Chapter 3
The library was by far the largest, tallest building Roy had ever seen.
He had only read three books on architecture, and so he didn’t have the best frame of reference, but it crossed his mind that if an artist ever tried to depict the sheer scope of the Orphic Basilica, they would never quite be capable of putting into comprehensible scale its majesty, its impossible vastness.
Constructed of obsidian-black stone, the Orphic Basilica was seven stories high.
Its great steeple stretched toward the soot-gray sky like a banner proclaiming safety, and its ridged roof pierced the lowest-hanging clouds, disappearing into the congregated thunderheads.
A large staircase, made from huge slabs of glistening, snow-sprinkled limestone, led to five white pillars, which supported the black-wooded double doors of the front vestibule.
Two clay bird baths, brimming with murky, algae-spattered water—now long frozen—flanked the entryway.
Roy made out several windows on each of the library’s stories, but the thick ebony-colored curtains hung over them provided him with nothing to stir his imagination.
Then a flutter of movement on the fifth floor caught his attention. A curtain parted, revealing the orange light of a lamp, which shone out like a big golden eye. Behind it stood a figure, but their features were entirely cloaked in shadow.
The sound of Dimestra’s muffled footsteps startled Roy into motion. He followed her up the stairs, then stepped aside as the Citadel emissary hauled open the left of the double doors, grunting through his gritted teeth.
As soon as Roy stepped across the threshold and into the Orphic Basilica, the very moment that his boots struck the crimson carpet runner before him, he took in a deep, even breath and closed his eyes.
A trancelike sense of calm and comfort came over him.
He had gotten so tangled up in Northgard’s cynicism and lies that he’d completely forgotten where he was being taken.
This building, he knew now, was not like those few he had read about because it wasn’t like any other.
This library was a relic of the ancients, and though they no longer held the keys, and nor were they around to prevent Northgard from possessing them, Roy let himself believe they could see him now. He hoped he would not disappoint them.
Then he opened his eyes, and the fear of failure and of what might happen should he not succeed crashed down upon him with horrible force. Maybe he would become as forgotten as the library itself.
But he thought otherwise. A scholar—their identity, their purpose, their drive—was not to be underestimated.
Razkamun, a highly renowned philosopher during the Age of Scribes, had once written on this: The drawn sword is to the warrior what the written word is to the scholar.
There was a reason for academics and their deviations, no matter how contemptible those deviations might seem to Northgard.
This damn city is trying to steal these thoughts from your conscience, Roy told himself. Your beliefs, your education; all of this will lose meaning if you give in, if you join the war.
Something awoke within Roy then, tenebrous and beckoning, as though a secret, watching pair of eyes had heard his affirmations.
The doors slammed shut behind him, a resounding thud that echoed through the Basilica’s hallowed halls.
Flames roared to life in fireplaces, dispersing the cold that had wound its way around Roy’s muscles.
A brilliant assortment of candles, lamps, and torches illuminated the space, revealing redwood floors, which were now bathed in a vermilion glow.
Firelight and shadow shivered across the hundreds of thousands of books that lined the walls and stretched far back into corners, seen and unseen, and around alcoves and nooks discarded by scholars long deceased.
The gilt-lettered titles on the spines of countless volumes shimmered a beautiful, enchanting shade of gold.
Roy looked upon it all, enraptured. The works of a million authors, neglected, left to rot and decay.
And now, possibly, his . . . for six months, at least.
He marched past the threshold with haste, determined and enthused, then slowed to a stride, giving himself a chance to marvel at the shelves upon shelves of books.
He felt somewhat like a thief, stealing glimpses of a world that was not his own.
There were immaculately sculpted busts of literary visionaries on either side of the carpet runner: Tahaluth, who had penned twenty-seven expositional essays on the symbiotic relationship between the lecturer and the listener; the aforementioned Razkamun, one of Roy’s heroes, the creator of the Warfare-Philosophy Principle; Polisworth, who had dedicated his life to helping other scholars by researching suitable processes for achieving mental durability during intense academic projects; and Atticus Walestone, admired by few, scorned by most, yet crucial for his investigation of other realities and other worlds.
Some figures Roy couldn’t identify, some names eluded him, but this filled him with excitement.
He found himself grinning at the idea of absorbing new information, of linking the ideologies he’d learned from his idol philosophers to historical events he had previously not heard of.
He only stopped smiling when he remembered his mother would not take kindly to such a display.
Overhead, small portholes surrounded a large skylight covered thickly in snow, wrapped around which was a panorama illuminated by dreary gray light.
Curved bas-reliefs depicted a series of foregone affairs: a queen sitting within a palanquin, carried by six knights whose helmets were capped with plumages of blue-gold feathers; the sails of a ship set aflame, drifting across a dark sea toward a distant shore; and an ambushed army, pristine silver shields raised, encircled by the cavalry cantering over the hills around them.
Roy could almost hear the drumming of their horseshoes, the battle cries of soldiers carrying over the wind.
He turned his attention to the balcony railings at the edges of the upper six levels.
Each ascended higher and higher, black as pitch, peaking at the seventh story like a pyramid.
He couldn’t see much of the fifth, sixth, or seventh stories from his vantage point, despite the dim illumination offered by the skylight, but he imagined bookshelves lurked there in the dark, filled to the brim with novels and poems, treatises and theses.
He was suddenly seized by the compulsion to dash off into the shelves and explore, and he might have done just that, but the responsibility that had been heaped upon his shoulders was too heavy, the price of failure too steep.
By the Scribes, the Orphic Basilica had to be as large as three countryside villas.
Dawnseve Manor was considered by other noble families to be one of the most ambitious domiciles in history, but the Basilica dwarfed even that.
Moreover, the library seemed alive despite having been half forgotten.
There was still a heart here, in these seven floors of sagas and fables, and Roy fancied that if he closed his eyes and strained his ears, he might’ve heard it.
He trailed Dimestra and the emissary up the spiraling staircase resting in the middle of the first floor, the black wrought-iron railing adorned with grinning, sharp-fanged basilisks.
The carpet runner had ended before the first step, and so the percussion of three pairs of boots rang through the library, creating an eerie symphony of overlapping echoes.
Roy looked up at the remaining stairs they had left to climb—he figured the fifth floor, from which the lamp he’d seen outside had glowed, was their destination—and then felt a wave of vertigo.
The skylight seemed darker, subdued. He cast his gaze down and saw much of the same: a fine layer of shadow lay upon the carpet runner and spread outward, encasing the surrounding bookshelves in gloom.
He was so distracted by the illusory sensation that he lost all sense of where he was going and stumbled into the Citadel emissary.
The tall, burly man had stopped in his tracks, his eyes wide with shock, and was twisting on his heels and whipping his head around as if someone from his past, a bully he thought he had long outrun, had called out his name.
He clasped the felt cap lying askew on his head, his hand shaking.
Dimestra looked over her shoulder, annoyed but also a little discomfited. “Evan? What is it?”
Evan shook his head, then wiped away the sweat that had gathered on his brow. “Thought I saw someone, Matron. Never mind me.” He continued up the stairs, darting quick glances over his shoulder, and added in a mutter, “But I can’t say I much like this place.”
Roy disagreed, mainly on account of what it contained and represented, but he could see why Evan was frightened by his surroundings.
Though the Orphic Basilica had seemingly sat in neglect for thousands of years, lain untouched—and this was immediately evident in its appearance—it did not feel abandoned or unused.
Had someone been here, maintaining it, dusting the books, tidying what had been disorganized?
He had no reason for thinking this; everything he knew about the city made this a ridiculous notion.
The anti-intellectuals of Northgard had no love for academia and so would undoubtedly bear even less love for a librarian, let alone the building itself, which had inexplicably withstood years of attempted acts of arson.
And yet the question wouldn’t leave Roy alone.
Is there someone here? he thought. Someone whom I cannot see?