Queen Talitha’s mages found and removed the last of the Elf’s gemstone anchors. Several guards sat around her, spears at the ready, along with one of the queen’s mages. Sheil, for her part, stared up at everyone with loathing, especially at Anna and the others. The queen sat down at the rim of the fountain, next to the Elf. “Now that all that unpleasantness is out of the way, pleased to meet you,” she said.

  “I’m sure,” Sheil said. “Attacking a traveler out of nowhere with a dragon and an army? Is that standard here in Selasem?”

  The queen smiled. “Not exactly,” she said. “Though we do have a bit of a pattern of unusual folks coming out of Grealand these days. Of course, the others were helpful.”

  “Oh, sure,” the elf mage muttered. “I bet they spouted some nonsense about the Wisps wanting help, and how people have been steeling them from the scepters.”

  “From the scepters?” Anna sputtered. “The king and queen don’t own the Wisps, any more than you do.”

  “Could have fooled me,” Sheil said. “The way I’ve heard you going around collecting Wisps for them.”

  Anna opened her mouth to reply, but Andrew put a hand on her shoulder. He stepped forward. “Lady Sheil, we’ve been dealing with bandits and Wisps in the wilderness. You told us yourself you were selling the ones you captured to the highest bidder.”

  “Is there a problem with that?” Sheil asked, addressing the Selasi instead of the Grealish trio. “Imagine a country where you, Queen, could monopolize a resource against your citizens.”

  Talitha frowned. “That would be a concern,” Talitha agreed.

  “More than a concern!” said her advisor, Mado. “It’s a travesty.”

  “That’s not what we’re doing, though,” Anna said.

  The queen held up her hand for silence. She thought for a moment, then nodded to herself. “I think it would be best if we got answers from her without interruption. You three said you wanted to explore these ruins? You have my permission to do so while I interrogate this prisoner.”

  Anna looked between the queen and Andrew. Stony-faced, the young man nodded. Anna had a sinking feeling as a pair of guards stepped forward to be their escort. Andrew looked at Anna. “Well… where should we start,” he said.

  The whole thing seemed like a haze. It felt like there was pressure on Anna as she looked around, pushing Anna toward the cavern.

  “This is bad,” Andrew muttered. “This is very, very bad.”

  “What are you talking about?” Peter asked. “We caught the mage. Now we can just look for the Wisps.”

  “No,” Anna said. “Andrew’s right. We can’t let her control what the others think. Remember in Nuidia?”

  Peter glanced over his shoulder. “What could she say?” Peter said.

  “She could confirm their fears about Grealand,” Andrew said. “She could lie about us. Make it look like we’re behind the all of the problems with the Wisps.” Andrew shook his head. “Maybe she wouldn’t even need to go that far. You heard what she said about ‘monopolizing a resource.’ The advisors were eating that up.”

  “We would be cut off from helping anyone here,” Anna said. “At best.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much,” one of the guards said. Anna turned and realized it was the same pair that had ridden ahead to greet them. It was Kofi, the younger, who’d spoken. He glanced over his shoulder and continued. “Her Excellency is good judge, and you lot seem… more or less trustworthy.”

  “More than the mage, anyway,” Osei agreed.

  “Right,” Kofi said. “She just needed you out of her hair while she got the other side of the story.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “You think so?” Anna asked.

  “She’s listening to lies,” Andrew said.

  The guards shrugged. The younger said, “We hear lots of lies. It’s our job to tell them from the truth.”

  “And the queen is good at it,” Osei said.

  There was silence for a moment. Then Peter said, “Maybe I am okay with you guys.” He stepped forward and asked the Kofi, “You think you could show me that trick you used to knock me down earlier?”

  “Maybe we could spar again back in the camp,” the guard said. “Just make sure your dragon doesn’t try to eat me.

  “If there’s time, that’d be fun,” Peter replied. “And don’t worry. He doesn’t eat people.”

  The two continued talking, with Peter asking more about the guards’ techniques. The guards described them, clearly proud that another warrior was taking interest in their skill. Anna looked back at Andrew and asked, “so what do we do now?”

  Andrew shook his head. “I’m not sure. I suppose we try and learn what we can from the ruins, if you think you can focus on anything.”

  Anna nodded. They continued into the underground chamber. It was some sort of entry hall with pillars holding up the ceiling, and now much of the mountain overhead. Beyond that, most of the other doorways had caved in, at least as far as Anna could tell in the light flowing through the main entrance. There was no way to tell what the hall had been for. Rubble that could have once been tables and chairs or benches or even just chunks of the ceiling was scattered all over the floor.

  They walked around the ruin for a few minutes, listening to Peter and the guards chat, while Anna examined the walls and pillars, looking for anything out of the ordinary. But the hall seemed empty of all details of the past.

  Of course, Anna knew her mind wasn’t really in it. There were marks along the pillars and the clear sections of wall similar to those around the fountains in the Crimson wood and just outside. She could only just bring herself to take out her notebook to compare.

  It was the same writing, of course. He same letters and words. But, no. The fountain in the crimson wood had seemed to repeat itself. The pillar before her didn’t. Anna found herself jotting down those sections as best she could. There wasn’t much, but she could feel her attention shifting to the task at hand. Perhaps the guards were right. Maybe the queen would be able to tell that Sheil was untrustworthy. They may yet be able to work with the Selasi to learn more about the Wisps.

  She was absentminded as she copied bits of the markings from the walls and pillars down. Even so she noticed that some of the rubble was parts of the wall or pillars, Most of the pieces were too small for her to make out much about them. A few were pieces of stone larger than she was. When she found a shard of stone the right size, she’d pick it up to examine it, and she found that for a few she could identify which part of the wall it was from.

  “So, what is it she’s doing, exactly?” Kofi asked.

  “She’s looking at the writing and copying it down for later,” Peter explained.

  “She can read the High Elvish?” the elder guard asked, sounding impressed.

  Peter shook his head. “Not really. But there’s someone working on figuring out how. She’s getting samples for him.”

  “How does that have anything to do with the Wisps?” The younger said.

  “It may not,” Andrew said. “But learning how to read what the Hight Elves wrote is our best bet to gaining more understanding of the Wisps, since they seem to like gathering in their ruins.”

  The young Selasi grunted. “What if this was just a dining hall or something?”

  “Why would the High Elves write all over a dining hall?” Peter asked.

  “I don’t know. Could you really learn anything from that, though?”

  “It’s the best we’ve got,” Anna said, picking up a stone the size of her head to examine. She turned it around, then gasped and almost dropped it.

  “What is it?” Andrew said rushing to her.

  Anna shoved the stone to him. “We need to find where that goes, now!” she said, spinning back to the pile and digging through the rocks in the caved in pile they were standing next to.

  “Why? What’s going on?” Peter asked, though he knelt down and started helping.

  “Look at the stone!” Anna said over her shoulder. “Tell me, what does that look like?”

  There was a pause. Then Andrew gasped. “Is that Grealish?” he said.

  “No, but it’s the same letters,” Anna said. “I don’t know if it’s the High Elf language in our writing system or not, so we need to find more.” She set the stone down carefully, so that the writing wouldn’t scrape against the ground. Her heart raced as she thought about it, though. Andrew hadn’t pointed it out, but there were both kinds of writing on that stone. Maybe someone could use one to read the other. They just needed to find more.

  “Got one! I think,” Peter said, pulling a little piece of rock out of the pile. He handed it to Anna. It was worn and small. She doubted the fragment had so much as a complete word. Still, she took it and brought it over to the bigger piece that Andrew was holding. It seemed to fit along the side, completing a word that had been cut off.

  She turned to the guards. “Come on!” she said. “The more of these we find, the easier it will be to translate the High Elf writing system!” she said. She got down on her knees again to dig and heard the guards do the same.

  For a moment, she touched her bracelet, trying to communicate her excitement to the Wisps. “We’ve found something!” she whispered. “It’s small but it’s our first real step. I’m sure of it!”