Chapter 13 #2
Roy bounded off the last step of the staircase that led to the first floor, then raced over to the elaborately sculpted bust of Atticus Walestone.
“Give me a hand, would you?” asked Percival, who had his sleeves rolled up and his hands braced on one side of the plinth on which the bust was resting. “I have a feeling this won’t be accomplishable with only one of us.”
Roy looked around him, half-afraid that Walestone’s ghost might come soaring out of some shadowy study hall and give them a tongue-lashing for plotting to destroy the statue of his likeness. “We don’t have to break it, do we?”
“This thing is damn heavy, darling,” Percival said, then grunted as he grabbed hold of the crown of Walestone’s head and shook it a little. “And I’m pretty sure the bust is welded to the plinth. So, yes, we do have to break it.”
Roy stood there hesitating for a long moment, then muttered, “I doubt this is how the Scribes opened it in their time,” and finally assisted Percival.
They each took hold of either side of the plinth, which was flatter and therefore less cumbersome to grip than the bust, and then heaved it to the side.
Roy let out a whooshing breath at the staggering weight of the plinth, and Percival’s face, which had turned a dark shade of red, was slathered in a gleaming veil of sweat.
Then, once they’d pushed the plinth off the ground to such an angle that it was slanted more backward than standing upright, the two of them let go on Percival’s murmured count of three.
The bust crashed to the floor with a disconcertingly loud crunch.
It and the plinth might have been fused together, or had maybe been seamlessly crafted from the same marble block, but Roy and Percival had toppled it with enough force to send a splinter, loosely resemblant of a lightning bolt, zigzagging down the middle of Walestone’s scalp.
He looked like a felled warrior, but that thought only made Roy think of the inscription he’d read under the painting, which in turn brought back the unsettling image he’d had of the Elder Scribes all bearing swords.
He shook off these memories and bid himself to focus.
Though nothing moved, Roy could feel the world slowing in the air around them, a grinding, then a halting, of clockwork. A long pause, which he waited through with bated breath. And then the cogs began turning anew.
He knelt before Percival, who was crouched in front of the floorboard where the sculpture had once stood.
Between them was a small square wooden platform, slightly raised above the surrounding redwood.
It was the size of a fist, its edges flat and smooth, and was encompassed by a gap as thin as paper.
Percival licked his lips, sweat dripping down his face. “This is it, Dawnseve,” he whispered. “This is it.” He looked directly at Roy, then, and smiled.
Roy, despite himself, smiled back.
Before Percival could move, Roy pulled his gaze from those captivating hazel eyes, reached over, and pressed his palm into the block, the tips of Percival’s fingers grazing his shoulder.
Roy recoiled with a small cry, acutely aware of the scars that had been so near to Percival’s touch, but Percival did no more than frown at Roy’s reaction before the piece of wood clicked into place.
A hidden compartment in the block sprang open, covering the gap that surrounded it.
The block now created the barest dip in the floorboards.
A sound rumbled from beneath their feet, rising higher and higher, and then exploded outward in a cacophony of discordant noises.
Roy was unprepared for the assault. He could not pick apart the sounds at first, but as he gritted his teeth against the racket, they clarified: the grinding of stone against stone; the grating sound of scratched sandpaper, its volume increased tenfold; and a clamor of tortured, grief-stricken screams. The noise didn’t seem to affect the library; no books toppled from their shelves, none of the remaining busts trembled on their plinths, and none of the curtains swung.
Still, Percival grabbed Roy’s wrist. “Get back. Move.” He pulled back Roy, who let out a muttered “Fuck” when the ground abruptly opened out beneath them.
The floorboards rippled apart, revealing a descending passage of stairs.
Wide slabs of stone, uneroded by time and unmarked by footsteps, led down into an untold length of pitch-blackness.
A terrible stench wafted up from the void, borne aloft on a dry breeze: graveyard dirt and dried wallpaper.
Roy closed his eyes, and somehow, in the darkness behind his lids, he glimpsed a history cloaked in shadow: the skeletal remains of scholars who had suffered far beneath his feet; their eyes bulging out of sockets, liquefying and running down their cheeks, aghast—in the last moment of their lives—by the deplorable things they had seen down in the dark.
Roy was struck with terror, now stronger than ever.
He tried to swallow, but his tongue felt dry and compact, like a block of hardened sand.
He wanted more than anything to give in, to run from the pursuit of knowledge, the one prospect that had provided him clarity throughout a lifetime of questioning his identity and determining his future, but . . .
But something had called to him for all those years as it was calling now, echoing from the darkness.
Find answers for this city, it said to him, or march into battle for this city.
He looked deeper into the dark, but perhaps it wasn’t just that. No, perhaps he was crouching before the fringes of an unfamiliar land. He knew not what might wait ahead . . . unless he took the first step.
Roy stood and hovered his left foot above the first slab of stone, hesitant, afraid some grave fate might befall him upon contact.
It didn’t seem far-fetched that the Elder Scribes had hidden traps in the stonework to maintain secrecy and protect their manuscripts.
He bore his weight into the step, and when he was certain he wasn’t about to become one of those bodies he’d envisioned, Roy exhaled.
Hurried footsteps sounded beside him. Roy went to give Percival a sidelong glance but Percival was already walking toward an unlit candle perched upon the edge of a pedestal. Not a second before he retrieved the candle, it sparked alight.
Percival strode back to the passage of stairs. The candle in his hand cast a fine glow through his blond hair. He returned to Roy’s side, his gaze flicking from the candle to the void. Only then did Roy catch Percival’s expression, an emotion rarely seen on his face: sorrow.
Roy took hold of Percival’s shoulder, tensed when Percival did.
When neither of them broke away, Roy said, “Whatever your past may be, there’s no need to hide yourself.
You don’t . . . You don’t have to keep to yourself.
This might not be the time to share, but you don’t need to live in constant fear.
And neither do I. I know you said we’re shunned for what we believe in, for who we are, but the world doesn’t always have to be like that. It wasn’t before . . . well, before.”
Percival gave no response, and Roy practically screamed: Can you tell me what you’re thinking? Can you show me what you’re hiding?
But Percival couldn’t answer what was unasked.
Instead, he walked on, his slow stride jarring compared to his earlier excited stroll.
He cupped his palm around the candle, a small length from the leaping flame.
He took a step forward, and another, and another, every step bringing him deeper into the darkness.
As Percival disappeared into the void, an inexplicable sensation seized Roy, like a foul, ungodly presence had invaded his mouth and inhabited his limbs.
He could feel his body as if from spans away.
For a moment, he saw himself from afar, and then the darkness was rushing toward him, and he was well past Percival, a breeze squalling about him, the sound of bones clacking and the stench of moss and dirt hanging thick in the air and wrapping tightly around him—
He blinked, and instantly, he was dropped back into reality. He looked around and saw that he hadn’t moved an inch.
It’s nothing, he told himself. It’s fear, and fear can manifest in a thousand different forms . . . and if there’s one thing you know how to do best, it’s being afraid.
Then Roy followed after Percival, toward his fear and—hopefully—his salvation.