The way to Darndelle was lohan Simon remembered. He retty sure it had taken him five days to get here once upon a time, but it took closer to a week before he sighted the city. He’d fotten how much he hated this part of his cycle. The only way to really appreciate how soft and weak he’d been in his past life was to be forced to wallow in it after spending years feeling strong and vital.

  This time, it wasn’t even the weight or his severe ck of cardio. It was how prone his feet were to blisters and how much he sweated uhe heat of the midday sun. He could use words of lesser healing to address the minor wounds, but only time would take care of everything else.

  “What I need is a word that lets me reshape my body,” he told himself one day while he rested in the shade. “Like a word of greater transformation or something. Hell, I’d take a word of lesser weight loss.”

  Despite his griping about his physical dition, his skills were only slightly dulled by it, and thanks to his bow, he ate well orip back. One night, he slow-roasted a rabbit on a handmade rotisserie with sage, and anht, he had fire-roasted fish that he caught in a raging stream he crossed earlier that day. Even at his worst, this was hardly a bad life.

  Simon didn’t enter any bandits, and though he saw the tracks of a beastman tribe, he never actually saw them, which was just as well since he was trying not to kill everything in sight on this trip. He did walk with a caravan for the st few days once he reached the road. He told them that he was a traveling schor, which wasn’t so far from the truth. They seemed skeptical, given his leather armor and his skill with a bow, but all he could do about that was mely offer that the road was a very dangerous pce for schors.

  Still, it was good feedback, and the first thing he did when he reached Darndelle once he’d secured a room at a cheap inn was to visit a tailor and have something more appropriate made. He pnned on spending a lot of time at the libraries of the trade city, and the st thing he wao do was stand out like a sore thumb.

  The sed thing he did, after he’d wasted half of his precious few gold s on a new outfit, was to go visit the graveyard where he’d spent so much time. He didn’t actually e, of course. Instead, he leaned on the fend watched the mist coalesearby as it sensed his life forbsp;

  “I’d be careful if I were you, stranger,” a man said in passing as Simon studied the pce. “You set foot in there after dark, and your life is forfeit. No one is going to be foolish enough to try to save you.”

  Simon nodded and thahe man, but he kept looking just the same. Fixing this particur problem iure was one of his biggest aplishments, and it felt weird to see that it was all undone like this. Part of him wao be here to watch when his past self finally burned all this away, but that was decades from now and well after the date he po be in Ionar.

  The disturbing view was beautiful in a way, though it felt silly that it had to be allowed to persist for so long before he could finally just ha. Still, wheuro the inn, he found that it had put things into perspective for him.

  Simon’s life iy tinued like that for the better part of a week while he ran various errands. He bought paper, ink, and wax te a note of introdu from a Baron in Liepzin. He sidered using the Raithwaite name, but the idea of associating himself with that family sied him. So, instead, he wrote it as if it were from Lord Corwin and hoped that he wouldn’t bring any trouble down on that man’s head while he waited for his clothes to arrive. It was only when all that was dohat he finally paid a barber to make him look respectable and visited the city archives.

  Though nominally, they were restricted to the King’s scribes and courtiers. He already knew what to say to get them to ask the least questions possible. Though initially, the archivist was quite unhelpful, when he read the letter and saw that Simon’s fictitious master had heard of the city’s plight and nning to e down and sy the monstrosity that had beset the city’s graveyard, he softened immediately.

  The people of Darndelle cared about many things. They cared about the roads and trade. They cared about the desert bandits and the taur tribes. They even cared about their retions and rivalries with Abrese to the south. What the city's rulers cared about more than anything else, though, was the curse that hauheir city eaight.

  It was a stain on their rule, and Simohat any serious effort te it would be granted all the support that was needed.

  “Why exactly does Baron uhm… Corwin? Is it? Why exactly has he taken an i in our little problem, Mr. Nomis?” the man asked, still a little suspicious, even after reading the letter. “And what does he hope to gain by your presence?”

  “Well, between you and me, my lord is a bit of a glory hound,” Simon fessed, pretending to sound embarrassed. This was made more difficult by hearing the alias he’d given the man said out loud. He’d reversed his name in case he actally did something so that he didn’t litter the history books with any more Simons, but now that he heard it repeated ba, he decided he should have picked a better his is hardly the first monster he’s fought. I think he’s hoping to create a legend of sorts.”

  “A legend, huh? What else has he sin?” the man asked, more curiously.

  Simon listed off a few random beasts inspired by his own advehough he gave them more creative names. “Well, after the goblin lord and the taur chieftaiurned his attention ter beasts and struck down the wyvern of Mount Wiggindorf and the Griffon of Matalena,” Simon tinued, using his most sincere voice, perfectly aware that not all of these were real pces.

  Still, the archivist didn’t seem to know that and, after the versation, granted him probationary access to the records so that he could begin his resear the Baron’s behalf. As a strategy, this worked splendidly, and the only time that people bothered him was when important persoracked him down to ask when the Baron was ing or if Simon had discovered the secret to sying the beast.

  His ao those annoyances always varied but was generally along the lines of, “I may yet send for him soon. My current line of research is promising, but not yet clusive,” even though very little of what he read about each day had anything to do, even taially, with the Bckheart or the mist.

  Instead, he spent his time trying to learn about the history of the region and the other monsters of the world while he poured through dot after dot, looking for more information about the Unspoken. True to what Aaric had said, though, they seemed to be a secret society i on saying that way.

  Very occasionally, he would find oblique references about some problem or another being solved with the assistance of doves, and occasionally, a record about some warlock would end with the phrase, ‘and he was never spoken of again,’ but these were flimsy things that were barely worth mentioning after he spent day after day trag down these out of the way stories.

  For a fantasy world, it seemed a great deal of information in the library was utterly mundane. Fantastical ats were rare, and almost all of them were ft and uailed or cut off before he could get a plete picture. To him, it felt almost like someone was sanitizing history, especially where magid the Unspoken were ed.

  Unfortunately, after months iy, his funds started to get low, and he had to switch from doing full-time research to doing part-time map-making to make ends meet. In Simon’s time at the library, he’d noticed that the primary users of the library, beyond city funaries, were merts looking for more information about this destination or that one.

  So, Simo about making reasonably accurate maps of the region that he could sell to these gentlemen. Each would take a few hours to make as he traced them from the rge glowing version he had the mirror in his room dispy, but each would sell for a handful of gold, which was more than enough to see him taken care of for a few months.

  On the rare occasion he was called out oher of these activities, he would make something up on the spot. “Oh, there was once a simir phenomenon in this region…” or “Though that’s true, the Baron told me that I might find a clue as to the thing’s weakness because…”

  It was all bullshit, of course, aually Simon got to be quite good at it. That was fortunate because the longer he stayed, the more parties of important people he got io share what he’d learned.

  By the time he’d been iy for over a year, he was io some event or another on an almost monthly basis, just so that the nobles of the city could ask him about the wider world and the ces that their city’s curse would finally be purged. Some brought up the Bckheart rumor, but he dismissed it. Instead, he focused oraneous details, like the way that the fog moved and how simir it was to the s wraiths that haunted some bogs or how one of the headstones in the cemetery might indeed be cursed.

  O a Vist’s diable, when he was asked how it absorbed the souls of everyone else who was buried there, Simo on at length about how their souls were trapped and o be freed. He even insihat someone might be able to unicate with the beast in some dark fashion. He only suggested all of this because the man seemed to have something to hide, and it amused Simon to make him think that whatever secret he was keeping might yet be revealed.

  He khat he shouldn’t be making waves like that and that even harmless fun might impact the future in unknown ways. What he didn’t expect, though, was for it to rouse the attention of the Unspoken themselves.

  Wheurned home the following night, though, that’s exactly who he found waiting for him. There were three men in white cloaks looking through his things, and when he opehe door, they seemed utterly uurbed.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Nimos,” one of them said, not b to pull back his cowl and show his face. “We’ve been expeg you.”