Jocasta felt momentarily crestfallen when Beren described them as ‘just traveling companions’. Fortunately she was standing behind Beren when he said it and his attention was focused solely on the dwarves. Well it wasn’t that big a deal, she had known him for less than a week after all. The demonic tattoo on her midriff seemed to throb slightly in mockery that Jocasta did not appreciate. Before she had too much time to dwell on it the conversation turned in an unexpected direction.

“There is a library here?” she interjected suddenly. The dwarves stared at her in surprise, apparently deeply sunk in their quest to locate this lost hold of theirs. Jocasta juggled the references to dwarves in her mind, quickly setting the date of any major dwarven presence to several hundred years ago.

“Well aye,” the leader of the dwarves agreed, “maybe not what you would call a library. A hundred and some odd years ago there was a would be despot who conquered Iskura and the surrounding area. Man named Cumberbean if you can believe it. Anyway he was from the south and had some odd ideas. Fancied himself an intellectual. He forced all the noble families and all the temples to give up their books. Piled them all up in what today they call ‘The Library’ though we gather it was a temple to some old god before that.” The dwarf made a gesture with his chin, indicating a large stone building that loomed up on the hill that formed the center of the town.

“Most of its trash, some of it we can’t read, but three ages of men must have seen something,” he sniffed in a tone that clearly despaired of humans ever amounting to anything. Jocasta neglected to point out that a race that had gone through an ‘Age of Reckoning’ probably shouldn’t be throwing any expertly shaped stones.

“Well it sounds like we might be able to help you, I know a thing or two about libraries,” Jocasta told the dwarves. Dubious would have been a charitable description of the looks they shot her.

“Hey what are these?” Jocasta asked, suddenly distracted by a pile of paper wrapped tubes in the corner of the smithy. She picked up a lantern and leaned closer to take a look.

“NOO!” the shout was general. Every dwarf jumped at her at once. One caught her across the chest and knocked her sprawling, spilling the lantern from her hand. She crashed into a pile of neatly stacked firewood, sending timber in all directions. The lantern tumbled towards the ground in slow motion. Beren kicked out at the last second, getting a toe under the lantern and kicking it upwards, catching it neatly. Jocasta sat up among the firewood she had been driven into by the crash tackling dwarves.

“Fireworks,” the head dwarf said with a scowl, brushing splinters of timber from her coat. “For the founders day celebration tomorrow.”