I found jos and his advisor father. I managed to pry the trundels away from huge catapult they were building. I am not sure how they planned to get it out of here through those narrow trundel sized tunnels but it is impressive. By the way, trundels are mouse like in appearance and only about the size of a rabbit so you can image that it was hard for me to get around in there, never mind a catapult.
father told me that I wasn’t the only one to pass through here recently. jos continued for him and added that they had just recently met the Winter Wizard. After getting his attention away from adjusting the tension on his catapult, he also mentioned that the trundels were looking for someone to work with. They both wondered if the Winter Wizard would make for a good partner.
For the next twenty minutes jos scurried back and forth looking through his telescope on one end and then fine tuning it on the far end while father tinkered with what looked like the complex innards of a clock but was probably just a door knob. I was beginning to think that they were just quietly hoping that I would go away and let him get back to their busy work. I didn’t take the hint.
Before I could leave I had to ask them about the person I was tracking. jos claimed that he wasn’t the White Ghost. He told me that he recently heard that the ice giants don’t like the elves because they find the elves hard to work with. jos didn’t think that the elves were difficult and he expects that Frosttooth will in fact turn out to be the White Ghost.
Now having completely lost his attention, I figured that I had gotten all I could from him and I let them get back to their tinkering. It was night now so I tried to rest here but if you didn’t already know, the trundels scurry about and tinker all night and day. This and their countless machines chugging through the night kept me from sleeping so in the middle of the night I left. I traveled through the dark frosty night, and only as the sun began to rise did I stop at an inn near Tagalong Keep. I am hoping for a quick rest before meeting with them.
I was very cold and very tired when I finally arrived. I was in the region of the Tagalongs and the other wolves but I was safer here than on the road. I rented a room at the inn and quickly ate some awful gritty breakfast. I took care of Nestor and had just lain down when someone knocked on the door. It was the innkeeper asking me to help him and his wife chase some dust bunnies out of the cellar that had been switching all of their salt with sand and had bent all of their forks into spoons.
I imagined that wolves were used to dealing with rodents themselves but dust bunnies are a whole other matter. So of course I helped.
I was so tired that I forgot to lock the door when I left. I then spent a half hour trying to track down those dust bunnies, an hour trying to bend the new spoons back into forks, and I no longer wondered why the eggs I ordered for breakfast had been so bland and crunchy.
When I got back to my dark windowless room I unlocked the door I found that my room had been ransacked! Nothing was taken and this clearly wasn’t the work of dust bunnies but I can’t say who or what had broken in while I was away.
I’m so tired; I just want to go to bed. I think I’ll tell the innkeeper about it when I get up.
I feel like I can’t rest just yet. Why?