While Karigan pondered that, Chelsa produced another folded piece of paper and silently offered it to her. It quavered in Karigan’s hand. Her name was written on it just like the other, in the captain’s style. This one was sealed with green wax imprinted by the winged horse. Just seeing it brought an onrush of emotion, a storm threatening to break. So homesick . . . She cleared her throat, forcing back tears, and broke the seal.
The captain had written:
Dear Karigan,
The scything moon is held captive in the prison of forgotten days. Seek it in the den of the three-faced reptile, for you are the blade of the shadow cast. Beware! The longer you linger, the faster we spin apart.
L. Mapstone, Capt., HMMS
Usually the captain was concise and to the point. But this . . . this was downright obscure. Even murky enough to make an Eletian proud. Karigan had hoped for some clear instruction to help her find her way home, but she’d gotten this instead. A riddle.
“Sir Karigan?” Chelsa said tentatively. “Is everything well? You’ve gone pale.”
Karigan wordlessly handed the message to Chelsa.
“Oh, my,” Chelsa murmured as she read it. “I take it this is not what you were expecting.”
Karigan gave a humorless laugh. “I was expecting explicit directions about how to get home. To my own time. But of course, nothing is ever that easy.”
Chelsa returned the message. “I am under the impression, from what I’ve read of her, your Captain Mapstone was never this cryptic.”
“No,” Karigan agreed. “This is not . . .” She struggled to find the right words. “This is not her voice.”
“But it is her handwriting, yes?”
Karigan nodded.
“In his log books, Agemon spoke of receiving the documents from the captain’s own hands. He described her as looking unhappy about it all as she instructed him to keep them secret until he was ready to pass his responsibilities on to his successor.”
The captain, Karigan thought, could have been unhappy about any number of things. It told her nothing about why the captain had written such a riddle.
“She obviously meant for you to find meaning in her words,” Chelsa said. “Somehow. I thought it remarkable that she knew you’d someday be here to read her words. I assume such precognition is one of the skills Riders are endowed with?”
“Perhaps, but it was not the captain’s. I’ve asked myself how she knew, but have no answers.” Karigan was not surprised Chelsa knew of Rider abilities. She shook her head. “All I know is that I just want to go home.”
Chelsa reached over and placed her hand on Karigan’s arm. The warmth of that touch helped.
“I do not know what it is like to be sundered from home,” Chelsa said, “for I was born and raised in these tombs, but I fear I may see its destruction.” Her face was clouded with worry.
“What will you do?”
Chelsa shrugged. “We shall do as anyone would do when their home is threatened—defend it. The Weapons wish to stop Silk directly, but they are few and stand no chance against the numbers that can be deployed by the empire.”
Karigan gave Joff a sideways glance. He had not left his station by the wall, and gave no indication he had listened to a word of their conversation. A true Weapon.
“If only I knew why Silk has started drilling now, and with such fervor,” Chelsa said.
“Do you know of an object called the dragonfly device?” Karigan asked. If Chelsa did, not only would it help the opposition in this time, but if Karigan could solve Captain Mapstone’s riddle and get home, she could find the artifact and prevent Amberhill’s empire from rising in the first place.
“Dragonfly device? I have not heard of it.”
Karigan tried to remember what the professor had said about it. “It was supposedly some sort of magical device used by a forerunner of the Sealender line to run off the sea kings. It disappeared afterward. The professor, the man who shelters me, thinks it may have been interred here with the first Sealender king.”
If Chelsa was shocked that some professor knew of the tombs, she did not show it. She gazed thoughtfully into space.
“The professor thinks,” Karigan said, “that this device has the power to stop whatever great weapon the emperor has at his disposal. He says Silk would like to get his hands on it to give to the emperor, to gain his esteem. Once in the emperor’s own hands, it would no longer be a threat to him. The opposition would like to prevent this from happening and use the device to their own advantage if they could.”
“There are many objects down here that have been interred with the royals, with all the heroes,” Chelsa said. “Much of it is just the ephemera of lives lived, some of it priceless jewels and gold, some of it not. There are other relics that have been kept secret down here for their more arcane properties. I have to say, your dragonfly device is not one. Or, at least, it is not one I’ve ever heard of, which is entirely possible. It could even go by another name. The sheer number of objects we keep under our care is more than one person, even the chief caretaker, can know.”
Nothing, Karigan thought once again, was ever easy.
“It appears,” Chelsa said, “we have both been presented with riddles this night.”
OPENING THE DOOR
“Did your professor happen to say what manner of object this dragonfly device was?” Chelsa asked.
Karigan felt a subtle change of air currents circulating the cool chamber, which she attributed to the Heroes Portal opening and closing. “He seemed to think it was a sword or rod or something. Maybe a spear.” She thought back to the drawing she’d seen in his journal. “All he had to go on was an ancient etching on stone that is being worn away by the sea.”