The entry hall of the library had been transformed. Dozens of tables had been hastily set up in what had previously been an imposing empty space, each one groaning with enormous piles of records—it seemed the dragons had overcome their resistance to sharing their records. Seth and Lana threaded their way through the room towards the back, where Acantha seemed to be keeping watch over proceedings, her back straight and her expression guarded. She nodded to them both respectfully.
“Good morning, Your Majesty. We’ve made a decent start. Arric and Hartwell are leading the investigation. I’ve organized four-hour shifts for the group to optimize focus and ensure nothing is missed.”
“What have we learned?”
Acantha shrugged her shoulders. “I’m on logistics, I’d be less than useless on research. Arric can brief you. See if you can convince him he needs rest like any other living being.”
Sure enough, the short-statured archivist looked exhausted when they found him… but Seth also knew he was looking at a man who was having the time of his life. He was pulling stacks of dusty parchment from a trolley and setting them in a teetering pile on a table, a couple of dragons watching on. Seth was surprised to see Elza standing with them, looking more relaxed than he’d ever seen her in the presence of a dragon.
“Several breakthroughs,” Arric said immediately—then flushed. “Apologies, Your Majesties. Good evening. Morning? It doesn’t matter.” Seth decided against correcting the flustered archivist on his manner of address—he’d never been a Majesty, but given that Arric was clearly struggling to remember what time of day it was, he wasn’t going to hold it against him. “Breakthroughs, yes. Regarding the Fog. I have found several more copies of the poem, as you rightly predicted, Queen Lana—our hopeful interpretation of the word ‘devour’ holds true over multiple drafts. There is hope.”
“That’s good—”
“Second! Sorry—”
“Go on.” Lana was holding back a smile, he could tell.
“Second, and perhaps more importantly—curses.” He rubbed his forehead, looking frazzled. “What was it—”
“The map,” Elza said, moving forward. “Show Seth the map.”
“The map!” Arric began rummaging through a nearby stack of paper, and Elza hurried to assist him. “Let’s see, let’s see—here it is. This is a copy—well, more accurately, a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy—of a copy of—well, a copy of some of the—”
“We get it, Arric, lots of copies.” Elza’s tone was sharp, but Seth heard the telltale sound of affection underlying it.
“The original excavation of the mountain!” Arric finished proudly, laying out a huge piece of parchment that barely fit on the table. Seth frowned down at it. “Countless centuries ago, these were the tunnels, carved out by the claws of our ancestors…” There was a reverence in the little dragon’s voice that made Seth pause. The map he was looking at was incredibly complex, but his impatience faded as he saw how carefully Arric smoothed the parchment, saw that care reflected in Elza’s movements as she helped adjust the map for Lana and Seth to study.
“What am I looking at?” Lana asked. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s interesting to see how this place was planned, but—what do old blueprints have to do with the Fog?”
“Here,” Elza said impatiently, tracing a finger along a line that was a little thicker than the rest.
“This is a top-down view, right? So that’s the Palace,” Lana was murmuring, frowning down at the map. “And that’s… wait, half of this stuff can’t have been built, can it?”
But Seth had seen what Elza was pointing out. He caught his breath sharply as he realized what was so familiar about the map, about the thick line that ran around the edge of the map. Its curves, its dips—one long, flat section that made him feel a strange quickening in his feet, hundreds of years of ancient memory rising to the surface of his mind… “It’s the trail,” he whispered. Elza was nodding furiously. “But—how? The dragons were underground, why would they—”
“Exactly,” Elza broke in. “Seth, it’s not just the outer trail. It’s all of them. Thousands of years ago, the dragons built a network of tunnels under the cavern, under the valley, under the world—tunnels that run directly under our trails.”
“They’re off limits, unused,” Arric explained. “The tunnels fell out of use a few centuries ago, after a cave-in sadly cost a young dragon his life. But there are references to them in ancient records, poetry—Hartwell’s been cross-referencing, with the help of young Xanthe, there.” Seth looked across the hall to see the other archivist and the young wolf poring over a book together, both of their eyes flicking across the page almost in unison. “You’ve a remarkable team here, Alpha. I can’t tell you how grateful I’ve been for their work. Without your mother, we might still be arguing over which stacks to start with.”
“So there are abandoned tunnels,” Lana said, sounding a shade impatient. “What do they mean? What are they for?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Elza said, a little reluctantly. “There’s a lot of books, as you might have guessed. But…” She took a breath, glancing up at Seth. “Our library is a little quicker to consult. But I didn’t want to dig too deep without your say-so, Alpha.”
“The trails,” he said softly, letting his mind roam back through the strange, semi-translucent memories that he knew didn’t belong to his own life. The memories of generations past, of the wolves whose paws had thudded against the ancient trails for more years than anyone could count… memories that were ancient, and sacred, and deeply, deeply personal to the pack. He knew why Elza had hesitated before sharing them—he felt the same resistance now, standing among dragons, who for so long had been nothing but enemies to them. Would he not be betraying his people, to share their most ancient secrets with dragons—even to save lives on both sides?
And then he saw it. Just a flash, in a memory so old it had almost disappeared completely. In the sky above the mountains, a dozen pairs of dragonwings… and a wolf’s head lifting in a howl not of warning, but of welcome.
“We were allies,” he whispered, his heart thudding against his ribs as the magic tingled on the surface of his skin.
“What?” Elza said sharply.
But there would be time for that later. Seth pushed on. “The trails, the patrols—they’re an ancient protective tradition,” he said quickly, the words falling thickly from his mouth. These were conversations that usually only took place in wolf form. “We walk the trails, three times a day. It lets us keep an eye on how close the monsters from the Fog have gotten to our settlements, of course, so there’s a practical purpose too… but the real reason is magic. The patrols are a protective spell, distributed across time, reinforced over and over—just like our shared memory.”
Arric’s eyes were wide as saucers, fixed on Seth’s face, but he could see the dragon taking hurried notes in a cramped shorthand.
“The tunnels,” Lana said slowly. “You think the tunnels … what? Serve the same purpose?”
“How long ago were they abandoned?”