The room, also lined in Orinfar, was the size of a large closet and once more displayed all the artistry of men wanting to be done with a miserable job. Hacked out of stone was a space not much larger than what was needed to accommodate the inward-swinging doors. Lying on the floor as if dropped with indifference was a stack of unbound, blank leaves of parchment.

Blank?

Farilane felt her stomach drop and her heart weaken at the sight.

All this way for nothing?

Then on closer inspection, she noticed the top sheet was faded nearly beyond legibility, but there were ghostly markings. A careful lifting of that page revealed darker, clearer writing beneath. She knew her time had not been in vain as she read the first passage:

They came with hardly a warning,
thousands both beautiful and terrible.
They came on brilliant white horses,
wearing shining gold and shimmering blue.
They came with dragons and whirlwinds,
and giants made of stone and earth.
They came and nothing could stop them,
save honorable men.

She’d found what she came for.

She had found The Book of Brin.

“I’m alive!” Farilane shouted as she returned to the waterfall shaft. “And I managed to—

“Princess!” Virgil shouted back. “It’s raining outside!”

“How bad is it?”

“Not awful. The usual little trickles of water are starting to form, but it’s getting steadily worse. Soon, we’ll have waterfalls outside as well.”

“If it gets worse and doesn’t let up, we run the risk of becoming trapped,” Kolby shouted from the depths, where she guessed the knight had waited on his little raft for the better part of the last hour. “We only have supplies for a day or two.”

“Okay,” she said, “bring me back.”

The philosopher used the name of Maribor to set the bridge rising once more. Knowing what to expect, Farilane and Kolby performed the return acrobatics smoothly. The princess leapt down before the bridge reached its apex with Kolby running out to the other end to keep the beam balanced. Farilane wasted no time running across as Kolby ran at her. They passed at the midpoint, keeping the platform level. Then, just as the letters snapped back into place, Farilane leapt off. Her sudden absence resulted in the bridge tilting upward in the direction of the exit. Sprinting back the way he had come, Kolby raced up the slope and jumped while the bridge still had some height. He caught the edge and pulled himself up with seemingly no effort at all.

“Show off,” she said.

“Are you all right?” Virgil asked.

“I’m fine,” Farilane replied. “Let’s get going.”

They returned to the entrance of the cave. As Virgil had mentioned, it was indeed raining. “This will make scaling the cliff more than a little reckless,” she said.

“Should we stay?” Virgil asked all of them.