opened thy mouth to our Master. Now I close it for good and all.
And when the youth expire, from my place among trees I did spy the Mydle binding his corpse, wading to the heart of the river, and disappearing, that he might send his remains into the deep.
“So this entry,” Quin said, “describes the Middle Dread killing a Young Dread—obviously a much earlier Young Dread than the one we know now—and pulling his body into the river.” She pointed to the series of athame symbols written in the margin by a modern ballpoint pen. “It looks like Catherine figured out where this happened, because she wrote these coordinates next to it.”
Questions presented themselves to Shinobu immediately. “Are Dreads allowed to kill each other?” he asked. “Or do they have to have a trial or a vote or something?”
“I don’t know, but even if they are allowed, I can’t imagine it would be done without the Old Dread present, can you?”
“No.”
“I think it’s safe to assume the Middle was doing something wrong,” she said. “So in the first entry, the Middle kills a Young Dread in a forest by a river, a ‘good journey’ from a stronghold. Now look at the second one.”
He read this one over her shoulder as she read it aloud:
1610?
…he did declare justice against my father, Sir Robert, of the house of the horse, for transgressions against the sacred three laws of Seekers. He declared Sir Robert had killed another Seeker and likewise harmed mankind.
He called my father to that place in the forest where he is often seen. We make it such on our stone device—
Here a series of athame coordinates had been included by the document’s author, written in messy quill pen. They examined them for a moment and then continued reading:
Arriving then together, my father commanded me up a tree to safety. I was to be his witness but not take part. The Myddle did appear and without argument did he strike my father dead as punishment for his crimes and removed his body past the river.
The Myddle come back directly, kicking dirt over my father’s blood on the ground. Hid in the branches of a tree, I wept but kept silent.
There was a noise of athame, a shaking of the air, and the eldest Dread Seeker arrived with eyes burning and whypsword drawn. Fearful argument ensued. The eldest struck with limbs like lightning, he disarm the Myddle and cast him to the earth, but the Myddle pled that his actions were just.
I could not make my limbs move to come down to earth and say what I knew. There was no crime save my father witnesseth the Myddle in an untoward act with a woman. God forgive me in my terror I did not move.
The Myddle left in shame. The eldest Dread remained and did turn to me and speake thus: He were in the wrong and ye have my apology. He will not be wrong again, that I promise. He will be a changed man and a decent Dread.
Within the month my brother too was gone, though others have sworn to me he was killed by a fellow Seeker, not the Myddle Dread. I know not what to believe.
When she’d finished reading, Quin looked over the pages for a few moments and tapped a small drawing in the margin that appeared to have been added by Catherine. “What do you think this is?” she asked.
“A hill?” Shinobu suggested. “Or maybe a cavern?”
“In this note,” Quin said thoughtfully, “the Middle declares ‘justice’ against a Seeker and calls him to a particular place in a forest—these coordinates, and maybe there’s a hill nearby—where the Middle kills him, as punishment for breaking a Seeker law, while the man’s son watches from a tree.”
“The son says it wasn’t justice,” Shinobu pointed out. “And it sounds like the Old Dread agreed and wasn’t pleased.”
“Yes. It mentions a river as well. And look at the coordinates. Isn’t that Scotland? Aren’t both entries pointing to Scotland?”
“I think so.”
They’d gained a working knowledge of athame coordinates during their training, but unless it was a location they were intimately familiar with, like Hong Kong or Scotland, neither could decipher, based solely on the symbols involved, where a set of coordinates would take them.
“Now the third page,” Quin said, and she read out the final entry:
April the Twelfth, 1870
Father,
The Middle Dread returned not three days past. He did not announce himself, but Gerald was hunting alone and spied him by the