Heron was exhausted by the end of it all. He was quite ready just to plop down and fall asleep on the soft bed in his room. So he felt some relief when the night started dying down and he could leave without being rude.
He yawned several times as Elswyth and him headed back to their rooms in the castle.
Elswyth teased him about it, but he barely paid attention. He just wanted to go to sleep.
He bid her good night sleepily and headed into his room to crash on the bed. He was out like a lamp. His sleep was peaceful.
In the morning the sun shining in his eyes woke him up. It was later than he usually woke up. He scrambled out of bed, somewhat wondering why Elswyth had let him sleep in so late. He was pretty sure she would not really approve of sleeping in and she would have no qualms about barging in his room.
He wondered why she did not. Especially when he exited his room and found her waiting for him.
"You up?" She smiled at him. "I was wondering if you were going to get up soon."
"Sorry." He immediately apologized, feeling bad that he had made her wait out here for so long.
"Don't." She shook her head, "It was a late night and you need your sleep."
He smiled. So she was being considerate. That explained it. He didn't know why he felt happy about that. But he did.
They walked together as they talked about nothing important at all, but Heron found himself just enjoying the friendly easygoing atmosphere. More than anyone else Heron found himself feeling relaxed around Elswyth, especially the longer they knew each other. Well, usually. When he wasn't suddenly made aware of the fact she was a rather attractive woman.
He just really liked being around her. He would miss her once he left for home after this year. The sudden thought made him nearly stop in his tracks. It would be lonely to go back home, even though he did miss home. But he had been making friends, and he felt rather close to them already, and he still had almost the whole year left to become even closer.
Either way, it seemed he would miss someone, whether he was here or at home. This realization was rather sobering.
"Is something the matter?" Elswyth stopped and looked at him.
"Just thinking," He hurried to fall back in step with her.
When they went to the library, they had missed the time for breakfast due to his oversleeping, Heron was a bit surprised that Kur was not already there. He wondered where his bookworm friend was, as Kur was almost constantly in the library.
Well, anyway, it was better to get to work. So he pulled some books and began studying.
About an hour after he had started, a sudden thump made him raise his head. Kur had finally shown up and had dumped a bunch of books on the table, "These are books from Carendlus. Magical theory and stuff on curses. I just picked them up. Our books don't seem to have anything, but Jarenkul isn't exactly the most inclined place to study such things in the first place. Most of the books we have that would even touch on the subject are older than most of the kingdoms."
Heron had to admit that the young elf was right. Books from Carendlus were more likely to prove helpful. The place was the place most likely to produce people who wanted to study magic. They even had schools dedicated to it. Other kingdoms might have a school. But Carendlus had one in every major city, and even some of the smaller ones.
That and they had a concentration of both wizards and sorcerers. Not that many sorcerers really studied too much into magic, that was mostly wizards.
Though it wasn't discussed much in Amriel, Heron did know at least this much.
Honestly, even if these books had nothing on whatever spell was affecting him, Heron was still excited to read them. He had always wanted to read Carendlian knowledge on magic.
So he quite happily picked one up and began to read. The writing of the book he had picked up was very neat, and easy to read. Some of the sentences were complicated, and it was obvious this was no beginner book on magic.
But the writer obviously loved magic. Heron enjoyed struggling through it, but unfortunately, he could not find anything pertinent to what he needed. But he did learn some things. So it wasn't a loss.
All the books were interesting. But they still did not help any.