Shailiha and Celeste opened the door and walked into the room, then stopped and gazed about, wide-eyed. The huge room seemed to take up the entire third floor of the mansion. The ceiling was constructed of curved, clear glass, its various sections separated by leaded panes. Outside, the rain had stopped, and rays of sunlight streamed down between the parting clouds.

The herb cubiculum, as Lionel called it, was part nursery, part laboratory, and part library. One of the long walls was filled from floor to ceiling with bookcases holding texts, charts, and scrolls. Charts carrying esoteric symbols covered another of the walls.

The nursery area took up about half of the floor and was full of short tables littered with potted plants of innumerable colors, shapes, and sizes. In many cases their leaves, branches, and vines had grown long enough to reach the floor and even to snake their way down the narrow aisles between the tables. Some of the hardier, gnarled vines had found their way to the walls and pillars, which they were climbing in their continued quest for the sunlight that streamed in through the glass ceiling.

The remainder of the cubiculum was given over to a laboratory. The tables there held strange-looking instruments and containers. Beakers burbled and bubbled, cauldrons steamed, and through crisscrossing lines of glass tubing flowed brightly colored, swirling fluids. The air was warm and fetid; but conversely, its odor was light, airy, and herbal, as if thousands of exotic petals had just bloomed, releasing their scents only moments before.

But a part of the laboratory area was in terrible disrepair. An entire wall of shelving had been pulled down, spilling hundreds of jars and vessels. Dried herbs lay scattered across the floor among shards of broken glass and weathered labels. Oils had run together into shiny, multicolored puddles. Not far from the mess, the canvas bags that had been rescued from the slavers' fire lay in a heap next to a large vat.

"I must find my equalizing spoons, I must." Lionel continued to chatter as he searched the room, the boards of the hardwood floor occasionally squeaking beneath his feet as he went. "They are absolutely necessary, don't you see? If I have lost them I will be very vexed, yes, terribly, terribly vexed!"

After watching Lionel's distraught antics for a moment, Shailiha gave Celeste a questioning look. Shaking her head slightly, Wigg's daughter raised an eyebrow, much the same way her father would have. Sensing their lack of understanding, Lionel turned to them.

"Well, don't just stand there gawking!" he said anxiously, waving them into the room with one of his short, stubby arms. "There is much to do! Come, come!" Doing as he asked, the two women stepped deeper into the room.

Shailiha pointed to the canvas bags. "Those contain herbs, don't they?" she asked. "That's why Krassus sent his thugs here-to destroy as much of Faegan's stores as possible, thereby making it far more difficult for us to employ the services of our herbmistress."

"Quite right," Lionel said, still waddling briskly from table to table in search of his mysterious spoons. "Master Faegan explained your predicament to me in his letter. A true quandary, I agree. But now things have gone from bad to worse, I must say, yes, they certainly have."

"Please explain," Celeste said.

Stopping at another table, Lionel began rummaging around under some papers. Then he squealed with delight. "I have found them!" he hollered.

Waddling back to Shailiha and Celeste, he proudly held up what looked to be an ordinary set of cook's wooden measuring spoons, fastened together by a brass ring. But then his expression darkened.

"Don't you see?" he said worriedly. "The coming of the slavers has changed everything, oh, indeed it has."

"But why?" Shailiha asked anxiously. Her impatience was clearly beginning to seep through. "We saved a lot of the herbs, didn't we? Why can't we just take them back to Eutracia and be done with it? Forgive me for being abrupt, but we have no time to waste. Tristan is missing, and we need those things to find him!"

"But you're forgetting something, Princess, yes, you are," Lionel countered. One of his stubby little index fingers went imperiously into the air as he emphasized his point.

"And just what is that?" Celeste asked.

Reaching into the pocket of his vest, Lionel pulled out a piece of paper. "Abbey's list," he said. "Given the fact that the bags aren't labeled, even if you take them back with you, how can you be sure that they contain what you need? Many or all of her requirements could have already gone up in smoke, in the bags that the slavers burned. And this vat presents the same problem-full of a mixture of oils, but which oils? Most of the individual containers have been spilled. I'm afraid that's only the beginning of the problem, yes, it is," he added.

Shailiha's heart fell. What was to have supposedly been a simple mission had quickly turned into a nightmare. If she and Celeste didn't return to Eutracia with the ingredients Abbey required for her gazing flame, then none of them might ever see Tristan again, much less find Wulfgar, or the other Scroll of the Ancients.

"And the other problem is?" she asked, not altogether sure she wanted to hear what the gnome's answer would be.

"Not only are the bags and the vat not labeled, but their contents have been mixed," Lionel explained sadly. "If you were to dip into one of them, you would come back with a fistful of herbs or a cupful of oil, to be sure, but you would have absolutely no idea what they were, or in what ratios they had been combined. Don't you see? If you better understood the art of herbmastery, you would know that this is without question the greatest tragedy that could befall us. Second only to the complete destruction of the cubiculum, of course, of course."

Suddenly both Celeste and Shailiha fully understood what it was that Lionel was trying to tell them.

"Why would the slavers go to all that trouble, mixing everything, dragging it out to the fire in the glade?" Shailiha asked. "If all they wanted to do was destroy what's here, then why not just set fire to the mansion, sit back, and watch everything go up in flames? Wouldn't that have been far easier?"

"Easier, yes," Lionel agreed as he walked back to the high stool and laboriously climbed up. "But there was more to their mission, yes, much more. And setting fire to the mansion so soon would have been counterproductive to their goals, yes, it would."

"How so?" Celeste asked.

"You're forgetting something again," Lionel answered. He pointed to the far wall. "Those texts and scrolls represent more than three hundred years of Master Faegan's research in the art of herbmastery. They are without doubt the single greatest such collection in existence, and are among his most prized possessions. Surely this Krassus fellow would have wanted them. Apparently the slavers' orders were to make certain that the herbs and oils were destroyed first, and then to abscond with the research materials. I can only assume that the demonslavers decided to take the herbs and oils to Tree Town, to use them to feed the fires and put even greater fear into the hearts of the gnomes. Then they could take their time removing the research. I also have no doubt that some of the slavers would have stayed behind to kill off the rest of us and set fire to the remainder of the town. Including, of course, the master's mansion. But then you two arrived, and stopped them." Lionel paused as a look of deep gratitude came over his face. "Master Faegan doesn't know it yet, but he has much to thank you for." Then he paused again. "But there is still something else to tell you, yes, there is," he said sadly.

Shailiha wasn't sure she could take hearing any more. She closed her eyes briefly. "What is it?" she asked softly.