“It must be hard for Ellukka to keep secrets from her father,” Rayna said.
“Better that than what’d happen to all of us if he found out,” Lisabet said, and nobody could disagree with that.
By the time Ellukka came to join them, they were trying to solve the riddle.
“He’s frustrated,” she reported. “They all are. Dragons might like to talk everything to death, but even the Dragonmeet knows it can’t go on forever. But nobody’s listening to anyone else. Where are we with the riddle?”
“Here,” said Mikkel. “It says through a mountain’s veil. A veil is something that covers you, right? So could it be clouds? It says as well that the veil is ice cold, and clouds are freezing.”
“So we have to fly straight through the clouds?” Lisabet asked, doubtful. “‘You’ll find this hiding place straight through,’ it says.”
“Sounds like it,” Theo agreed. “Hopefully without crashing into the mountain.”
“‘Light on the air,’” Anders said, running through the riddle in his head. “That sounds like clouds as well. Do you think it’s too obvious?”
“I’m not going to complain if it is,” Rayna said. “I wonder what this word,rót, means. I haven’t seen it before.”
“I think it’s another language,” Ellukka said. “Bryn will know. We can ask her in class tomorrow.”
Anders thought of the Finskól’s language specialist, who had always been friendly to him. If she knew what the word meant, perhaps its origin would give them another clue.
They made no further progress that night, though Anders lay awake later, turning the riddle over in his mind until he eventually fell asleep. He suspected the others were all doing the same.
The next morning, he copied the wordrótonto a scrap of paper and sat down next to Bryn as soon as he arrived in class. But before he opened his mouth to ask her about the clue, he realized something wasn’t right. Her shoulders were rounded, her hands were tucked beneath her arms as she worked, and her light-brown skin was paler than usual. Usually she looked strong, but just now she was curled in on herself.
“Bryn, are you all right?” he asked.
His voice seemed to startle her, and she looked up with a blink, then tried for a smile. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just the cold, it’s bothering me this morning.”
A shiver went through Anders that had nothing to do with the temperature. “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked. “I could get you a hot drink?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem to make a difference. Truly, I’ll be all right.” She paused, though, and bit her lip. “I’m not worried about me, but my mother’s in the infirmary,” she admitted. “She came over all faint last night.”
“Pack and paws,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, I hope she feels better soon.”
The silence stretched between them, awkward—he hadn’t meant he was apologizing, but in a way, he was the one who’d let the wolves steal the Snowstone. And it was his kind who were doing this to hers. And though he knew Bryn didn’t hold him responsible, he still wasn’t sure what to say.
She was the one who broke the silence. “Did you come over to ask me something?”
He dug in his pocket for the scrap of paper. “I don’t suppose you can tell me what this word means?” he asked, showing it to her.
She leaned in to examine it, frowning thoughtfully. “It depends,” she said.
“On what?”
“On which language it’s in,” she said. “This word exists in more than one.”
“Oh.” Anders was crestfallen. “I have no idea.”
“Well,” she said, tapping her finger against the letterr. “In Allemhaüten, it means ‘red.’ Usually you’d have two dots over the lettero, instead of an accent, but that can just come down to handwriting, and sometimes in old-fashioned texts they use an accent.”
Anders couldn’t see how the wordredhelped solve the riddle, but more, he couldn’t see why his mother would have used a word from Allemhaüt. She was rumored to be from Vallen and Mositala. Then again, all Anders really knew about Allemhaüt was that Sakarias liked to buy pencils that were made there. “Do you know what it means in the other languages?” he asked Bryn.
“Hmm.” She paused so long he wondered if she’d forgotten he was there, and he fought the urge to fidget impatiently. If Bryn didn’t know, where could he possibly find the answer to this? “Yes,” she said suddenly, just when he was about to give up. “It could be a word in Old Vallenite. That’s what we spoke centuries ago.”
“Really?” Anders’s excitement jumped back to life. He only knew one word in Old Vallenite—barda, which meant battle, the word that had given him his name.
“Yes,” said Bryn. “I think it would mean root, like the root of a tree or a plant.” She frowned. “Or maybe a tooth? Maybe. But...”
