He and Ellukka took the bookshelves, since they were the tallest, reaching up to feel along the top with their hands and carefully checking behind them where they came away from the wall. Lisabet searched the dark corners of the room with her lamp.
Anders knew his friend had to be thinking about Leif’s words.
Perhaps it was a comfort to her that he was so sure her mother was out there somewhere. Leif was right—the danger they were in was bigger than Sigrid, that was for sure. If the Dragonmeet was intent on war, then Sigrid herself could probably show up and tell everyone to hold hands and make friends, and it wouldn’t be enough. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t worried about the Fyrstulf. He and Lisabet both knew that Sigrid was capable of causing a lot of trouble all by herself.
His thoughts were interrupted after a minute, when Rayna rolled completely under the bed and then squeaked in delight.
“Found it!” she called, then broke off into a fit of coughing as a cloud of dust emerged, followed by a gray and gritty Rayna.
“All of it?” Ellukka asked, hurrying over to help her to her feet.
“All of it,” Rayna confirmed.
“Well, that’s something,” said Ellukka. “Sparks and scales, I wasnotlooking forward to hunting all over Vallen for another three pieces.”
Anders was already thinking ahead to the next step, and he lifted his lamp to look at the others. “Can we get to Tilda and Kaleb tonight?” he asked.
Ellukka and Rayna considered the question.
“I don’t think so,” said Ellukka. “It’s a long way to fly when we’re so tired. And how would we find the red flag in the dark?”
“And Drifa said we need Hayn,” Lisabet pointed out. “So someone would have to fly to fetch him as well.”
“It makes sense that we’d need a wolf designer to help with repairs,” Rayna said. “She said that she and our father repaired the mirror together last time, so repairs must need a wolf and a dragonsmith.”
“That’s right,” said Lisabet. “Of course, I should have thought of that. All around Holbard, artifacts were beginning to break this last year or two, because there weren’t any dragonsmiths to help the wolves with repairs.”
“The wind arches at the harbor,” Anders said, remembering. “They kept letting in huge gusts.”
“And lots of other small things besides,” Lisabet agreed.
“Well,” said Ellukka, “I hope Hayn likes the dragonsmiths as much as Leif does.”
“We’ll have to sleep here tonight,” Lisabet said. “We’d have to fly to pick him up, andthenfly to the caves, and he’s going to be heavy. We’re meeting him at the town camp tomorrow morning anyway. I know Leif said it was urgent, but it’s too far and too dangerous to fly.”
So they slept at Old Drekhelm, all four of them piling onto Drifa’s bed. As Anders nestled his head down onto the pillow, he couldn’t help but think that once, his mother had lain in this very place. Like being in her workshop, her bed brought with it a feeling of closeness. He wondered where she had slept when she hid at Drekhelm, and tried to imagine her lying in bed with her babies sleeping nearby.
She must have been aching with sadness for their father, who had been killed, and afraid that she would be found and blamed for something she hadn’t done. She must have been afraid for Anders and Rayna as well. It must have been lonely.
Though neither he nor Rayna doubted their mother’s innocence, now that he lay here in the dark, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought to ask her if she knew whohadkilled Felix when he’d had the chance. And now she was gone.
That thought brought with it a sadness that stayed with him late into the night.
Chapter Eleven
THE NEXT MORNING,ELLUKKA ANDLISABET LEFTfor the town camp to meet up with Hayn, promising to bring him to the hermits’ caves as soon as they could. Anders and Rayna set off to find Tilda’s and Kaleb’s aerie.
They flew first over the Uplands, soaring above the broad, golden plains, watching the thousand streams that twisted and turned across them, mirroring the sky. Slowly, the perfect green carpet of the plains was broken up by small rocks, then large, and then they came to the foot of the Seacliff Mountains.
Rayna flew south of the Skylake, where they had found a piece of the Sun Scepter, wheeling through the passes that Hayn had shown them on the map, flying lower and more slowly, carefully hunting until they began to see the mouths of caves.
Then she dropped lower again, so the wind that wastwisting its way through the peaks began to buffet her this way and that. It was hard going, and it was another half hour before they saw a large red flag outside a cave mouth, fluttering fiercely in the breeze.
Beside it was a broad, flat platform, perfect for landing, and as Leif had told them to, Rayna set herself down in the very center of it.
No sooner had her feet touched the ground than a series of mechanical fences sprang up from where they had been concealed, forming a perfect circle around the landing pad. At first, they were perhaps six feet tall, and Rayna made as if to take off again and free herself from their enclosure. Then another layer of fencing seemed to unfold from the top of the first, and another from the top of that, expanding until, within seconds, the twins were enclosed in a large dome made of latticed metal.
Anders slowly slid down Rayna’s side, putting down the package that contained the mirror, and then laying the staff on the ground beside it before he turned to pull off his sister’s harness. There didn’t seem much point in leaving it on when they clearly weren’t going anywhere.
