Chapter 20
Let it be said that it was I, Percival Atherton, who brought an end to the great war,” Percival said as he joined Roy in the Observatory one morning, then put three vellum-bound books on the desk between them.
A little over three weeks had passed since Roy had told Percival about his past with Gabriel, and things had become markedly different between them.
They sat closer, their thighs brushing. They slept together, and while they had not progressed beyond kissing, Roy was decidedly more comfortable with Percival’s fingers drifting near his chest and his ribs.
But they hadn’t yet garnered more intelligence on either of the swords.
Ever since Percival had unsheathed one of them, they’d once more gotten skittish around the weapons.
The Governor had informed them when he’d visited last that the third supply drop and check-in had been set three weeks from then, which was any day now but he and his Droves hadn’t yet made their return. Perhaps the storm had blocked their passage.
Now, Roy groaned with relief at Percival’s declaration.
“By the Scribes, I dearly hope so.” He turned the books around, scanned their titles, and gave Percival a sardonic, dissatisfied look.
“Volumes one through three of Taglian’s Astevian Jousting Techniques?
Somehow I doubt this will be beneficial. ”
“Is that so?” Percival countered. He opened to a page halfway through the book, embedded inside of which was a hidden compartment lined with lush crimson fabric. Within was a black wooden box whose shape perfectly resembled that of the Elder Scribes’ coffins in the crypt.
Roy stilled. “Where did you find this, Percival?”
“The fourth floor. Well, I didn’t find it so much as I felt drawn to it. Can you guess what else I felt, Dawnseve?”
He didn’t have to guess; he knew. “The wind.”
Percival nodded to the other books. “And these?” He flipped them open, revealing identical hollow spaces within the volumes. “The same.”
Percival reached inside one of the opened books and flipped up the latch on the side of the compartment within it.
Inside, shards of black metal, none larger than a finger, lay scattered in a heap like crushed onyx.
The velvet-padded edges of the box were suffused with gray light, dreary compared to the blade of the sword.
“The swords,” Percival whispered. “They were forged from this metal.”
“Don’t touch it,” Roy warned, a cold numbness stealing over his skin.
“Hell, we shouldn’t even be looking at it.
” The metal did not hum, nor did any violent light stream out of it, but nonetheless, Percival obeyed Roy, who then asked, “Why is it shattered? And why did the Scribes keep it contained?”
“Both solid questions,” Percival said, then suddenly leaned closer to the compartment and agitatedly slapped at Roy’s arm. “I can see something on the metal. Roy, look.”
As Roy complied, he felt gooseflesh spread across his arms, prickling his skin.
Along the flat edges of the shards, inscribed across the black metal, was a series of alien symbols and shapes. Engraved on the disarrayed pieces of metal were squares and diamonds and ovals, dovetailed together in a seemingly deliberate order.
“Is this a code?” Roy exclaimed. “What—” He looked up, then noticed Percival had disappeared.
Only a minute passed before Percival returned, scabbarded sword in hand. He must’ve left it in whatever room he’d been using before coming to the Observatory.
Roy rose to his feet, his teeth gritted. “Put that forsaken thing away. I can’t have what happened last time happen again.” And I can’t bear seeing those visions again, nor the risk of making you see them. He attempted to steady his breathing. “I can’t believe you brought it here.”
“Darling, don’t you remember how powerful this is?”
Roy shuddered; he remembered all too well. It was why he’d stashed his own away in the closet in his bedchamber since Percival had unsheathed his.
Percival continued. “It’s obvious from the presence of the swords, and whatever else might be secreted away in this library, that something made the Elder Scribes break their code of nonviolence established in Clive Lortan’s essay.
Now, I have a theory, and I would like to see if it holds any merit.
That’s why I brought the sword here. The moment I held it, I thought the blade was .
. . peculiar. Black metal, emitting a bright silver light. ”
Roy muttered, “Paradoxical.”
“Precisely. You claimed to have seen visions of your own death, executed in various, horrifying methods. But besides the weight of the sword, I felt nothing. I only saw the room losing and then gaining its color, and that was after you experienced those visions. It seems that whatever gives this weapon its power had no effect upon me. The wielder, I think, could be immune to its power. The sword might have grown louder as a response to recognizing hostile threats. Maybe it marked you as its target.”
“This is your theory?”
“No.” Percival glanced from the metal shards in the box to the sword, then explained, “Before I unsheathed the sword, I was distracted. That silver light is blinding. Considering that the Scribes evidently used these weapons to fend off the Old Ones, or buy themselves some time at the very least, maybe there are some commonalities between them all—this broken one, mine, and the one you’re keeping in our chamber. ”
Roy pursed his lips, then nodded. “All right. That sounds plausible.” He began to stand. “Let me go grab mine—”
The door to the Observatory, which had been shut, abruptly banged open, swinging back on its hinges. A gusting, bellowing wind swept through, carrying the sword Roy had stood to retrieve and depositing it in his lap. He gaped.
Percival blinked. “Well. It appears we’re on the right track.”
Roy took up his sword, Percival mirroring him with his own. They nodded at one another, then twisted the hilts and scabbards of their respective weapons in parallel directions, making sure to point the blades downward. Then, as one, they unsheathed them.
As his sword fell to the ground, clattering, Roy pivoted, shielding himself from the force of its deadly yet intoxicating power.
An unworldly hum, like the reverberations made by metal ringing against glass, filled the air and set the windows a-shiver.
He heard screams from the sword too, rife with torment, but they were nowhere near as loud as that ethereal chorus.
Roy looked over at Percival, who had placed the sword with the skeleton-shaped hilt on the desk.
The silver iridescence that had once outlined the entire sword now only gleamed dimly near its hilt and the tip of the blade.
He hadn’t seen it in the room in the museum, but there was a slight curve to the black metal, as though intended to carve around the waistline.
And indeed, incised into the flat of the blade was a chain of luminous symbols, written in the same eldritch language as the symbols on the metal shards.
Almost as soon as Roy had made this comparison, the symbols etched into Percival’s blade shone brighter and brighter, glaring furiously, and then the same happened to Roy’s.
He drew closer. After a moment, the symbols disappeared, replaced by a variant vaguely similar to its predecessor.
Again, it faded and was substituted. The cycle went on, each symbol bearing an equivalent structure but with the slightest of modifications: an accent over one icon; a line struck through another.
One of the variants was slanted and bold, while the next stretched along the blade, elongating like a whip unfurling.
They seemed nearly similar to the cryptic symbols Roy had seen upon the books in the catacombs.
“Get back!” Roy ordered, grabbing Percival around the waist. “Get back, damn it! Get back!”
“The swords will not attack us,” Percival said, placing a hand on Roy’s, which were clasped around his middle. “I . . . I think they’re trying to speak to us.” He withdrew from Roy’s hold. “Wait. Roy, look.”
Reluctant, Roy glanced at his sword and saw that the alternating symbols had begun to slow.
Rather than twice every second, the languages changed within every few seconds now: sleek and elegant; stout and dense; high and curvy.
He hadn’t known that there were so many languages in the world .
. . If, Roy thought with a sense of deep foreboding, these languages even belong to this world.
At long last, the symbols stopped at a language and froze. One word was engraved into the blade, in the common alphabet learned across Northgard:
KHARUAN
And on Percival’s sword:
VALUSVAR
He recalled both of the names instantly.
When he’d skimmed through the piles of papers and texts which had ended with books on thanatology, he’d come across a volume he’d previously thought unrelated to the Old Ones.
The Blades of Tangror by Leopileus. And the names of the blades themselves?
Malevoli, Kharuan, Cephius, Valusvar, Parlikeves . . .
Roy grabbed his scabbard from the floor, then sheathed Kharuan. “I didn’t tell you this because I didn’t think it was important,” he said to Percival, “but I have definitely seen these names before.”
“Both of them?” Percival asked, observing Valusvar with an unsettled expression.
“I have no doubts about it,” Roy said, then paused. “But why were they in the catacombs? Did the Scribes consider them memorabilia? Spoils of war?”
Percival picked up Valusvar from the desk, sheathing it. “All solid questions, darling. Why don’t we go ask someone who might be able to answer them?” He smiled. “How do you fancy another stroll with the dead?”
* * *