Free A Threat of Shadows by JA Andrews

inaccessible except from this tunnel.
    “In the valley were the beginnings of a tower. A circle of iron-laced sandstone. It rose about twenty feet before it stopped, as though the builder had been interrupted. Only one room on the ground floor had been completed. A dusty bedroom.” Douglon leaned closer. “It had belonged to a wizard.”
    Alaric’s mind was racing. Douglon had found a Wall, a tunnel, and a valley complete with the beginnings of a new Stronghold? In the Scale Mountains? More questions than he could voice swirled in his head.
    “A wizard?” he asked finally.
    Douglon nodded. “It was full of wizardy things. There were shelves of scrolls and pouches and boxes. The scrolls were written in runes we couldn’t read. But the pouches and boxes, every one held some marvel. The boxes held things like a spinning top that bounced off the sides, a pile of ancient gold coins, three dried mushrooms that hummed. One pouch held bright blue beetles the smelled of rosemary, all dead. Another was filled with pure silver sand.”
    Douglon’s voice grew quieter. “All these things were fascinating, but we found the real treasure on a shelf near the bed. Next to a book, written in runes we couldn’t read, lay this.” Reaching into his cloak, Douglon pulled out a worn roll of leather.
    Alaric unrolled it, reading a short, scrawled paragraph.
    It feels wrong to bury something of such value. Perhaps I should give the stone to them, but I can’t bear to look at it. The memories haunt me. I will bury it in a place of honor and leave it behind. I pray this map remains useless, and I am never in need of finding it again.
    The handwriting was the same as the scroll at the Stronghold. The page had been written by Kordan.
    Alaric read and reread the paragraph, his heart pounding. The map really was to Kordan’s Wellstone. The new Stronghold the dwarves had found must have been built by the old Keeper as well. What had he done? Left the real Stronghold and tried to continue as a Keeper by himself?
    Alaric flipped the leather over. Time had faded the ink, and there were blotches where the leather had been soiled, but most of the map was decipherable. Several sets of runes, meticulously drawn dotted the page.
    Alaric let his eyes wander over the runes. There was no doubt that this was written by a Keeper. The precision and clarity of the writing made him surprisingly nostalgic. Whatever their other faults, the Keepers could write.
    The map showed a valley at the base of the Wolfsbane Mountains containing some buildings. Two rock formations were labeled. In the center of the map was a tree with a gem drawn beneath it.
    “And the town is Kordan’s Blight?” asked Alaric.
    “Judging from the rock formations, yes,” answered the dwarf. “But whenever this map was drawn, the town was much smaller than it is today. And Kordan’s Blight is full of trees. How on earth do we know which one the map refers to?”
    “These are the runes that Gustav translated?”
    “If you can call it translation. Either Gustav is an idiot, or whoever wrote this was a lunatic. Everything is gibberish.” Douglon’s finger stabbed at a point on the map where a cluster of runes stood. “This says: The falling stars cool the turtle’s back .” Douglon glared at the wizard walking ahead of them on the road. “I’m willing to believe he’s an idiot.”
    Alaric took the moment to study the runes. He could see what Gustav had translated, but the writing was off slightly. An extra tail here, an odd dot there.
    These weren’t modern runes at all. They were ancient.
    The Keepers had some books old enough to use them, and each Keeper was schooled in how to read them, but they were too nuanced and open to interpretation to be of use for most things today. The fascinating thing about the runes on the map was that even though they were ancient, each was similar to a modern rune with a different meaning. Sometimes radically different.
    “Falling stars” was