But again, he couldn’t bring himself to care. It did not matter anymore. Nothing did. He’d tried everything he could to save Northgard and its depleting academic community, and all of it had amounted to nothing. He had put the assignment before every other component of his life, including Percival. He had unmasked the Old Ones, but he still hadn’t figured out how to defeat them. And now he had less than two weeks to do it.
I killed her, Roy thought at some time during the cycle of days following Briar’s death.She’s dead, executed. I killed my sister. The Governor may have been the weapon, but I was the one who handed him the right to do it. If not for me, she might still be alive.
A brother was meant to be trusted, meant to be a protector, but he hadn’t given her that. He was a traitor, a murderer, a disobedient dog in need of being put down. But there was no one around to do the deed, to finish what he had once, in Dawnseve Manor, been determined to start.
Maybe this was his sign. Maybe he ought to complete what Gabriel hadn’t had the gall to do. Roy had been enticed by the prospect of suicide on several instances, although he’d never devoted himself to the task.
Now he could hardly quell the urge. He visualized the myriad ways he could accomplish it and fixed them in his mind. He could climb over the railing on the seventh floor and jump, his body shattering on impact. He could drink himself to a stupor, then to death. He could throw himself into one of the fireplaces and burn to a crisp, filling the library with the stench of his seared flesh. But these attempts would necessitate effort, resolve, and strong cognitive functioning, and of these three Roy had none.
Hewantedto do something. He wanted to stand up and remember what he was fighting for. But the thought of putting quill to parchment, of cohering the interconnected workings of the mystery into an answer, exhausted him. He wastired, so damn tired. And he didn’t know if that was for better or for worse.
* * *
Sometime during his grieving, the Orphic Basilica began to teem with the sorrowing moans of the dead, increased twofold by the storm’s strengthening wails. Books rattled upon their shelves. Loose sheets of paper spilled out over balcony railings and glided through the library, stirred about by the passing of anguished ghosts. Some of these creatures did not move, though, instead choosing to hover in multitudes in front of snow-glazed windows. The maroon and crimson light of their eyes cast an infernal glow over the floorboards, illuminating brighter with every ghost that seeped out of the shadows. Only once the sun fell and the moon rose to take its place did Roy come to understand what was happening, what had ushered the ghosts out of hiding.Why else would they be behaving this way?Roy asked himself.What else would disturb and induce fear in a ghost other than grief, than death?A large part of it could be the war, he reasoned, but these creatures had been imprisoned within the library for who knew how long. They hadn’t been pushed to their turbulent state of mind by the battle raging in the city, but by their own personal turmoil, their demons. Roy had spoken his own; he’d shared it with Percival loud and clear. The ghosts had no doubt overheard his story.
Percival, Roy thought, horror creeping through him. Percival had been quiet, inattentive, as of late. Roy hadn’t seen much of this taciturnity, as he’d been much too enshrouded in his own despondency, but these discomforts did not happen immediately, as Roy well knew. They accumulated over time, swelling and broadening, and Roy was frightened—why understate things? He’d already slept next to the bastard—he waspetrifiedof what exactly would transpire if Percival didn’t say something. What visions and horrors would Percival see if he didn’t tell Roy what had happened to him, what had bitten and gnashed through his brilliant, beautiful mind all this time? All thisdamntime, he’d been outracing the shadow bound to his feet like manacles and he’d been too afraid to tell Roy the full of it.
Roy entertained the theory, however briefly, that maybe it wasn’t Percival’s silence that had caused this supernatural disturbance. Maybe it was Briar’s death, and all the memories it had dredged up within Roy. But one night, when the hallucinations started to come few and far between, something occurred that proved to him that this was not, in fact, the case.
Roy was at the head of the staircase that spiraled down to the second floor when, far down below, a very human scream filled the library. The books and the windows shuddered and rocked.
“Percival!” Roy cried out. Nauseous with fear, he raced to the balcony, gripped the railing, and looked down.
Initially he could not quite comprehend what he was seeing. Then it came to him.
Percival was kneeling near the foot of the staircase leading up to the second floor, sitting on the heels of his boots. He had his hands clamped tight over his eyes, the skin underneath the right gouged and dripping blood, which wandered down his face like a tear. He bellowed, a long, anguished roar, shaking his head back and forth. Roy saw all this faintly, though, as if through fog-smeared binoculars; for Percival was enveloped in a seething, red-eyed shadow. A ghost.
It was wearing Percival like a black shawl, its eyes jutting two inches or so above his head and bearing witness to the gradual deterioration of his senses. He scrabbled at the ghost, the palm of his right hand streaked with the blood he’d drawn, but his curled fingers passed straight through it.
“I didn’t mean to!” Percival screamed. He scrambled up to his knees, then fell, thrashing and writhing, lashing out at the ghost. It hovered about his head as if pinned into place there.“I didn’t think they’d come for us! I didn’t know!”He crawled across the floor, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, the drooping purple bags underneath them wrinkled and wet with tears.“I thought it would just be him, I swear it!”
Roy bolted down the stairs he’d been standing near, then down those that would bring him to the first floor. Once he was there, he rushed over to Percival, his heart slamming against his ribs—Hard enough to shatter them, Roy thought distantly—and then wrapped his arms around Percival’s chest, dragging himself into the shadow of the ghost.
Inside it, a string of images appeared before him, similar to those generated by Valusvar’s premonitory abilities but darker, opaque. The blurry shape of a building—a manor, he realized; the design was similar to Dawnseve Manor’s—emerged from the gloom, dressed in skeins of roiling smoke. No,flames. He was looking at a house fire, but through the dark, spectral lens of the ghost holding Percival hostage.
“Don’t look!” Percival shouted. He attempted to shove Roy away, but Roy held on, banding his arms tighter around Percival. Their heaving breaths shuddered out before them but did not disturb or twist the ghost’s humanoid form. Percival thrashed again, trying to pull himself out of Roy’s tightening clutch. “Don’t look, Roy!”
Panic and helplessness seized Roy. He could feel himself fading, his ideas for a possible escape route rapidly fleeing him. The ghost had to be affecting his mind, too, playing with his memories and fears, his delusions and concerns. But as its influence took hold of him, diminishing logic and reason, he remembered, as though from some great distance but still there nevertheless,whythis ghost and its kind had rallied their forces, why they had been so drawn to the scholars effectively trapped in the Orphic Basilica with them. He remembered, and it smoothed out the tension in his shoulders, alleviating the secondhand dread he felt for Percival.
“This is all behind you, Percival,” Roy whispered. He laid his arm diagonally across Percival’s chest, wiped away the sweat from his brow, brushed back the clusters of hair that had fallen over his forehead and into his eyes. Percival shivered in Roy’s hold, crying. “This is in the past. It’ll still hurt you. It’ll still work its way deeper into your mind. It’ll steal from you your energy when you most need it. It’ll leave you blind sometimes. It’ll leave you in the dark.” He kissed Percival’s forehead, tears welling in his eyes. “But I won’t,” he vowed. “I won’t.”
Percival was quiet for a while. Then he whispered, “I failed them, darling.” He sobbed. “I failed them. I failedOwen.”
Owen?Roy thought.Is this the friend he lost?
The ghost was still loitering about Percival, captivated by the passion of his grief and the vividity of his recollections, but it kept looking back from him to Roy. Roy had thought these ghosts were benign, that their private histories had given them a comprehensive grasp of the histories of the library’s two living inhabitants, but something Walestone had said had slipped by him, a piece of information Roy had thought small and meaningless until now, as Percival fell prey to his grief.
My memories are a frail web. I have roamed too long a path to reflect and remember my end.
Had the same fate befallen the rest of the ghosts? Roy wondered. Had they forgotten who they’d been, the core of their identities, their codes of morality and their ability to feel respect or compassion for humans? Had time done this, diluted—and eventually disintegrated—their spectrum of emotions? Or had the Blight?
“Don’t give in to it, Percival,” Roy whispered, again kissing Percival’s forehead, where underneath, his deepest scar was feeding on him, glutting itself on his sorrow. “Don’t give it what it wants.”
Percival shook his head, an expression of weary consternation forming across his features. After a moment, though, he curled his fingers around Roy’s arm, the one clutching Percival’s chest, and slackened, sagging to the ground, letting go of the tension he’d been holding desperately on to. He opened his eyes, and Roy was relieved to see they were clear—lined with tears, yes, but bereft of shadows. The ghost, apparently tired of maintaining its grip on him, soared upward and out of sight, blending into the darkness engendered by its companions.
After a silent while, Percival said, “I’ve kept you in the dark long enough, darling. I thought that I could run from my past simply because you revealed yours, because I was too horrified to reciprocate.”
Roy murmured, “I’m sorry.”
