Sienna Du’for's Arc

Chapter 16 of 19

They left the grove with a plan that was barely a plan. If the scourge had come before, someone had written it down. Sienna knew where old writing lived. She had grown up in rooms full of it. Clementine walked beside her into the market town, hood up, pendant tucked under her collar. They asked a bread seller first, then a scribe with ink under his nails. Both pointed them the same way: up the hill, past the smithy, to a small hall behind the castle wall where a boy kept the old records because no one else wanted the job. The door was not locked. Inside, books stood in leaning stacks that reached Sienna's shoulder. A single lamp burned on a long table. A young man sat behind it in a dark robe, round glasses low on his nose, one finger tracking a line of script. He did not look up when they entered. He did not look up when Clementine said hello. Sienna stepped closer and cleared her throat. He turned a page. She said, "Sir. Please." He kept reading. Clementine walked to the table and set her palm flat on the open book. Theodore Hartwell finally raised his head and blinked at them as if they had come through the wall. "The scourge," Sienna said, before he could ask. "We need everything you have on it. The last time it broke through. What stopped it." Theodore pushed his glasses up. He stood, went to a shelf, came back with three thin volumes and a bundle of loose paper tied in twine. He set them down and spoke in a quiet, tired voice. "Most of what I have is folklore. Songs about a burning field. A story where a farmer feeds it his own hand. One priest wrote that prayer alone turned it back. I don't believe him." He tapped the stack. "This is what there is. It has been a very long time." They read for an hour at the table. Clementine took the songs. Sienna took the priest and a farmer's account that contradicted itself twice on one page. She was closing the third book, ready to give up, when a slip of paper slid from the pages and drifted to the floor. She picked it up. The handwriting was small and even, not the ink of the book around it. A list of four steps, numbered. She read the first line twice. She read it a third time. She looked up at Theodore. "This book," she said. "Have you read it?" He glanced at the cover. "A thousand times. Why?" Sienna held out the paper. Clementine leaned in. The first line said: Reclaim the crown of Lorimar. Sienna felt the room go still. Lorimar was her mother's house name, the one carved above the nursery door she had run from. She folded the paper into her palm and did not tell Theodore what it meant. Clementine watched her face and asked nothing yet. They thanked him and stepped out into the street with a direction, and with a problem Sienna had spent every day trying not to become again.