Mic let his hands fall into his lap. From outside came the noises of a camp stirring awake—dogs barking, people talking in an unfamiliar language, occasionally a child crying or calling out. Distantly a horse whinnied, and mules brayed in answer.

“We might as well get up,” Berwynna said.

“Indeed, and I wouldn’t mind a bit of breakfast, either.”

They’d both slept dressed. Mic pulled on his boots, then got up and left the tent. Berwynna busied herself with rolling up their bedrolls.

“Berwynna?” Dallandra pulled back the tent flap and came in. “You’re awake, then?”

“I am, my lady.”

“There’s no need to call me lady,” Dallandra said with a smile. “I wanted to tell you that your father’s flown off to scout the Northlands. He asked me to give you his love and to tell you he’ll be back again as soon as he can.”

“My thanks.” Berwynna bit her lip in disappointment. “I’d wanted to say farewell.”

“Dragons come and go as they please, not as we want, I’m afraid. He also told me about the lost dragon book.”

Berwynna winced. Dallandra sat down opposite her. In the pale light from the rising dawn, she seemed made of silver, with her ash-blonde hair, steel-gray eyes, and her pale skin, so unexpected in a person who lived most of her life out-of-doors. Silver or mayhap steel, Berwynna thought, like the pictures on the doors of Lin Serr.

“In a moment I’ll have to go tend the wounded men,” Dallandra said. “But I wanted to ask you about the book. You’ve seen it, I take it.”

“I have,” Berwynna said. “Not that I were able to read a word of it, mind. Laz, he did say that it be written in the language of the Ancients, your language, that be.”

“It was written, then, in letters?”

“Be not all books written so?”

“They are, truly.” Dallandra smiled at her. “But some also have pictures in them.”

“I never did see such, but then, my sister wouldn’t be allowing me to turn its pages, and no doubt she were right about that, too. What little I did see did look to me much like the carvings on our walls.”

“The what?”

“Forgive me.” Berwynna smiled briefly. “I do forget you’ve not seen Haen Marn. In the great hall, the walls, they be of wood, and there be carvings all over them, letters and such, I do suppose them to be. Laz, he did call some of them sigils, whatever those may be.”

“They’re a particular type of sign, a mark that stands for the name of a thing or a place or suchlike.” Dallandra paused. “Well, that will do as an explanation, though it’s not a very good one.”