Stolen Songbird
Page 26
I had only seen the library from the outside. In fact, I had never been inside a library before, and nothing could have prepared me for the magnitude of the place. Rows and rows of shelves stretched through the building, some so tall that their tops were obscured by darkness. I would have been at a loss about where to begin, but fortunately, the library was not empty.
Leaving my guards at the front, Élise and I walked towards the telltale glow of troll-light until I came upon a man bent over a large book, quill in hand. He leapt up at our approach, and I noticed he had an ink stain smeared across the bridge of his nose.
“My lady.” He bowed awkwardly and pushed his thick spectacles back up his nose. They promptly slipped back down again.
“Are you a librarian, sir?” I asked politely.
“Fourth librarian, if it please you, my lady.”
I didn’t overly care if he was fourth or fortieth, so long as he could help me find what I needed. “I am hoping you can help me with some… er…” I glanced at Élise, who was examining the titles on one of the shelves, “research.”
“On what subject, my lady?”
I took the librarian’s arm and led him deeper into the stacks. Élise seemed content to stay where she was, which was fine with me. I didn’t want to involve her unnecessarily. “Is there anything written on the Duchesse Sylvie’s prophesy?”
His eyes widened. “No, my lady. She would not consent to being questioned about the details. But His Highness was present – he knows precisely the words she spoke.”
I frowned. “What about the Fall, then? Or… the witch?”
“Anushka.” His expression was grim – this was not a topic the trolls liked to discuss.
“Was that her name?” I had never heard her called anything but “the witch”.
“Indeed, my lady. She was foreign-born, obviously, from the northern part of the continent. A favored courtesan and entertainer of the court of King Alexis III.”
We reached a pedestal with a glass case sitting on it. Inside there was a book, which the librarian removed: Chronicles of the Fall. He flipped carefully through the heavily illustrated pages and then paused. “This is her.”
I leaned over to get a better look and gasped. The redheaded woman on the page stared out at me with brilliant blue eyes.
“A few years older, but the resemblance is uncanny,” the librarian agreed.
“It is indeed,” I breathed. “Tell me sir, what is your name?”
“Martin, my lady.”
“Martin, will you leave me with this book and seek out others that might be of assistance to me?”
“Gladly, my lady.”
Before he went, he set the ponderous book on a table for me. I started at the beginning, the morning of the Fall. Just before noon, all of Trollus was alerted of their impending doom by the echoing crack of thunder. As countless tons of rock spilled down the valley, tens of thousands of trolls lifted their hands and magic to protect themselves and, in doing so, created a collective shield that protected the city as the rock blocked out the sky.
I pored over the illustrations showing beautiful, terrified troll faces with their arms thrown skyward as the mountain poured down on them. The drawings showed humans, too, all of them crouched in terror at the feet of the trolls. Helpless.
The city was organized into shifts of trolls holding up the rock and trolls digging a way out. Bodies of those killed by falling rocks rotted in the streets and the human population was quickly stricken by plague, which was exacerbated by famine and lack of clean water. The humans began to die out, and only the favored few were given what they needed to survive.
Drawings showed emaciated humans on their knees begging, corpses littering the streets around them. And in the midst of them stood the trolls, their eyes focused on the rocks overhead, not on the misery surrounding them. I shuddered to think of what it must have been like: to be starving in the dark, to be shown no mercy because my life was considered worthless.
It took them four weeks to dig through the rock. King Alexis was the first to cross into the sunlight with his human mistress, Anushka, at his side. But as he turned to welcome his people to freedom, Anushka slit his throat and uttered the malediction binding the trolls to the confines of Trollus for as long as she drew breath. All the surviving humans walked into the sun, but no troll could pass the boundaries of the rock fall.
But why? Was it because she’d grown bitter over the way her fellow humans were treated during the crisis? That didn’t make sense – by breaking the mountain, she was the one who’d put both races in such dire straits in the first place. A personal vendetta, then? Revenge against the trolls for something that had happened to her? By all descriptions, she was treated even better than the Queen. What could Alexis have done to inspire such an enormous act of evil?
Martin reappeared and set a stack of books down next to me. “You may find these interesting,” he said.
I nodded and pointed to the enormous portraits lining the library walls. “Which is King Alexis?”
“The Third?”
“Yes. The one Anushka killed.”
Martin’s light flew along the portraits until he found the one he was looking for. I rose and made my way over to it. King Alexis was handsome, with strong, straight features, and black hair that fell to his shoulders, but his good looks were marred by his haughty expression.
“His son, King Xavier II, also known as the Savior.” Martin’s light moved over to reveal a grim-faced troll with the eyes of a man who has seen too much. “He ascended to the throne at age sixteen, but it was his genius that designed a way in for the river. Trollus would not have survived if not for the fish.
“He was succeeded by King Tristan I, also known as Tristan the Builder. He was the architect of the original structure of the tree. His work reduced the number of trolls required to maintain the ceiling by more than half. He was also responsible for the construction of the moon hole.”
Tristan the Builder was as grim-faced as his father, but as Martin continued his description of the Montigny line, I noticed a return of the haughty expression that Alexis had worn. Even King Marcel III, known to all as Marcel the Dimwit, had a look of self-entitlement.
“What do you suppose they will call His Majesty?” I asked, looking up at Tristan’s father’s portrait. Either it was from many years ago, or the artist had taken a great deal of liberty, because the Thibault in the painting was not the enormously fat man I knew. In fact, he looked eerily like a somewhat older version of Tristan.
“I don’t make a habit of speculating on such things, my lady,” Martin said, but I saw the corners of his mouth creep up.
My vote was for Thibault the Corpulent.
I turned back to the book and flipped to the portrait of Anushka. “Martin, why would she have broken the mountain while she was still in the city? Why risk her own death?”
“No one knows for certain, my lady.”
“And if she was powerful enough to break a mountain, why didn’t she break herself out? Why did she suffer through everything that went on down here for the four weeks it took to dig out, and then curse the trolls?”
Martin shrugged. “It is not in my nature to– “
“Speculate, I know.” I frowned at the book. It simply did not make sense for her to have broken the mountain while she was in the city unless it was some act of suicide. “Could a troll break a mountain?”
“One troll?” He shook his head. “No. Not possible.”
“What about several working together?”
“It’s feasible, I suppose.” He didn’t look very happy at the direction I was going. “But that isn’t what happened. The witch broke the mountain, waited until safety was in our grasp, and then uttered the curse.”
“Are curses anything like troll magic?” I scratched my head. “How is it possible for her to still be alive after so many years? Are you even certain that she is?”
Martin’s face pinched together – apparently I’d offended him. “Troll magic is not the same as human magic, which is to say witchcraft. Not the same in the least. And we know she is alive because the curse is still in place.”
“But how?” I persisted.
“Blood magic, my lady. The dark arts.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Little. It is human magic that draws power from the spilt blood of sacrifice.”
I frowned. “Is all human magic dark? Is blood the only source of power?”
He cleared his throat. “No. My understanding – which, I must reiterate, is limited – is that blood magic is not the norm. Most witches draw power from the earth by tapping into the power of the four elements.”
“What can they do with their power?” I persisted. “Other than curse trolls.”
Martin looked uncomfortable. “A witch can affect the world with the words she speaks. Heal other humans. Convince them to do things.”
My whole body jerked. “What do you mean, ‘convince them to do things’?”
He shrugged. “I mean what I say.”
What he was telling me was alarmingly familiar. “The ability to convince…” Did that mean? The countless times I’d been able to convince the inconvincible scrolled through my mind. Could it be that what I had always attributed to willpower was something else entirely? Sweat broke out on my palms. “Where does troll magic come from?”
“The fifth element: spirit.” He tapped his own chest. “Our magic comes from within. Witches are merely conduits of the earth’s power.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
Martin shrugged one shoulder. “Our ancestors were curious about such things. Foolishly, it turned out, believing that human magic was no danger to our kind. They kept records of what they learned, and we also have documents written by witches themselves.”
He tapped the spine of one of the books he’d brought me. “This is a witch’s grimoire. It was found in Anushka’s rooms after she fled Trollus.”
Tentatively, I reached out and plucked the book from the pile, half-afraid the thing would burst into flames at my touch. It was in surprisingly good condition considering it was over five centuries old. I touched the runes engraved on the cover, which was made of a strange sort of leather that I’d never seen before.
“Human skin,” Martin said helpfully.
I dropped the book.
“Try to open it, my lady,” he said.
Reluctantly, I retrieved the book from where it had fallen. The smooth feel of it beneath my fingers disgusted me. This wasn’t something, it was someone. I tugged on the clasp, gently at first, and then harder. It refused to budge.
Martin sighed. “No one has been able to open it. I thought perhaps because you are human it might…” He sighed again.
“Perhaps one needs to be a witch,” I said. “And do I look like a witch to you?”
Martin laughed nervously.
“Do you know where she is now?” I asked.
“No one knows, my lady.”
“She could be anywhere, then. Pretending to be anybody?”
“Don’t ask him to speculate, Cécile. Martin only deals in facts.”
I leapt off my chair, spinning around. “Tristan! I mean, my lord.”
“Your Highness.” Martin bowed. He eyed the two of us as though wondering what sort of destruction we would wreak upon his library. “If you could please keep your voices down.” Then he walked hurriedly away.
Tristan gave a soft snort of laughter as he warded our conversation against eavesdroppers, but I could tell he wasn’t feeling very amused. “I suppose I should consider this an improvement over the mines.”
I eyed him nervously, wondering if this would be the moment of reckoning. “It was something I thought I needed to do. Thank you for not interfering.”
He cocked one of his eyebrows. “Once I realized where you’d gone, there wasn’t much I could do without making a scene and raising more questions than I’ve a mind to be answering. It was reckless of you, though. And dangerous. I have noticed that there is a certain pattern to your behavior, and it makes me nervous.”
“I didn’t get caught,” I said. “At least, not really.”
His jaw tightened.
“A guild member saw me,” I admitted. “But I think he was a sympathizer.”
Tristan went very still. “Tell me what happened.”
I explained, and when I finished, he nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t think we need to worry about him.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “Do you know who he is?”
“Yes.”
I had hoped he would elaborate, but as usual, he was unwilling to divulge any more information than necessary.
Silence hung between us, but I felt his anxiety mount. Though he knew we were allies, he did not trust me. Not completely. Not in the way I found myself trusting him.
“Why are you in the library, Cécile?”
I stepped away from him and back to my table full of books. I cleared my throat. “I was brought to Trollus for one reason, Tristan, and that was to fulfill the prophesy that came from your aunt’s foretelling.”
“I’m not sure anyone actually believes you will,” Tristan started to say, but I interrupted him.
“Oh, they believe,” I said softly, thinking of the faces of the half-bloods in the mine. “Not everyone is as pessimistic as you.”
I rested my elbows on the table and stared at the grimoire. “Clearly it wasn’t the two of us being bonded under moonlight. It must be something we need to do. What exactly did your aunt say?”
Leaving my guards at the front, Élise and I walked towards the telltale glow of troll-light until I came upon a man bent over a large book, quill in hand. He leapt up at our approach, and I noticed he had an ink stain smeared across the bridge of his nose.
“My lady.” He bowed awkwardly and pushed his thick spectacles back up his nose. They promptly slipped back down again.
“Are you a librarian, sir?” I asked politely.
“Fourth librarian, if it please you, my lady.”
I didn’t overly care if he was fourth or fortieth, so long as he could help me find what I needed. “I am hoping you can help me with some… er…” I glanced at Élise, who was examining the titles on one of the shelves, “research.”
“On what subject, my lady?”
I took the librarian’s arm and led him deeper into the stacks. Élise seemed content to stay where she was, which was fine with me. I didn’t want to involve her unnecessarily. “Is there anything written on the Duchesse Sylvie’s prophesy?”
His eyes widened. “No, my lady. She would not consent to being questioned about the details. But His Highness was present – he knows precisely the words she spoke.”
I frowned. “What about the Fall, then? Or… the witch?”
“Anushka.” His expression was grim – this was not a topic the trolls liked to discuss.
“Was that her name?” I had never heard her called anything but “the witch”.
“Indeed, my lady. She was foreign-born, obviously, from the northern part of the continent. A favored courtesan and entertainer of the court of King Alexis III.”
We reached a pedestal with a glass case sitting on it. Inside there was a book, which the librarian removed: Chronicles of the Fall. He flipped carefully through the heavily illustrated pages and then paused. “This is her.”
I leaned over to get a better look and gasped. The redheaded woman on the page stared out at me with brilliant blue eyes.
“A few years older, but the resemblance is uncanny,” the librarian agreed.
“It is indeed,” I breathed. “Tell me sir, what is your name?”
“Martin, my lady.”
“Martin, will you leave me with this book and seek out others that might be of assistance to me?”
“Gladly, my lady.”
Before he went, he set the ponderous book on a table for me. I started at the beginning, the morning of the Fall. Just before noon, all of Trollus was alerted of their impending doom by the echoing crack of thunder. As countless tons of rock spilled down the valley, tens of thousands of trolls lifted their hands and magic to protect themselves and, in doing so, created a collective shield that protected the city as the rock blocked out the sky.
I pored over the illustrations showing beautiful, terrified troll faces with their arms thrown skyward as the mountain poured down on them. The drawings showed humans, too, all of them crouched in terror at the feet of the trolls. Helpless.
The city was organized into shifts of trolls holding up the rock and trolls digging a way out. Bodies of those killed by falling rocks rotted in the streets and the human population was quickly stricken by plague, which was exacerbated by famine and lack of clean water. The humans began to die out, and only the favored few were given what they needed to survive.
Drawings showed emaciated humans on their knees begging, corpses littering the streets around them. And in the midst of them stood the trolls, their eyes focused on the rocks overhead, not on the misery surrounding them. I shuddered to think of what it must have been like: to be starving in the dark, to be shown no mercy because my life was considered worthless.
It took them four weeks to dig through the rock. King Alexis was the first to cross into the sunlight with his human mistress, Anushka, at his side. But as he turned to welcome his people to freedom, Anushka slit his throat and uttered the malediction binding the trolls to the confines of Trollus for as long as she drew breath. All the surviving humans walked into the sun, but no troll could pass the boundaries of the rock fall.
But why? Was it because she’d grown bitter over the way her fellow humans were treated during the crisis? That didn’t make sense – by breaking the mountain, she was the one who’d put both races in such dire straits in the first place. A personal vendetta, then? Revenge against the trolls for something that had happened to her? By all descriptions, she was treated even better than the Queen. What could Alexis have done to inspire such an enormous act of evil?
Martin reappeared and set a stack of books down next to me. “You may find these interesting,” he said.
I nodded and pointed to the enormous portraits lining the library walls. “Which is King Alexis?”
“The Third?”
“Yes. The one Anushka killed.”
Martin’s light flew along the portraits until he found the one he was looking for. I rose and made my way over to it. King Alexis was handsome, with strong, straight features, and black hair that fell to his shoulders, but his good looks were marred by his haughty expression.
“His son, King Xavier II, also known as the Savior.” Martin’s light moved over to reveal a grim-faced troll with the eyes of a man who has seen too much. “He ascended to the throne at age sixteen, but it was his genius that designed a way in for the river. Trollus would not have survived if not for the fish.
“He was succeeded by King Tristan I, also known as Tristan the Builder. He was the architect of the original structure of the tree. His work reduced the number of trolls required to maintain the ceiling by more than half. He was also responsible for the construction of the moon hole.”
Tristan the Builder was as grim-faced as his father, but as Martin continued his description of the Montigny line, I noticed a return of the haughty expression that Alexis had worn. Even King Marcel III, known to all as Marcel the Dimwit, had a look of self-entitlement.
“What do you suppose they will call His Majesty?” I asked, looking up at Tristan’s father’s portrait. Either it was from many years ago, or the artist had taken a great deal of liberty, because the Thibault in the painting was not the enormously fat man I knew. In fact, he looked eerily like a somewhat older version of Tristan.
“I don’t make a habit of speculating on such things, my lady,” Martin said, but I saw the corners of his mouth creep up.
My vote was for Thibault the Corpulent.
I turned back to the book and flipped to the portrait of Anushka. “Martin, why would she have broken the mountain while she was still in the city? Why risk her own death?”
“No one knows for certain, my lady.”
“And if she was powerful enough to break a mountain, why didn’t she break herself out? Why did she suffer through everything that went on down here for the four weeks it took to dig out, and then curse the trolls?”
Martin shrugged. “It is not in my nature to– “
“Speculate, I know.” I frowned at the book. It simply did not make sense for her to have broken the mountain while she was in the city unless it was some act of suicide. “Could a troll break a mountain?”
“One troll?” He shook his head. “No. Not possible.”
“What about several working together?”
“It’s feasible, I suppose.” He didn’t look very happy at the direction I was going. “But that isn’t what happened. The witch broke the mountain, waited until safety was in our grasp, and then uttered the curse.”
“Are curses anything like troll magic?” I scratched my head. “How is it possible for her to still be alive after so many years? Are you even certain that she is?”
Martin’s face pinched together – apparently I’d offended him. “Troll magic is not the same as human magic, which is to say witchcraft. Not the same in the least. And we know she is alive because the curse is still in place.”
“But how?” I persisted.
“Blood magic, my lady. The dark arts.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Little. It is human magic that draws power from the spilt blood of sacrifice.”
I frowned. “Is all human magic dark? Is blood the only source of power?”
He cleared his throat. “No. My understanding – which, I must reiterate, is limited – is that blood magic is not the norm. Most witches draw power from the earth by tapping into the power of the four elements.”
“What can they do with their power?” I persisted. “Other than curse trolls.”
Martin looked uncomfortable. “A witch can affect the world with the words she speaks. Heal other humans. Convince them to do things.”
My whole body jerked. “What do you mean, ‘convince them to do things’?”
He shrugged. “I mean what I say.”
What he was telling me was alarmingly familiar. “The ability to convince…” Did that mean? The countless times I’d been able to convince the inconvincible scrolled through my mind. Could it be that what I had always attributed to willpower was something else entirely? Sweat broke out on my palms. “Where does troll magic come from?”
“The fifth element: spirit.” He tapped his own chest. “Our magic comes from within. Witches are merely conduits of the earth’s power.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
Martin shrugged one shoulder. “Our ancestors were curious about such things. Foolishly, it turned out, believing that human magic was no danger to our kind. They kept records of what they learned, and we also have documents written by witches themselves.”
He tapped the spine of one of the books he’d brought me. “This is a witch’s grimoire. It was found in Anushka’s rooms after she fled Trollus.”
Tentatively, I reached out and plucked the book from the pile, half-afraid the thing would burst into flames at my touch. It was in surprisingly good condition considering it was over five centuries old. I touched the runes engraved on the cover, which was made of a strange sort of leather that I’d never seen before.
“Human skin,” Martin said helpfully.
I dropped the book.
“Try to open it, my lady,” he said.
Reluctantly, I retrieved the book from where it had fallen. The smooth feel of it beneath my fingers disgusted me. This wasn’t something, it was someone. I tugged on the clasp, gently at first, and then harder. It refused to budge.
Martin sighed. “No one has been able to open it. I thought perhaps because you are human it might…” He sighed again.
“Perhaps one needs to be a witch,” I said. “And do I look like a witch to you?”
Martin laughed nervously.
“Do you know where she is now?” I asked.
“No one knows, my lady.”
“She could be anywhere, then. Pretending to be anybody?”
“Don’t ask him to speculate, Cécile. Martin only deals in facts.”
I leapt off my chair, spinning around. “Tristan! I mean, my lord.”
“Your Highness.” Martin bowed. He eyed the two of us as though wondering what sort of destruction we would wreak upon his library. “If you could please keep your voices down.” Then he walked hurriedly away.
Tristan gave a soft snort of laughter as he warded our conversation against eavesdroppers, but I could tell he wasn’t feeling very amused. “I suppose I should consider this an improvement over the mines.”
I eyed him nervously, wondering if this would be the moment of reckoning. “It was something I thought I needed to do. Thank you for not interfering.”
He cocked one of his eyebrows. “Once I realized where you’d gone, there wasn’t much I could do without making a scene and raising more questions than I’ve a mind to be answering. It was reckless of you, though. And dangerous. I have noticed that there is a certain pattern to your behavior, and it makes me nervous.”
“I didn’t get caught,” I said. “At least, not really.”
His jaw tightened.
“A guild member saw me,” I admitted. “But I think he was a sympathizer.”
Tristan went very still. “Tell me what happened.”
I explained, and when I finished, he nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t think we need to worry about him.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “Do you know who he is?”
“Yes.”
I had hoped he would elaborate, but as usual, he was unwilling to divulge any more information than necessary.
Silence hung between us, but I felt his anxiety mount. Though he knew we were allies, he did not trust me. Not completely. Not in the way I found myself trusting him.
“Why are you in the library, Cécile?”
I stepped away from him and back to my table full of books. I cleared my throat. “I was brought to Trollus for one reason, Tristan, and that was to fulfill the prophesy that came from your aunt’s foretelling.”
“I’m not sure anyone actually believes you will,” Tristan started to say, but I interrupted him.
“Oh, they believe,” I said softly, thinking of the faces of the half-bloods in the mine. “Not everyone is as pessimistic as you.”
I rested my elbows on the table and stared at the grimoire. “Clearly it wasn’t the two of us being bonded under moonlight. It must be something we need to do. What exactly did your aunt say?”
