A Ride of Peril(20)

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"I find your Druid abilities to be quite fascinating," I added and gave him a sideways glance. My spine tingled as I felt desire emanating from him like a heatwave. His gaze locked on my lips.

A strange shuffling sound drew my attention to the books next to my elbow. I dropped my fork on the plate with a clang, my mouth gaping and eyes nearly popping out of my head. Draven looked down and immediately shot up from his chair.

The books, placed neatly one on top of the other, trembled. The layers of leather rubbed against each other. The covers began to ripple, and over the course of a minute, their texture changed as they merged into one large and very thick book. The leather turned black, and we stared as we realized that the three books had become one.

"What the heck," I managed to croak as I stood.

The others joined us on our side of the table, each gawking at the book.

"What happened?" Aida asked.

"What's that?" Phoenix asked.

"I have no idea," Draven replied, equally baffled. "They seem to have morphed into one. I think it was part of the spell."

With slightly trembling fingers, I reached out and turned the first pages. The writing was clear and linear, the sketches and pentagrams complete. The swamp witches had used a spell to protect their knowledge by splitting it into three separate books. They were useless on their own, and, even when they were put next to each other, they still made no sense. One had to put them together, literally stacking them, for the knowledge to emerge in the form of one large compendium.

"This is still wrong," Draven added, once again frustrated. "I don't recognize the language."

"Oh, come on!" Hansa groaned and flipped through the book. "Figures! They used their cryptic code to write it all down."

"If they were the only ones who knew this language, and they were obviously going extinct, why write it all down in a code that would die with them?" I asked.

"Don't expect much sense out of the swamp witches," Draven sighed. "They were brilliant but never easy to work with. It seems like even beyond the grave they're still experts at making everything unnecessarily difficult."

"What do we do now?" Phoenix asked, his brow furrowed.

The Daughter seemed pensive as she slowly moved closer to the book, one step at a time.

"Unfortunately, we have no swamp witch translators lying around," Draven replied, his tone laced with sarcasm. "We're stuck with a book that we cannot decipher and the spell that we need somewhere in it."

"Are you sure there's no other way to get to Mount Zur, then?" I started going over options. 

"Not unless you want to get captured, tortured, and killed along the way," Hansa said. "It's a very long way from here, and the closer you get to the castle the more spies and traitors roam the dark woods. It's nearly impossible to get there in one piece, given how paranoid Azazel's gotten over the past few decades."

"Why can't the Dearghs from Mount Zur help with getting Sverik out?" I asked, aware that it sounded like a long shot.

"A massive stone giant can't infiltrate Azazel's dungeons without getting noticed," Draven answered. "I'm not even sure they would fit through those corridors. You've seen them yourself. They're gigantic."

It made sense. Based on Aida's descriptions, the dungeons were relatively small, with narrow corridors and not enough room for a Deargh the size of a plane to move around and pluck Sverik out of captivity.

The Daughter stood next to Draven, her fingers running over the first line of writing on the first page. She read aloud: "To the one reading this, you are most fortunate. The swamp witches bestow this gift upon you."

"You can read this?" Draven asked, his voice barely a whisper.

She nodded and looked at the text.

"For this is the knowledge of the Aelias, the all-powerful mistresses of dark waters, the coven of witches blessed by the Daughters of Eritopia."

A wave of relief washed over the room.

The Daughter looked up at us, slightly confused.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know I could read this. I don't know how I can, to be honest," she said.

"There is no need to apologize," Draven replied with a brilliant smile. "You couldn't have known. The important thing is that you can!"

"Can you read it all?" I asked.

She looked through the book, pursing her lips and squinting, then nodded.

"Yes. It will take a little while. There's a lot of text here. But they look like instructions with clear measures and diagrams."