Tomas sat in his office, wallowing in a puddle of maudlin rumination. In his early years, he had expected his life to be defined by its successes, but lately, he’d decided that disappointments would be a more appropriate term. Nothing significant ever happened. Just tedious day-to-day things. Big things like the Dreamer, the Horde, and whatever was going on with Tenthé, kept slipping through his grip, never coming to a resolution.

He was beginning to understand people who used recreational magic and drugs. At least you felt like you were happy, even if you were living in an alley and eating garbage.

At that moment, he was interrupted as another problem pounded on his office door. It didn’t stop. Tomas sighed. He probably should see what this was all about.

His secretary was off doing… well, he didn’t know. Hopefully secretarial stuff. Controlling his enthusiasm, he stood up, made his way to the door, and reluctantly opened it. Facing him were Elishua, the Envoy, and a teeming mass of minions. They pushed past to pack themselves into his office, all the while talking loudly to everyone and no-one. He wormed through the crowd, and the moment his butt hit the chair, Elishua slammed a thin book down on the desk before him.

“We found it!”

A voice buried in the crowd piped up, “Actually, I did.”

Elishua glared at the voice’s origin, “We found it.”

She turned back to Tomas.

“We. Found. It.”

Tomas looked at the unprepossessing book. He opened the cover to find a full-page drawing of a girl sending rays out of her hand at a snarling dragon while a small dog stood beside her, barking at the self-same dragon. Maybe it was yelling; the illustration was unclear.

“Very impressive. It appears you have found… what? A picture book?”

“Exactly!”

Tomas assumed there was more to the story, so he paged through the book. Its format was that of a page of text with an illustration on the facing page. The text consisted of ancient glyphs he couldn’t read.

Upon a closer examination, the pictures were a little odd. In one, the girl was setting fire to a siege engine, in the next, blowing up draft animals, and in a third, collapsing a mountain on some hapless soldiers. Somewhat out of place was the copious amount of red used to signify blood.

“Well. I assume that this has more significance other than being a relatively gruesome children’s story?”

“Yes,” Elishua affirmed, then turned and yelled, “Come up here!”

The crowd surged as that someone battled forward.

“This is Joon, she’s one of your researchers. Tell him.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Tomas felt he should know her, but couldn’t recall why.

In a timid voice, she stated, “Um, uh, we were going through the library for the umpteenth time, trying to find any information about… um, our subject. With no luck, as usual. I was passing by a table where some kid has been hanging out, reading, um, well, kid’s books. Then I saw this one sticking out of the pile. The binding is quite fine. Much better than any other children’s book I’ve ever seen.

“I picked it up and started looking through it. Immediately, it was obvious that the book is really old. And, not so obviously, it’s written in a wizard cypher. A version that hasn’t been used for a long time. I’m sure you remember that’s what my under-Magister project dealt with: cyphers through the ages. This one’s a variant I hadn’t seen before, but I recognized the general pattern. As you may recall, these cyphers fall into three broad categories...”

Knowing where this was going, Tomas broke in, “Ah, yes, I recall your work, now.”

It had been so impressive. Neither he nor any other Magister had made it past the first ten pages. They all agreed it was excellent, but a bit… dry. And pedantic. The universal feeling was that it had also been imbued with a soporific spell.

Keeping this in mind, he directed, “Why don’t we bypass a description of the style and get to what you have uncovered. I’m sure you can author a treatise before anyone else.”

Tomas was no fool, he’d been dealing with scholars for all of his career.

Joon peered around, as if she expected to catch someone plagiarizing as she spoke. She wasn’t necessarily wrong.

Finding no obvious culprit, she continued, “Anyway, we never thought to look in the kid’s books. The content is a variant of…” At Tomas’ glare, she became flustered, then recovered.

“Um, I worked on the text for a few days and managed to uncover a good deal of the meaning. Um, ah… the book’s text doesn’t exactly follow the pictures. The first few pages discuss some war that’s not going well. It states that everyone is appealing to their gods and anything else for help. There’s a discussion concerning their Dreamer, who seems to be quite inept. I haven’t deciphered enough to find out why.

“At some point, a few of the Hands show up. Maybe something the Dreamer does, or a god… I don’t know, yet. It turns out one of them is particularly useful and causes so much chaos in the enemies’ army that they withdraw, or reach a truce. Or something else. The text is difficult to follow.”

With that, she stopped with a smile on her face, as if she had made a telling point.

“Are you saying that our subject may be this agent of discord?”

“Exactly!”

“Anything more?”

“Oh, yes,” and Joon pointed at the book.

“What?”

“Turn to the last page.”

Tomas did so, revealing a pictorial representation of the Dreamer’s pantheon. This version was similar to the modern-day one. At the peak was the Dreamer, portrayed as an outline of a person. The other known Hands-of-the-Dreamer were also present, shown standing on steps descending to one side.

Beside him was the first Hand, usually called the Hero. A bigger than life character who led armies and was popular in stories. The fifth, seventh and eighth were missing, as usual. Even today, nobody knew who they were, or what they did.

Not being an idiot, Tomas had an idea where this was going. He counted down the steps and, sure enough, the little girl depicted in the previous illustrations was standing on the tenth step, making her the Tenth-hand-of-the-Dreamer.

In spite of the efforts of the Dreamers and scholars, language drifted over time. Originally, the full title would have been pronounced: Tenthé-’and-’o-da-Dreee’mar. There were other Cities that still spoke that way.

But, seeing nothing obvious in the picture, Tomas looked up.

“Look very closely,” Elishua directed, having pushed in front of Joon.

The picture was quite faded, but eventually he realized the girl was holding the dog by her side. Not the way one would hold a pet; she had it by a rear leg. Just like a toy.

Tomas let out his breath.

“Ahhhh. So. Our Tenthé is not a Tenthé. He’s the Tenthé!”