He prepared a soup for the Wing Rider, tossed in a little dried fish, added a side portion of bread, and watched in satisfaction as the other ate it all and drank several more glasses of ale in the bargain. He left the map where he had put it, on the table between them, showing no interest in it. He was not sure yet what he had, and he wanted to be very sure before he conveyed to the Wing Rider a reaction that might be carried back to the Elf King. The uneasy relationship he shared with Allardon Elessedil did not permit giving anything away in their dealings. It was bad enough that he must pretend at civility with a man who had done so little to deserve it. But in a world in which alliances were necessary and, in his case, tended to be few and infrequent, he must play at games he would otherwise forgo.
When Hunter Predd was fed, bathed, and asleep, Walker returned to the table and picked up the map. He carried it from that room down musty halls and up winding stairs to the library, which had served the Druids since the time of Galaphile. Various inconsequential books filled with Druid recordings of weather and farming and lists of surnames and the births and deaths of noted families lined the ancient shelves. But behind those shelves, in a room protected by a magic that no one could penetrate save himself, lay the Druid Histories, the fabled books that recorded the entire history of the order and the magic its members had conceived and employed in the passage of more than a thousand years.
Settling himself comfortably in place amid the trappings of his predecessors, Walker unfolded the map and began to study it.
He took a long time doing so, much longer than he had supposed would be necessary. What he found astonished him. The map was intriguing and rife with possibilities. Inarguably, it was valuable, but he could not make a firm determination of how valuable until after he had translated the writings in the margins, most of which were scripted in a language with which he was unfamiliar.
But he had books of translations of languages to which he could turn, and he did so finally, walking to the shelving that concealed the Histories and their secrets of power. He reached back behind a row of books and touched a series of iron studs in sequence. A catch released, and a section of the shelving swung outward. Walker slipped through the opening behind and stood in a room of granite walls, floor, and ceiling, empty of everything but a long table and four chairs set against it. He lit the smokeless torches set in iron wall racks and pulled the shelving unit back into place behind him.
Then he placed his hand against a section of the granite wall, palm flat and fingers spread, and lowered his head in concentration. All the lore of all the Druids since the beginning of their order belonged now to him, given when he recovered lost Paranor and became a Druid himself those many years ago. He brought a small part of it to bear, recalling the Druid Histories from their concealment. Blue light emanated from his fingertips and spread through the stone beneath like veins through flesh.
A moment later, the wall disappeared, and the books of his order lay revealed, shelved in long rows and in numbered sequence, their covers bound in leather and etched in gold.
He spent a long time with the books that night, reading through many of them in his search for a key to the language on the map. When he found it, he was surprised and confounded. It was a derivation of a language spoken in the Old World, before the Great Wars, a language that had been dead for two thousand years. It was a language of symbols rather than of words. How, Walker wondered, would an Elf from his era have learned such a language? Why would he have used it to draw the map?
The answers to his questions, once he thought them through, were disturbing.