Where had the rest of the scribes gone? There were bodies here and there, to be sure, but nothing like what Katerina would have expected at a grand library such as this. Were they here, concealed somewhere, awaiting rescue? Or had the Grigori dragged them away to torture them, as determined to use the scribes’ knowledge to their advantage as Katerina had been?
The Magiya was quiet. Too quiet. It seemed to Katerina that the library held an anticipatory silence, as if waiting to strike. But that was absurd, was it not?
“I don’t know.” Alexei strode forward, stepping over the spilled books and the bodies, and gestured at the walls beyond. “But look.”
Before them, the corridor widened. The walls were filthy, smudged with dirt—no, not dirt, she realized as she peered more closely. Ash.
“Who would start a fire in a library?” Dread curled in her stomach. Whatever had happened, she was sure this lay at the heart of it somehow.
“People who had something to hide, and believed it was worth destroying centuries of knowledge to keep their secrets,” Sofi signed. “Or people who valued those secrets more than their own lives.”
There was an alternative, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Niko was the one to voice it. “Or,” he said, “people who wanted to destroy the safeguards put in place to protect those secrets. People who aren’t people at all.”
His voice was dry, unemotional, which Katerina couldn’t have managed in a million years. She followed Alexei, doing her best not to look down, until she stood in front of the scorched walls.
Her hands trembled as she traced them, wiping the ash away. Beneath it, they were inscribed with runes for protection and safety, for repelling evil. And yet, they were…dead, was the only way she could think to describe it. They didn’t hum with the energy she’d expected, the buzz that normally emanated from a rune-spelled surface. The power they held had been expended, had burned through its limits and left only scars behind.
So, where was that trace of power coming from, if not this? And what was so important in this deserted corner of the library, so crucial, that more bodies than anywhere but in the rotunda lay here, as if the Dimis and Shadows who guarded the Magiya deemed this area more worthy of protection than any other?
It was a conundrum. And yet—this was a repository of knowledge, was it not? What could be such a crucial piece of intelligence that so many warriors had paid for it with their lives?
She pressed her hand to the wall again, willing it to relinquish its secrets. For an instant, the outline of a bird blazed up on its defiled surface, its plumage a fiery gold, its dark eyes glowing. A Firebird, like the one she’d seen in her visions of the Rozhanitsy. Like the one her father had always imagined her to be.
The image of the bird dulled, faded. And then, to her shock, the wall began to turn, giving way as if it were a door and not a solid block of plaster. It spun, and Katerina gasped, and when it was finished, they stood gazing into a small, high-ceilinged room, empty save for a peculiar shimmering curtain of disturbed air at its far end.
“What in the name of the Saints is that?” Damien said from behind her.
Katerina had a sinking feeling she knew exactly what it was. She had seen it before, when Sammael had given her the runestone to guide her way on the Shadow Path. That one had been different, tucked between the roots of a gnarled oak and flecked with Darkness, but its otherworldly quality was the same.
“It’s a portal,” she said, swallowing hard. “To who knows where.”
It was Ana’s turn to gasp. Everyone knew portals existed, of course; before the Darkness had gone so terribly awry, they’d provided demons’ only access to the world aboveground. Iriska had been built around them; there was one outside of each of the Seven Villages. Few people other than Katerina, as far as she knew, had seen an open one—unless you counted the gaping holes to the Void that everyone in Satvala and Drezna had been unfortunate enough to witness before the Darkness gobbled them whole.
Next to Katerina, Niko gave a low, dissentient growl. She wondered whether he was thinking of the portal to the Void that the Darkness had torn in the clearing, the night Elena had sunk a blade into his heart. The one Katerina had cast the Vila and the two demons into, taking her Shadow with them. How could he not be?
She wanted to comfort him. To reassure him. But one look at his arms, crossed so tightly over his chest they appeared to be holding him together, and she knew it would be a terrible idea.
“So this is what they were guarding.” Sofi took a step closer to it, then another, and Damien’s hand came down on her shoulder, stilling her. “All this time, there’s been a portal hidden in the Magiya. Why did we not know of this?”
“It’s dangerous.” Niko cleared his throat. “Obviously.”
“But…where does it lead?” Katerina squinted, as if that might help unravel the portal’s mysteries. It hung, silent and ominous, its appearance morphing as she watched: a rippling veil, its edges fraying into silver sparks; a vertical pool, its center dark as pitch, with faint stars churning inside it; a slow-turning vortex of mist, lit from within by shifting hues.
“What if,” Damien said, his voice soft, “it goes straight into the heart of Gadreel or Sammael’s kingdom? What if it’s where most of these demons came from, and not from across the bridge, after all? What if an advance party destroyed those runes, opening the portal and letting the rest of the bastards in—and then they sealed the wall behind them?”
The concept was too terrible to contemplate. Because if that were the case, the portal was likely still open. And at any point, more demons could boil out of it. If the rest still hid somewhere in the Magiya, then perhaps they’d been watching every move Katerina and her friends had made since they entered the fortress. Perhaps the Grigori were closing in, intending to corner the six of them between the demons already within and the ones that were amassing on the other side of the portal even now, braced for attack.
“You think this is a trap,” she said, the words squeezing themselves from her throat, which seemed to have narrowed to the circumference of one of the Rozhanitsy’s delicate threads.
Damien didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. His silence was eloquent enough.
As if the revelation had summoned them, faint footsteps echoed in the distance. Was it possible they belonged to survivors—that some of the scribes still lived, and sought their help?
Wiping her clammy hands on her pants, she turned to Niko. With his far-more-sensitive hearing and sense of smell, he would be able to detect what she could not. A foolish note of hope rose in her heart as she lifted her eyes to his face.
Her Shadow sniffed the air as, beside him, Alexei and Damien did the same. Then he frowned and, in unison, the three of them shook their heads.
“Demons,” Niko said.
