Still, Walestone admitted,I do not know what to feel, how to process this development. You would expect me to be content, and I suppose I am, but... there is a part of me, however small, that knows my people must still carry the demons which haunt them.He sighed.Must the past always leave its mark?
“If it did not,” Percival said, pulling himself from Roy’s hold, though only to squeeze his hand, “we would not grow.”
Roy smiled and squeezed back, then said to Walestone, “If all else is lost to memory, then at least your friends and followers will remember your perseverance. You tried. And we’re here to chronicle it. So that the memory at least has a chance to be visited time and again.”
But I did not succeed, Walestone said.There is nothing to chronicle.
“How can you say that?” Percival pointed to the clouds. “This is as much your achievement as it is ours. We gave them an out, but we wouldn’t have known what to do had you not shown Roy your memory, your own demons, and that takes bravery.”
Walestone considered that.I suppose I have gotten so mired in my failure that I neglected to give myself credit for my accomplishments. Though that is the way of most academics, it seems. I know you both must share the sentiment.
Percival shrugged. “And then some.”
Walestone spared another glance at the clouds, which continued to twist and roil with displeasure, the sounds now overtaking the crackling of flames and the spitting of embers. He looked back at Roy and Percival with urgency, though he appeared less anxious, the crinkle between his vaguely visible brows gone, at least partially assuaged by the scholars’ reassurances.It is time for you to leave, he told them.I know not the consequences of opening the door to this place from inside out, but the power invested in those swords is volatile, so I would take caution.
“Will you go with them?” Percival asked Walestone. “Your friends? When we open the doors, will you fight?”
No, my fight is over, Walestone answered, then gestured emphatically to Kharuan.Go back, mortals. I do not know if there’s a next road I might take or if this is my last, but either way, I am eager to find out.
Roy was happy for the Elder Scribe, and yet there was a profound sense of loss in knowing this potential fount of knowledge was moving on. He knew it was Walestone’s choice, and he respected it, but it took all Roy’s strength to hold himself back from asking Walestone the litany of questions that troubled him: Where had the Blight come from? Was there truly no cure or had Walestone merely not found it? Were the Old Ones’ plans of conquest central to Roy’s world? Or had Walestone discovered, through his research, the existence of other worlds? Were these in peril, too, threatened by this incomprehensible army?
But even if he had the time to ask these questions, he knew they were not his and Percival’s to examine. They’d identified the Old Ones, those who had originally invaded and stormed Northgard. They knew that, if they were to tear off their masks, they would find the faces of mortals who should be dead, whose lives had been extended against their will like the Governor’s—and Dimestra’s—Droves. And in figuring this out, they had banished them from their homeandsaved the scholars, bonuses they would not take lightly.
At last, Roy took up Kharuan in both his hands, the muscles in his forearms straining at the weight. When he had finally found a good hold and repositioned the sword so that the blade pointed downward, he located a wide fissure in the fractured earth and plunged it deep, Percival standing prepared next to him.
The fuzzy landscape evaporated around them, and before Roy could figure out whether their plan would work, everything went dark.
28
When they reappeared in the Orphic Basilica,Roy immediately became aware of the tremors coursing beneath his feet.
He stood braced in the same position as when he and Percival had crossed from purgatory to the material world, but he was no longer grasping Kharuan in his white-knuckled hands. The sword had exploded into glittering smithereens, scattered around the redwood floorboards alongside the remains of Valusvar. The shuddering vibrations continued, pitching Roy into Percival, who staggered to the side and almost tripped over his own feet. But Roy hauled him upright, clutching him by the sleeve of his tunic, gazing around with increasing fascination and incredulity.
A torrent of snow blew violently down through the shattered skylight, whipping and stirring past bookshelves and sculptures. The tremors intensified, rumbling and trembling through the foundations of the library. Rolling ladders skidded back and forth, producing a terrible screech that grated against Roy’s ears. The wind whistled and howled and ripped a sculpture off its plinth, then hurled it against the staircase with dreadful strength. Splinters and chips of wood cracked off the risers and spiraled through the air, nearly slashing across Percival’s cheek.
Roy cried out and wrapped his arm around Percival, tenderly cupping the back of his head. He pressed down, lowering them both to the carpet, which was sprinkled with glass and metal.
He did not know how—perhaps because of the gaping hole in the floor to his left, from which the ghosts had evacuated—but he couldfeelthe erosion of this ancient, long-believed-invincible building underneath him: the grinding of cobblestone, the crumbling of mortar, the eerily human groaning of its skeletal framework... and the prolonged booms and echoes of the release of thanatological energy. Intermittent pulsations of silver light, much stronger and more vibrant than what had emitted from either of the swords, erupted from the chasm that tunneled deep down into the catacombs. Paroxysms of dust and dirt shot out of the blackness. A brown mist of earth rained down on Roy and Percival, their heads still covered, their bodies still hunched and curled around one another.
They began coughing, and Roy was instantly filled with alarm. He remembered when, during their initial foray into the catacombs, he’d coughed and hacked and then been assailed by a series of disturbing visions. He waited, dread curdling his blood, but nothing happened. The visions seemed to have gone with the dead.
Now new visions assaulted him: premonitions of himself and Percival being crushed to death, pummeled by books and sculptures and stones. Because the waves of destruction went on, and those reverberations and lights coming from the catacombs did not seem to be ceasing anytime soon. One did not need to be a seer to know how easily that timeline could become their reality.
A plangentcracksounded from their left, like a stack of wood dropped from the precipice of a towering cliff. The doors to the Orphic Basilica had swung wide open, one of them hanging askew, the hinges torn free by the force of the wind. A bestial howl blasted out of the entryway, as if from the maw of some prehistoric leviathan, and began dragging Roy and Percival by the heels of their boots.
“The wind!” Roy shouted in Percival’s ear, clutching him tightly. His teeth were chattering, and his extremities were growing number by the minute, but there was a wild grin on his face.
Percival trudged toward the entryway, the intact door of which was slowly coming loose from its hinges. He looked pale as an apparition, a path of half-frozen tears imprinted onto his cheeks.
“Come on,” Roy yelled, tugging on Percival’s sleeve.
Percival, who seemed unusually reticent, at last pulled himself out of his thoughts and came back to his senses. He grabbed Roy’s hand, his grip firm.
They tried briskly walking toward the entryway first, though the wind of the Orphic Basilica and the wind of the snowstorm contested for control, battering Roy and Percival from side to side. The biting chill rushed into them with an almost sentient fury, as though eager to take them off their feet. But the other wind, that which had followed and assisted them throughout their investigation, set them back to standing. It even protected them from the cyclone of debris whooshing through the library behind them. A book flew toward them and nearly struck Roy over the head, but the wind soared off with it, leaving them briefly exposed, then returned just before a hail of ice and snow could attack them.
After what felt like an eternity of pushing back a wall of raging winds, they eventually made it past the threshold and out of the Orphic Basilica. As they did, a plaintive cry—high and angelic—issued from the wind, like a mournful farewell. Then it rushed forward, sending Roy and Percival wheeling through the air, far beyond the range of danger.
For a few dizzying moments, Roy rolled through the snow. It got into his mouth, his nostrils, and his hair. Then, shuddering against the cold, he rose to his knees and watched the library he had come to love buckle under the pressure of the swords’ expended abilities, crumble, and fall.
