After a heart-stopping moment where Baz thought they might have gotten it all wrong, an unnatural chill ran through the quiet library. The air in front of the archway seemed to shift and part like a gauzy curtain caught in a breeze, and before their eyes appeared four translucent, shapeless forms. They were no more than tricks of the light, an out-of-focus impression that was there and gone as Baz blinked.
Clover didn’t look surprised it had worked, only grew more confident in his stance. He breathed in deeply as if bracing for the next step: drawing upon the magic of Florien Delaune, the founder of the Crescens library.
“With the voice of a Wordsmith,” Clover said, “I beseech you, spirits of the four founders, to make yourselves visible to us, just like a waxing moon growing into its light.”
Kai swore. Baz gripped his arm, eyes wide as he stared at theliteral ghoststhat slowly appeared before them. With a Wordsmith’s ability to manifest things into being, Clover had effectivelysolidifiedthe founders’ spirits, making them visible, tangible things.
Hilda, Florien, Lutwin, Suera—the four library founders of two hundred years past, dressed in robes and garments that screamed of another time. They were still somewhat translucent, but now they had faces and bodies and eyes that peered at them with a keen awareness that set Baz on edge.
And then the ghostspounced.
Their eyes bulged in an unnatural way, their mouths opening on screeching, bloodcurdling screams to reveal pointed teeth. Their flesh had a green tinge, putrid and decaying, and their hands were clawed as they reached for those who dared to disturb their peace.
Baz and Clover had anticipated this—that surely the founders’ spirits would have been enchanted to bar the way into the Vault by whatever means. Still, nothing could have prepared Baz for the pain.
His blood was boiling, bubbling in his veins, sprouting from his mouth. He clawed at his stomach and saw the others suffering in a similar way. They were being exsanguinated.
“Spirits of the four founders,” Clover intoned over the chaos, blond hair fluttering wildly around him like on some invisible wind, turquoise eyes gleaming in the dark, “with the virtuous light of the full moon and the cleansing tide of Purifiers, I command you to be at peace and let us be.”
The pain stopped. Baz’s blood stilled.
With a Purifier’s ability to balance energies—the magic of Lutwin de Vruyes, the founder of the Pleniluna library—the founders’ spirits were appeased, settling back into their human forms.
Clover was panting now, but he seemed indomitable, eager to keep going so close to the end. “With the intuitive intellect of Unravelers and all the secrecy of a dark waning moon night,” he said, “I urge you, spirits of the four founders, to unveil what you have so long kept concealed.”
The magic of Suera Belesa, founder of the Decrescens library they stood in, was perhaps the most evident last step in picking through the Vault’s wards, but Baz nevertheless held his breath, praying it would work. And it did. Like a key fitting into a lock, the ghosts suddenly went still at Clover’s magic—and like a cloud of smoke vanishing on a sudden wind, they dispersed.
A shudder went through the library. Something prickled against Baz’s magic, familiar and inexplicable. He watched as Clover stepped up to the door beneath the arch and froze with his hand hovering over the knob. He turned to Baz.
“The honor should be yours,” he said with a smile.
“But you’re the one who broke through the wards.”
“And you’re the one who figured the whole thing out.” Before Baz could argue that this wasn’t true, Clover added, “Besides, I’m afraid we won’t know if the wards are truly gone if I’m the one to open the door, since Iamtechnically already allowed entry into the Vault. You, on the other hand…”
Bazwasn’tin the Selenic Order, and so the wards, if they were still intact, would not allow him through.
Gulping down his fear, Baz reached for the door—only for Kai to step in and pull it open in his place.
“What are you—” Panic sliced through Baz. He desperately tried to pull Kai back, but the Nightmare Weaver had already stepped over the threshold. He held the door open for them with an almost bored expression.
Nothing happened. No blood loss, no sentient wards attacking him in any way.
Baz shoved at Kai’s chest. “Why in the Tides’ name would you do that? The wards—”
“You would have saved me.” Kai’s eyes shone with fierce emotion. “None of us could have turned back time ifyou’dbeen attacked by the wards.”
Baz couldn’t exactly fault that logic. And as Clover and Cordie and Luce stepped through the door, all he could think of was that they’d really done it. They’d broken through the wards.
Together, they descended into the Vault of Knowledge.
The Vault was notquiteas Baz remembered. For one thing, the silver door behind the permissions desk that he remembered was not there; the grotto-like space at the bottom of the stairs merely led to the Vault proper, where the aisles were laid out in the same clocklike fashion Baz remembered, with the Fountain of Fate spilling into the heart of the Vault, acting like the center of said clock. But the shelves were older, more sacred, in a way. The tomes they held looked like they were about to disintegrate. There were shelves covered entirely in scrolls of parchment that Baz did not recall seeing in his time, making him think they must have been moved in the next two hundred years, or perhaps had been lost to time.
Clover brought them to theSaisle, at the entrance of which stood a replica of the Fountain of Fate’s statues of the Tides: Bruma, Anima, Aestas, Quies, all standing back-to-back.
“I thought there was supposed to be a spiral staircase here,” Baz whispered to Kai, remembering how Virgil and Nisha had described the entrance to the Treasury.
“Maybe it was built later?” Kai suggested.
