Seregil looked up sharply at the sound and Miya chuckled and pointed to the mark of the dragon bite across his left hand. “You’ve had some experience with the young ones, haven’t you, Aurënfaie?”

“Yes.”

Wine and cups stood on the sideboard, but they weren’t offered any. Alec got the distinct impression that their visit was nothing to her but an annoying interruption of her work.

Miya lowered herself into a sagging armchair and motioned them to a pair of wooden chairs. “Thero says you’re investigating the plague in the poorer quarters.”

“Yes. I understand your master was an expert in various death magics,” Seregil replied. “I was hoping you might have heard of something similar to this sleeping death.”

She nodded toward the workroom. “As you can see, my studies have taken me in a different direction, though I daresay I know more about death magic than most under this roof.” She reached over to a side table and carefully picked up a dusty, fragile scroll. “I found this in the cases of my master’s personal library. Do you boys read Red Sun Period Zengati?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Alec glanced sidelong at his friend in surprise; he hadn’t thought there was any language Seregil didn’t have some knowledge of.

She sniffed at that, then gently smoothed out a portion of the scroll. “This was written by a traveler to eastern Zengat some four centuries ago, Teleus thought. I don’t know how it came to him. It’s just a journal, really, and talks about all sorts of different things, but here it mentions what the author calls the falling sickness, which he describes as a kind of trance a person falls into for reasons unknown. And then they die.”

“That’s all?” asked Alec. “It doesn’t say what caused it?”

The old woman spared him a scathing look. “No, it doesn’t. But an intelligent person might gather from this that it’s Zengati magic. Hardly surprising, really, with those folk. Always killing each other off in nasty ways.”

“And there’s no mention of a treatment for it?” asked Seregil.

“No, it just says they die. I told you already, the author was a traveler, not a wizard. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

She showed them unceremoniously to the door and closed it firmly behind them.

“Thero could have told us that much at the Palace!” Alec exclaimed softly as they made their way down to the atrium.

“I don’t think he was in the mood to do us any favors.”

“So this is Zengati magic. I wonder if that’s why Thero couldn’t sense it?”

“Perhaps, but I’m not prepared to take anything for granted. It’s time we caught a raven.”

Chapter 36 - Honor