“Doesn’t the compulsion affect you at all?”
“No, I don’t feel it. Why can’t I feel it?”
Her eyes are haunted but she only shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll go with her, Mother,” Eiras says. “I’ll look after her, don’t worry.”
Now Naida puts her hands over her eyes. “How can I not?”
“Let me go,” I say more softly. “I’ll be careful. Naida…” I catch her hands and lower them. “Look at me. It will be all right. Maybe it was meant to be.”
“No, I was supposed to keep you safe. Come here.” She pulls me into her arms. “This is all my fault.”
“Of course not. Why would it be your fault?” I nestle in her familiar embrace, her scent of dusty fabric and herbs. “I’m the only logical choice to carry this book to the Areon where it won’t hurt anybody, and you need to be here for Brogan. It’s my fault for picking it up in the first place. So let me make things right.”
“You will have to avoid the Whispering Forest,” Naida says, sitting down at the table with us later on, her face drawn into tense lines. “It’s made up of fae who turned into trees when King Rouen’s magic went wild. The fae who followed him, the most magical, talented of them all, were either imprisoned or fled toward the rim of the world. Some entered underground passages in the mountains and vanished from memory. Others never made it to the mountains, turning into trees and animals that now haunt the expanses of the plains and slopes.”
“Then we avoid the mountains,” Eiras says.
“That’s impossible. The library is inside one of the mountains, fittingly called The Mountain of Stories or Crowned Mountain.”
“Fuck,” Eiras breathes. “This is insane. A warrior should be in charge of taking this book to that dreaded library, not us.”
“How do I deliver it?” I ask Naida, ignoring him. “How do I find the library? Is there a huge gate or something?”
“Or maybe weathered signs pointing the way?” Eiras hazards. “Buzzards flying over the mountain summit? A path strewn with skeletons still holding books in their hands?”
“Eis,” I snap.
He lifts his hands in surrender.
“There are no signs or skeletons.” Naida sighs. “Or a huge portal. You will see the mountains in front of you. One of them houses the library.”
“But how?—?”
“Its peak is shaped like a crown. Or a star. As for how you enter and deliver the book… few have chronicled their journey there. I recall a passage in the Samis Scrolls about a maid who carried a magical book to the Areon. She claimed that she visited the library.”
“She just pushed the door open and entered? And then what happened?”
“It was only a passing mention in an old book that’s centuries old,” Naida admits.
“Does that mean that she never returned?”
“Of course she did.” Naida scowls. “She came back and wrote her tale down.”
This could be fiction. A fantasy. Maybe that woman never existed. Or never came out of the library. But I don’t say that because I need Naida to believe we will be fine and return home to her.
“How do you know so many tales, mother?” Eiras asks. “Even the thought gives me a headache.”
I roll my eyes at Eiras. “She used to be a royal librarian at the palace, remember?”
“Yes, the palace,” Olm whispers in my ear. “Let’s go there.”
I flinch and hope nobody has noticed.
“Why did you leave the palace, Mother?” Eiras asks. “And why didn’t you look for another such job later? A storyteller and a scribe like you has to be in great demand in libraries.”
I open my mouth to tell him he’s an idiot if he can’t see why she couldn’t handle being a mother and a librarian, how hard it would be to juggle everything.
