No, Roy had to face the facts. His idols hadn’t only been scholars, shoulders hunched from the arduous, though rewarding, burden of their studies. The Elder Scribes had been an order of mystics bearing a repository of arcane knowledge. They had chosen to use their abilities for these academic pursuits rather than the encroaching advent of continual warfare, and with that one goal in mind—to unravel the well-buried secrets of history—they had fallen, brought to their knees by the Old Ones and Walestone’s failed mission.
Roy lifted his gaze now to Walestone, who still had a humanoid quality about his appearance—all but for his nebulous, shadowy form and glistening red eyes. “But you didn’t fail, did you?” Roy said. “You just didn’t know Holyborn alone wouldn’t open the doors, free the ghosts,andlet you back out because it hadn’t beendonebefore. Eldreave wasn’t aware of this, either, nor were any of the caretakers preceding him.”
Although Walestone bore no facial features with which to make an expression, in the ghost’s brief silence, Roy could somehow pick up on a sense of melancholy.The answer was right beneath our noses, Walestone said.I had cached in my study two swords of Holyborn’s like, as you saw. Gods Above, I was afool. A disgrace to my honorable, esteemed people. If only I’d known—
“But you didn’t,” Roy interrupted Walestone, and surrounding him, there came the dispirited, disembodied groanings and murmurings of the dead. He could hear them strongly now, as though they were pressing against the boundaries containing them, longing to be set free, to be at long last liberated from the wasteland Roy had momentarily seen in Walestone’s memory. “Youdidn’tknow, and moreover, the longer that you’ve been trapped, the harder it is to remember. Right?”
It has been... many years, Walestone whispered. Roy had to strain his ears to decipher the deceased Elder Scribe’s words over the commotion of the ghosts.My impressions of the past, of my demise, only grew substantial once I saw those unworldly swords in yours and your colleague’s hands.
“Valusvar and Kharuan,” Roy said. “But the last I saw of them in that memory, they appeared to be in your study. How did they come to be in your sarcophagus? And how were the shattered pieces of Holyborn brought aboveground?” The answer to these questions came the moment that he’d voiced them. “The library. It protected you,allof you. By entombing the swords, it kept them out of the Old Ones’ hands, should they invade again.”
And out of the Governors’ and the Droves’, those before your time, Walestone said.It carved out of this chamber—shortly after the Old Ones’ incursion, I presume—the sarcophagi for my fellow Scribes and our Protectorate. There were some tombs made for our apprentices, though the amount is much smaller than how many scholars came down here to assist me in invoking the glamor rune. Perhaps they were so severely dismembered that the library could not recognize which parts belonged to which body... but this is all moot to the larger issue.He leveled his gaze to Roy.Do you see what must be done, Roy Dawnseve? Do you see how these souls can finally be freed?
Roy ruminated. He knew how to put things to right, how to undo what had been done, but he was also acutely aware, again, of the frightening probability that Briar might be erased from existence. But as Walestone had proclaimed earlier, that was the risk that Roy would have to take to release these ghosts from their cage, to let them have their peace and return to them their diminishing memories.
“I see,” Roy said. He felt the weight of purpose mounting on his shoulders, but it was not a burden.
Thank you, mortal, Walestone said with audible relief.If all goes to plan, I shall see the both of you on the other side of the barrier.Then the Elder Scribe disappeared, as though he’d slipped into some unseen fold of reality.
Roy didn’t waste a single moment. He whirled around, the glow of the torch in his hand close to winking out. The ghosts shrieked with what sounded like triumphant satisfaction, and as Roy rushed back through the tunnel network, the torch swiftly brightened, like the library was lighting his way.
* * *
When Roy emerged from the depths of the tunnel network, Percival was standing over the entryway to the catacombs, his hair askew and mussed from sleep, his eyes ringed with deep purple shadows.
“By the Scribes, youweredown there,” Percival exclaimed, extending a hand, which Roy eagerly accepted. “Darling, you’reshaking. What happened?”
His mouth drawn into a dismayed grimace, Roy hastily ran his fingers through his hair, clearing out the cobwebs and dirt, then started as the passageway to the catacombs rippled closed behind him. “How did you know where I was?”
“That wind woke me up,” Percival said as he looked over Roy, probably for any visible signs of injury. “It must’ve slipped under the door and into our chamber. I followed it down here, to the first floor, then I saw one of the torches missing from the walls and figured you’d gone down to visit Walestone for a little chat.” He said this with half-hearted mirth, but his tone quickly turned somber as he regarded Roy’s expression. “Darling, goodness, you really seem on edge—”
Roy grabbed Percival’s shoulder with one hand, the torch still clutched in the other. “Percival,” he said, a small smile on his lips, “I know how to banish the Old Ones.”
Percival gawped, aghast. “How—What do you—”
Roy kissed Percival’s forehead. “We have to free the ghosts.”
Once Roy had gotten his bearings, still a little unsettled by the confronting barbarity of the things he’d seen in Walestone’s recollection, he related to Percival what he’d witnessed piece by piece, making sure not to skip out on any of the details.
Roy told him about Holyborn. How, when Walestone had used it, it had shattered into shards of black metal, which the Orphic Basilica had kept for two millennia in a box in the hopes that someone—someone, perhaps, from the group of scholars Walestone had insisted that his apprentice Maude Chasile lead so they could keep the academic community alive—might bring their society of enlightenment back to its former glory. He told Percival how, since nobody had ever opened the doors to purgatory fromwithinbefore, the process hadn’t been recorded.
Finally, Roy finished with the other piece of information he’d been considering. The Orphic Basilica stood ononeincredibly powerful source of thanatological energy. It was not the only one, and, as corroborated by the broad range of historical accounts he had read, the Hasdan Isles was not the only continent that had been targeted and invaded by the Old Ones. Therefore, Roy was sure there were other wellsprings of this power like the Orphic Basilica, twisting across the world.
Purgatory contained exclusively the ghosts of those slain by the Old Ones, but this race of red-eyed creatures had likely exterminated millions of humans, and Roy and Percival had already determined that they killed indiscriminately, unlike the Radiant Droves. Once freed, the ghosts would significantly outstrip the Old Ones in number.
“I think we need a second sword,” Roy said, slotting the torch back into the sconce from which he’d taken it. “You left Valusvar in the Observatory, yes?”
When he turned back around, Percival was gesticulating wildly. “Darling, this isabsurd. I mean, I completely agree on the number of ghosts, but as for the swords, you hardly lasted a minute under the influence of Valusvar’s visions. How do you think we’re going to open the doors toanother worldwith two of those cursed weapons?”
“I know how it’s going to go because I saw the reverse happen,” Roy explained. “Just as I said: Walestone went exactly by Eldreave’s instructions, and Holyborn unlocked the gateway to purgatory, like a key into a door... but neither he nor Eldreave nor the caretakers before them thought to use a second sword.”
“I see the logic, I just... I don’t want to see you in that position again,” Percival said. “What if using one of those swords as a sort of key brings about some worse sort of power than when I pointed Valusvar in your direction?” Then he imploringly blurted out, as if he was begging for Roy to find another way: “What about Briar? What about Owen? What if being freed means being wiped out of existence? No afterlives, no second chances—”
“Percival, I’ve considered the repercussions, trust me, but these souls have been imprisoned for over two thousand years,” Roy said, his eyes brimming with tears. “They need to be let go.”
Percival wandered away from Roy and pivoted in a slow circle, his eyes sweeping around the library with solemn reverence. Then he stopped, the wind threading about his shoulders and through his unruly hair. “They’ve suffered long enough,” he said. “All right, let’s do it. I’ll go get the swords.”
Roy almost expected the wind to retrieve Valusvar and Kharuan itself, to place the black-scabbarded weapons neatly into his and Percival’s hands like a squire equipping knights for a battle. Instead, it loitered around the first floor with fretful anticipation. Perhaps it was unsure of the outcome. Perhaps it simply wanted them to fulfill Walestone’s failed duty, from start to finish, on their own.
