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“Here he comes again.” Venk sighed loudly. “How many more times must we endure this? He’s a scholar. Surely he must have been proven right before?”

  “Would you like me to answer that?” Athos asked dryly.

  Tristofer approached the spread out pieces of the power hammer and gazed wistfully down at them. Again.

  “After so long,” the scholar whispered to himself, “we’ve finally got proof. We were right. I was right!”

  “You’re not going to get all weepy again, are you?” Athos asked disgustedly. “If you’re going to blubber kindly do it elsewhere.”

  Tristofer gave out a loud sniffle.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Athos plucked the hammer head off the grass. He studied the irregular shaped metal object.

  “So you say the gem is supposed to be affixed somewhere on here? Where?”

  Tristofer shrugged. “I’m not sure. I had hoped that there’d be an indentation, or a hole, or something to indicate where the gem was supposed to be inserted. All I see is a featureless metal shape that I find difficult visualizing as part of a hammer. I didn’t know hammers came apart.”

  “They don’t,” Breslin assured him. “Once you assemble the hammer you see to it they don’t come apart. Why this one is, I cannot say.”

  “Where’s that old copy of Legend of Nar?” Athos asked. Once Tristofer had produced the thin book and had given it to the uncharacteristically talkative brother, the close up illustration of the hammer was inspected.

  “Look, this is obviously the head,” Athos explained, placing the large metal object down on the grassy floor. “See how the square striking surface is on one side and this metal dowel has been attached on the other? It’s flattened there, in the middle. There’s a hole in it. That’s where the handle should attach. Now look, see here? This is the counter weight. It should slide on here.”

  Athos took the heavy inch thick iron square acquired from the nixies and threaded the tang through the hole in the center of the counterweight. It fit. Perfectly.

  “See? The head matches the picture. So far.”

  “How does it stay together?” Tristofer asked. “What’s to keep the counterweight from sliding off?”

  “Er...” Venk stared blankly at the incomplete hammer. If all they were missing was the handle, how would it stay together?

  “Maybe there’s something we’re missing,” Athos suggested.

  Thinking he was once more being accused of providing false information, Tristofer angrily tapped the drawing in the book.

  “No! Do you see any other parts? Of course you don’t. That’s because there aren’t.”

  Athos surprisingly backed down from the fight.

  “That’s not what I meant. My apologies. What I meant is that there must be some other type of unknown force that keeps the hammer together. Perhaps whatever holds the jewel on? I don’t know.”

  Tristofer approached Athos and stared at the hammer head. After a few moments he nodded. “Of course. My mistake for overreacting.”

  Venk looked quizzically up at his brother. “What’s gotten in to you? Since when have you become so polite?”

  “Haven’t you always said that I need to be nicer?”

  “Since when do you listen?” Venk sputtered.

  Athos shrugged off the question.

  Venk pointed at the pieces of the hammer spread out across the ground. “Athos, step away from all of that and tell me again what you just said.”

  “Certainly. I’d be delighted to.”

  Athos stepped away from the hearth and walked about twenty feet away. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, happy?

  “Tristofer just told you that the hammer doesn’t have any other parts besides the handle and that you’re clearly insane for thinking we’re missing something else. What do you say to that?”

  “I’d say he’s full of manure.”

  Surprised, Breslin looked up from packing his pipe and stared with amusement at Athos and his quick changing personalities.

  Venk beckoned his brother over. “Come back here. Say that again, but only when you’re next to the fire.”

  Athos returned to the hearth and sank back down on one of the logs being used as seats.

  “What do you want me to say again?”

  “That Tristofer is full of manure,” Venk suggested.

  “That’s rather rude, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “What’s going on?” Breslin asked, rising to his feet. “Why does he keep changing his personality? Is the hammer affecting him?”

  “Let’s find out if it only affects him. Walk over to the pieces of the hammer and tell me what you think about the guur.”

  “Misunderstood creatures,” Breslin stated, as soon as he stepped next to the various pieces of the hammer.

  “Now go back over there and say that again.”

  “Walking horrors which deserved to be made extinct. Hmm, that’s an interesting side effect. Anyone else want to try?”

  Venk passed, as did Tristofer. Breslin leaned down to pick up the hammer head.

  “Well, is anyone else as anxious as I am to see what’s in store for us next? Where’s Lukas?”

  Venk turned to see his that his son was sitting by the fire and quietly watching the proceedings. Venk pointed at Breslin and motioned for his son to join him.

  “You’re up, son.”

  Lukas nodded and pulled his jerkin up to his chin, hoping this would be the last time he’d have to expose his back.

  Breslin, about to touch the heavy metal block to Lukas’ back, paused. Figuring the boy’s father should be the one to hold the piece of tool up to the underling’s back, Breslin looked at the prize they had found at the waterfall and silently handed it to Venk, who wordlessly accepted it. Venk gently lowered it until it touched the Questor’s Mark.

  The final section, that which lay directly in the center of the mark, rippled outward and came into focus. Everyone leaned over Lukas’ back to get a good look at their next clue.

  It was a tree. Not just any tree, but a very unusual one at that.

  Two cedar-like trees, displaying two separate root systems and two separate colors, appeared almost dead center in the mark. The two trees looked as though they had leaned towards one another and had merged together. Growing simultaneously, the enormous tree continued to thrive as it sprouted upwards as one combined tree. The roots of the left half stretched out towards the nixie’s pool and the roots of the right half of the tree extended towards the edge of the water fall. The foliage of the combined tree branched in all directions, coming to rest next to the Zweigelan on the top left-hand portion of the map and stretching right to approach the top of the falls.

  “That must be one mother of a tree,” Athos observed. The others nodded in agreement.