But despite all the horrors of the disease, a cure exists. The process for producing it is complex, but…

It ended there.

NO! Greave shouted. IT CANT BE!

Greave roared with frustration. Someone a long time ago had torn pages from the book.

Who? Why?

No, as crucial as that question was, it wasnt the one that mattered right then. The thing that mattered was finding out the contents of those missing pages. Finding who had taken them could come later.

First though, he had to find the cure. How could he do it when this was all he had to go on? Greave read the book again, and there seemed no more clues, until his eyes fell on a small, crabbed note at the front.

Based on notes at GLA.

GLA, Greave wondered. GLA…..

Then it came to him: the Great Library of Astare.

Greave had heard of the library. It was a place in the northeast of the Northern Kingdom. It was closer to the dead, volcanic lands of the far north than it was to Royalsport, and would represent many days of travel. Even then, Greave didnt know if he would be able to get in, because it was a place belonging to the House of Knowledge, and none but their number were supposedly allowed within. Even a prince might find himself refused for not being one of them, especially asking about something as sensitive as this.

Greave knew though that he had to go anyway. The contents of the book told a story that would have shaken most people, but to him, they were crucial to saving his sister. If a cure existed, then he had to find it, whatever the difficulties or the dangers. He knew then what he was going to have to do.

He would risk his life if he had to. He was riding to Astare.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Vars had planned to get Rodry to take over the duty of leading his half-sisters guards. He had planned to listen to whatever nonsense his brother wanted to spout about him shirking his duties, then head off to the warmth of one of the House of Sighs establishments while his brother trudged through the rain after Lenores carriage.

Instead, something had gone wrong. Nerra had been sent away, not that Vars cared. Rodry had gone away on a hunt or something, at Lenores insistence. Now he found himself riding at the head of a marching column of men, all willing, even eager to protect his half-sister on her wedding harvest. Vars suppressed a sneer as he looked back at them. There must have been a hundred men there, and for what? To protect a sister who didnt even matter as far as the succession went? Would they spring to his defense with such eagerness?