Roy turned on his heel, shaken out of his musings, just in time to see one of the rolling ladders set against a bookshelf rushing toward him. Its wheels clacked and clattered against the floorboards, and initially, Roy could not determine what had set it into motion. Percival clearly hadn’t pushed it; he was standing a few paces from Roy, where he’d been observing the skylight. Then a blast of wind roared toward him, blowing back the hair dangling over his brows.
Percival cast a panicked look at Roy over his shoulder, his eyes widening with frank disbelief, then whirled around and tackled Roy—who had been rooted in place, wordlessly watching the rolling ladder’s quickening approach—to the ground.
Roy gasped, the breath driven out of him. Once he’d managed a deep inhale, a residual feeling of curiosity stirred in him, and he weakly shoved Percival off his chest, then staggered to his feet.
Rolling over onto his back, Percival groaned, “Not exactly how I expected to be thanked for my daring sacrifice.”
But Roy paid no heed to Percival. He was too entranced, toohypnotizedby what the previous few seconds had confirmed. He wandered toward the ladder, which had come to a halt at the end of the bookshelf. He waited impatiently for the wind to make a reappearance, though it did not. It had done its job. All he could register now was a creeping coldness; not the ethereal kind, but one of revelation, of suspicion calcified into clarity.
Roy set a hand on the ladder, looking down through the unoccupied bookshelf. “It’slisteningto us,” he whispered, then gawked at Percival, who was now standing. “That wind. It’s the libraryguidingus.”
Percival looked mildly perturbed by being pushed aside, but once he regarded Roy, he nodded solemnly. “Finally accepted it, have you?”
“I...” Roy fumbled with his words. “I suppose I have. I felt it when I found that grant, you know?”
“And even then, that wasn’t enough for you?”
“It was, but I guess I overlooked the experience too quickly to look into it, unlike my reaction now,” Roy said. He lifted a hand, and though the wind did not rise to his summons, he felt lighter, calmer, like there was another presence at his back, quietly monitoring his progress and wishing him well. He grasped the ladder with both hands and looked up at the inscriptions under the paintings encircling the skylight, which, he gathered from the soaring height of the shelf, would certainly be visible from the top of the ladder. “It’s calling to us, Percival.” He felt exhilarated, empowered, like he could absorb the most challenging texts known to mankind and never tire. “Something’s there, written on the ceiling, and it’s been there a very long time.”
Percival seemed reluctant to agree, but as he looked between Roy and the ladder, it became clear that his reluctance was, in fact, concern. When a crease appeared between his minutely raised brows, Percival asked, “Are you sure?”
“I am,” Roy said, stepping onto the ladder and then echoing what Percival had said moments ago, “if you can just trust me on this.”
Percival watched him for a long moment, his features more open than ever before, and Roy momentarily thought, and secretly hoped, that some bridge had been lowered to span the chasm between them. Perhaps that closing of spaces had begun minutes ago, when Percival had accepted the game was done, a thing of the past, but Roy couldn’t banish the feeling that this was their first demonstrable, practical step forward.
Percival said nothing. Rather, he grasped either side of the ladder, holding it rigidly in place.
Roy swallowed, his heart swelling with not a small amount of gratitude, though it was only once he’d averted his eyes from Percival’s earnest stare and fixed his gaze upward that Roy was overcome with the enormity of what he’d gotten himself into. He wasn’t scared so much by whatever the inscription might reveal of the Old Ones than by the daunting stature of the bookshelf.
By the Scribes, he thought, his stomach churning.Have they always been this damn tall?
“Well,” Percival said from beneath Roy with his usual sardonic tone, “no dawdling about now, Dawnseve. Up you go.”
Percival’s half-hearted attempt at encouragement, however, had no effect on Roy. He felt immobilized, like his feet were encased in blocks of stone. He kept telling himself, in a sort of cyclic self-deprecating mantra, that he wasn’t fit for this assignment if he did not take this next step, that the Elder Scribes had likely done what he was about to do—daily, with ease and without reservations. This motivated him to rise one step, and then he stiffened at the intimidating thought that it was the first of what seemed to be thousands.
Then Percival whispered, “Come on, darling.” He wrapped his fingers gently around Roy’s right calf and squeezed. “I’d take over if you wanted, you know I would, but Iknowyou want this.”
Roy had closed his eyes and hung his head, but now he looked up again, his hesitation dispersed by the casual tenderness in Percival’s voice. He nodded, once to Percival and then again to himself with conviction. Percival released his calf, and Roy ascended the ladder, his eyes trained on the skylight.
But after a few minutes, he noticed that his considerably elevated position afforded him a spectacular view of the Orphic Basilica. The arrangement of bookshelves, reading halls, and study nooks looked painstakingly methodical, which was a jarring contrast to the absence of a cataloging system.
Focus, Roy reprimanded himself, tightening his grip on the rails.Find your focus and maintain it.
Thankfully, he reached the top of the ladder without incident. The air felt strangely thinner, and he couldn’t tell whether it was from the remarkable speed of his ascent, but his head was spinning and he couldn’t string together any coherent thoughts. But at least all he had to do, at this stage, was read.
Roy clutched the uppermost rung of the ladder and hoisted himself up. The paintings were still quite far, but as he squinted, he made out the inscription beneath the piece of the ship, its sails aflame:
Depicted:An unnamed artist’s dramatized interpretation of the Old Ones’ voyage to Wynair, preceding their banishment by the gathered intellect of the Elder Scribes.
Roy dropped back onto the balls of his feet, still gripping the top rung. It took all of his mustered strength to hold on. “Banishment?” he muttered.
“What does it say?” Percival called out from below. Roy heard the distant riffling of paper. The notebook in which Percival had been recording his half of their findings, Roy suspected. “Read it out!”
Once Roy did, his recitation earning a shocked exclamation of disbelief from Percival—who, after scribbling in the notebook, shouted at Roy to descend—Roy inched his way down the ladder. Despite his earlier promise to himself to clear his head, he couldn’t put his overworking mind to rest.
The Elder Scribes cast the Old Ones out of Northgard, Roy thought, letting the weight of that revelation sink in. But how? How could they have been capable of banishing an entire army? With knowledge? With... He felt a horrid sinking in his stomach, like he’d swallowed a hot stone, as a thought emerged in his mind, something he’d never believed he would have to consider. Had they done it with force?
With weapons?
