Page 71 of Keldori By Daybreak

“Gone.” Iseult shrugged. “After the fall of Tulyr fifty years ago, most of the city left, including our historian. Grandfather said she packed all of Lady Lyria’s writings, stole them away in the middle of the night, and we never saw her again.”

The canyon reeled, and I fought back my rising disappointment.

“What are you saying?” I needed her to say it plainly if she wanted me to believe her.

“I’m saying what you’re looking for might exist, but you’ll never find it in time. Your grandma was wrong. I can’t help you. No Lyrian can. You have no back way into Keldori.”

17. Roman Architecture

The canyon walls seemed to close in around me. We did not break into the Second Sentinel for nothing. We had not come all this way for nothing.

We can’t have.

But Iseult was saying we had. There was no secret door to take me home. There was no way to save Gams without letting Ferrin into Keldori.

“I fought you for a dead end?” I asked. “And you let me?”

“Yes.” Iseult refused to meet my eye.

“Did this historian have hair like yours?” Tiernan looked up at Iseult from where he sat on the keep’s front steps.

“I never knew her. She fled Tulyr fifty years ago.” She hesitated, chewing on her lip. “But she was Grandfather’s cousin, and it’s a common hair color among Lyrians, so it’s possible.”

Tiernan’s brow furrowed, and he nodded.

“Why?” Ciarán demanded.

“There’s a citadel in the northern region of the Grand Barony. I’ve heard of a white-haired woman with a large library inside.”

“How far?” I asked. Maybe it was a good thing I’d taken the time to save Tiernan from his jail cell after all.

“A few days, maybe? I’m not sure. I’ve never traveled through this region.”

“It’s better than nothing.” Orla, ever the optimist, looked back at Iseult. “What do you think? Will you come with us? If it really is your historian in the citadel, she might be more likely to help family.”

Iseult grimaced, looked down the length of the canyon, away from the Keep, and then sighed.

“I have nowhere else to go, and while I don’t much care for your friends, I do enjoy your company, Orla. So, fine.” She marched up the steps of the keep with her head held high and proud. “I suppose I’ll go with you to the citadel.”

She reached out towards my spear where it still stuck from the wall and tapped it with the tip of her finger as she passed. It dissolved in a shower of blue sparks, and Iseult disappeared into the keep.

I’d imagined when the day finally came that I created anything other than a flail, I’d feel something more like triumph. Instead, anger, defeat, and frustration roiled inside me as I trudged down the spiral steps to the dungeon bathhouse.

I’d wanted Iseult to have the answer, but instead she only had the next piece of a puzzle. We were operating off of uncertainties and rumors, and Iseult was right to doubt our ability to pull any of this off.

Steam, lightly glowing, wafted up the stairs from the bathhouse, smelling like petrichor with a hint of sulfur thanks to the water’s geothermal origin beneath the mountains.

The floor was still slick from the others’ baths the previous night, and I stepped through the cool puddle at the base of the stairs to turn the corner.

Steaming water swirled in the single basin that took up most of the low-ceilinged chamber. I couldn’t tell if the slight glow emanating off its cloudy surface was because of the Skal streams that ran through the gutters along the edges of the room or if the light was an artifact of whatever I’d done to my eyes in my fight with Iseult.

I hadn’t figured out how to return them to normal, and after nearly killing Ciarán, I was too embarrassed to ask for help.

Granted, he had been asking for it.

I folded my clothes and tried to stack them where the floor was the driest, wondering vaguely what I was going to use for a towel. I hurried into the water, eager to hide in something more substantial than steam even though there was no one down here to see me.

The hot water elicited a shudder, and I relaxed into the stone bench hiding under the clouded water’s surface. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was in a hotel hot tub, traveling for one of my mother’s many book signings. Hotel hot tubs didn’t smell like sulfur, of course, but it still helped, imagining I was somewhere that made sense.