Page 37 of Lake of Sorrow

Of course, if they had wanted to deter pursuers, they would have laid traps along the shoreline, where thirsty rangers might stop to fill their canteens. If the Kar’ruk knew how the druids had felt about humans, they would have assumed rangers wouldn’t go anywhere near the ruins. If anything, a former druid village would be a place the Kar’ruk might camp, believing humans wouldn’t disturb them in there.

The thought made Kaylina halt and eye the moss-covered slabs of rock warily. But she didn’t smell any musky odors, and Levitke was ambling about without concern. Kaylina didn’t think any Kar’ruk were there, at least not now. Her hand remained cool, almost soothingly so, as she headed deeper into the ruins.

Ahead, stone benches rose up a slope in a semi-circle that overlooked the lake and a flat, cleared area among the ruins. An amphitheater of sorts?

In the cleared area, Kaylina spotted large footprints. Levitke sniffed them, then swished her tail as she gazed about.

“Do you think there’s anything useful in here that could help me learn how to remove curses?” Kaylina didn’t expect her to respond in any way, but the taybarri brushed her tail over the ground, wiping out a couple of footprints. What did that mean?

Next, Levitke ambled past the benches and toward rectangular stone formations that reminded Kaylina of raised garden beds. Flowers heady with unfamiliar scents grew inside and outside of their borders. The taybarri’s tail brushed some plants, and orange pollen wafted into the air.

Levitke stopped in one formation and placed her foot on something. She wiped it side to side, her claws scraping on stone or metal as she brushed away dirt.

Kaylina joined her. It was a plaque. Though it was as weathered and pitted as the stone slabs, runes were visible on it, the first sign of writing.

“Did you know this was here? Have you been here before?”

Levitke whuffed, then wandered into the flowers and squatted to pee on them.

“I have no idea how to interpret that response.”

Levitke whuffed again, tail batting more pollen into the air. It tickled Kaylina’s nostrils, and she sneezed. The cloying stuff lingered in her nose and made her skin tingle.

“Tingly nostrils. Just what one wants.” Kaylina knelt and brushed more dirt off the plaque. “If I had paper and some charcoal, I could make a rubbing. But all I’ve got is the ranger book.” She glanced toward the lake, but enough ruins blocked the view that she couldn’t see Vlerion. She did glimpse the tip of Crenoch’s blue tail swishing about and trusted his rider wasn’t far. “If Vlerion is looking at tracks, he might not notice a touch of book blasphemy, right?”

As she eased off her pack, Levitke moved into a different patch of flowers and rolled on her back like a hound. She swished from side to side, this time sending yellow pollen into the air.

“You like this place, huh?” Kaylina pulled out the ranger book and checked for blank pages. “The title page might do, but I don’t have charcoal for a rubbing.” She eyed the pollen dusting the area—thanks to Levitke’s rolling it was all over the nearby stones. “I don’t know if that’ll be waxy enough, but let’s try.”

After making sure Vlerion couldn’t see her, and wouldn’t notice her destroying his book, Kaylina carefully tore out the title page and laid it over the raised runes. She swept pollen from the rocks into her palm, then spread it over the paper. She used the binding of the book to rub over the page, pressing and trying to get the pollen to stick to the paper. It worked better than she expected.

“It’s sticking to my nostrils, so why not,” she murmured and raised the page, blowing off loose pollen.

Levitke padded over.

“What do you think?”

The taybarri snorted, her hot breath blowing across the page.

“Yeah, it probably won’t help Frayvar or whoever knows how to read this language, but you never know.” Kaylina tucked the page back into the book to protect her rubbing and returned it to her pack. Someone else had probably done this long ago with professional rubbing materials. For all she knew, every library in Port Jirador had copies of the plaque with translations. Even though it felt like they were out in the middle of nowhere, it couldn’t be more than ten or fifteen miles back to the city.

One of the plants that Levitke had rolled in straightened its stalk, its bulbous flower rising up and rotating toward the lake. Several others did the same. They looked like a herd of animals lifting their heads because they’d detected a predator approaching.

Levitke whined and pawed at her ears with one limb while her other three carried her away from the flowers. She hid behind a stone slab.

“Vlerion?” Kaylina couldn’t hear anything, but maybe the taybarri could. Something that bothered her ears? “Are you doing something… offensive?”

“I’m looking at refuse the Kar’ruk left behind and searching for clues about their plans,” he called back.

“Offensively?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

A shriek came from the heart of the flowers.

It startled Kaylina so much that she fell over, grasping for her sling. The petals of several flowers undulated as another shriek sounded. An alarm?

Levitke roared and ran away, shaking her head, her tail smacking the ruins.

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