Raya sneezed. There was too much dust to help it. She held her fingers over her nostrils and ruffled pages with her hand as she shook with a heavy sneeze. “Sorry,” she mumbled, embarrassed, as Benn stifled a chuckle. The books they were looking through were moth-eaten and dusty, the library’s atmosphere was dry and seemed foggy with the dust and dirt disturbed by the comings and goings of studious bookkeepers, business people, and scholars young and old.
“Anything?” she asked a moment later.
Benn lifted an open tome and she leaned closer to look. “Just snot,” he said, with a wink. She couldn’t help but laugh. He set down the volume and said, “I’m sorry, that wasn’t—”
“It was funny,” Raya said, smiling.
Benn smirked. “Good,” he said. “I haven’t found anything. Not about a puzzle table like that. Not about Dago Malzo, the traveller. Ha, or any other Dago Malzo.”
Raya nodded. “I can’t find anything either.” Benn and Master Omanah had taught her how to search the stacks and the reference guides for the Archive of Vagren, and she had procured a dozen books for her and Benn to look through. But they found no record of the information they sought. The identity of Nalisa Orr and Dago Malzo remained a mystery. Was that house just a safe haven for magicians? What was the connection between the missing vagabond and the volcanic annihilation of Ellakar?
“Do you think Dondar will find anything?” Benn asked a moment later. Their soldier-friend had asked what they had found in their searches in Vagren, and Raya had chosen to share what she knew—including Lotha’s presence at the house of Nalisa Orr and the puzzle she had found within. Now he had chosen to go on stake-out at that address, to see if Lotha would return, or even anyone else of note.
“I think he’ll find that the magician’s guild is meeting there,” Raya said, quietly. She opened the next dusty tome to its table of contents. Nothing promising.
“Hmph.” Benn plopped his elbows on the table; he had worn a sleeveless tunic today, and he looked lanky. But also good.
“If someone is behind the destruction of Ellakar, they’ve covered their tracks too well,” Raya said. “Or we’re chasing shadows.”
“But there’s the puzzle,” Benn said.
“There’s the puzzle.”
They spent the rest of the day in the cobwebs and dust of the Archives, finding little. Raya was determined to find every last detail she could though, and they went back again the next day, and the day after that. The refugees had reached Ellakar in the last few days—hundreds of nearly deaf survivors from Mount Lukar’s blasted slopes. They brought tidings of misery and doom. Some had spoken to the survivors at Old Wall, so there were already rumours of sorcery behind the cataclysm. Rumours and doubts and puzzles.