The Gnome nodded quickly. He understood, all right. “I’ll do as you say,” he agreed reluctantly. “How long do I have to wait?”
“I don’t know. Maybe quite a while. You must be patient.”
Poggwydd sniffled. “I don’t have anything to eat. I’m hungry.”
Abernathy rolled his eyes. Questor squeezed the Gnome’s shoulders and released him. “I know. Be brave. We’ll try to find you something to eat and bring it down. But you have to stay where you are, no matter what. This is important, Poggwydd. You must not leave this room for anything. All right?”
The Gnome rubbed at his nose and shrugged. “All right. I’ll wait. But try to hurry.”
“We’ll be as quick as we can.” Questor backed away, looking once again at Abernathy and Elizabeth. “We’ll have to start over, tourists or no tourists. The common rooms first, then back into storage. But I’m willing to bet the book we need is right out there where we can see it.”
“You know,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully, “I think there were some books that were kept separate from the others, ones printed in a language that no one here could read. My father mentioned them once.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Questor exclaimed in undisguised glee. “Books written in Landover’s language, carried over by Michel or my brother! They would have to be the ones, wouldn’t they?”
And with that, following Questor’s final reassuring smile and wave of the hand to Poggwydd, they were out the door and on their way back through the castle.
The search took them longer than they expected, however, extending well into the late afternoon, when the last of the tourists were straggling back to their buses and cars and heading home. They hunted through the rooms of the castle twice before they found what they were looking for. There were books in every room, and most of them were under lock and key. That meant keeping watch and distracting both tourists and guides while the locks were released and a quick survey made to determine if any of the books were what they were looking for. Questor used magic on the locks, which hastened the process, but checking through the books took an inordinate amount of time and for most of the day yielded absolutely nothing.
Until finally, with time running out and the castle closing down, Elizabeth remembered a massive old glass-front cabinet in an upstairs drawing room tucked away in a dormer that was not visible from the roped-off doorway. There were some books there, she thought. Just a few, but she remembered them because her father had remarked once on their covers. Following her suggestion, they hurried to the drawing room as a bell sounded closing time in the downstairs hall. While the girl and Abernathy kept watch, Questor stepped over the ropes and wormed his way through an obstacle course of furniture to the cabinet. He peered inside. Sure enough, there were the books, a dozen of them, all wrapped in dark cloth covers that concealed the titles. The cabinet latch was locked, but a whisper of magic and he was inside.
Excited now, Questor reached past a collection of amethyst glassware that fronted the books and pulled the first out. To his extreme disappointment it was written in English and had nothing at all to do with Landover. He checked another two. It was the same. Another dead end, it seemed. Hope dwindling, he continued on more quickly. Books on gardening, travel, and history.
“Questor Thews, hurry!” Abernathy hissed from the doorway as voices from down the hall rapidly approached.
Questor opened the eighth book in the collection and his eyebrows shot up. It was written in Ancient Landoverian script, in a language the old wizards had commonly used. He paged through it hurriedly to make sure, hearing the voices more clearly: laughter, a quick greeting to Elizabeth, her response. Feverishly, he wedged himself between the wall and the cabinet, where he was out of sight of anyone standing in the doorway.
“Still poking about, Elizabeth?” someone asked, coming to a stop beyond the ropes. “Aren’t you getting hungry?”
“Oh, we’re almost done,” she replied with a nervous laugh. “Is it all right to stay a bit longer?”