I gazed at the destroyed homes. If Ryne hadn’t gotten sick, his men might have stopped those marauders. That thought led to another, which had been bugging me for the past couple days. “Why couldn’t the elite counter Tohon’s army?”

“We don’t know. None of the squads returned from a reconnaissance mission in Sogra,” Kerrick said. “That’s why we were in Vyg, to find out what happened to them.”

“Not even one solider?”

“No.”

Later that afternoon, I stopped and glanced around. The area looked familiar, but I’d no idea where we were exactly. Each day we had covered as much ground as possible, traveling about twenty to thirty miles before halting for the night. I calculated the approximate distance to be one hundred and twenty-five miles in five days.

“What’s wrong?” Loren asked me.

“How close is Galee?”

Everyone looked at Kerrick. He always knew our location. Quain had once teased that Kerrick was a living map, and I had wondered if the information had come from his forest magic.

“Galee is about eighteen miles east of here. Why?” Kerrick asked.

“My mentor, Tara of Pomyt, lived there. She had known so much about plants and herbs that she had written everything down so she wouldn’t forget. That book would be invaluable. It’s not far—”

“We spent three days in the Guild’s record room. Wouldn’t that information have been there?”

“No. The records are of past experiments and studies. Something that was used daily would have been near where the healers worked, not put away. It would have burned.”

“And Galee probably has been burned to the ground by marauders,” Kerrick said.

“Even if the town wasn’t,” Loren said gently, “her house would have been torn apart if her neighbors knew she was a healer.”

True. “And Tara probably carried it with her when she went into hiding. Never mind.”

But Kerrick didn’t move. “Tara didn’t go into hiding.”

“How do you know?” A cold emptiness swirled inside me.

“She was on the top of Ryne’s list, and close to our starting point. Belen and I arrived in Galee a few days after we left Ryne, but she had been executed the month before. Her house had been looted, but not burned.”

Grief swelled along with an impotent fury. Killed by the very people she had loved and cared for. Whose scars she proudly wore. Whose sickness she had assumed so they didn’t have to suffer.

I pushed my useless emotions down. Nothing would change because I was angry. “The book’s long gone. Probably burned for warmth that first winter.”

“Perhaps. Or she could have hidden it,” Kerrick said.

“Maybe. But the odds are so slim there’s no sense going eighteen miles out of our way.” I was well aware that Kerrick and I had changed roles even before I caught the monkeys’ smirky grins.

“Still worth stopping,” Kerrick said.

I stared at him knowing full well he only agreed because he hoped it would sway me to decide in Ryne’s favor.

As expected, the town of Galee had been destroyed. Burned-out buildings lined the streets. Nothing left except the stone foundations. However, Kerrick was determined to find Tara’s house.

I led them to her place by memory. As her newest apprentice, it had been my job to go to the market every morning. I had gotten all the jobs no one else wanted, but I had treated each task as if it had been essential to do well—a trick I had learned from my father. Tara had called me her hardest-working apprentice, and had eventually started coming to me to help her with the more interesting cases.

Her house resembled the others—a pile of burned rubble. Kerrick and the others poked around, clearing sections. I stayed on the street, trying and failing not to recall how the six months I had lived and studied here had been the happiest of my “adult” life.

“Found something,” Kerrick said, joining me. He held a small dented metal box coated with ash.

My heart jolted in recognition. It had survived!

“It’s locked.” He shook the box and it rattled. “Hold it so I can pick the lock.”

“No need.” I dug into my knapsack and withdrew a small silver key. “The box is mine. I’d left it here when I returned home, hoping I would be back. I’d forgotten about it.”

“Yet you carry the key.”

I shrugged. “Just couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Strange, I know.”

The key fit, but opening the lock proved difficult. Kerrick helped and soon the contents that I had thought vital at the time were revealed. Coins, a necklace and a notebook.

Kerrick held up the necklace. The pendant hanging from it was a pair of hands. He gave me a questioning glance.

“My brother Criss sent that to me a month before I left home to start my apprenticeship. He’s the one who taught me how to juggle.” I smiled at the memory. “His letter said he knew I would be the best healer in all the Fifteen Realms because I had always been good with my hands and that he was so proud of me.” Tears filled my eyes, blurring my vision. “That was the last time we heard from him or my father.” I turned so Kerrick couldn’t see me wipe my cheeks.

“What’s in the notebook?” Kerrick asked.

I flipped the pages. My crooked handwriting filled each one. Reading through a few, I realized that what I had thought was a silly diary of events actually was an account of what I had learned each day. I had already forgotten many of these lessons.