19. Chapter Nineteen
Chapter nineteen
The fireplace is not lit when I wake, and I suspect it has something to do with the hour I have woken into.
The moon still peers in through the window, casting her ethereal light upon me as I try to dress as quickly as possible to gather warmth.
I am refreshed enough to know that I have slept a considerable amount, but too restless to lie in bed awake and trying to make sense of the recent turn in events.
My father was involved in the exact sort of thing he always warned me about.
He had told me time and time again that it was our job to protect the Relic, to shield it from those who would misuse it – those who took too much.
But if the Relic was supposed to be the most potent and pure source of power in existence, then why would he feel the need to tap into something so sacrilegious?
The Relic was literally created by the gods themselves.
I think it’d be safe to say its power is perfectly strong enough to protect itself – to create a barrier between itself and the greed of man.
I squint through the dark of the corridor, the floor creaking with each tentative step, alerting anyone in any nearby rooms that I am loose in the halls. I have a sneaking feeling that those rooms haven’t been occupied in recent years. Eliaz does not seem like the type to host guests.
My hands slide along the wall, guiding me, following the bumps of the wallpaper around the corner, until I grapple with the banister at the head of the staircase.
The only place that might quell any storms of questions within my mind, is the library.
It seems obvious to me that such a room would be on the ground floor, where, in the time where the Umbrian Court thrived, guests and visitors might find themselves searching the manor for entertainment or places to escape the raucous parties the Daegon’s were renowned for hosting.
I’m grateful for my borrowed boots of Calli’s as I make my way down the marble steps, recalling all too well the coldness that overtook my feet on my first venture downwards into the stomach of the manor.
The foyer is still scattered with remnants of furniture and odd discarded household items that I struggle to dodge in the grainy dark of the night.
I slink through the rubble with almost full success, but just as I am almost clear of the foyer itself, one wrong step sends an unseen slab of wood sliding across the floor and into the hall.
My body tenses with cringe as the impact echoes around me.
‘Who’s there?’ a grumbly and familiar voice slurs out from the floor, a mere three feet from where I’m standing. Whoever the voice belongs to must be perched on a broken chair.
‘It’s Eira.’ It comes out almost like a question, most likely because I cannot be sure whether or not the floor dweller would receive it with disdain or indifference. The person grunts, and the sound of liquid sloshing against glass follows.
‘He shouldn’t have brought you back here. I have warned him endlessly how dangerous you might be.’ Cole. Of course it is. I curse Orlaith for the misfortune of our paths crossing under the guise of night. Perfect conditions for another attempt on my life. No witnesses. No evidence.
‘Coming from the person who tried to assassinate me but a mere day and a bit ago, that is incredibly ironic,’ I retort, kicking more scraps of wood in his direction.
‘Is that how long I was a slave to the realm of dreams for? That is just like my kind and honourable king, repaying my concerns for his safety with a smack into unconsciousness.’ He lets loose a manic sort of chuckle.
Another swish of liquid. ‘I do so love the feeling of his rummaging through my thoughts, the way he so gracefully defiles my mind. There is nothing quite like it.’ The last word comes out in a burp, and the musky stale scent of whisky wafts my way.
‘Ahh, you’re drunk. And here I was thinking you a masochist.’ Even squinting does nothing to help me make out the shape of a body, the outline of his decanter of alcohol, nothing.
‘I will kill you now, I think. My senses – although dulled by this wondrous amber liquid – are no longer being tampered with.’
I laugh at the audacity of him. ‘The alcohol makes you bolder but without all the obnoxious aggression of your sober self. Might you consider remaining intoxicated for the duration of my stay? It would certainly make things much more tolerable.’
‘I am a master of daggers. You underestimate me.’
I arch a brow into the dark, forgetting he cannot see me. ‘As I recall, I last saw your dagger planted quite firmly into your own foot. Pray tell me, where is your masterful blade at present?’
Cole shuffles as though in search, then clicks his tongue. ‘Huh. That’s peculiar.’
‘What? Dagger gone awol?’ I taunt.
‘Not quite. It seems it remains implanted in the flesh of my foot. How extraordinary. I cannot even feel a thing.’
Gods, this man is so gone, I can hardly believe it’s Cole, the master of blind hatred himself.
‘That’s wonderful,’ I jest, beginning to shuffle away seeing as he is not currently a threat. ‘I am so pleased for you. I hope I don’t see you later, Cole.’
He stops his gentle chuckling, displeased. ‘Wait, where are you off to? You do not like my company? I can’t fulfil my promise to kill, my skin and muscle cover the most useful part of my blade. Come, drink with me.’
This is a strange, strange man, one might say deluded if they were not worried of being too harsh. I am not. Cole is a certified psychopath in my books.
‘As much as it pains me to decline such a tempting offer, I’m going to seek out the library, and I also do not wish to spend any more time with you, so there’s that too.’
‘Why would you have to seek out the library when it is just down the hall past the dining room? You Reyheni things are so dumb for how dangerous you are.’
I make a mental note of his weird offering of directions and leave the mumbling drunkard to his place on the floor, in the darkness of the foyer.
The library is the hidden beating heart of Daegon Manor.
Its great oak bookshelves span the entirety of the four high walls, the painted ceiling depicting a rising sun of yellow hanging in a summer sky of crimson and gold.
There is a warmth in the room that no fire could imitate, the air isn’t clouded with years of dust and dampness like any of the other rooms, but with a tender freshness that indicates it is very well tended to.
Preserved from an era of time where a family thrived here, with the utmost care and precision.
It is easy to imagine the Daegon’s sharing their favourite tales from the gold-rimmed armchairs that huddle by the hearth, Eliaz and Calli scaring each other silly with folklore stories they’d plucked from the lower shelves, their two parents smiling to each other, oblivious of the truth in the horrors their children tell – how it would seep into their lives and poison the harmony they live in.
By pure coincidence, the first book I tug free from the tightly packed shelf nearest the circular windows opposite the door is bound in emerald cloth, with silver embossed letters on its spine spelling out the title of The Fury of Man as God.
Intrigued by the words and hopeful it might have some useful information; I tuck it under my arm and continue perusing the shelves for any other titles that catch my eye.
There are many copies of the most popular fairytale stories, shiny editions of The Rain and The Seeds sit shoulder to shoulder with special satin bound copies of The Lone Dragon and its sister story His Divine Interference. Stories Ori and I devoured over mugs of warm milk at bedtime.
My heart squeezes in my chest at the thought of never hearing him read to me again. A fact I should be used to after all the decades we’ve already spent apart.
Leaving the fairy tales and familial thoughts behind, I wander across the room to the wall the door cuts through as soon as I spot it in my peripheral vision.
The bookshelves are a sea of various shades of red, a peculiar method of ordering books within a library that I am not familiar with.
Each spine is empty of any lettering, giving no indication of what might lie within its pages.
The first one I pull out has a rough leather texture, and upon opening it I am met with the grid-like, boxy lettering of a language I am unacquainted with. There is a sketch of a vase on the first page, one adorned with a simple pattern of snaking vines and blossoming, colourless flowers.
The dropping of my stomach accompanies that feeling when you see again the face of someone you met in a dream, an uncanny replica of something you thought to be unreal, a conjured-up image of something that does not exist in reality.
I could rummage through my memories forevermore and still never recover the moment I saw this vase before. It is long gone to the land of the unconscious, I must’ve let it go to make room for something else, something I thought more important than some old antique piece of tat.
I return the book to the shelf, then place the one from under my arm on the ground at my feet. The next leathery book I pick up is of a paler red – almost light enough to be considered pink – again, with no outside lettering.
I open it up to reveal writing in yet another language I cannot decode, with the same picture of the vase. Surely, this is some sort of fluke, that I might happen to pick up two different translations of the same text. However, scanning the wall of red, I feel like this is not an act of fate.
My suspicions are confirmed as I crack open copy after copy of the same book, all with varying text but all having an identical sketch of that same vase.
This is a wall of one book alone.