Renold smirked. “All the worse for us. The ‘people’ are lapping up her gifts. And, in truth, it’s no small thing that she can make water flow from a dry well. She works sorcery. Think about that. It can only be that she has discovered Santoth secrets.”

“The Song of Elenet,” Hunt whispered.

The group fell silent. Barad opened his mouth to say something dismissive, but he was unsure of what to say and chose to share the silence. The Song of Elenet. Could it be, he wondered for the hundredth time, that such a book exists and that Corinn has it? Throughout most of his life he had considered Santoth lore simply fantasy, stories meant to amuse the masses and feed the Acacians’ sense of their past grandeur. But that was before Aliver and the way he dream whispered the masses off mist, before the sorcerers appeared on the fields of Talay to destroy Hanish Mein’s army, and before giant beasts began popping up here and there like weeds. Something had changed in the world. There were old powers at work once again, and—if that was true—it might also be true that the queen had found a way to tap into them. That was a dreadful thought, and it was not the only one they had to face.

To change the subject, Barad asked Renold to detail what he had learned about the league’s plans. The scholar said that on most things the league was impenetrable and their specific intentions shrouded as if by the mist they once trafficked in. Most who sailed the Gray Slopes believed that the league had burned what remained of their damaged platforms and abandoned the site in exchange for the Outer Isles. League vessels patrolled the archipelago’s waters like barracuda seeking prey, boarding any ship that blundered too near, even sinking a few and leaving the crews bobbing in the waters, food for sharks.

It wasn’t possible for him to get to the islands, but Renold had found out a few things about their doings through barroom interviews along the Coastal Towns. In Tendor he had spoken to squatters who had been ousted from the islands by Ishtat Inspectorate officers. Several used spyglasses and had seen league engineers surveying the land; and a few reported having been hired as laborers on compounds of buildings that dotted the island chain. Another man claimed to have shuttled a shipload of wooden dowels and thin boards to Thrain. He had noted the cargo because there were so many of the same objects, with no explanation given as to what they were for. The sailor had speculated that they were to be made into training swords, but Renold had a different idea.