Chapter 14 | Part 4

“We need somewhere to go.”

Dulint leaned on the table, easing the weight off his bad knee while Xandor searched a shelf.

“North isn’t somewhere,” Eldric said. “It’s a direction.”

“I know.”

“Frostgard is half a continent.”

“I know.”

Balin leaned toward Maris. “He enjoys this.”

“I know,” Maris said.

Xandor ignored them.

He found a thin folio bound with cracked cord and opened it near the middle.

“I bought this catalogue from a Frostgard skald twenty-two years ago.”

Eldric stepped closer.

“Of what?”

“Old songs, memorial stones, copied inscriptions. Things the skald thought a southern scholar might pay for.”

“Did you?”

“Too much.”

Xandor laid the folio beside the five marks.

One entry carried the same sequence.

Sense. Erase. Alter. Bind. Rewrite.

Dulint bent closer. “Where?”

“Jotunheim.”

Dulint stopped rubbing his knee.

Even Balin knew the name.

Xandor traced the catalogue entry.

“The skald recorded a stone tablet kept with older songs. Five marks in this exact order. He copied the marks, but not the inscription beneath them.”

“Why not?” Eldric asked.

“He wrote that the verse was ‘winter nonsense’ and charged me extra for the drawing.”

Balin stared at him.

“I hope he’s dead.”

“He was eighty when I met him.”

“Then I hope he died wealthy.”

Xandor opened his map.

“He saw the tablet in Jotunheim. If it is still there, we could read the words he left out.”

“How old was the catalogue when you bought it?” Eldric asked.

“He was still adding to it. But I cannot tell you when he saw that particular stone.”

Maris looked at the Beacon. “And north is where it keeps pointing.”

“Mostly,” Xandor said.

“That’s two reasons,” Dulint said.

“The tablet gives us a destination,” Eldric said. “I can find a road to a destination.”

Dulint looked at the roads north.

“How soon?”

“As soon as we can leave the watched roads behind.”

Dulint glanced at him.

“I need food for the road. A day to buy it, no more.”

“Buy it in the morning. I’ll look for a route tonight.”

Maris pushed herself upright using the table.

Her knees shook.

“Not tonight,” Dulint said.

“I can walk.”

“You can stand.”

“For the moment.”

Balin moved a chair behind her without comment.

Dulint looked at the window. The street was already dark.

“First light,” he said. “Food and blankets. We can do without the rest.”

Eldric nodded.

Xandor smoothed a crease in the map.

“There’s one more problem.”

Balin groaned.

“Of course there is.”

“Jotunheim keeps records. That doesn’t mean they’ll let us read them.”

Dulint pulled his pack toward him and checked the straps.

“Then at least we finally have a problem with an address.”

The light on the Beacon shifted a fraction north.

Eldric held the map open while Xandor marked the roads to Jotunheim.

End of Chapter 14.4 —> 15.1: The Goblin Who Counts Costs: The Wanderers