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By Root 920 0

the inside by potted herbs and on the outside bv kudzu vine. On a large bench, a maze of alchemic equipment distilled the life out of a blackened muck. There was no bowl catching the final product-a green ichor that had burrowed a hole an inch deep into the bench's granite surface. Notebooks full of internal anatomical charts of squirrels and rabbits and mice and rats and birds and fish covered pans containing the models from which the studies were drawn-all with their heads chewed away. Baskets of rock were stacked beside a kiln. Jars full of dead frogs and snakes and live caterpillars and ants and crickets and vials of potions filled an entire bookcase. There was no telling what was in the locked cabinets. Saucers of water and bones and dried cheese and curdled milk lay beside a desk.

The finishing touch, of course, was the paper-paper littered every available flat surface. Stacks of tomes and notes and letters lay on the desk and improvised tables of old crates and sawhorses covered with planks. Folded paper animals roamed the mountains of paper. Charts pasted to the walls overlapped other charts pasted to the walls. Finally, a crisis in housing had occurred, and the paper stacks had migrated to the floors beside walls and beneath tables. To Olive's astonishment, nothing littered the ceiling.

Drone's lab was more spacious than most, about forty feet in diameter, and it took the halfling a minute to thread her way through the maze of equipment and junk before she found her companions. Giogi and Cat stood beside a desk, speaking to Frefford Wyvernspur. Giogi's cousin held a silver urn, a sheet of paper, and a floor brush.

Freffie was saying, "I think you're right. There is evidence that it might not have been something he summoned himself. A window pane was broken. Nothing out of the ordinary with that, considering Drone, but all the kudzu vine from the roof to the window was blighted and withered. Those piles of papers by his desk were scattered across the floor."

"Any other signs of a struggle?" asked Cat.

Frefford gave a shrug, "With this mess, who could tell? I'd really better start heading down. Aunt Dorath is standing at the foot of the outer stairs, waiting for me. If I take too long, she's liable to send a division of the purple dragoons up.

"It was so kind of you to offer Giogi your aid," Frefford said as he bowed over Cat's hand, "in bringing Steele down from the mausoleum."

"It was nothing," Cat muttered.

"I hope you've shown her your appreciation, Giogi," Frefford said, his eves still fixed on the beautiful mage.

"Yes," Giogi replied flatly.

"Well, then," Frefford said, not noticing his cousin's frown, "I'll have the things to take to the temple piled in your carriage before you leave. Be careful up here."

Frefford turned and left the tower room by a second door, which led to a wider, windowed staircase running along the outside of the tower.

Olive popped out from behind a large brass gong. "I take it vour cousin was only up here to collect the last of your uncle's remains," she said.

"Yes. There wasn't very much to collect, though," Giogi said.

"No. There wasn't much of Jade, either," Olive said. "I went back to look for her ashes, but the rain had washed them away."

Cat said nothing but flipped open a book on the desk. It was the pink catalog Gaylyn had kept for Drone. Inside were lines and lines of small, neat handwriting. Cat lifted a few scrolls and manuscripts off a pile beneath the desk and compared each one to a list in the book. "Your cousin's wife has done a remarkable job. There is some organization to this whole mess. Only a small minority of these papers are actually magic, however. It will still take some time to separate the gold from the dross."

"Can't you just cast a detect magic and find the most useful things?" Olive asked.

Cat's face broke into a grin. "Good thinking, Mistress Ruskettle. I will cast the spell while you collect everything that glows. Look sharp, we do not want to miss anything," the mage warned.

"I'm ready," Olive declared.

Cat walked to the outer doorway