“Maybe you should also be on your way,” I breathe. “We have nothing more to say.”
“Why? What did I do?” Sedrig rubs the back of his neck. “Oh, come on. By tomorrow we’ll go our separate ways and you won’t see me again.”
I glance at Eiras to gauge his reaction. He’s stony-faced. “You should leave, now.”
“Don’t send me out there all by my own.” Sedrig spreads his hands. “I’ll behave. And I could tell you a thing or two about this library. I can see you’re interested. It’s a marvelous place.”
I’m about to tell him to sod off but his words give me pause. “What would you know about the Areon?”
“You’d be surprised.”
With a sigh, Eiras starts walking again, grabbing my wrist and pulling me along. He has been doing a lot of sighing during this journey.
Sedrig falls into step beside me, grinning, as if nothing happened. “The Crowned Mountain has been sacred for as far back as memory goes due to its shape and the honeycomb caves hollowing out its guts. It hasn’t always been a library of magicalbooks, but it has always been a sacred place of power. The people living on the mountains have always revered it like a god, leaving offerings, as well as fearing it, locking their doors and windows at night.”
“Because of wild animals?” I can’t help but ask, lost in the story. Storytelling is my power but also my weakness. Like a drug, a good story always hooks me.
“The wind has always brought down howls and whispers, ailments and curses. Then someone started stashing dangerous books there for safekeeping. Reversals happened, upending the worlds time and again, and every time we landed on this side of the world, the rumors of magic returned. The library was reopened and more books added, together with a warrior librarian to keep order.”
“Ersil,” I whisper. “The current librarian is Ersil.”
“A fae.” Sedrig nods. “Warrior librarians traditionally come from the fae race. Magic is necessary to keep the books and the monsters from spilling out of the library. They are usually chosen for their prowess with both weapons and power, though it is said that in the past two centuries, since magic went rogue and out of control, those sent are the desperate ones, forced into the service because of their debts or some other obligation.”
“How long has this Ersil been there?”
“A generation. A hundred years at least. Nobody has heard from the last warrior librarian in years.”
“Years?” I blink.
“Communication can’t be easy,” Eiras says. “Nobody ever goes up there.”
“And how one can enter the library?” I ask.
Sedrig narrows his eyes at me. “Wanting to enter that library is folly.”
“I know. Like you, I’m just curious. So do you have any idea?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“And what about Ersil?”
“What about him?” Sedrig’s voice hardens.
“Anything else you know?”
“What everyone knows. Ersil Davara was a taxiarch in the royal army and was rising in the ranks, only his father was a gambler. His father got into huge debts, was about to lose their ancestral home and end up begging on the streets. Instead, he offered his son to the service of the Crown as a warrior-librarian and Ersil was sent to the Library of Areon to serve the rest of his days there.”
This rings a bell. Did Naida tell me about it?
“He was sent to the world’s end,” Sedrig says, “to the rim and the mountains?—”
“—which stand guard by the Circular Sea until the horizon.” Yes, she did tell me this, didn’t she? It’s the Ballad of Ersil—an old ballad. Then again, if he has been there for a generation, he must be an old man now, even by fae standards. “Is he meant to die in there?”
“Every hundred years, a replacement is sent, but as far as I know…” Sedrig shrugs. “He’s still the one.”
“How do we know he’s still alive, then?”
“We don’t. Like I said, his last dispatch was years ago.” Sedrig says.
