Page 40 of Requiem of Silence

“Apparently, these obelisks focus Earthsong and can also help to combine it with blood magic.” He read on silently, and Zeli grew impatient.

“What? What does it say?”

“More formulas. Equations.” He flipped another page. “He talks about meeting an emissary from the south. Another Earthsinger. Here, listen to this: ‘The young man, Gilmer he calls himself, has the strength of a Second. This land has not seen a Singer so strong since the days of my grandparents. Already, he has taught me much, helping to refine certain techniques that the Cantors struggled with. He says mere curiosity has brought him here, but I am not so certain. I hope he can aid my quest and help me find a way to correct the mistakes of my past.’”

Varten lifted his head and they shared a look of wonder. “There’s a lot more here. It will take some time to get through it all. I don’t think all of it is written in order, either, which is… kind of odd.”

“If the writer really found a way to restore lost Songs, why haven’t we heard of it before? He was doing experiments, but must have failed.” False hope was worse than no hope at all, and she couldn’t bear this kind of disappointment.

“Maybe.” Varten tapped his chin. “But he seemed confident that he was on to something. This guy was really smart, obviously, and he spent a lot of time on this, from all appearances. If we can figure some of this out, wouldn’t that make all the difference in the world for the Lagrimari?”

Zeli was dubious. “Whoever he was, he had his Song and was way smarter than us. And the Goddess said whatever was in here was best left unread. She—”

“Didn’t even read it. Are you sure She knew what was in it? What if you went back to Her and told Her—”

“Told Her what, that I disobeyed Her and read the journal when She told me to take it straight to the vault?” She shook her head. Visions of being sent back to a refugee camp, standing in line for rations filled her head. Varten pursed his lips and sat back.

“You’re right though,” Zeli said. “Her reaction to the journal was really strange. Sometimes… I’m not sure about Her sometimes,” she whispered, hunching down, ashamed to have even said that much. Worries about the True Father on the loose had never left her—the promise she’d made to keep his escape quiet haunted her. And now, hiding the wraith attack from everyone—none of it felt right.

“If there’s a chance to restore the Songs of the Lagrimari, isn’t it worth just about anything, even the Goddess’s wrath? More Earthsingers could give us a fighting chance against the wraiths at the very least. It would give the Lagrimari options.”

He was right. Zeli knew he was, but fear still raced through her veins. “We have no idea of how to do it.”

“I think we need to go through this journal with a fine-toothed comb. Study it and everything it references. Find out about this Gilmer from the south—that must be Fremia or Yaly. I didn’t even know there were Earthsingers there. Then again, I didn’t always pay attention to all my history lessons.” He looked a bit abashed.

“This is crazy. I don’t think we can do this on our own.” But if she got on the Goddess’s bad side, she could very well lose her position in the Sisterhood and kiss her future good-bye.

“What if we find something in here we can take to the Goddess or my sister? Something real that could help?”

Zeli took a deep breath. “All right. We’ll read this very carefully and see what we can find out.”

“The Singer from the south, what was his name again?” Varten asked, looking up from the large book he’d been reading. More like it were spread all over the library table before them. Zelisquinted in thought and tapped her lips. He fought to wrench his attention away from her mouth and not be distracted by her skin and her scent and her presence beside him. What they were doing was serious and he needed to focus.

“Gilmer,” she replied. “He’s the traveler who came and shared knowledge with the journal’s author. And then disappeared again.”

“And this would have been after the erection of the Mantle, right?”

“Yes, I think so. The author talks about how he wishes the others were still around to help, so I think it means that he was the only Singer left in Elsira after the Mantle went up and trapped everyone else in Lagrimar.”

“What do you think happened to him?” Varten asked. “I wonder why nothing of him remained?”

“You mean stories or legends? Maybe more of him persisted than we know,” Zeli said. “Have you found anything about a Singer named Gilmer anywhere in all of these? Or any other Singers at all?”

“No.” He shut the large, musty history text he’d been scanning. It probably hadn’t been opened in decades. “It’s like once the Mantle went up, magic disappeared from Elsira until the First Breach. There’s nothing in any of these books about Earthsong.”

Since most Elsiran writing wasn’t in the peculiar script of the journal that could be understood by readers of both languages, Varten would read from the Elsiran texts and Zeli would take notes. Visions of teaching Zeli to read Elsiran swept Varten’s mind. It would give them a reason to keep meeting after all of this was over.

She pushed her notebook away to lean her forearms on the polished wooden table. “We might have to start—” But whatever she was going to say was swallowed up when the door crashed open.

Varten jerked around to the entrance, then relaxed to find it was just Roshon. “Fancy meeting you here,” his brother said dryly.

“Told you I was helping Zeli with her Elsiran.”

“Welcome, please be seated,” she said in formal Elsiran, playing along. It wasn’t a lie, they had been working on her language skills while they studied the journal.

Roshon looked around skeptically at the towering shelves stuffed with books. This place was Jasminda’s fantasy, but it wasn’t filled with the type of reading material that either of the twins preferred: comics or detective novels.

“Oh, you found him,” Ani said from the doorway. She entered and stood next to Roshon.

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