Later, Devary stood in the middle of one of the university's smallest research libraries, grateful to find it empty and silent.
I can show you my research notes, Indren had said. Or rather I can tell you where to find them for yourself. You'll have to be quick, and very careful.
Following her instructions, he stood in the centre of the room and turned his body towards the north corner. The sorcerer-warded door was supposed to be somewhere here, with a five-hundred-year-old map of the Seven Realms covering part of the adjacent wall. Finding the map, Devary paused, scanning for any sign of a portal.
There was none. The wall beneath the map was featureless and unremarkable, with no sign of any mechanism. It was a good illusion.
Devary followed Indren's instructions, placing his fingers just under the aged and wrinkled paper of the map and running them downwards. His first attempt found nothing, but on the second he detected a notch in the smoothness. Feeling his way carefully, he slipped the key into the tiny keyhole and turned it. The door opened under his hands, though he couldn't see it: the wall remained apparently intact. Steeling himself, he walked through, closing and locking the hidden door again behind himself.
The chamber beyond the door was larger than he might have expected. It was empty, but several desks stood ready to accommodate researchers. The bookcases lining the walls were all locked, but Indren had provided him with another key for that purpose. He located the one she had described to him and opened it up.
Inside was the bulk of her genealogy research. It was Llandry's records he was most interested in, and it took him several long minutes to find them in the stacks of papers. He found that Indren had been drawing a chart, beginning with Llandry's name at the top and the names of her parents underneath. The tree was already complex, covering several sheets of paper with the details of Llandry's ancestors. Most of the names were highlighted in blue or purple: Indren had explained that blue indicated a summoner and purple denoted a sorcerer. Llandry was descended from an enormous number of summoners, it was clear, with more than a few sorcerers in her family tree as well. No wonder she had so much raw summoning ability.
How common was it to have so many practitioners in the family? He wondered how many of the current day's most powerful sorcs and summoners could boast such an impressive pedigree. But did it relate to her draykon shape shifting? If so, how? There were many very powerful practitioners across the realms who had not discovered any such latent ability as Llandry's. Sheer force of power couldn't be the answer.
Indren's findings stopped eight generations back on the Glinnery side of Llandry's family and four generations back on the Irbellian side. She'd told him that the research was incomplete; she had agents digging for more information from within Glinnery and Irbel, but it took time. She had promised to keep him informed, and he hoped she would.
He noticed one name on the tree that was heavily starred: Orillin Vanse, apparently a distant cousin of Llandry's. He shared many common ancestors with her, and where the trees diverged Orillin's showed similar characteristics. His parents were both Glinnish and both summoners, and he had a sorcerer grandfather.
Intrigued, Devary searched through Indren's papers and found a separate file on Orillin. The boy was currently nineteen years old, and enrolled as a student at the Summoner Academy of Waeverleyne. Indren had written notes in her own hand: Model student. Year's most powerful.
Looking at Vanse's profile, Devary felt a sense of foreboding. The boy had so much in common with Llandry, he would certainly attract Krays's notice as soon as Indren submitted her report. The boy had to be protected, but he had no time to divert back to Glinnery himself.
A gentle voice interrupted Devary's reverie. 'Good morning again, young man.'
The elderly gentleman they had passed in the gardens stood a few feet away. Devary started, astonished. He hadn't heard the door open, and Indren hadn't behaved as if she knew this man. Did someone else keep keys to Indren's private library?
'Morning,' he said warily, straightening up. He hadn't been addressed as "young man" in many years, but compared to this man perhaps he was indeed. The newcomer looked at least eighty, though his age didn't appear to hinder his mobility at all. He sat easily at one of the desks, though his gaze didn't move from Devary's face.
'Can I help with something?' The man smiled again as he said it, though the expression didn't make Devary feel any more at ease.
'Ah... I don't know. Who are you, if you don't mind my asking? I wasn't expecting to meet anyone here.'
'Just a fellow scholar,' the man replied. 'My name is Limbane.' The man stood up and bowed. 'Whom do I have the honour of addressing?'
His courtesy was charming in spite of Devary's unease. 'Devary Kant,' he replied with an answering bow. 'A colleague of Professor Druaster.'
'I see.' Limbane looked at him for a moment, his eyes narrowing. 'I am quite familiar with this library,' he offered. 'Perhaps I could assist you with your research.'
'I'm finding my way around, thank you,' Devary demurred. Limbane may seem friendly, but he hadn't given his last name and he hadn't explained what he was doing there.
'You're one of Krays's, aren't you?' Limbane sat down again and rested his aged hands on the desktop.
Devary's wariness increased. 'You know Krays?'
'Better than I'd like to,' Limbane replied dryly. 'Tell me, are you a willing assistant or a coerced one?'
'Um... I haven't been working with him for very long,' Devary stalled. He wasn't sure how much he could say to this man. Was he an associate of Krays's?
'Coerced,' Limbane concluded. 'I disagree with his style, personally. People work poorly under coercion. It's a clumsy way to accomplish anything useful.' His smile was back. 'That's apart from its being morally questionable, of course.'
Devary stared.
'I do not number Krays among my colleagues,' Limbane said. 'To my relief. You may set your mind at rest on that score: I am not here for him.'
'Then why are you here?'
'I came to meet the young man who is championing the cause of that most interesting young lady, Llandry Sanfaer.'
'You know Llandry?'
'I know of her. We have not yet been introduced. But when I asked myself the question of where to find that elusive young person, I came to the same conclusion as Krays has apparently done.'
'I don't know where she is,' Devary said quickly.
Limbane nodded. 'Good, I do approve of loyalty. You need not fear, however; I do not wish to capture or hurt your young friend. On the contrary, she is in grave need of assistance and it is time she was offered some.'
Devary shook his head, backing away. 'How can I trust your word? As far as I'm concerned, anybody connected to Krays is dangerous. Besides, I speak the truth: I do not know where she is. I made sure that I would not.'
Limbane's pale blue gaze sharpened. 'Ah,' he said after a moment. 'A tracer.'
'What do you know of the tracers?'
'It is certainly an inconvenient device to be carting about,' said Limbane cheerfully. 'I may be able to help you as well, young man, but not yet. Miss Sanfaer's need is currently the greater.' He stood up slowly, though with no apparent sign of discomfort. 'We'll meet again, Mr Kant.' He bowed, turned and walked to the door. But before he reached it, he vanished.
Exactly the way Krays had done.
Devary sat down at the desk and put his face in his hands. More vanishing people, more cryptic hints, not nearly enough clear facts. He wished that, just for a little while, life would make sense again.
Tren got as far as the third Change before he ran into trouble.
His journey had begun well enough, if one discounted the customary pain and nausea associated with crossing the boundaries between the worlds. He'd stepped into the Lowers to find a yellow moon in the sky and an essentially benevolent, if hot, panorama of gold-tipped grasses grazed upon by an array of herbivores. He'd found a rock to climb up - the highest point he could find in the otherwise flat landscape - and searched the horizon, but no spindly tower rose in the distance. So he'd sat down on the rock to wait.
As if his weight gave it more substance than it might otherwise have enjoyed, Tren's rock remained stationary as another Change passed. He stayed where he was as the moon's light darkened to deep green and a dense evergreen forest took the place of the savannah. When the tower had been visible before, the reigning landscape had been an undulating whistworm meadow clustered with floral bushes, and Tren was hoping that the light would change to the purple he remembered quite quickly. So he waited on.
But the third Change rolled around; the evergreen forest shimmered and vanished, and instead of the gentle meadow he was hoping for came a dull grey light and a rocky landscape.
And barely twenty feet from where he sat roamed a muumuk.
His first thought was a kind of gratitude that no muumuks had yet wandered into the Seven Realms through the unstable rogue gates. The creature was easily three times as tall at the shoulder as he was, its body so large and heavy that the ground shook when it moved. Its hide was a dull bronze colour, its eyes buried under folds of loose skin. This led to a lack of precision with its vision that boded ill for anything that managed to get under its enormous feet - and the muumuk tended to be willing to eat anything that it happened across.
And of course it was lumbering its way directly towards him.
He slid off the rock, trying to be quiet. Its vision might not be spectacular, but he had no idea whether its senses of smell and hearing were any better. Would it follow him? He opted to hide rather than run and tucked himself against the side of his rock that was furthest away from the muumuk. Drawing his sorcerous Cloak around himself, he prayed that sufficient shadow covered the ground here to allow him to blend in.
Slowly, far too slowly for his liking, the muumuk lumbered past his hiding place and away. He held his posture for some minutes more, wondering as he did so about the mysterious Changes in this world. When the light altered and this landscape faded, what happened to the creatures that populated its surface? Where did those enormous muumuk beasts go? And why was he himself not carried with them? As far as he knew, no one had yet produced a satisfactory answer to that question. It was one of the many mysteries of the Off-Worlds.
He stood up at last, shrugging a dusting of mud off his coat. The Changes were still coming fast in the Lower World of Ayrien; he'd waited barely an hour between each one so far, so as near as he could judge he had perhaps half an hour before the next. He had nowhere to go, and in fact he had no wish to go far, or he may take himself out of sight of the tower once it did finally emerge. So he sat down again with his back to his faithful rock, and waited.
But before he'd been seated many minutes his attention was caught by an odd flicker of movement ahead of him. He tensed, fighting the temptation to stand in order to see better. If it was another dangerous beast, he didn't want to draw attention to himself.
But it didn't look like one. The movements of the tiny figure more resembled the smooth two-legged gait of a fellow human. He watched intently as the figure grew steadily closer.
Certainly a human, and a female one he guessed. Fortunately he was still Cloaked; if she looked his way she would see nothing but a dark patch of shadow at the base of a tall rock. He waited, hoping she would come close enough for him to see her face; but after travelling towards him for a time she veered away to the right and slowly vanished again. All he could determine about her was that her hair appeared to be brownish.
For a moment he considered following her. It was rare to encounter other humans down here. Was she a herbalist, here to harvest the unique plants of Ayrien? Part of a summoner exploration party? Or was she connected in some way to the mystery he and Eva pursued?
But while his real errand remained uncompleted, could he afford to chase after this lone figure on the mere hope that she was relevant in some way? He paused a moment in indecision, and as he did so the grey light drained away and a purple radiance bathed the ground instead. Tren stood up, all thought of the mysterious woman forgotten. As he watched, the rocky terrain pulsed and vanished; in its place emerged the soft hills and meadow grass he'd been hoping for. Whistworms emerged from their burrows and began crawling up the stalks, hoping to reach the fragrant blossoms that crowded the low-growing bushes. After a brief check for threats - he didn't know for sure that the muumuks wouldn't still be wandering this new environment - Tren climbed his rock again and stood tall, shading his eyes against the silvery light of the larger, constant moon that shone perpetually overhead.
For a heart-pounding instant he thought that the tower was gone. Therein lay the potential for disaster; it hadn't occurred to him that the building might not re-emerge with the meadow, and what would he do if it did not? He had no possible means of determining where it had gone.
But no: his observation was merely hindered by a touch of mist that clung to the cool ground. He spotted the indistinct image of a tall, thin structure some way off and his heart leapt. Jumping down from his rock, he aimed for it at a run.
When he arrived at the base of the tower, his heart beating hard with exertion and his shirt sticking to his skin, he discovered another problem. He'd forgotten that the peculiar building had no door or other discernible means of entry. What had Eva done last time? She had caused the stone itself to form a ladder by some method that remained somewhat unclear to him.
Running his fingers over the stonework didn't help. He felt nothing but cold stone, fixed and immutable. Mustering his will, he tried again, pushing harder at the blocks. Eventually, tiresomely slowly, the stone softened the barest bit under his hands and the tip of one finger sank slightly into the rock...
'Can I help you with something?'
The voice, female and waspish, cut through the silence like a whip and Tren jumped back, staring around for the source. Leaning out of the window near the top of the tower was the woman he'd seen earlier, her chestnut-brown hair loose around her face.
After a moment's scrutiny, he recognised her as the same woman who had wandered into Eva's study and taken Andraly Winnier's memoirs.
'Um,' he stammered. 'I might have knocked, if you had a door.'
She narrowed her eyes at him. 'You're the book thief.'
'What? You're the book thief.'
'I can't steal what was mine in the first place.'
'That was your book?'
'By virtue of the fact that I wrote it. Have you come to steal it again?'
She wrote it? Tren thought that through. 'Then you're Andraly Winnier?'
'Yes,' she snapped.
'You were friendlier before.'
'I didn't have a runt of a human male sticking his fingers in my stonework at the time.'
'Runt?' Tren pulled himself up to his full, six-foot -and-a-bit height.
'All right, you're a beanpole, but in years, boy, you might as well be about three. What do you want?'
Tren sighed. What was it with imperious older women casting aspersions on his age? He was twenty-five, not twelve.
'I was wondering what became of the book,' he replied. 'And I had some hopes of reading the parts that I didn't get to study before.'
She considered him for a long moment, her face unreadable. 'You've some nerve,' she said at last.
He spread his hands apologetically. 'The matter's urgent.'
'Oh? What matter?'
He considered for a moment before he spoke. 'The matter of Llandry Sanfaer and her draykon friend,' he said, hazarding everything.
Her eyes narrowed again. 'You're a friend of Llandry Sanfaer?'
'Er. Sort of. I mean, we've met, though I don't think she was in any condition to remember me at the time.'
Andraly Winnier made a sound of disgust and disappeared from the window.
'Hey, I - wait -' She was gone. Tren subsided, cursing inwardly. He looked around, seeking some other way to reach the distant window, but then the stonework crunched oddly and a line snaked its way through the blocks, forming a door. It opened to reveal Andraly standing on its other side, glaring at him.
'Hurry up,' she said.
He hurried.