The Baast Cats had dwelled in the Torre library for as long as it had existed, yet none knew where they had come from, or how they were replaced when age claimed them. Each was as individual as any human, save for those beryl-colored eyes they each bore, and the fact that all were just as prone to curl up in a lap as they were to shun company altogether. Some of the healers, old and young alike, swore the cats could step through pools of shadow to appear on another level of the library; some swore the cats had been caught pawing through the pages of open books—reading.
Well, it’d certainly be helpful if they bothered to read less and hunt more. But the cats answered to no one and nothing, except, perhaps, their namesake, or whatever god had found a quiet home in the library, within Silba’s shadow. To offend one Baast Cat was to insult them all, and even though Yrene loved most animals—with the exception of some insects—she had been sure to treat the cats kindly, occasionally leaving morsels of food, or providing a belly rub or ear scratch whenever they deigned to command them.
But there was no sign of those green eyes glinting in the dark, or of a scurrying mouse fleeing their path, so Yrene loosed a breath and set aside the ancient scroll, carefully placing it at the edge of the desk before pulling an Eyllwe tome toward her.
The book was bound in black leather, heavy as a doorstop. She knew a little of the Eyllwe language thanks to living so close to its border with a mother who spoke it fluently—certainly not from the father who had hailed from there.
None of the Towers women had ever married, preferring either lovers who left them with a present that arrived nine months later or who perhaps stayed a year or two before moving on. Yrene had never known her father, never learned anything about who he was other than a traveler who had stopped at her mother’s cottage for the night, seeking shelter from a wild storm that swept over the grassy plain.
Yrene traced her fingers over the gilt title, sounding out the words in the language she had not spoken or heard in years.
“The … The …” She tapped her finger on the title. She should have asked Nousha. The librarian had already promised to translate some other texts that had caught her eye, but … Yrene sighed again. “The …” Poem. Ode. Lyric—“Song,” she breathed. “The Song of …” Start. Onset—“Beginning.”
The Song of Beginning.
The demons—the Valg—were ancient, Lord Westfall had said. They had waited an eternity to strike. Part of near-forgotten myths; little more than bedside stories.
Yrene flipped open the cover, and cringed at the unfamiliar tangle of writing within the table of contents. The type itself was old, the book not even printed on a press. Handwritten. With some word variations that had long since died out.
Lightning flashed again, and Yrene rubbed at her temple as she leafed through the musty, yellow-lined pages.
A history book. That’s all it was.
Her eye snagged on a page, and she paused, backtracking until the illustration reappeared.
It had been done in sparing colors: blacks, whites, reds, and the occasional yellow.
All painted by a master’s hand, no doubt an illustration of whatever was written beneath it.
The illustration revealed a barren crag, an army of soldiers in dark armor kneeling before it.
Kneeling before what was atop the crag.
A towering gate. No wall flanking it, no keep behind it. As if someone had built the gateway of black stone out of thin air.
There were no doors within the archway. Only swirling black nothing. Beams of it shot from the void, some foul corruption of the sun, falling upon the soldiers kneeling before it.
She squinted at the figures in the foreground. Their bodies were human, but the hands clutching their swords … Clawed. Twisted.
“Valg,” Yrene whispered.
Thunder cracked in answer.
Yrene scowled at the swaying lantern as the reverberations from the thunderhead rumbled beneath her feet, up her legs.
She flipped through the pages until the next illustration appeared. Three figures stood before the same gate, the drawing too distant to make out any features beyond their male bodies, tall and powerful.
She ran a finger over the caption below and translated:
Orcus. Mantyx. Erawan.
Three Valg Kings.
Wielders of the Keys.
Yrene chewed on her bottom lip. Lord Westfall had not mentioned such things.
But if there was a gate … then it would need a key to open. Or several.
If the book was correct.
Midnight chimed in the great clock of the library’s main atrium.
Yrene riffled through the pages, to another illustration. It was divided into three panels.
Everything the lord had said—she had believed him, of course, but … it was true. If the wound wasn’t proof enough, these texts offered no other alternative.
For there in the first panel, tied down upon an altar of dark stone … a desperate young man strained to free himself from the approach of a crowned dark figure. Something swirled around the figure’s hand—some asp of black mist and wicked thought. No real creature.
The second panel … Yrene cringed from it.
For there was that young man, eyes wide in supplication and terror, mouth forced open as that creature of black mist slithered down his throat.
But it was the last panel that made her blood chill.
Lightning flashed again, illumining the final illustration.
The young man’s face had gone still. Unfeeling. His eyes … Yrene glanced between the previous drawing and the final one. His eyes had been silver in the first two.
In the final one … they had gone black. Passable as human eyes, but the silver had been wiped away by unholy obsidian.
Not dead. For they had shown him rising, chains removed. Not a threat.
No—whatever they had put inside him …
Thunder groaned again, and more shrieks and giggles followed. Along with the slam and clatter of the acolytes leaving for the night.
Yrene surveyed the book before her, the other stacks Nousha had laid out.
Lord Westfall had described collars and rings to hold the Valg demons within a human host. But even after they were removed, he’d said, they could linger. They were merely implantation devices, and if they remained on too long, feeding off their host …
Yrene shook her head. The man in the drawing had not been enslaved—he’d been infested. The magic had come from someone with that sort of power. Power from the demon host within.
A clash of lightning, then thunder immediately on its heels.
And then another click sounded—faint and hollow—from the dim stacks to her right. Closer now than that earlier one had been.
Yrene glanced again toward the gloom, the hair on her arms rising.
Not a movement of a mouse. Or even the scrape of feline claws on stone or bookshelf.
She had never once feared for her safety, not from the moment she had set foot within these walls, but Yrene found herself going still as she stared into that gloom to her right. Then slowly looked over her shoulder.
The shelf-lined corridor was a straight shot toward a larger hallway, which would, in three minutes’ walk, take her back to the bright, constantly monitored main atrium. Five minutes at most.
Only shadows and leather and dust surrounded her, the light bobbing and tilting with the swaying lanterns.
Healing magic offered no defenses. She’d discovered such things the hard way.
But during that year at the White Pig Inn, she’d learned to listen. Learned to read a room, to sense when the air had shifted. Men could unleash storms, too.
The grumbling echo of the thunder faded, and only silence remained in its wake.
Silence, and the creaking of the ancient lanterns in the wind. No other click issued.
Foolish—foolish to read such things so late. And during a storm.
Yrene swallowed. Librarians preferred the books remain within the library proper, but …
She slammed shut The Song of Beginning, shoving it into her bag. Most of the books she’d already deemed useless, but there were perhaps six more, a mixture of Eyllwe and other tongues. Yrene shoved those into her bag, too. And gently placed the scrolls into the pockets of her cloak, tucked out of view.
All while keeping one eye over her shoulder—on the hall behind her, the stacks to her right.