A Woman Warrior Born

By Alexander Edlund

Breea Banea is poised to become the youngest female scholar in a thousand years, but before her testing can begin, she finds herself hunted by a beast of elemental malice in the shape of a white wolf. When she learns that her entire life has been planned to enable her to survive this battle, she sets out to find the priest who called at her birth, "A Warrior is Born."

From Kirkus Reviews
A smashing series opener for fans of literary fantasy.

Edlund’s fantasy stars a capable young warrior who seeks more knowledge about a ruinous prophecy she herself is destined to fulfill. In the kingdom of Limtir lives 19-year-old Breea Banea, the youngest female applicant to the Library in 1,000 years. She’s an expert in woodland survival, hunting, and combat. Breea still has much to learn, however, including the potent magic of weaving and why a priest said that her birth signaled the destruction of Yash, the religious capital city of the distant realm of Yasharn. In the forest, Breea encounters the violent Lupazg, a being out of the Legend Time who can change from a man to a giant white wolf. Lupazg strikes at the Library, placing Breea’s friend and mentor, Ajalay, (and most of the Tomeguard soldiers) in mortal danger. During the chaos, a guard named SaKlu performs a coup at the Library that’s tied to the religious upheaval sweeping nearby lands. He rules in the name of Yash, proclaiming those who stand against him vile Dauthaz. Will Breea survive long enough to discover the truth about her role in the Yasharn prophecies? This first volume in author Edlund’s ambitious new series drops readers into a grandiose realm, filled with forest cats who speak the secret Breowic language and lovers who have “caught the moonstone” for each other. The prose is dense and lyrical, reminiscent of high-fantasy masterminds like M. John Harrison: “The spark hovering above her palm,” we read of Ajalay in battle, “shone like a star brought to ground.” Edlund’s cinematic action scenes feature magic that whips and writhes like a living thing (“Lupazg snarled, and frost rimed her clothing and hair”). Though many of the set pieces are standard fantasy fare—the sea battle and the bustling city—audiences will likely follow the complex Breea anywhere after Edlund’s astonishing cliffhanger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Edlund
• Release date: Nov 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310710940

Alexander Edlund

Alexander Edlund was born in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, but within months was off adventuring with his parents across the South Pacific, and in a year or so ended up learning to walk in the rainforests of eastern Australia. His first novel began as an image heard to music when he was sixteen. He set the story aside for years until attending University in England re-awoke the desire to share the stories in his mind. Alexander studied writing at the University of Washington. When his first book was reviewed by Kirkus Reviews as a "A smashing series opener for fans of literary fantasy," and the book broke out in Australia on Apple, fans began asking for more. Alexander now returns to Australia on a regular basis to write. Alexander's latest science fiction adventure, Keelic and the Pathfinders of Midgarth has been years in the making and is also available as an audio book, narrated by the fantastic Greg Patmore.

Book preview

A Woman Warrior-Born

by

ALEXANDER EDLUND

The Book of Banea

Volume 1

Copyright © 2013 by Alexander Edlund

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express permission of the publisher. Thank you for respecting the rights of this author.

Smashwords Edition

V2.2

ISBN: 1493729950

ISBN-13: 978-1493729951

Table of Contents

Chapter 1—Lupazg

Chapter 2—SaKlu

Chapter 3—Leaving Home

Chapter 4—B’feu

Chapter 5—The Outer World

Chapter 6—Seeds on the Wind

Chapter 7—Sherishin

Chapter 8—Open Water

Chapter 9—You Live, Remember?

Chapter 10—Rautukana

Chapter 11—A Woman in Need

Chapter 12—Prophecy

About the Author

Chapter 1

Lupazg

Breea wove a path through the forest, leaping the spreading roots of giant trees, skipping rock to rock over tumbled boulders, and sweeping through banks of broad-leaved ferns, leaving a cloud of fern spores drifting hazily in shafts of sun. Sprinting, she shot into an expanse of meadow cut by a broad stream. Without breaking stride she leapt the water, hair swirling. Both feet thudded in the grass on the far shore, and falling forward she rolled into a somersault that unfolded into a high leap. Too soon, the ground pulled her back, and she landed.

Breathing hard, she turned back to the water and saw a rabbit bolting away. It dashed upstream and vanished into deeper grass. Breea untied a braided wool sling from her waist, fit one of her hunting stones into the sling’s pouch, then stood still. The rabbit sat up to look back at her. It dropped down, and Breea watched the grass wiggle as it moved. The animal pushed out of the deep grass, paused, and began sniffing its way along the border. Her sling whirled once, and the rabbit’s ears twitched at the hum of the stone an instant before the rock took its life.

Before retrieving her meal, she dropped to her belly at the water’s edge to drink. Sitting back, she tied the sling around her waist, then pulled a cloth from a belt-pouch, wet it, and bathed her face and neck. In the glassy water beside her, a young trout, wriggling to maintain its place, emerged from the undercut hummocks of moss along the bank. A pine lark trilled as a butterfly dipped on the breeze to flutter around her.

Smiling, Breea tightened the laces of her boots, and thought of places to look for mint and pepper-leaf for the rabbit. As she rose, her gaze caught on the crags of Limtir Mountain where it reared above the trees to the north. Midmorning light etched a strange pattern on the fastness of jagged stone and fissured ice. Eyes of gray shadow seemed to glower at her under a brow of frowning stone. She took a step back. The mountain looked like Ajalay when she was angry.

Ajalay was the Tetr-Sanis of the Library of Limtir, an adviser to kings. In song she was called Speaker, for she had yet to meet a man whose language she did not know. Library peers recognized her as the only Fourth Sanis Scholar living, a rank achieved by being the first ever to have read the histories of every people recorded in the library’s vast halls.

Breea knew her simply as Aja, powerful in ways no soul other than Breea could guess. Yet Aja knew less of the deep forest than Breea had at eight winters. The Tetr-Sanis did not love the wilds, those surrounding the library or those within Breea, and thus misunderstood deep truths of both.

In two days the sanis testing of high summer would begin. Hundreds of scholars would speak, experiment, draw, and sweat for five days to earn their first sanis or prove worthy of higher place. There were none called scholar in Limtir who were not sanis. Nineteen winters made her the youngest female applicant in a thousand years, and the entire library would be watching to see what mettle of mind she had.

Aja would rage if she knew how Breea chose to spend the day. But the Tetr-Sanis was not here. The books could wait. She lay back in the grass and stretched like a forestcat, arms way out over her head.

There was one in the world who cared nothing if she attained sanis. Let Ambard be near, she wished. Let him see her lying in the grass, and appear suddenly at her side, smelling of leather and the chase. A breeze lightly touched her, caressing, bringing with it the spice of the Gamanthea-Dur trees.

The wind died and birdsong cut abruptly. Breea went still. Her father had taught her to hear it when the mountains spoke, and now, seven years later, in spite of all he had taught her, she was discovering how little he had understood. She let out her breath, and did what her father never knew.

She listened.

The stream was a ripple of cool essence, and all about her was the flutter of small life. On the edge of her senses the Gamanthea-Dur trees were a strength, quiet but active.

A rhythm touched her. Scattered footfalls. A deer galloping. Stumbling. Wounded? Breea rolled and came to her feet. She ran to the far edge of the meadow where a bank of tall ferns dominated the forest margin. Careful not to break stems, she ducked among them, turned around, and lay on her belly, rising up on her elbows to look back across the meadow.

Bushes thrashed and a stag burst into the clearing, antlers shedding bits of leaf and vine. He bounded to the stream and plunged in. One foreleg twisted on the rocks, and he fell headlong into the water. The current shoved him downstream as he heaved himself up and out. On wobbling legs, he staggered toward Breea. On the eighth step, his foreleg failed, and he crumpled to the earth.

Breea had seen this before. Dogs drove deer so, and she spat a curse at village men who let their animals run free. She rose up, reaching for her sling. Though she had only one more handmade hunting stone, there were rocks in plenty in the streambed that would serve to discourage village dogs.

She hesitated. The forest was quiet—silence where there should have been braying, yipping barks. Foreboding flowed over her like cold oil. Backing into the ferns, she whipped off her sling and fit her single stone into its pouch. Going down to one knee, she freed the guard strap on her dagger.

A low howl ripped through the forest. Breea ducked, going flat. The howl sang through her like a horn blast, dark and dreadful, and…something else. It reached its peak, and a chill flooded her, shot through with slivers of heat. As the howl faded, she found her fists clawed full of leaf mold. She looked up to see the deer pawing at the grass, craning its neck to look back.

Following its gaze, Breea felt her belly knot. Something hurtled through the trees, its approach like a sword thrust seen but impossible to parry. It burst from the forest, cold white, with a presence that filled the meadow. Crossing, it leapt the stream in a smooth arc, landing solidly behind the deer.

Breea couldn’t breathe. Instinctual need to flee warred with powerful intuition telling her not to move. Forcing a breath deep into her lungs, she willed herself still, like a rabbit. To flee was to die. Carefully, she released the leaf mold she still held. Pressing her hands to the ground, she dreamed herself a stone, the roots of trees, a leaf of fern. Through this, she had found she could remain unseen. Her tracks to the ferns were obvious, and she willed the grass to unbend and lose her scent, hoping desperately that it would obey.

Taught wondrous ways to know the world, and to never discount the truth of what was before her eyes, she knew that this thing which stood before her was no imagining, no fable. It was a beast, eons old, from the Legend Time. Breea had no name for it, but her mentor would, for Aja knew the names of all old things.

To keep herself steady, Breea did what her mother had taught her, what she used to calm herself when attacked by fear—she studied the source.

It was wolf-like, eighteen or twenty hands to the shoulder, and a third of that across the chest, with muscles rippling beneath a shaggy coat of pure white fur. Not white like snow; this was a twisting absence of color. Its eyes, white as well, radiated a piercing essence.

The wolf-thing watched as the stag thrashed, the deer's brown eyes staring ahead at the forest, at Breea.

Wind caught in the trees above, then swirled down to brush the meadow grasses. The white wolf’s gaze swung about the glade, nose sensing. As it slid over her ferns, Breea stifled a gasp. Ravening fear thrashed in her. Against it, she brought to bear all the discipline of mind and body drilled into her over a life of intense study and martial training. Even as she mastered her body, she felt the fear lodge a certainty into her heart; this creature was beyond her, beyond hope to combat, beyond hope even of escape.

The deer whined, and the wolf turned back to its victim. Lowering its head, the beast nipped the stag’s rump. The deer screamed, kicking at the grass. The white beast watched as the deer stood and began hobbling for the trees where Breea hid.

The wolf-beast followed close. When the stag was a few paces from Breea, the wolf leapt beside it, grabbed the back of its neck in its jaws, and bore the deer to the ground, cracking bones.

In Breea, rage stirred. Wind sighed through the trees on its way up the mountain, a breath of resin-scented warmth that bent the grass and waved the ferns concealing her. The white creature raised its head, blood-splattered nostrils tasting the new breeze. It seemed to find nothing of interest and settled onto its belly. Bracing the stag with a forepaw, it fed.

When satisfied, it stood. The white eyes closed, and Breea felt as though a veil had been drawn over the worst of the beast’s hope-piercing essence. As she relaxed, cold bloomed from the creature, searing across her as it passed. She tasted carrion, and her gut heaved. The creature’s form dissolved into a seething whiteness. Even without listening, she could feel the warp of its essence weaving. It was bitter cold, worse than winter winds off the mountain. Power twisted, rotating about it. Tendrils of foulness brushed past, and she recoiled.

The air crackled with cold as the weave pulled in warmth and life. Breea cowered, holding desperately to her own warmth, an agonized cry rising in her throat as she felt the creature’s power overwhelm her.

*****

When Breea came back to herself, she did not move. Fragments of sunlight drifted slowly across the ferns, and the stream gurgled beyond her vision. A wren warbled. Raising her head frightened a grasshopper sitting on a frond. It flew across the grass in the sun, wings clicking.

The carcass of the stag lay as she last saw it. The wolf was gone. Breea gathered her sling and got up stiffly, feeling chilled. Stumbling into afternoon sun, she found that she was treading in untouched grass. There was no sign of her tracks from the stream to the fern bank. Such things happened occasionally since Ajalay had taught her how to listen, though Breea had yet to mention them to the Tetr-Sanis. They occurred only in the forest, and were personal somehow, private, like her relationship with Ambard.

Without approaching too closely, she studied the area near the stag. For a long while she stared at the ground there.

The grass was wilted and beginning to rot where the beast had stood. Deep boot prints, the largest she had ever seen, led away from the carcass. Scanning the area for other sign, she searched for anything to give explanation other than the one she knew and feared, but found only tracks that told the tale she had witnessed, then boots walking away upstream. Trying to fathom what it meant, this thing she had seen, left her cold. On impulse, she started tracking the boot prints, but stumbled to a halt.

Run! said something within, and she obeyed, going downhill with the stream, tucking away her hunting stone and wrapping her sling about her as she went. At a jumble of boulders she crossed the stream going rock to rock, and set out through the forest toward her house, picking the route in her mind, following it at her fastest pace. Fervently, she prayed for rain to cover her scent.

The familiar forest whisked past as she leapt fallen trees, ducked branches, and scrambled hillsides. Though the sun was beginning to move behind Eagogan Peak, she made a detour to Rainpool Rock, the last water until home.

Panting, she made her way up the only climbable section, a narrow chimney crack. A sun-warmed pond sprawled across the boulder top, and she drank, careful not to take too much, then lay by the water, resting. To keep thoughts of the thing just seen at bay, she thought instead of the day she had led Ambard to this pool.

The huntsman had been tracking her run all that morning, never revealing himself. When she finally slowed to be caught at a place of her choosing, he remained hidden, so in playful spite she ran, not trying to hide her trail, but fast, down trails only she knew. Had she wished, she could have lost him, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted him to work to catch her, to remind him that she could escape him, a huntsman of Limtir. On the rock she swam and lay in the sun until scraping on the stone below announced his arrival. She’d walked over to watch him as he climbed, and enjoyed the surprise on his face when he noticed her naked above him.

But he was gone. Somewhere north, he refused to tell her where. Breea sat up. She was alone, and alive by what luck she knew not. Thoughts of what the wolf-beast could have done to her splattered across her vision. She shuddered and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them.

Then into her mind her mother’s voice seemed to ring, Now is not the time.

Both advice and order, the statement held a power now that it had not possessed when her mother used it years ago. She looked up, realizing that the sun was gone from the treetops, the air cooling before the dew fell.

Alarmed, she stood and considered her next move. The thing had walked upstream, up the mountain toward Limtir. She had to get to Ajalay. Only Ajalay could face this creature, though Breea dared not follow thoughts that compared their relative strengths. Taking a last drink, she thought of the way home—an hour’s fast run to her house, then at least two more to the library by horse.

Mindful of the setting sun, she began to descend the crack in the boulder, halting as premonition brushed her. Frantic, she climbed back up, and saw pale movement along the route she’d taken to the rock. Her eyes darted around the boulder top. No escape. The closest trees were a good twenty feet away, and were only branch ends.

She decided immediately, bolting around the edge of the pool and launching herself into the air. Descending in flight, she reached for a branch, grabbing with both hands. It bent under her weight, offering no resistance, whipping her through lower branches as she swung inward. Her fall halted, and the branch recoiled, lifting her. Hand over hand, she went up its length. Where it was thicker and more horizontal, she swung around to straddle it, and glanced back and up, but could only see the edge of the stone, having fallen below it. Rocking forward on her arms, she lifted her feet to the branch, steadied herself, then stood and walked to the immense trunk.

Leaning against it, she whispered to the Gamanthea-Dur tree, Thank you, great one.

She moved around the trunk until she was on the side opposite the boulder. The limb she stood on reached only a short distance from the trunk, shaded here by neighbor trees. The limbs farther up were larger and longer. Ascending, Breea felt a chill crawl over her body. She pressed herself against the tree, dreaming herself a part of the Gamanthea-Dur.

The chill faded, and she climbed fast, then ran most of the way down a thick, straight bough until it bent under her weight. Ten feet away the end of her branch touched that of the next tree. Rust-colored needles covered the ground over a hundred feet below. Was the beast down there? Did it know where she was? She scanned other branches but none reached farther. Looking up, she saw the tree, many branched and dark against the sky, rising hundreds of feet higher.

Ten feet. Ajalay had to be warned. Breea swallowed and acted before fear could stop her. She crouched and, pushing down with her feet, jumped, using the branch’s spring. She sailed across, catching the opposing branch with both hands. After a short recoil, she swung up her legs, pulled herself on top, and climbed inward, not looking back.

High over the forest floor she traversed tens of trees, climbing easily from one to another where possible, leaping where she must, until, near a league from Rainpool Rock, she came to a broader gap. Here an ancient wall ran, now only a jumble of mossy rocks that cut their course through the forest, creating a space that no branches bridged. To find another way she would have to backtrack some distance, or descend. The sky was still pale, but darkness was gathering rapidly near the forest floor. Frowning, she looked down. The ground, hundreds of feet below, was dim in the failing light.

Hold me awhile longer, she said to the trees.

She unlaced her boots and tied them around her waist. Barefoot, she backed up to the trunk. After a few long breaths gauging distance and the thickness of the forked limb, she bolted down the branch, placing her last step in the fork, and pushed back to propel herself toward the opposite tree, arms outstretched.

The tree approached then began to flash past. Her fingers caught a twig, and were ripped free. Another brought her inward and almost stopped her before it too was torn from her grasp. Hands burning with pain, she succeeded in grabbing and holding the next, clenching her jaw to keep from crying aloud as skin tore.

She swung freely, breath ragged, blood dripping down her forearms. Hand over hand she climbed, tears and droplets of blood blurring her vision. Where the limb was thick enough, she fought to get astride, and then worked her way inward. At the trunk, she curled against it, holding her hands tight against her belly.

The wet warmth of her blood reminded her of the feel of her father, ripped open and dying on the forest floor. Despair welled up, but she bore down on it. With her dagger, she cut strips from her tunic and wrapped each hand tightly.

The forest floor was no longer visible. She gripped a branch, hissing in pain, and swung down. When she reached the dead branches shaded out by the upper levels, she put on her boots.

Relying on the bark, she placed her feet in the grooves and grasped the raised sections with her fingers. The grooves got deeper as she descended, and she was able to fit her hands inside them and bunch her fists, wedging them securely, biting down on the agony every hold brought.

Feeling her way down, she paused periodically to listen. Near the forest floor the tree base spread, and the climbing became easier.

The mosses and needles covering the earth were soft beneath her feet. Holding her hands to her chest, she rested against the tree. Crickets chirped and the breeze carried the scent of coming rain. These things comforted her, though when she quieted her breathing and tried to listen, there was nothing. Where that part of herself should have been was merely cold emptiness. A piece of her had died in the presence of the wolf-beast, or had been…consumed. The loss echoed in the empty places of her soul, evoking memories of her father’s death, the vanishing of her mother, and her last parting with Ambard. She sank to the duff under the weight.

An owl hooted, and the desolation broke. She stood and began to search for the path that ran between her house and Rainpool Rock, wondering what the wolf-thing had done to her.

The way became easy, and she turned on the path toward her house. Soon, the steep roof and sweeping eves of her log home came into view.

Once inside, she bolted the door and peered through a window at the forest. Fearing light, she blew out the lamp that still burned at the table where her unstudied books lay, then ran to the end of the great hall and up the stair three steps at a time. In her bedroom she lit a candle with an ember from the fireplace, quickly and painfully washed her wounded hands in a basin scented with a bit of crushed mendwort, then wrapped them with clean bandages. With stiff fingers, she buckled on her weapons belt, which held a pair of fighting daggers given to her by SaKlu, Captain of the Limtir Tomeguard, as a reward for her courage in battle against a Nagra cave bear. Her father’s long-sword, given to her as he died of wounds from the same animal, her recurve bow, a full quiver, and extra sling stones completed her arming.

In the light of the candle, she pulled a dagger free, looking at its smoky steel blade. SaKlu scared her at times, the way he looked at her. Something in his eyes reminded her of the beast just seen. She shuddered to think what he thought in those moments. With effort she drove such thoughts away, resheathing the blade with a crack. Sweeping her bear-fur cloak over her shoulders, she ran from the room, down a side stair to the kitchen. After stringing her bow and setting an arrow, she emerged from a door facing the stable.

The giant trees stood still and quiet. Silently, she ran to the stable. Letet, her mare, stamped and snorted, then nickered at the smell of blood, tossing her head. Breea flung open the stall door and, stepping on a side rail, swung herself onto the mare’s back. Gripping a fistful of mane, she bent toward the horse’s ears, crooned in urgent Breowic, and they were away.

Holding Letet to a trot, Breea watched their back trail until Letet warmed. The night was almost silent, and Letet’s muffled hoofbeats sounded as loud as near thunder. Sensing Breea’s fear, Letet stretched her stride. Breea gripped with her legs and, after releasing the bowstring, wrapped her fist in the horse’s mane. Letet surged forward, and they met the main valley road in a spray of gravel as Letet turned north.

Letet flew as only a Meric steed could. They left the giant trees of the southern forest, Gamanthea-Dur Su, passing into rocky hills clothed in lesser trees. Where the trees ended, the road passed between a pair of house-sized boulders, their faces each carved as one half of an open book.

Beyond, a boulder field rose to a cliff that soared straight and sheer out of the rocks. From a cleft in the rock face, Wisdom’s Water leapt down the cliff in a starlit cascade. Above, a structured outline was etched against the pale snows of the upper mountain—the roof peaks of the Library of Limtir. Below the roofline a scattering of pale glows gave Breea a surge of hope—lamplight through the windows of the library.

Letet charged up the boulder-lined road, powering her way up the slope. Despite the cool night air, Breea felt warm, and Letet was a furnace. Letet had never galloped so far. Breea’s eyes hunted the slopes below them for movement, then said in Breowic, Braphaerr, ooth, ooth, r’hame. Spirit-wind, slow, slow, my love.

The horse flicked an ear and ignored her, struggling to maintain pace up the long, east-trending switchbacks. At each turn she slowed a bit more, until she was walking, then surging to a gallop along the straight ways. Ever eastward, they climbed to the foot of the dark cliff, then followed its base until black rock met the gray granite of a ridge running down the south flank of the mountain. The road turned and vanished into a cart-wide crack between black stone and gray, Fall Rock Gap. Within, sheer walls rose on either side to a thin strip of star-filled sky overhead. Letet could only walk now, blowing and sweating. Breea stroked her neck. What horse could run up the Limtir road? Breea had never heard of such a thing, barring Meric horse stories everyone knew to be myths.

When Breea shifted her weight for Letet to stop, the horse walked on. Frowning, Breea shifted to dismount anyway, but Letet stepped aside, twitching her back to keep Breea mounted. Tears welled in Breea’s eyes, and she leaned forward to rest her cheek against Letet’s neck.

The right side of the canyon wall ended, revealing Uruidsen’s Basin, a vast bowl of heather meadows laced with white rushing streams, nestled like the palm of a hand in the southern flank of the mountain. Above the basin rose the mountain proper, occulting half the night sky. Ice rivers glowed down its flanks, filling valleys. Ridges running down were black with pale patterns of snow. Mist hung in tatters about their many peaks.

The roar of water drifted across the basin and reflected from the dark cliffs to the left of the road, the only sound other than the echoing clop of Letet’s hooves on the fitted flagstones of the roadbed.

After a few hundred feet of elevation, the view opened, revealing a crenellated curtain wall crowning the black stone ridge. Beyond the wall reared layer upon layer of sharp roof peaks and graceful eaves sheltering balconies and lamp-lit windows. At base of the wall, an arching bridge spanned the cleft cut by Wisdom’s Water.

As Breea crossed, a deep voice cried, Hold. Name yourself, and your service. The challenge echoed back and forth from the cliff behind her and the cliff-like walls of Limtir.

Recognizing Bay-ope Gardasim’s voice, Breea called, Bay-ope! It is Breea. Open the way!

One stone portal swung enough to allow her to ride into the gatehouse tunnel. Middle and final doors opened for her as she rode through the dark passage. The great courtyard that lay between the wall and the library was lit faintly by lamplight and torchlight. The few people about paused to peer curiously at who came at this hour. Bay-ope strode over, scale armor twinkling, a double-bladed ax in one hand. A small crowd of guardsmen followed in his wake. Painfully, Breea dismounted.

You are wounded, he said through a thick beard.

He motioned for a guard to take Letet, and by torchlight took full measure of her tangled hair, bloodstains, ragged tunic and breeches, countless scratches, and blood-soaked bandages. Rage, rare in him, rose about him like a thunderhead.

Breea wanted to hug him for it, but said, Wake the Voice, Bay-ope. There is something in the forest. It was heading toward the library, then it—he—tracked me in the Gamanthea-Dur Su. I must tell Ajalay.

Bay-ope raised a curved horn and sounded a blast that forced Breea to cover her ears. On the outer wall, the Voice of the Watch, an immense and ancient drum, answered with a tone that echoed across the mountain.

As Breea and Bay-ope ran across the courtyard, the drum spoke a rhythm that quivered her bones. There was no place in the entire library, above stone or below, where that rhythm was not felt. Doors around the outer wall slid open, spilling lamplight into the misty night air. Most of the Tomeguard lived within the wall, and the ready-watch were now pouring out of it and across the courtyard to the library. There were no shouts, no commands, just a rushing rattle of armor and pounding boots. Having run to a guard post at the sound of the drum herself many times, Breea knew that every major entranceway was now guarded, and in a few heartbeats all corridors within the library would be patrolled, guards tripled on the roofs and walls.

Side by side with Bay-ope, she passed into the vaulted Greethall. At the far end, Tomeguard heaved open doors to allow them access to the spiral staircase that connected every floor of the library above ground and below. The pair ran up the stair as halls emptied of scholars, students, servants, and guests, each finding their way into whatever room was nearest.

By the time they left the stair on the twelfth level, a taut quiet had taken hold throughout the library, a silence that lodged in the gut of every Limtirian, for when the Voice sang a war rhythm it meant that a thief or assassin was at work.

On the twelfth level, near the stair, a dozen elite guardsmen of the Tetr-Sanis Guard stood with drawn swords and armed crossbows at the ornate entry to Ajalay’s chambers. The doors opened from