Chapter 1. Don't upset the apple cart

"It's been a long night," Estral thought to herself, as she sifted through yet another stack of fragile vellums. She had sent the other archivists to bed long before, but a hunch had kept her in the chamber, the "Arcosian Alcove" as the other archivists had started to call it. She felt there was more information on Mornhavon if she could only find the right documents. It seemed the crumbling layers of the last stack were held together by the dust of centuries instead of the lacing running through the holes in each vellum. As she squinted in the flickering candle light on a particularly patchy page, runes surrounding the recurring sigil of Mornhavon – the dead tree – glowed faintly. The sigil was repeated as she scanned another vellum, carefully stacking the pages on top of each other. The runes looked Arcosian, not Old Sacordian as the majority of the other vellums were written in.

Estral remembered Karigan telling her about the tattoo on the old woman's palm. Grandmother, the second empire prisoners had called her. She could see the runes clearly, imprinted against her closed eyelids, and even as she started dozing, the runes began to reform in her head, spinning around the dead tree, until she thought she discerned a pattern in their wake.

"Mistress, Mistress," a voice called across the room to her.

Estral blinked away her sleepiness, sitting up suddenly on the hard stool. What a fine example she was setting, she thought. Biersley, the butler from the Golden Guardian's residence hurried between the stacks, to finally stand, out of breath in front of her. Estral's mouth hung open, as she gazed thunderstruck at Biersley. In all her years at Selium, she had never seen him so agitated.

"Biersley," she finally managed to say, "what has happened?"

"Mistress, it's them, they've come back, what will the Lord say?"

"Biersley, please calm down," replied Estral. "You shouldn't be down here with this bright light."

"Quite so, quite so." The butler appeared to be pulling himself together, remembering the strictures of the archival area.

He took his silk cravat from his neck, wiped his sweating brow, then wrapped it around his lantern to dim the glare. "Oh dear, oh dear, yes, dim the light. Mistress, you must come quickly. Who knows what they will do to the house."

"Really, Biersley," soothed Estral, "tell me, who has come? Guests of Father?"

"Yes, no….no," he replied. "You will see, come quickly now."

Estral quickly stacked up the vellums she had been studying and followed Biersley as he scurried across the room and up the stairs leading to the main rooms of the archive. "I must get back here soon," she thought, feeling there was something she kept missing. Perhaps her father would be able to see a pattern woven in the runes.

As Estral followed Biersley's lantern bobbing ahead of her down the Selium campus pathway towards home, she mentally ran through a list of possible guests who might have stopped by. Her father often extended invitations to old friends and scholars, but usually they nighted at the Selium Guesting House. Certainly there was no one she knew to put Biersley in such a state. If only her father wasn't away on yet another of his many journeys. Well, she wouldn't find out who the visitors were if she didn't get there soon!

Nearing the turnoff from the main road leading to the house, she could see Biersley's light swaying to and fro as he mounted the front granite stairs. He was certainly leaving this in her hands, she thought with a slight frown. Biersley turned to see if she was following behind him, then quickly opened the front door and disappeared inside. Closing the front gate he had left open, Estral walked slowly down the flagstone path. To the right of the front entrance steps sat a wagon crammed with furniture and household items.

"Gypsies," she thought, "Rhovian gypsies."

Her father, Lord Fiori, cultivated widespread musical contacts on his journeys across Sacoridia and the neighboring lands. Gypsies often camped near Selium at her father's invitation. Although, she recalled, most of the teachers preferred the wagons to be camped far away from the school grounds. In fact, she couldn't recall any of their wagons ever coming this near to her house. Nor did this wagon look exactly like the gaily painted conveyances that were part of the traveling gypsy trains.

As she mounted the steps, Estral came to complete halt when she saw who awaited her in the front entrance hall.