Chapter 14
After a few minutes of descending into the darkness, the planks of redwood that had hidden the passage covered the entrance once more. Roy started, his heart pounding unevenly in his chest, though it returned to its steady beat as he took in his surroundings.
The walls were painted in a honey-gold glow, stretching four steps ahead of where Percival was walking, the candle held in his outstretched hand.
Beyond that, the stairs were visible. The farther down they went, the more convinced Roy became that his strange vision had been only that: his imagination fueled by exhaustion.
Roy proceeded downward, each of his footsteps accompanied by the smell of dust. Frowning, he drew to an experimental halt, making Percival glance interestedly over his shoulder, and the smell faded. Wordlessly, Percival resumed his stride and Roy followed—and the smell came once more.
It would have been easy to dismiss the scent as just the thin film of dust coating each slab of stone being disturbed.
A sign, as he’d imagined, of a history secreted within this tunnel.
But there was something else. Distantly, the odor of the forgotten dead assailed his nostrils, hauling up before his mind’s eye a sequence of grisly images—limp tendrils of flesh hanging from rotting bone, gaping jaws, and hollow sockets.
He wrinkled his nose and groaned, a deep revulsion crawling through him.
He could feel those skeins of flesh scraping across his face, brushing over his cheek like scabrous fingers—
With a sharp gasp, Roy tried to shake this dark flight of fancy, focusing instead on a rational connection between the scent and the flashes in his mind.
On a logical plane of thought, this tunnel could lead to the burial chamber of the Elder Scribes.
Several sights within the Orphic Basilica had hinted at death, memory, and reflection: on the sixth floor, a museum of old artifacts; in the Observatory, whose dust-coated surfaces alluded to forgotten objects; and throughout, the various art pieces displaying certain figures and events throughout Northgard’s history.
Even the appearance of the Orphic Basilica, from outside, seemed like material for suspicion—of what hid behind those massive double doors, of what secrets the Scribes had augured all those years ago, of what, beyond the supposed hallucinations, had stopped the Radiant Droves from reducing the library to rubble.
It’s reasonable enough, Roy mused. If the Scribes wanted a place to be remembered, they wouldn’t have risked a cemetery above ground.
But if the Elder Scribes had wanted to preserve anything, it would have been their manuscripts, not their bodies.
Life was finite and death was eternal, but a book could outlive its creator and the ideas within could prevail over even the greatest calamity.
Perhaps the Elder Scribes had been aware of this and created a guaranteed method of survival when pitted against those who meant to harm their work: an escape route from danger.
But isn’t the Basilica protected enough? Roy thought. Every person who’d tried to burn the library to ash had faced madness and defeat. Something, a shield perhaps, had protected the Basilica from harm. So why would the Scribes feel the need for such an egress?
But he stopped himself there. Conjecture would get him nowhere.
Only moving forward, onward, held the answers.
Whether mausoleum or manuscripts, or something else entirely, this tunnel held a great secret.
Roy could feel it in the walls around him, like coils of mist seeping from stone.
Because of this, his eagerness warred with his hesitancy.
You’re getting ahead of yourself, you dim-witted fool. You don’t entertain theories. You relish facts.
It’s Percival’s fault. He’s letting you forget who you are, changing you into someone who protests evidence. You don’t make spontaneous decisions; you make careful ruminations. When have you ever resisted the traits so fundamental to your own existence?
But there were multiple examples of this sort of resistance: when he’d accepted Percival’s game, when he’d deemed the Urswaelian grant for Black chest plate indisputable evidence of the ancestors of the Old Ones .
. . and when he had wanted, longed for, Percival to slide his finger into Roy’s mouth.
A cool shiver trailed up his spine. Beads of perspiration formed on the nape of his neck.
Roy furrowed his brow, his longing and frustration interchangeable, as they’d been before.
But even now, he couldn’t distinguish which emotion had shone brighter when he’d stood a breath from Percival.
It would have required no further effort to lean closer and taste Percival’s skin.
Yet Roy had pulled away, and even after the infectious desire that had swept through his body when he’d felt the contours of Percival’s own, Roy didn’t know if he could survive another similar encounter without giving in. He would melt. He would burn.
Roy looked over at Percival now. He held the candle near his chest, firelight fluttering over the angular planes of his face. The only suggestion of his bitterness lay hushed in the air like an unwelcome visitor.
You don’t . . . You don’t have to keep to yourself.
Gone was his vulnerable sadness; Percival wore an expression of fearful resolve, severe lines marking the skin beneath his lips and around his narrowed eyes.
While Roy knew it was a mask, his hands were still clammy with sweat.
He tried to keep his attention on the firelight flickering across the walls, but Roy was no soldier. He could not win this battle.
“I hear them,” Percival murmured. “Not voices, but those . . . vibrations.”
Roy heard them, too. They were quiet but rhythmic, like the fluttering of butterfly wings.
He wanted to keep silent and show Percival he was capable of not giving him the satisfaction of a response.
Percival had done the same. When the descent into the catacombs had been too much for him to bear, owing, perhaps, to the tragedy he’d hinted at, he had gone silent.
Roy knew he could do it himself. Why not?
He didn’t have the willpower to coerce Percival into a false sense of security or form replies full of gilded trickery.
Maybe silence was the better option. But the tension that had risen between them was receding, and the whispers were getting louder, so Roy eventually broke the quiet.
“What is this place?” he whispered.
While the candle provided a warm glow, breezes of cool, crisp air kissed his cheeks.
A second scent lurked beneath that of rot and decay but he couldn’t determine the odor; the first was too potent, clogging his nostrils.
It sneaked inside him, then came back out, up the back of his throat.
He gagged, swallowing the vomit pressing against the inside of his mouth.
Those whispers, the voices Percival had mentioned, sounded more than anguished; they sounded trapped.
Muffled pleas scuttled through the eerie silence, just beyond his reach, like sobs stifled by a damp rag.
He remembered those agonized screams when the ghost had chased him and tried to draw a comparison, though these voices were much quieter, softer, but just as terrified.
Before Roy had been taken to the Orphic Basilica, he’d walked down a hallway in Dawnseve Manor and seen Northgard from afar.
Only then had he realized how tiny the city was and, with this in mind, how much misery could be compressed into a single pocket of civilization.
Distraught, he’d listened to the desperate appeals of frostbitten families, begging for food and mercy, their screams carrying on the shrieking winter wind.
He had tried several times to give the Matron a written petition to deliver to the Iron Citadel, requesting bread and jam and other amenities, but she had burned Roy’s letter seconds after reading it.
The familiarity of the citizens’ screams struck a chord in Roy’s chest now. Phantoms hissed within his head, and though he wished to help them, Roy was powerless to do so. The innocents, those in his mind and outside these walls, had no savior.
“What is this place, Percival?” he asked again.
“No place for the present. You can feel the age in this tunnel, yes? It feels so . . . so old, like the stones might crumble at any moment.”
Roy stopped and looked at the walls. Percival circled back and followed his lead.
There was truth in what Percival had said.
The age of a building reflected the shadow of its past. Architecture had an uncanny way of depicting history so that later generations could understand their ancestors, ruminate on their triumphs and misdeeds.
Yet this tunnel was more akin to a warning, a place best left undisturbed.
Indeed, Percival was right. This was no place for the present; whatever cataclysm had caused such dread here did not belong in this age—or, possibly, this world.
Roy exhaled, his breathing ragged. He needed to be here; of that, he had no doubt. He had to save the damned people of Northgard before they became the dead.
He pressed his hand against a flagstone, and a chill rushed through his palm. A thick substance coated the stone, sticky as sap. He pushed his fingertips deeper into the liquid, then slowly pulled his hand away.
Roy frowned, confused. Perhaps his vision was failing him— he had been subject to odder occurrences in this library—but he couldn’t seem to locate the substance.
He rubbed his fingertips together, cringing at the unusual sensation, and, sure enough, he felt its resinous consistency.
But the wall was clear as the slabs of stone beneath his feet.