Alynthia fumed at her red-bearded companion but said nothing.
“I don’t recall anything by that name,” Brother Bertrem said, while thoughtfully stroking his beard. “I created a complete inventory for the city senate, researching those items about which nothing was known. The Founderstone, for instance.”
“This item was said to be a small silver dragon,” Alynthia reluctantly admitted. “It is hollow, and inside, on a cushion of velvet, sits an old brown skull.”
The old Aesthetic pondered for a few moments, searching the ceiling with his dim eyes. “No,” he said at last. “I don’t recall anything by that description. Although it is entirely possible that some private looting took place among members of the raiding parties. Such allegations have been made in the past.”
“It would have been coveted by the Dark Knights,” Alynthia said, her voice lowered with disappointment. “Perhaps it was taken by the Lord Knight, Sir Kinsaid, before you had a chance to inventory it?”
“As far as I know, Sir Kinsaid took nothing from the scene that was not shown to me first, for historical purposes. In fact, Sir Kinsaid himself went to great pains to see that every item was carefully catalogued and recorded for posterity. I doubt he would have taken anything without my knowledge. There are many things about Sir Kinsaid that are questionable, but I believe he is sincere about preserving history.”
Alynthia stared in mute appeal at the elf, but he merely shook his head as if to say, You knew this was hopeless from the start. She turned back to Brother Bertrem.
“We thank you for your assistance, old man,” she said with a disappointed sigh.
“You are welcome. What use is all this knowledge if it is not shared?” he asked.
“We should have asked you earlier,” Cael said.
Brother Bertrem rose, eager for the thieves to be gone, eager to get back to his bed. “Shall I show you the way out?”
“We know the way,” Alynthia said.
“You may use the front door. I will let you out,” Brother Bertrem said. “After all, you seek knowledge, the same as other visitors to the Great Library.”
With a weary shrug, the two thieves rose and followed the elderly Aesthetic as he led them from the room.
Alynthia paused on the steps of the Great Library and looked back at the door as it closed behind them. “We could continue to search. It is possible he overlooked something,” she said.
“Not likely,” Cael answered. “He seems honest and wise to a fault.”
“What are we going to do, then?”
“Retrieve my staff. That’s the bargain, isn’t it? Afterwards, we’ll leave this city once and for all. Krynn is a wide world. Palanthas isn’t the center of it.” Cael’s words felt hollow. He felt no more real desire to leave Palanthas than to leave Alynthia.
Alynthia gasped, appalled by the idea, “Leave Palanthas! Leave the Guild?”
“The Guild has already abandoned you,” Cael retorted. “Even your own husband betrayed you. Why do you cling to it so?”
“My husband and the Guild are all I have, Cael,” she cried. “The Guild is my family. My husband has his faults, but he is wily, and maybe he has some plan in mind. The men and women under his command have been brothers and sisters to me. Do you know how it would feel to forfeit all that?”
“I suppose not,” Cael bitterly commented. “Seeing as how I’ve never had a family to lose.”
Alynthia took his hand and pulled it close. “All the more reason to rejoin the Guild. The Guild will protect us, give us a home. The Guild is family, kith and kin, people we can depend on, even for the protection of our lives.”
“They want to kill us!” Cael snapped.
“Please, Cael,” Alynthia cried.
He looked in her dark eyes. Facing innumerable dangers did not frighten the beautiful captain of thieves, but the thought of losing the Guild terrified her beyond description.
“Very well,” he sighed.
She smiled, pulling him close.
“First, my staff,” he finished.
At her dark look, he said, “You promised. The Reliquary is a hopeless quest. Now we get my staff. After that, I will stop at nothing to help you regain your place in your precious Guild.”
“Our precious Guild,” she corrected, taking his hand and leading him down the stairs to the street below. They turned toward the rising sun and hurried away.
A pair of eyes followed their progress until they were out of sight. Then the owner of those eyes, a red-robed sorceress, stepped from an alley across the street and turned west, toward the Shoikan Grove and the Three Moons shop.
Chapter Thirty-One
Footsteps receded down the hall, leaving the passage in quiet shadows. Alynthia peered out from a curtained alcove, making certain that everyone had gone, before stepping out from the hiding place where she and Cael had just spent the better part of five hours waiting for Arach Jannon to leave his study. The door leading to the Thorn Knight’s chambers was visible from the alcove, and Sir Arach had just hurried down the hall, called away to some important late night meeting by a palace page. Alynthia and Cael had wondered if he would ever leave, and they were becoming concerned that the mage might sleep in his underground study and laboratory, deep beneath the lord mayor’s palace, rather than in the upper chambers indicated on Alynthia’s detailed floor plan as the bedchamber of the lord high justice.
Their acquisition of the map had neither come easily nor quickly. They had spent an interminable eight days waiting while Claret scoured the markets of Palanthas, finally finding a copy in a bibliophile’s shop on Windsong Street. During those eight days, Cael had nearly climbed the walls with impatience.
Sir Arach’s laboratory lay deep beneath the Lord’s Palace. The chambers and passages leading to them were discovered during the construction of the first Lord’s Palace. As the passages connected directly to the sewers, the lord at that time ordered these entrances blocked. Not long afterward, the Thieves’ Guild had cleared it, replacing the wall with one of their own devising, one with a door only they could find. Their entrance into this hallway came by/way of that ancient, not-so-blocked-up passage connecting to the sewers. Alynthia knew about the door, of course, and she knew how to spot it and open it. She had been taught this by her husband, Oros uth Jakar, but she had never actually been here. Still, after only a half dozen attempts, she had managed to open the door.
Now, as she stepped out from the alcove and motioned for Cael to follow, she once more removed the parchment document from her pouch and, by the light of a nearby torch, examined the layout of the lord’s palace. The level of detail of the document was impressive, for it showed not only the visible rooms, but the hidden ones as well. In addition, all exits and doorways, both mundane and secret were also described.
Cael stepped out from the alcove and joined her in studying the floor plan. “Here is Sir Arach’s laboratory,” she said, indicating it first on the map and then by pointing to a door a short distance down the hall.
“Let’s go then,” Cael said.
“Wait! We dare not try the door. It’s probably warded. Remember what happened at Mistress Jenna’s? We have no magic to dispel the wards,” Alynthia said.
“How will we get in?”
“There is a secret door here,” she said, tracing the symbol on the paper with her finger. “I doubt even he knows about it. If we are lucky, it won’t even be locked. But if it is…” She smiled beneath her mask and patted the pouch at her belt.
She continued. “From there, a short hall and another secret door. This lets directly into the laboratory. Let’s hope it isn’t blocked by a stone table or fixed cabinet.”
“Or guarded,” Cael added.
Alynthia pouched her map and then slipped down the passage, moving by habit from torch’s shadow to torch’s shadow, while the elf paced noiselessly behind her. They passed one door that stood ajar, open onto empty darkness, a storeroom perhaps. Next they passed the door through which Sir Arach had exited moments before. Now Alynthia slowed and allowed her fingertips to gently brush the stone wall. This passage was deep underground, one of the many secret vaults and treasuries beneath the lord’s palace. The wall was cut from the limestone bedrock that underlay the entire city, carved by patient dwarven hands more than twenty-five centuries ago. Here and there a crack marred the otherwise polished surface, evidence of the destruction of the first Cataclysm, when the gods hurled a fiery mountain upon Krynn, destroying the gleaming city of Istar, creating new seas and draining old ones. Not even Palanthas, beloved of Paladine, City of Seven Circles, was left unmarred, though it faired better than most. The dwarves have a saying-heroes live and die, trees grow tall and wither, and all are soon enough forgotten, but stone never forgets. Palanthas the fair might forget the Cataclysm, her bards might no longer sing of its horror and tragedy, but the stone on which she was built still bore the scars of that day.