A priest stepped out.
For a moment, he was certain the man would turn, that his eyes would lift and find the outline of a figure pressed to the stone. The priest lingered, adjusting his sleeves, muttering under his breath. The lantern in his grip burned steadily, and with a turn, would have revealed the druid just out of reach.
Finally, the priest made his way across the bridge.
The druid waited, chest rising and falling as the priest’s footsteps faded away. The door had not yet latched. He slipped from his hiding place, fingers catching the edge. A moment more and he was inside, his footfalls lost in the hush.
The air was thick within, disturbed only by the faintest echo of his breath.Tip tap. A figure paced along the nave, candle in hand.
The druid flattened against the curve of a pillar. He did not move. Did not breathe. The man passed in quiet vigil, save the rustle of robes, and the soft scrape of leather soles. Only when the last of his light had faded did the druid creep away.
His eyes darted over the lintels, reading the names carved above. Archways leading to the refectory and the upper dormitories. And… the bookhold.
The druid stopped before a stair. It was narrow, hewn from the same cold stone; its steps worn smooth by centuries of passage. The must congealed as he descended, as if the earth itself pressed in—warm, damp and tinged with mildew. At the foot of the stair, a door loomed. His fingers found the handle, pausing only to listen. No voices. No movement beyond.
The hinges creaked softly as the door yielded, spilling him into the still. He was greeted by the scent of wax and vellum. The chamber was meager, crowded with misshapen shelves stacked with tomes and scrolls. A low, vaulted ceiling arched above, with ribs of dark wood.
Books piled everywhere, their contents thick with age, their bindings stiff with dust. A table occupied the center, its surface cluttered with loose parchment and an old lantern hung from a hook above. A single window carved into the stone foundations let in the night air, and he watched for shadows in the cloister above. None came.
He had made it. But time was thin.
He sifted through the papers on the desk. Mostly letters and correspondence from within the cleirigh, some from as far as Tírth. All of them emblazoned with a strangely familiar symbol—a braid of endless fire.
He took the lantern from its hook, holding it high as he scoured the shelves. There were tomes inscribed with hagiographies and the divine writ of kings. There were scrolls on herbology, horticulture and husbandry. Psalms and sermons from years past, and calendars dating back to the passage of Æon’Righ. He had never seen the western annals with his own eyes. The first of the scripture read:
So it is recorded on the fifth day of Lorchanach, when the earth was still young; there came upon the sky sea a terror clothed in fire. It came not as man nor beast, nor bird nor storm, but something of all these things, and yet of none. It moved above the world with great and terrible majesty and stretched wider than the vale, dark as the starless midnight. And upon its back it bore the light of all creation. A sun not risen from the west—but carried. It set the sky alight as it passed, and the rivers filled with fire.
It gave no cry, no bellow, nor call of war—only silence in the vastness of its wake, save for the wind that chased behind it, hot and howling. And when it was gone, the sun no longer slumbered below the horizon, nor hid in the gloom of dawn—it rose and set and the days became long.
Crús Crúnach,from the Scroll of the Dawn-Witness
The further he dug, the dustier the pages became, till his gaze caught upon a familiar rune. The ink was faded, yet he could make out the branches of the Oron’Feyr—symbol of the first men.
His breath snagged.
These were druidic texts.
But why were they here at Rhyd-hal? How did the An’Atherin get their hands on them?
The druid set the lantern aside. The books—if they could be called thus—were small and ragged, like they might turn to ash if held too tightly. The pages were tattered and threadbare.
He was careful, pulling back the binding to reveal an ancient scrawl, barely legible beneath centuries of wear.
It was strange.
Druids weren’t known to keep written records. The knowledge they collected was passed down through story and song. What little theyhadwritten remained in the Fáoth under the protection of their elders. To see such things here…
He didn’t know why, but it turned his belly.
Brushing the dust aside, his eyes followed the runes etched faintly beneath. These texts seemed less like scripture and more like journals.
“Second day of Murtagg in the fifteenth year of the Ere of Sun…” he read in a whisper. “The singr speaks of the hatching, and of the woman of root who spoke in tongues of wood.”
The record told of the time after the Awakening, before the Ere of Stone and the rise of the An’Atherin. Of the people of the wood, who sang and walked in the deep forests and communed with the trees. He knew those stories from when he was young. When the fíor would spin tales of the Naém’a—she who had taught his kin to see the past.
His brows knit.
These were not the tales he had heard as a boy, but a methodical account of secondhand experiences; a detailed observation, as if the author had been performing some sort of… inquiry.
