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“I suppose,” he said absently as he tried to pick out a word he might possibly make sense of as they flipped past his eyes.
None did.
“Except,” Vedetta confided in a very low whisper as her eyes shifted to each side for a quick look, “this here.” She tapped a page very near the end. “These words here I managed, by an accident of coincidence, to decipher. Just these two.”
“You did?” Zedd squinted at the words. “‘Fuer Owbens.’” He looked up into her excited eyes. “Vedetta, do you really know what ‘Fuer Owbens’ means, or do you just think you might?”
She frowned with seriousness. “I really know. I quite by chance came across a place in another book, called Tinder Dominion, where it mentions the same words and uses both versions. It was about some—”
“So, you deciphered the words. What do they mean?”
She put her mouth close to his ear. “The Ovens.”
Zedd turned his head and looked into her dark eyes. “The Ovens?”
She nodded. “The Ovens.”
He frowned. “Any idea what that means?”
Vedetta snapped closed the little black journey book.
“Sorry, but I don’t.” She straightened. “It’s getting late, Ruben. The guards said that after I showed you this, they want to close the library.”
Zedd didn’t try to hide his disappointment. “Of course. Everyone will want to go home and get some dinner and sleep.”
“But you can come back tomorrow, Ruben. I’d love to help you some more tomorrow.”
Zedd was stroking his lip as his mind raced, going over every scrap of information he had learned and trying to think if any of it would be of any use at all. It didn’t seem so.
“What?” He looked up at her. “What was that?”
“I said I hope you will come back tomorrow. I’d love to help you again.” She smiled in her shy way. “You’re more of a challenge than most who come in here. Few people care to research such ancient books as do you. I think that’s a shame. People nowadays don’t respect the knowledge of the past.”
“No, they don’t,” he said in all seriousness. “I’d love to return tomorrow, Vedetta.”
Her face went red again. “Perhaps… if you’d like, you could come back to my apartment and I could fix you something to eat?”
Zedd smiled. “I would love that, Vedetta, and you truly are a kind lady, but it wouldn’t be possible. I’m with Franca. She’s my hostess, and we must get back to Fairfield and discuss all our research. My project, you know. The law.”
Her wrinkles sagged. “I understand. Well, I hope to see you tomorrow.”
Zedd caught her sleeve as she started to turn away. “Vedetta, perhaps tomorrow I could take you up on your offer? If it would be open for tomorrow, that is.”
Her beaming smile reappeared. “Why, yes, tomorrow would be better, actually. I would have a chance to—well, tomorrow would be fine. My daughter will be gone tomorrow evening, I’m sure, and we could have a lovely dinner, just the two of us.
My husband died six years ago,” she added as she fussed with her collar. “A fine man.”
“I’m sure he was.” Zedd stood and bowed deeply. “Tomorrow it is, then.” He held up a finger. “And thank you for showing me the special book from the vault. I was most honored.”
She turned and started off, taking a big smile with her. “Good night, Ruben.”
He waggled his fingers in a wave while giving her a wide grin. As soon as he saw her vanish into the vault, Zedd turned and gestured to Franca.
“Let’s go.”
Franca closed her books and came around the table. Zedd offered his arm as they ascended the grand staircase together. The oak railing, nearly a foot across and sculpted in an exquisite profile, reflected the points of lamplight from the lamps flanking the stairwell.
“Any luck?” she whispered when they were out of earshot of the others.
Zedd checked over his shoulder to make sure none of the people who had shown interest in the two of them were closing in behind. There were at least three people Zedd found suspicious, but they were too far back cleaning up their papers and putting away books to hear—unless they were gifted.
Since magic didn’t work, he didn’t need fear that. A small convenience of magic’s failure.
“No,” Zedd said with resignation. “I didn’t see anything of any use at all.”
“What was that little book she brought out of the vaults? The one she wouldn’t let you hold?”
Zedd waved a hand. “Nothing of any use. It was in High D’Haran.” He looked over out of the corner of his eye. “Unless you know High D’haran?”
“No. I’ve only seen it a couple of times in my life.”
Zedd sighed. “The woman knew the meaning of only two words out of the entire book: ‘The Ovens.’”
Franca halted on the stairs. They were near the top.
“The Ovens?”
Zedd Frowned. “Do you know what that means?”
Franca nodded. “It’s a place. Not many people but the gifted would know it. My mother took me there once.”
“What is it? What kind of place?”
Franca squinted off into her memories. “Well… it’s an abnormally hot place. A cave. You can feel the power—the magic—in that hot cave, but there’s nothing there.”
“I don’t understand.”
Franca shrugged. “Neither do I. There’s nothing there, but it’s a strange place that only the gifted would appreciate. It just gives you a kind of… I don’t know. Kind of a thrill of power running through you just to stand in there, in the Ovens. But those without the gift can’t feel anything.”
She checked the others, to make sure they weren’t listening. “It’s a place we don’t tell people about. A secret place—just for the gifted. Since we don’t know what’s in there, we keep it secret.”
“I need to go see this place. Can we go now?”
“It’s way up in the mountains—several days away. If you want, we can leave in the morning.”
Zedd thought it over. “No, I think I would prefer to go alone.”
Franca seemed hurt, but if it was what he thought it might be, he didn’t want her anywhere near it. Besides, he didn’t really know this woman, and he wasn’t sure he could trust her.
“Look, Franca, it could be dangerous, and I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you. You’ve already given me selflessly of your time and trouble—and risked enough.”
That seemed to make her feel better. “I guess someone will have to tell Vedetta you won’t be able to
make dinner tomorrow. She will be disappointed.” Franca smiled. “I know I would be, were I her.”
48
Zedd grunted with the weight as he slid the saddle off Spider. He was getting too old for this sort of thing, he decided. He smiled at the irony.
He flopped the saddle down over a log to keep it off the ground. Spider happily surrendered the rest of the tack, which Zedd laid over the top of the saddle. He covered it all with the saddle blanket.
The log with the gear lay against the trunk of an old spruce, so it was out of the weather, to an extent, anyway. He stacked pine boughs over the tack, leaning them up against the spruce’s trunk, interlocking them, to keep the gear dry as best he could. The drizzle would soon turn to rain, he had no doubt.
Spider, free of duty, cropped grass nearby, but kept an eye and an ear to him. It had been a hard three-day ride across the Drun River and up into the mountains. Harder on him than on the horse; the horse wasn’t old. Zedd, seeing that Spider was happily engaged, turned to his own business.
A small stand of a half-dozen spruce screened the view of his destination. He walked quickly along the quiet shore to skirt the trees. Once beyond them, he stepped onto a thumb of rock jutting out, almost as if it were set there as a podium.
Hands on hips, Zedd looked out over the lake.
It was a beguiling spot. Behind him, the thick forest stopped well short of the lake, as if afraid to approach too close, leaving the lone level and gentle access, but for the few brave spruce, empty of trees. The peninsula was covered here and there with brush but mostly it held thick tufts of grasses. Small blue and pink wildflowers cavorted among the grass.
Sheer rock walls rose up around the rest of the deep mountain lake. If the isolated and remote stretch of water had a name, he didn’t know it. There was no practical way to reach it but this one shore.
Across and to the left, the jagged mountains, with a sloping field in their lap, rose up ever higher into the distance, providing little opportunity for much more than scraggly trees, here and there, to set down tenacious roots. To the right, dark stone cliffs obscured the view beyond, but he knew that past them were more mountains yet.
