It took nearly three hours to get Aalis down from the high lake. Suvau and Judd had to manoeuvre her body through the chasm, down the tunnels, into the cave of tainted water pools and naturally formed pillars and finally, the hardest stretch of them all, getting her through the steep descent. They took turns, passing her, Verne darting around, helping where he could with Emeri leading the way.

  Giordi and Caste remained at the house, Caste still bearing the effects of shock and strong liquor had needed sleep and Giordi was unwilling to leave him.

  Aalis’ body lay in Emeri’s bed, silent and still. She hadn’t made a sound, not a groan or murmur, the entire way down. Yolana shoed all the men out and closed the door behind them. Dazed and exhausted, they gathered in the kitchen, Verne looked over his shoulder. Judd grabbed him.

  “What happened, Verne? What in Maul happened up there?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “You don’t know? How could you not know?”

  “LaMogre,” Suvau put his hand on Judd’s shoulder to stop his rant, “look at Verne’s face.”

  Judd’s berating was silenced when he saw the stricken expression on the archer’s face. Judd had to remind himself that, while he cared deeply for Aalis, it was Verne who was her partner, very possibly her lover. He closed his eyes and groaned.

  “Verne, I’m sorry…what you must have gone through…”

  “She just started screaming,” Verne sank onto a chair, “screaming…like she was being burned alive…” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands over his ears, shaking. “I can still hear it…”

  Suvau opened a cupboard and took a bottle of liquor out. He poured Verne a glass and pushed it in front of him. Yolana and Emeri took their time examining Aalis so Suvau took charge of the cooking that evening. Rashers of bacon, eggs fried, slabs of toasted bread, tomatoes and onion cooked and sprinkled with pepper. Though the meal was hearty and delicious, the mood was sombre. They ate consistently but slowly and silently.

  Emeri appeared at the threshold of the kitchen, swaying on her feet. Giordi stood up and ushered her forward to sit.

  “Any change?” Judd asked as Verne raised his head.

  “Mother confirmed there’s a heartbeat and she’s breathing…but she’s still unconscious. There’s no bite mark or injury that we can see…” Food was pushed in front of her and she tried to eat, the food sticking in her throat. “What…what if it was…something in the lake? One of the plants we gathered?” Tears fell down her face, dropping onto her plate. “What if this is somehow my fault?”

  Suvau held his daughter as she wept.

  Caste, who was the most awake out of all of them owing to his nap, worked his clever mind. “We could figure it out. Did you bring her pack back with you?”

  “It’s there.” Judd pointed to a hook.

  Caste stood and gingerly peered inside. “If everything she gathered is in this pack, we can cross reference it with botanical archives and see if there are any recorded reactions like this before.” He stood and, taking the chest he’d recovered from the basement, reached for the pack. “I’ll start looking into it.”

  “I’ll help.” Emeri took the pack from him.

  “I really don’t think…” Caste said, seeing the shadows beneath her eyes, visible even on her deep, warm skin.

  “I’m not a fool and I know where the botanical archives are.” Emeri protested sharply, slinging the pack onto her back, heading for the door.

  “Make sure you wear gloves when handling those plants!” Judd barked.

  Emeri and Caste both gave him withering looks.

  “We know.” They retorted and headed to the library.

  Verne closed his eyes and rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m going to sit with her.” He said, rising wearily and leaving the kitchen.

  Using gloves Caste and Emeri laid the plants collected from the high lake onto a table, making sure they didn’t touch them or let the plants touch each other. Emeri found the botanical archives and they’d set the books on the table on the other side to the plants so they could match their leaf and floral colouring. Emeri’s intensity was fearsome as she frantically searched. Caste let her go. She clearly needed to be able to do something to help Aalis. Caste doubted there was any correlation between the plants picked and Aalis’ condition but he wasn’t about to tell Emeri that. Aalis had an extensive knowledge of plants and would have known if something was so poisonous as to induce fitting, painful spasms and a coma. However, there was a small possibility that he was wrong and there might have been a previously unidentified plant in the lake that had done this…whether or not it had been collected so they could identify it though…

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  Caste rubbed his eyes, feeling them burn with gritty tension from constantly peering at tiny writing and comparing every little detail of the plants to make sure they were correctly identified.

  He sighed, shaking his head, marvelling at the extent that researchers, herbalists and physicians had contributed to the botanical archives.

  “How Aalis knows all this without excessive education is beyond me.” He murmured, marking the final of the plants as harmless. “Well…that’s that…Emeri?” He turned and saw her curled up in a chair, eyes closed, still clutching a book in her hands even while fast asleep.

  Caste found himself smiling and shaking his head. He spied a blanket on a footstool and picked it up, spreading it over Emeri’s sleeping form, gently easing the book out of her grasp. He closed it and set it aside.

  “Well…so long as I am here…” He turned to the chest he’d rescued from the basement. He hadn’t told Emeri about it, knowing that even she, a bibliophile, would not appreciate its contents when Aalis’ life was in jeopardy. The chest had been of excellent make in the beginning but the lock, which Caste did not have a key for, had happily rusted and only required a tug to snap it. He eased the lid up, his eyes glowing at the presence of several manuscripts and parchments within. With ginger care he lifted them out and set them aside, seeing that the box, while of excellent make on the outside, had been fortified and waterproofed on the inside to the point of paranoia.

  Caste sat cross legged on a rug, two lamps nearby with a happy golden glow about them and began to study the parchments. They were extremely old, most made out of animal skin and would have perished to decay before Caste’s grandfather’s grandfather had been born if not for the care taken with their storage.

  So while there was a piece of parchment, yellowed from age, amongst the precious contents of the chest, it immediately stood out as younger than the rest of its companions.

  Caste reached for it, uncurling it gingerly, his green eyes darting over the words.

  It was a letter, addressed to the finder of the chest.

  “What were you doing in my chambers, drenched as though you had been wading and shivering from the cold?” He looked up, astonished to see Cleric Severo standing in the doorway, leaning might have actually been a better description. The wine sodden cleric staggered in, red faced, bleary eyed, blinking frantically to focus on the parchment in Caste’s hands. His jaw wobbled as though he was talking to himself, trying to convince himself that what Caste held wasn’t what he thought. “Where…did you get that?”

  Caste stumbled to his feet, clutching the letter. Cleric Severo then saw the chest.

  “That…that is…blasphemy!”

  “Keep your voice down.” Caste snapped, eyes darting to Emeri who shifted in her sleep.

  Cleric Severo, in a shift of energy and dexterity Caste didn’t think he was capable of, darted forward, snatching the letter out of Caste’s hand.

  “This,” Cleric Severo shook his head, “this is…an abomination! A rogue cleric!”

  Caste gasped and ran after the elderly cleric who stumbled out of the library. It was easy enough to catch up with him just outside the library, it was not so easy to circumvent his girth to grab it back. But Caste persisted and tore it from Severo’s hand, putting it behind himself. Cleric Severo puffed angrily, his thickened fingers making clutching motions in the air.

  “I demand you give it back to me!”

  “This is a letter written by Cleric Iliet! As such, it is part of Astaril history!” Caste refused.

  “He was insane! His mind had gone. He was out of his wits!”

  “By preserving documents that the Order he served demanded that he destroy?” Caste was aghast. “Cleric Iliet did as he should have done!”

  “Cleric Iliet’s actions and his theories are treasonous!”

  “If not for Iliet’s bravery, the library at Astaril would be forever missing these precious accounts of Maul before the wall was constructed! Bishop Peele will be the one to decide their fate, not some knight and a king who was known to be a brutal one.”

  Cleric Severo snorted. “Oh little cleric…you think the Order of the Grail cares about manuscripts that contradict some of its foundational doctrines?”

  Caste stared at Severo. “You’ve read them… haven’t you?”

  “I acted as you did when the chest was discovered, thinking I’d found a way to be forever marked in the accounts of Astaril when I revealed the lost knowledge…” Severo shook his head, his whole body shaking with the motion. “I copied everything, including the letter from cleric Iliet and sent it to Bishop Peele, eager to hear his response.” Severo closed his eyes. “Never has a massive of mine been so speedily answered.”

  “What did he say?” Caste asked.

  “In order to protect the foundations of the Order of the Grail and the doctrines which govern our world…burn it all.” Caste’s jaw dropped as the blood emptied out of his face. Severo gave a small, mocking laugh. “You see now why I stopped caring…stopped bothering…and started drinking…because when I drink, I forget.” He looked blearily at Caste, his expression wreathed in sorrow. “Keep the damn letter…it will do you no better than it did me.”

  Caste watched him waddle away, his shoulders bowed with surrender.

  “Why didn’t you burn it?” He called softly.

  Cleric Severo looked back without meeting his gaze. “Whatever sodden, aged and useless excuse of a man that barely stands before you…I am still a cleric of the Order of the Grail, a protector of the knowledge of all that has gone before…and could not burn it no matter the heresy contained within.”

  Caste closed his eyes and sighed. When he opened them, Severo was gone. Caste returned to the library, the letter trembling in his grasp. Somewhat frightened of delving any further, he packed the documents away and sank into a chair, his head in his hands.