Chapter 45 — The Missing Road

Chapter 45: Chapter 45 — The Missing Road

Chapter 45 — The Missing Road

Edwin found the missing page by discovering where it was not.

The Old Library catalogue jumped from entry forty-seven to entry fifty-one. The numbering had been corrected in later ink, making the gap appear like an old copying error, but when Edwin held the page beneath stronger light, he saw that the binding thread around the missing leaves had been replaced.

Someone had removed them deliberately.

Librarian Olyne looked over his shoulder. "You’re frowning at the binding again."

"Several entries are missing from this section."

"Old catalogues always lose pages," Olyne said.

"These were cut out before the volume was rebound. The stubs are still beneath the stitching."

That earned a closer inspection. Olyne touched the newer thread, then checked the library mark on the cover.

"Long before my time," she said.

"Does the library keep a record from the rebinding?"

"If the person who removed them wanted a record."

She permitted Edwin to compare the volume with an older shelf list. The list confirmed four entries had once existed between the surviving numbers, though their titles were not copied, only their storage classifications.

One classification matched the damaged grey book’s repeated tower symbol.

Edwin waited until Olyne returned to her desk before opening the grey book.

Provincial, the spirit whispered.

The word left pressure behind his eyes.

"A provincial tower?" Edwin murmured.

No response came.

He worked from ordinary records for the next two hours. Provincial war towers had once guarded roads, laboratories, Mana wells and regional storehouses. Modern histories claimed most were abandoned before the Ancient Mages departed, and several had been dismantled while others became foundations for newer forts.

The damaged classification included a partial regional mark: three strokes surrounding a broken circle.

Edwin found the same mark in an old tax ledger describing settlements west of Alvion’s capital. The ledger was newer than the supposed Mage departure by decades, yet it referred to "the closed tower road" with the easy certainty of people who still knew where it led.

Later maps showed no tower road.

He copied the relevant lines and returned every book before closing.

At the apartment, his mother was adding columns from a merchant’s account book, while his sister slept behind the curtain dividing their rooms.

"You missed supper," his mother said.

"I ate at the academy."

She said nothing, waiting.

"I forgot supper," Edwin admitted.

She pushed a covered bowl across the table.

He ate while comparing the ledger copy with a small modern map. Three abandoned districts lay west of the capital. One was now farmland. Another contained quarries. The third had lost most of its population after a river shifted away from the old road.

None showed a tower.

"What are you looking for?" his mother asked.

"I may have found the location of an abandoned site."

"Is Master Vey sending you there?" his mother asked.

"No. It is connected to my library research."

Edwin explained the catalogue gap and the road reference. He presented the journey as a search for surviving records along the abandoned road.

"If you found it," she asked, "what would you do?"

"Study the records first. If the location seems real, I would go and look."

"Would you go alone?"

"No. I would hire an escort."

"Does your master know you are considering this?"

Edwin lowered his spoon.

His mother closed the account book. "You have made the face you used before climbing the mill roof."

"I was nine."

"You still fell."

He smiled despite himself.

The next morning, Master Vey found Edwin waiting outside his laboratory with three copied references.

Vey read them in silence.

"A removed catalogue entry, a damaged symbol and a road mentioned in a tax record," he said.

"The dates agree."

"Dates frequently agree without becoming discoveries."

"The tower classification appears in both records."

"Part of it appears."

Edwin kept his frustration from his face.

Vey returned the pages. "Continue. Do not decide what you found before the evidence does."

"Would the academy approve a survey with so little evidence?"

"Of three districts because half a symbol resembles another half a symbol? No."

"If I confirm the location?"

"Then we discuss it."

Edwin disliked the answer, though he understood it.

His morning duties did not pause for private frustration. Nine apprentices waited in the practice room, including one boy who had spent a week failing to sense the boundary of his Mental Palace.

Edwin repeated the breathing count Master Vey once used with him. The boy forced the exercise, tightened his shoulders and lost the faint sensation again.

"Stop trying to catch it," Edwin said.

"You told me to look inward."

"I told you to look, not seize at whatever answered."

The boy scowled. "Easy for a First Circle Mage."

Edwin remembered watching talented students advance ahead of him. "It was not easy then."

He stayed until the boy sensed the boundary for three breaths. The success was small. The apprentice left smiling anyway.

If Edwin handed over the clue now, senior researchers would control the expedition. If he brought the complete location to the academy, senior researchers would lead it. They might allow him to attend. They might also take the grey book, seal the records and thank a junior assistant for his useful catalogue work.

Edwin did not believe Master Vey would deliberately cheat him, but Master Vey did not control the entire academy.

For the first time, Edwin considered confirming the site himself. The thought frightened him less than it should have.

He began by checking travel instead of treasure. The western farmland lay four days from Alvion by cart, less by horse. Villages occupied the main road. The abandoned side roads were less certain. Bandits existed, but the region was not a war frontier.

A short escort contract might be possible.

Edwin visited the public hiring board near the western gate and read prices without approaching anyone. Even a modest group cost more than several months of his former copying wages. First Circle work paid better, but his family depended on that income.

He copied the usual rates and left.

That evening, he separated household money first: food, clothing, heating, his sister’s lessons and an emergency reserve. What remained would not fund a safe journey.

The tower, if it existed, had waited centuries. Edwin could wait several months.

The possibility kept pulling at his thoughts.

He spent the following week reconstructing the old road through toll records, flood reports and village lists. He performed his teaching duties, helped apprentices with Mana control, and accepted two evenings of additional paid copying.

The extra money went into a separate envelope after his household contribution was paid.

Master Vey offered him another paid task preparing low-grade wind crystals for a laboratory experiment. The work was repetitive and demanded enough control that Edwin could not think about the tower while doing it. Three crystals cracked during the first evening; their value came from his wages.

He improved on the second evening.

The money joined the envelope, as did the fee from correcting an old merchant’s collection of mistranslated spell labels. Edwin refused a riskier offer to demonstrate cutting wind at a private salon. He saved his money and his courage for the tower.

His mother found the envelope while cleaning the table. She set it aside, unopened.

"Travel money?" she asked.

"I will need it eventually."

"For the old site?"

Edwin nodded.

"Then save enough to return too."

He promised. Neither of them pretended promises controlled old ruins.

At the next library session, the book spirit stirred when Edwin placed his copied map beside the damaged page.

He pointed to the abandoned river district.

"Is it here?"

Silence.

He pointed to the old quarry region.

Nothing.

His finger moved to the western farmland.

Pain tightened behind his eyes.

Near.

The spirit fell silent immediately.

Near was vague, but it narrowed the search.

He folded the copied map and placed it inside his coat. He would not report a guess. He would find enough evidence to know what he had discovered first.

Before leaving the library, Edwin copied the catalogue gap exactly, including the repaired thread and changed numbering. If the grey book vanished or someone challenged his conclusion, memory would not be enough.

Olyne watched him seal the notes.

"You have moved from reading a damaged book to planning a journey," she said.

Edwin paused. "How do you know?"

"People researching from a chair copy titles. People planning to leave copy road conditions."

"Will you tell Master Vey what you found?"

"Have you broken an academy rule?" his mother asked.

"No. I have only followed references in the library."

"Then there is nothing to report." She locked the grey book in its work cabinet. "There may be something to report later."

Edwin walked home wondering whether that was permission, warning, or both.

At the apartment, he added the western road conditions to his private notebook and placed it beneath his academy lesson plans. His sister asked whether the little circles marked villages. Edwin showed her how roads crossed rivers and hills, keeping the erased road to himself.

Later, after his family slept, he opened his savings envelope again. The amount had barely changed. Research could move quickly when a missing word appeared, but travel required food, horses, guards and time.

Reading faster would only carry him so far. This answer would not come from a book.

The mercenary captain wanted twelve gold coins.

Edwin studied him across the alehouse table. "For six days?"

"For the road, the return and whatever ruin you want us to enter."

Captain Taron had a scar across his left cheek and a Bronze Knight’s steady pressure. Two armed men sat at another table where they could watch both doors. Neither drank.

Edwin had chosen the company because it was small, licensed and had returned from its last four contracts with its employers alive. The hiring clerk had considered that an excellent record.

"I said I need an escort to abandoned settlements," Edwin replied. "Not ruin delvers."

"Then you won’t mind paying six gold for the road and returning before we enter anything."

"Six is still high."

"You’re a young Mage asking armed men to take a side road that disappeared from modern maps. Either you found something valuable or something dangerous. Usually both."

Edwin kept his face still. Negotiating over dried fish in Griffin City had not prepared him for this.

"Four gold," he said.

Taron stood. "Find cheaper men."

He meant it. Edwin could see that much without magic.

"Five," Edwin said. "Half before departure. Half when we return. Travel only. Any structure needs a separate agreement."

The captain sat again.

"Food and fodder?"

"Included in the five."

"Then no."

They argued for another quarter hour. The final price was five gold and eight silver, with Edwin providing his own food and the company feeding its people and animals. The agreement covered two Black Iron fighters, three ordinary veterans, a scout and the Bronze captain. They would inspect roads and settlements but would not enter a sealed magical structure without renegotiating.

Edwin did not sign.

"I need time to prepare the deposit."

Taron’s expression did not change. "Then you don’t have a company yet."

"How long will you remain in the capital?"

"Ten days unless another contract pays first."

Edwin left with a copied rate and less confidence than he had brought in.

The separate envelope in his apartment held enough for the deposit. Using it would leave almost nothing for travel supplies or emergencies. His academy wages were better now, but better did not mean unlimited.

His mother counted the coins after supper.

"You can pay him," she said.

"I can pay half."

"That’s what a deposit is."

"Then I have to earn the rest before returning."

His younger sister looked up from a copied alphabet. "What happens if you don’t return?"

Their mother gave Edwin a look.

"I return," he said.

"That isn’t an answer," his sister replied.

She had learned that from their mother.

Edwin folded the rate sheet. "I haven’t hired them. I still need a location."

The old records gave him three possible districts. The book spirit had called one of them near, which might mean nearby, nearly correct or simply closer than the other choices. Building an expedition around a single whispered word would be foolish.

The next morning, he asked Master Vey for permission to compare provincial measurements in the lower archive.

"For the removed catalogue entries?" Vey asked.

"That’s what I requested."

"You’re still pursuing that."

"You told me to continue researching."

"I didn’t expect you to hear it as a challenge."

Vey signed the request anyway.

The measurements were not maps. They listed road distances used to calculate transport costs for grain, lamp oil and low-grade Mana crystals. Edwin compared three separate years and found one route whose recorded length exceeded the modern road by nearly eleven miles.

The difference vanished from later ledgers.

He searched bridge records next. An old stone bridge west of the farming district had required repairs long after the tower road supposedly closed. The province had paid for guards during the work, but the ledger did not say what the guards protected.

Edwin copied the bridge name and found it in a collection of village complaints. Farmers had once protested that the repaired bridge served "the dead road" while their own crossing remained timber.

Edwin copied the reference into his notes.

The erased route now gave him enough evidence to search for the tower.

During his afternoon class, Edwin taught five apprentices to hold a thread of Mana without shaping it into a spell. One student rushed, lost control and sent a puff of heated air into her own face.

The room laughed.

"Again," Edwin said.

Her ears reddened. "I failed."

"You stopped before it burned you. That’s part of control."

She tried again.

Edwin walked between the desks, correcting posture and breathing. Becoming a First Circle Mage had changed how the apprentices looked at him. Some listened more carefully. Others waited for him to make a mistake worth remembering.

It had also given his family a cleaner apartment, regular meals and a future that no longer depended on his mother’s aching hands copying merchant accounts every night.

He placed the signed agreement inside his case.

After class, Master Vey offered him two weeks of paid work preparing labels and reference samples for a mineral collection. It would cover most of the remaining escort fee.

"You look disappointed," Vey said.

"I was hoping the work would be interesting."

"Interesting work is why laboratories explode."

Edwin accepted.

For five evenings, he sorted stones, checked old labels and corrected the names of minerals that looked almost identical until touched with Mana. The work demanded care rather than power. Twice he found samples placed in the wrong cases. Once he discovered that a dull grey stone was a depleted Mana conductor worth more as a teaching specimen than the entire shelf beside it.

He began to understand why the academy distrusted exciting conclusions.

He also continued his private search.

The dead road appeared in a traveller’s diary written nearly ninety years after the last official reference. The writer mentioned taking shelter beside "three fallen pillars where the western road bends away from the river." No tower appeared in the account, but the described bend matched the old bridge district.

Edwin copied the passage and waited until his next supervised session with the damaged grey book.

Librarian Olyne remained at the far desk. She had begun watching him whenever he handled the volume. Edwin could not tell whether she suspected its nature or merely disliked the attention he gave a damaged book.

He placed his map beneath the open cover and marked the bridge.

"Is this the road?" he whispered.

Nothing answered.

He waited.

The pressure behind his eyes arrived slowly.

Pillars.

The voice faded.

Edwin closed the book before his excitement showed on his face.

The clue did not reveal where the road ended, but it confirmed that the three fallen pillars mattered. Edwin could justify a scouting journey with his own money. The academy would demand more.

He returned to Captain Taron on the eighth day.

The same two men occupied the rear table. This time a lean woman in a weather-stained coat sat beside them. Her boots carried dried mud, and a short bow rested within reach.

"Your scout?" Edwin asked.

"Nessa," Taron said. "She knows the western farm roads."

Nessa studied Edwin. "Not the dead road."

"You’ve heard of it?"

"People name every abandoned track. Which one?"

Edwin described the stone bridge and three pillars.

She recognized the bridge, though the pillars were less certain. Shepherds sometimes used that district, but a flooded channel had cut part of the old route years ago.

"Can we reach it?" Edwin asked.

"On foot. Maybe with pack animals. Not a wagon."

Captain Taron placed the contract on the table. It stated that all historical records, books and scholarly findings belonged to the employer. Ordinary salvage found outside a sealed site would be divided by agreement. No one was required to enter unknown magical defenses.

Edwin added one line requiring the company to keep the destination private for sixty days unless a crime had occurred.

Taron read it. "If you die, I tell the academy where."

"That’s reasonable."

"If your ruin threatens a village, I tell the local lord."

"Also reasonable."

They signed.

Edwin paid the deposit from his envelope. The loss of weight in his pocket made the expedition suddenly real.

They would depart in six days.

That gave Edwin six days to finish his academy duties without drawing attention, prepare a believable research explanation and learn enough road healing to avoid being useless if someone was injured. He was a Mage, not a physician. The distinction mattered more outside the capital walls.

That night, his mother helped him prepare for the journey. Together they listed food, a blanket, spare boots, lamp oil, chalk, rope, bandages, paper and two waterproof cases for records.

"You wanted to go before you knew what was there," she said. "Now that you paid, you’ll want to find something because you paid."

"I know."

"Remember that finding nothing is cheaper than dying to prove you were right."

Edwin promised.

He had enough sense to mean it.

Whether he would remember it beside the dead road was another matter.