conjure up..."

"That would just be pure swindle," I wasn't sure if he was joking or being totally serious. "First of all, the real Calthraval is still out there somewhere... how could I ever try to take what's rightfully his? Second, I really don't feel any urge to go back to what I've been through there... And third, I don't want to put simple people at risk of experiencing something so horrible. The conflict with Sharish may be inevitable, but I want to believe that the battle is still optional."

"You're right... I'm sorry, it was silly of me."

"It's alright," I soothed, still watching him unsurely. "Maybe... maybe while we're searching for the shards, we could keep an eye out for Calthraval as well. I could ask Kristya for a more detailed description of him..."

"That might be a good idea..."

I couldn't hold it back anymore. "Siaril... are you alright?"

My friend seemed to hesitate shortly, before giving me a gentle smile. "I just thought of how much you've changed since our first meeting."

"I've changed? How so?"

"You were just asking questions back then... now you're giving answers."

"I told you, he's growing up," Yasenka smiled and closed the Dracascarion. "We should give Tacritia a try. Even if we still don't know what the riddle means or why the city is called the City of Pearls, I think it's a good place to start."

"It's up to you now when we can set sail then."

She gave me an innocent smile. "It would go quicker if you'd bring me another piece of tart from Light."

I stood up and bowed a little. "As you wish, my lady."

Before I left the room, I caught a sleepy, pleading glance from Ertralia, so I made a mental note to bring some milk with honey with me as well.