"I couldn't get much sense out of him my lord," said Parane to Valis, "he was the worse for drink and not the man he once was."

Parane was a terrible liar, the truth seemed to exude from her very being; she suspected that all great liars believed their own deception and she had never managed this feat. He stared at her, his face an intimidating but inscrutable mask.

"He won't come?" asked Valis, after a long pause.

"No, he refused, he feels angry..."

"...towards me, no doubt," muttered Valis. Parane wanted to add that Orsyn was entirely justified in this resentment, but thought better of it. The two scholars stood in the wreckage of Valis's chambers, among piles of books strewn across the floor. Valis didn't look as if he had eaten or slept in days, his face was pale and his hands shook. Being so close to such extraordinary power and to have it so cruelly snatched away, made the dull business of the day to day survival less than meaningless.

Sensing that there was nothing more to be gained from the conversation, Parane turned to leave. Whatever powers Valis may have wielded previously, they seemed to be long gone. Instead there stood before her the physical wreckage of a deluded man, one who had once been a great mind. Orsyn had been right about Valis; the old man might crave power, but didn't seem to possess any if his own. She would find Borycke and persuade him to leave with her as soon as possible.

As she walked away, a single droplet of water fell to the ground, it narrowly missed her and made an audible tap on the stone floor. She looked at it as it fell and then looked at Valis, who's gaze who fixed on the droplet, his mouth agape.

"I, I must be alone now Parane," he mumbled, "...go!" he snapped as she lingered. Parane hurried for the door. She closed the great doors to Valis's rooms behind her and made for the stairs, Orsyn's words in her thoughts. Valis couldn't fragment the world on his own, the power came from somewhere else, just as that droplet had. Valis hadn't noticed that Parane had seen the truth about the droplet; it had appeared in front of her, from nowhere.

"Borycke, he's got something, someone helping him," said Parane as she burst through the door into the hidden annex that the scholar had appropriated for himself. Borycke looked up from a thick black tome, a look of surprise and apprehension on his face. Behind him stood Vrana and Tillei.

"Vrana," said Parane, unsure of what to make of her presence, "how did you know where to find Borycke?"

"He's terrible at hiding, you should really rethink your whole strategy. You were the only two Neemans not to have left, I checked, and I knew you were forced to stay. Borycke chose one of my favourite places in the House of Neem to avoid cleaning work, and if memory serves me correctly..."

"...you showed it to me," Borycke said to her.

"You should probably go," Parane said coldly, "we're working together on something that could be dangerous, the fewer people who know, the better. Who are you, if you don't mind me asking? she fired a question at Tillei.

Before the Veskan could answer, Vrana spoke for him.

"This is Tillei Na Geil, my friend, and he has come to ask for Borycke's help if you must know."

Borycke watched the conversation between the two women impassively. In his time at the House of Neem he had come to know both of them, one as a hostage, the other as an indentured servant. He had observed this brittle quality to their interactions before and had been confused by it, until he had heard Vrana's story. Borycke had never been rescued in quite the same way but he certainly knew loneliness the way Vrana did. The intense sisterly bond that had developed between Vrana and Parane had fallen apart somewhere, so much so that Parane seemed unable to accept the friendship and intimacy that had once been. It was sad to see, but it had no place disrupting his or Parane's plans.

"Tillei," he said over the icy exchange, "let me show you something."

Glad to be free of the uncomfortable moment, Tillei nodded attentively.

"Here's your problem as Mordei Morhannan sees it. Old Vannic's last resting place as a language was Gol, on the far side of the Greater Arc Sea. The last Old Vannic speakers died out during the Sundering era, when Gol was devastated by a great wave when the Khul laid siege to the city."

"So, in my first few days here, it turns out coming to Harenis was a complete waste of time."

Borycke's silence confirmed Tillei's suspicions.

"I am just one scholar, reading from the account of another. I could be wrong," he said.

"Why do you want to find Old Vannic?" asked Parane, welcoming an opportunity to break the tension with Vrana.

"My people, along the borderlands of Veska, they are dying without it."

"I don't understand," said Parane. Tillei looked grimly at her.

"There are things that walk the Great Plains on Veska's borders that only Old Vannic can stop."

Orsyn Cohl took his last drink an hour after Parane left. He winced as the bitter dregs of the roughest root spirit he could afford burned his mouth.

"So long old friend," he said as he tossed the bottle to one side, "...won't be needing you now."

He pulled on an old jerkin and a heavy leather overcoat and found his boots. Before he left his tumbledown garret for the last time he opened a small wooden chest at the end of his bed. He took a box out of the chest and carefully opened it, his hands trembling from the effects of his drinking. Inside was a long, oval piece of stone which looked like steel to some and cold grey slate to others. It was unlike any piece of stone that had existed in Harenis bar one. It was Orsyn's prized possession, and his greatest mystery.

"Now I'm ready," he whispered to himself, smiling, "...now I'm ready for Valis."