“Where are we?” asked Rori.

  “What do you mean?” answered Nolan.

  “I didn’t realize that question could be confusing.”

  “Sorry, let me give a better response. Why do you want to know?”

  “Because I’m evidently going to be living here for a while and because I’m a naturally curious person. New question, why the secrecy with where we are?”

  “Don’t take it personally,” said Kedra, “but the less you know about where we are, the safer you are.”

  Rori looked over the stone railing of the large balcony the three of them were standing on. There were large snowcapped mountains stretching as far as he could see in every direction. Judging by how much he could see and their relative position to the other mountains, this balcony and the connecting rooms were carved into a mountainside more than halfway to the summit. The air was crisp and cold and there was no sign of the early, warm spring that he’d been lazing in yesterday.

  “You’re going to have to explain that one. How can my knowing where I am, make me less safe?”

  “Imagine that some bad people are trying to kill you,” said Nolan. Which you don’t have to imagine, because there are in fact bad people actively trying to kill you right now. But let’s also say that these people have a lot of money and access to pretty much whatever magic that they want. Which again isn’t a stretch of the imagination. Based on the previous attempts at killing you and the size of the bounty on your head, we know that there is plenty of money at play.

  “You then disappear and go into hiding. This is a problem for them because in order to collect on that bounty they’ve got to find you. So how can they do that? Unfortunately, there are multiple ways.”

  “The most direct would be to cast a spell that can immediately ‘Discern Location’,” said Kedra. “If I cast that, then I would immediately know your exact location. For instance, casting it on Nolan might reveal that he was in Lorenthia, in the city of Lycea, in the bar called The Laughing Green. Then I would need merely travel to that location to find you. If the trip took a long time and you were likely to change location before I could get there, I could simply cast it as many times as I needed until I was standing right beside you.”

  “Alternately, I could cast any number of divination spells that would reveal your location to me in less specific ways. And while some of them would give back cryptic or partial answers, if I’m willing to dump a bunch of money at the problem, there are other spells to cast that could clear up any confusion,” added Nolan. “For instance, a wish spell combined with another spell called ‘Find the Path’ would work just as well.

  “Of course, if we don’t have access to those spells we can try to get by on cheaper things. There are spells that let you know what a certain person is thinking. If I can’t afford or find someone to cast the expensive spells, I take it down several steps and just cast that one over and over and over. Maybe the first twenty times I cast it I get pretty boring stuff. You’re thinking about food, or you’re asleep or you’re training. But if I’m patient, eventually I catch you thinking about the fact that you are now hiding in the Black Tooth Mountains.

  “I head to those mountains and wander around casting “Find Person.” Unfortunately, find person has a pretty limited range, but I can always just wander around until you end up in range of the spell. If I’m persistent, eventually I will find you.”

  “Doesn’t the thought stealing spell have a range limitation too?” asked Rori.

  “Sure,” answered Kedra, “but there are ways to extend that range. Some of which make it essentially cover the globe.

  “You make it sound depressingly simple and easy. Why did we even bother hiding in the first place?” asked Rori.

  “Don’t forget our assumptions. Some of those magics are not simple spells to cast. You need someone with impressive levels of competence in very specific magics. Such people are not so easily found and hiring them to cast those spells does not come cheap. Also, we can take precautions against that type of magic.”

  “Like this ring you’re making me wear?” asked Rori holding up his right hand to show the plain silver band that he was now wearing.

  “Exactly,” said Kedra. “That ring makes the wearer all but immune to divination and scrying. Someone casting discern location right now would get no answer. If I were to cast find person right now, it would not tell me you are standing right there in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to steal your thoughts, no matter how much I’d increased the effective range of the spell. Which is why, until things are resolved, you should never take the ring off. Not even for a moment.”

  “Unfortunately, that ring is not inexpensive, and we currently only have three of them in our possession. So, if I can’t find you with a spell, instead I try people I know you are going to be hanging out with. We have a pretty large group, so it’s only a matter of time before we hit on someone who isn’t wearing a ring,” said Nolan.

  “Okay, so the less I know about where we are, the less likely I will spill the beans on my location, intentionally or unintentionally. I guess that makes sense. So, I take it we are not actually in the Black Tooth Mountains.”

  “Nope,” said Nolan. “We aren’t even close.”

  “How long are we staying here?”

  “Right now, the only definite thing we have coming up is your clan’s conclave, but that is still months away. Of course, Dade might come up with something else we need to do between now and then. That places us somewhere between a week and several months.”

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  Rori walked to the railing and leaned over to peer down into the valley below. The mountain side beneath the balcony was nearly vertical and there were no paths anywhere to be seen. He whistled as loudly as he could and listened to the echoes reverberating in the cold air.

  “Is there even a path that leads to this place?” he asked.

  “No, and there never was. In fact, I’m only aware of twenty or so people who even know of its existence and of those only a handful actually know how to get here,” said Nolan.

  “Everything looks clear,” said Wergen as he and Baxter walked out onto the balcony from the interior rooms. “Based on the amount of dust covering everything, it doesn’t look like anyone has been here in quite some time. There are no tracks besides a few rats’. The walls and ceilings are safe and strong. The food stores are still intact. Water supply is fine. Besides cleaning up the handful of rooms we want to use, there should be no problem staying here as long as needed.”

  “How many rooms are there?” asked Rori.

  “I stopped counting at twenty,” said Baxter. “And we weren’t even halfway done.”

  “Who made this place?” asked Rori.

  “Maybe I’ll tell you some day when we aren’t hiding out here. Again, too much information about this place is not necessarily a good thing right now,” said Nolan.

  “Sounds like you’re getting a bit paranoid to me,” said Rori, “but since it’s my butt on the line, I guess I can’t complain. Who’s going to be staying with me first?”

  “Actually, we all are for a few days. Dade wants to have another meeting, and this seems like a safe location to have it,” said Kedra. “So, let’s get started on cleaning up enough sleeping quarters for the lot of us.”

  It hadn’t taken long to get the place ready. There were a couple of rooms with a lot of beds that looked as if they were intended to be barracks. Wergen and Baxter both assured Rori that since most of the people would only be staying for a night or two, they would all be fine sharing the room. That just left getting a couple more bedrooms ready for Dade, Kedra and whoever it was that would be staying after with Rori. Add to that list a large dining room, the kitchen and a large room meant to be a sort of common room, and the cleaning was done in no time.

  After they were done with the cleaning, Rori decided to wander around and check out the rest of the place. It was, as Baxter had said, impressively large. Since most of it was built into the side of the mountain there were almost no exits leading outside. The common room had the balcony that they had been standing on before. The large bedroom that would be used by Dade and Kedra had its own private balcony that was hidden from sight from the first one. Finally, the kitchen had a small balcony that was barely large enough to hold one person.

  There was no ‘front’ door or any other door leading out of the mountain abode. Unless you teleported in like they had, your only other option was to scale the side of the mountain and come in one of the balconies.

  Despite the lack of windows, the base didn’t feel dark or stuffy. The rooms all had hooded lanterns hanging on the walls, but the lanterns didn’t burn oil. Instead, lifting the hood on the lantern revealed that suspended inside was a stone enchanted with a permanent light spell. In that way you could have as much or as little light as you’d like in a room without worrying about smoke and fumes from a fire.

  Rori suspected there must be other magics at work as well, because despite the frigid temperatures outside and the fact that they were literally inside a cold, stone mountain, the rooms were a nice, comfortable temperature and the air stayed fresh and clean.

  During his wanderings Rori found several other interesting rooms as well. There was the expected kitchen with storage rooms attached to it, some of which already had dried goods waiting to be used. Two training rooms with a storage closet full of sparring equipment. A generic chapel that, with the addition of a few items related to any given god, could be used by most religions. A laboratory, that as far as Rori could tell, had everything you might need stored in neat piles under large sheets on one side of the room. And there was even a working bath that perpetually had warm water that came up from an underground hot spring.

  There was one door that was locked and sealed with four stout looking locks. When he’d asked about it, Nolan had said it was a vault and that the four obvious locks were only the beginning of the defenses placed on it. He’d warned against ‘mucking around’ with it.

  But the find that made Rori the happiest was the library. The room was large and cozy. There were rugs on the floor and tapestries on the walls. There were large comfortable chairs scattered around several low tables for lazy reading and there were two tables with wooden chairs for serious research. There was a container filled with maps. A wall rack that held several dozen scrolls and there were five large bookcases that, while not completely filled with books, had more than enough to keep him busy for the amount of time he would likely be here. He’d already done a little searching through the shelves and had pulled a few titles he wanted to read.

  In the end it had been three days before everyone else had arrived for the meeting. Rori pointed out that anyone magically searching for them would have a lot more than three targets to choose from. Kedra assured him that they had taken care of the problem with some spells that would mask all of their presences for a short period of time.

  As each group arrived, ferried in by Kedra, there was an increased feeling of camaraderie and goodwill. When the last group finally arrived, Rori was pleasantly surprised when he found out that L’nova was included in their number.

  L’nova was a palindri sorceress that specialized in offensive spells. The cat woman was not a part of the military but was more of a ‘spell-caster for hire’ that Nolan, and occasionally Dade, used from time to time. And since she had been a part of the group that helped retrieve the sword, it was only natural that she be included. There had been a bad incident between her and Dade before Rori had ever joined the group, so there was also always a hidden undercurrent of tension between the pair as well.

  “L’nova!” said Rori as she strode into the library where Rori, Ian and Honoria sat before a fireplace chatting. He jumped up out of his chair and walked over to her. “Would it be out of place for me to hug you?”

  “Rori, just because I am of a different race does not mean I don’t like to embrace friends I haven’t seen in a while.”

  When they embraced, Rori was surprised to find that she smelled quite a bit of some sort of cinnamon-like spice. It was something he’d never noticed before. The cat woman wore the same outfit she had in the past: a pleated black skirt that was barely long enough to adequately cover, and a similarly thin black band of cloth across her top. If she had been human, her outfit would have probably caused a lot of stares and drawn attention to how high up her thigh it went and how much of her bosoms were exposed. However, since her jet-black fur was nearly the same color as the cloth, without staring it was hard to say where the cloth ended and her fur began. Additionally, the wide variety of jewels, rings and other jewelry she wore tended to divert your attention as well.

  “You look fantastic.”

  “Thanks, pink face. But you’re still not my type.”

  “That’s . . . not . . .” stumbled Rori.

  “Make that red face,” said L’nova with a smile.

  “You done torturing Rori?” asked Ian. “Or should we leave you two alone?”

  “I guess I’m done. Anyway, Dade said to tell you to come to the dining room. Now that all the important people are here, we can hold our meeting.”

  Before anyone could respond, the palindri turned and sashayed out of the library her tail swaying with her hips.