Page 116 of Requiem of Silence

“She’s still missing. Nobody has seen Her in days.”

“Maybe She’s trying to find Her brother.”

“I hope so,” Zeli said, unable to hide her doubt. “But there’s no way to know. We might just be on our own.”

“Again,” he whispered. “Maybe we should try to create our own drawings of the old section of the palace. We can go from room to room and measure and recreate all the missing parts of the plans. The obelisk could have been walled up during one of the renovations by people who didn’t understand what it was.”

Zeli beamed at him, a slow smile spreading across her face. “That’s a good idea.”

He shrugged and tapped his lips with the fingers of his free hand. She tightened her grip on him. “You have good ideas, Varten, it’s okay to trust them.” He ducked his head, for some reason unable to accept the praise.

“Want to start now?” she asked, letting him off the hook. He smiled gratefully.

Within minutes, he had found a sketchpad and acquired measuring tape from the palace steward. He and Zeli started where the detailed blueprints ended, evaluating the rooms in the original section of the building, making measurements, taking notes, sketching walls and doors. They worked for hours, Zeli testing her new lock-picking skills to enter unused rooms full of dusty, covered furniture.

As Varten continued to add to his sketchpad, he frowned. “Something is strange here.”

“What is it?” Zeli let the measuring tape slide back into its case with a snap.

“There’s a gap.” He led them from a room bearing only a long dining table covered in a white cloth back into the hallway. They were in the same corridor where their secret parlor was located.

“This hallway is two hundred and fifty paces long. But the rooms inside only add up to two hundred and eighteen paces. And that’s accounting for the width of the walls.”

They stepped back into what might have long ago been a small dining room. The narrow chamber featured a marble floor and walls with no windows. But none of the rooms in this section had any windows.

“So there are thirty-two paces missing,” she mused. “That’s too big for a closet.”

“Big enough for an obelisk?”

They stared at each other for a long beat before rushing back into the hallway. The next twenty minutes were spent remeasuring and checking the sketches until they’d located the missing space.

A wall stretched between two doors, papered in a faded damask pattern that looked gray but could have been red many years ago. Zeli ran her hand across it feeling the smooth, even surface.

“If there’s a room behind here, there must have been a door at some point,” she said.

Varten drummed his fingers against his thigh, scanning where the floor met the wall and doing the same for the ceiling. He ran a finger under a curling strip of paper that had lifted away from the molding along the floor. After he gave a tug, it ripped from the wall, revealing cracked plaster.

Zeli stayed watchful; though they hadn’t yet encountered another soul in this corridor, she didn’t imagine the palace staff would take too kindly to this sort of defacement. Varten continued peeling away strips of paper, which came away easily. Beneath the wallpaper, water damage from an old leak had left a brown stain. Other than that, the plaster revealed nothing—no obvious doorways that had been covered over.

“We’ll need a hammer,” Varten said, wiping dusty hands on his trousers.

“Wait, let me try.” Zeli closed her eyes and drew in Earthsong to fill her Song. She couldn’t help but smile at the sensation of life energy flooding her. On a deep breath, she focused a concentrated blast of air and pummeled it into the plaster. The wall cracked and then shattered, raining bits and pieces of gypsum all over them. Too late she realized that she could have directed it away from their bodies with a blast of air.

Her chest felt heavy from the exertion and the feeling of euphoria faded away. Her Song was already drained, just from thatsimple action. She wasn’t a strong Singer, and still very far from proficient after so many years without her Song, but she was still proud of herself.

Her blast had also cracked the old and rotting wooden lath strips, which lay horizontally behind the plaster. And behind that was a wall of stone.

She helped Varten clear away the wood, creating a large pile of rubbish from the castoffs. They moved faster once the rounded corner of a stone archway came into view. Soon an entire bricked-up stone entryway was visible. Carved into the top stone of the arch was an inscription written in a script similar to that of Yllis’s journal, but Zeli couldn’t read it.

“This is more like modern Elsiran,” Varten murmured. “Must be from when the languages started to diverge.”

“What does it say?”

“‘Keep the secrets. Spread the lies. Remember the truths.’”

Zeli frowned. “Strange. I wonder what that means.”

“And who put it here?” Varten shook his head as they considered both their progress and this new impediment. The bricks had obviously been added many years after the original stone entry had been constructed.

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