“Can you open it?” Lewis asked, stepping back and scanning the vault in its entirety.
“Perhaps.” I kept my hand on the tumbler. Images appeared again, vague and indistinct. I heard, felt, and saw the dial spin beneath Dr. Maddeson’s touch.
The dial scraped softly as I spun it to the first number. I was rewarded by a soft click and glanced at Lewis with a triumphant smile. He grinned back, genuine and impressed, and I felt a happy warmth from my cheeks to my toes.
I set back to my work. Five turns later, there was a louder clunk, and my task was done.
Together, we heaved on the iron bar. The door ground open, letting out a rush of musty, oddly scented air—old wood, chemicals, and dust.
Rounded arches of ancient stone branched off into a network of cellars in the same style as those beneath The Three Trees, studded with hefty pillars and lined with shelves. Statues stood veiled beneath sheets, hung with labels. Crates of every size were shoved into free spaces, and every shelf was laden with boxes, each marked with painstaking care.
My stomach sank. “It could be anywhere. I hardly even know what it looks like.”
“And I cannot see far,” Lewis added. He was grim in the little orb of light from his lighter. “You start. I will find a lantern.”
I nodded my agreement, and we separated.
I ducked under a low arch and avoided an Ummani coffin urn so large it could have fit both of us inside. Chilled by the thought, I carried on, scanning labels and peering into boxes.
One section of shelving held unrecognizable animal skeletons, empty eye sockets watching me from carved and painted skulls. Another row housed meteorological instruments, discs and dials arching through the gloom.Still another hosted pottery from every era of human history, depicting hunts and festivals and geometric patterns in age-muted tones. Clay tablets sported pressings from reed styli, and one particular crate, yawning open, held a blank-eyed automaton in Seaussen court garb from three centuries past.
The Sarre—Landsdown Trove.
I darted back and pulled out a small crate. Inside, packed in wool, were several paper-wrapped objects.
“Lewis!” I hissed to the darkness.
I received no answer, but distantly I thought I saw a swell of light.
I set the crate on the floor and brushed my fingers across the bundles. I wanted to tear them open in reckless curiosity but reached for the papers’ memories instead.
Dust came off on my fingers, along with distant memories of being packed away. None of this was recent enough to be our artifact. I still unwrapped them, just in case, and found funerary statues of mundane, grey stone. No familiar symbols.
I turned, surveying the shelves around me with the back of one hand to my forehead, dusty fingers crooked and hopelessness welling in my throat.
“Ottilie!” Lewis’s voice echoed towards me, just loud enough to hear. “Over here!”
I set off at a run, abandoning the crate on the floor and darting through a regiment of suits of armor into a broader section of the vault. The ceilings were higher here, and several tables were set out between veiled hangings on wooden frames. One table held rows of weapons, unsheathed and carefully oiled. Another held stacks of books.
Lewis stood over the last table with a lantern held high. And on the surface before him, was an orb of dazzling blue stone.
Ihad the sensation of a great bell ringing above my head, profound and bone-quaking. But the vault was silent; I heard nothing except the rush of my own breath and the shift of Lewis’s feet.
I approached the table slowly, almost reverently. The stone, I discovered upon closer inspection, was not precisely an orb. It had twelve sides, each adorned with a symbol like those on the box.
“Have I gone mad, or do you feel that, too?” I whispered, trying not to shatter the weighty stillness.
“I feel something,” he mused, leaning down to consider the sides of the artifact. He matched my tone.
I bent to consider the other side of the artifact—a dodecahedron, my memory now supplied. Twelve sides. Twelve surfaces of stone, and upon them, memories and secrets that might unravel not only this entire sordid affair, but the balance of power between humans and Entwined.
Only eleven sides had singular symbols. The final side contained a section of text in neat, tight lines, though their edges ended abruptly. Was this part of the Stele Maddeson had mentioned, the valuable stone carved into this shape at a later time?
I drew a bracing breath and caught Lewis’s gaze again,seeking courage in his eyes. He seemed to understand, and gave a small nod.
I laid a hand on the artifact. It fit neatly into my palm, smooth and cool, the ridges of its many sides smoothed with time.
Memories assaulted me, as strong and vivid as they would have been in the heart of twilight. I inhaled sharply, taken aback, but I did not retreat.
