Chapter 4 Say Goodbye
CHAPTER FOUR
SAY GOODBYE
ADELINE
“Why didn’t you tell us that the book was talking to you?” Naida’s brow is creased with lines of worry and anger. “That was reckless! What if it had succeeded in influencing you?”
“I hadn’t realized it was the book’s voice I heard,” I protest. “Besides, you’d have known if it had influenced me. It did try.”
“Oh, for all the Gods’ sakes. How would I have known?” She rubs at her face. “What is this book?”
“It’s called Book of Olm. I saw the name when I opened it yesterday.”
“What else did you see?”
“Nothing much. Only the title was legible. The rest of the text was blurred.”
She gestures at the satchel. “Give it to me.”
“Naida, no. You don’t understand,” I whisper. “This book is dangerous. You were right.”
“Did it hurt you?”
“No, but it speaks to me. It spoke to Eiras and convinced him to take it to the palace. He set off immediately. I had to stop him and wrestle the book away from him.”
“Oh no.” She pales. “This isn’t good.”
“No, it isn’t,” Eiras says sullenly. “It got to me instantly. But for some reason, it doesn’t affect Aline.”
“Why would the book want to go to the palace?” she murmurs to herself. “Give me the book, daughter. Now.” She beckons imperiously, and I hand it over with a sigh.
“Be careful, Naida.”
“I bet it can’t control storytellers,” she says and before I can protest the logic of that statement, she opens the book to the first page. “Okay, let’s…” Her eyes widen and she lets it drop to the floor, taking a step back and lifting her hands. “Oh no!”
“Naida?” I whisper.
“The compulsion is… strong.” She lets out a breath. “Damn strong.”
“You heard its voice, didn’t you? Olm’s voice.”
She nods.
“But you’re not compelled, either?”
She doesn’t reply, looking as if she’s seen a ghost.
“Naida?” I prod.
“I’ll fight it.” Her mouth tightens. “Stay with Brogan. I will take it to the Library of Areon.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, he needs you here and you are compelled. We can’t risk it. I’ll take it.”
“Doesn’t the compulsion affect you at all?”
“No, I don’t feel it. Why can’t I feel it?”
Her eyes are haunted but she only shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll go with her, Mother,” Eiras says. “I’ll look after her, don’t worry.”
Now Naida puts her hands over her eyes. “How can I not?”
“Let me go,” I say more softly. “I’ll be careful. Naida…” I catch her hands and lower them. “Look at me. It will be all right. Maybe it was meant to be.”
“No, I was supposed to keep you safe. Come here.” She pulls me into her arms. “This is all my fault.”
“Of course not. Why would it be your fault?” I nestle in her familiar embrace, her scent of dusty fabric and herbs.
“I’m the only logical choice to carry this book to the Areon where it won’t hurt anybody, and you need to be here for Brogan.
It’s my fault for picking it up in the first place. So let me make things right.”
“You will have to avoid the Whispering Forest,” Naida says, sitting down at the table with us later on, her face drawn into tense lines.
“It’s made up of fae who turned into trees when King Rouen’s magic went wild.
The fae who followed him, the most magical, talented of them all, were either imprisoned or fled toward the rim of the world.
Some entered underground passages in the mountains and vanished from memory.
Others never made it to the mountains, turning into trees and animals that now haunt the expanses of the plains and slopes. ”
“Then we avoid the mountains,” Eiras says.
“That’s impossible. The library is inside one of the mountains, fittingly called The Mountain of Stories or Crowned Mountain.”
“Fuck,” Eiras breathes. “This is insane. A warrior should be in charge of taking this book to that dreaded library, not us.”
“How do I deliver it?” I ask Naida, ignoring him. “How do I find the library? Is there a huge gate or something?”
“Or maybe weathered signs pointing the way?” Eiras hazards. “Buzzards flying over the mountain summit? A path strewn with skeletons still holding books in their hands?”
“Eis,” I snap.
He lifts his hands in surrender.
“There are no signs or skeletons.” Naida sighs. “Or a huge portal. You will see the mountains in front of you. One of them houses the library.”
“But how—?”
“Its peak is shaped like a crown. Or a star. As for how you enter and deliver the book… few have chronicled their journey there. I recall a passage in the Samis Scrolls about a maid who carried a magical book to the Areon. She claimed that she visited the library.”
“She just pushed the door open and entered? And then what happened?”
“It was only a passing mention in an old book that’s centuries old,” Naida admits.
“Does that mean that she never returned?”
“Of course she did.” Naida scowls. “She came back and wrote her tale down.”
This could be fiction. A fantasy. Maybe that woman never existed. Or never came out of the library. But I don’t say that because I need Naida to believe we will be fine and return home to her.
“How do you know so many tales, mother?” Eiras asks. “Even the thought gives me a headache.”
I roll my eyes at Eiras. “She used to be a royal librarian at the palace, remember?”
“Yes, the palace,” Olm whispers in my ear. “Let’s go there.”
I flinch and hope nobody has noticed.
“Why did you leave the palace, Mother?” Eiras asks. “And why didn’t you look for another such job later? A storyteller and a scribe like you has to be in great demand in libraries.”
I open my mouth to tell him he’s an idiot if he can’t see why she couldn’t handle being a mother and a librarian, how hard it would be to juggle everything.
But Naida speaks before I utter a single word.
“I wrote down many stories for them. Compendiums of legends and tales from around the world. Songs and sagas. Epics and ballads. I unearthed old books from the storerooms, reorganized the sections and shelves. I traveled between the major libraries, as is the custom of the head librarian, to record all the titles in existence—”
“You were head librarian?” Eiras stares at her. “How come we only hear about this now?”
“It wasn’t important.” Naida waves a hand and glances at Brogan who is dozing on his bed. “Still isn’t.”
“The hells it isn’t. Why did you leave such a post and decided to live…?”
“Like this? Like a pauper?” Naida cracks a smile. “In this little house, telling tales and selling herbal remedies?”
Eiras hangs his head, his cheeks reddening. “I didn’t mean to say it was a bad life.”
“It was the politics,” she says. “I don’t care about politics. Knowing stories means I’m less gullible, less manageable, and many tried to manage me. The queen wanted my ear and my advice often, and her sycophants didn’t like that.”
Eiras’ eyes have grown so big, they swallow half his face. “I had no idea.”
Neither did I, if we’re being honest here.
Naida rolls her eyes. “There are more important things to life than power and coin, son. I thought I’d taught you as much.”
Eiras chuckles. “Sure, but you have to admit, we need coin and it’s hard to get it these days. Can’t completely dismiss its usefulness.”
I nudge him with my elbow, though he’s right, too.
He started out working with Brogan when he was younger, but since Brogan was laid up, Eiras has had to strike out on his own.
Despite my general annoyance with him, he’s a good son and brother.
He’s too worried about us to stay away for long.
I may give him a hard time for leaving us alone for stretches of time, but the truth is, it’s never longer than a couple of weeks.
He can’t start an apprenticeship away from here, can’t take a position in a manor out of the city.
He isn’t free to go away and start a new life. Because of us.
He nods at me. “Everything all right, sister?”
I nod back and smile.
“Aline…” Naida reaches across the table for my hands and squeezes them. Her eyes are full of worry. “Eis is right. Letting you go on this quest is nonsense. Way too dangerous. Let’s sit tight and send a message to the palace about this. Someone else will come and fetch the book.”
“I love you, too, Naida,” I say, glad my voice remains steady, “but you know that’s not a viable solution. You saw what it can do. How it controls people. Well, it can’t control me. I have to take it.”
She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Gods. I should have realized.”
“Realized what? Tell me, Naida, why can’t it control me? Who am I?”
She lets out a low laugh. “If you’re expecting a story about you being a lost princess or descendant of dragons, daughter, you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“I only want to know the truth.”
“The truth is… we don’t know who you are.
You’re a foundling. You were wrapped in a filthy blanket, nothing to identify you.
But you have always been my magical daughter, resembling me more than Eiras.
You have a great head for stories. Almost as if you were born from my womb.
Use that knowledge. It’s its own brand of magic.
And a library is the best place to wield it. ”
I think about that as I prepare for the journey. Stories, all the stories Naida taught me, all the books whose contents she recounted to me.
Somewhere deep inside of me, I feel a shiver of anticipation when I think of any library, but this library specifically shouldn’t excite me.
Yet it does. It’s a mystery, a magical place, and it’s not just filled with books, but magical ones. Naida only has a few books here, old and falling apart, mostly books of herbs and medicine, while these magical books appear to be books of stories.
I can’t imagine what the library might look like, or what it must be like to open such a book, although…
Although the book I’m supposed to take there is magical, and doesn’t look like much.
“Excuse me?” Olm hisses in my ear. “My book is fine and dandy. Take that back.”
I refuse to flinch, though I have to grit my teeth against the shock of hearing him again. “It has a nice enough cover.”
“… Thank you.”
“But that’s it. The script inside is nothing special, judging from the title that I was able to read. Of course, the rest of the text keeps blurring, which is annoying.”
“That’s magic!”
“That’s a nuisance,” I say, refusing to be intimidated by a voice from a book, of all things. I’m already annoyed and scared that it influenced my brother’s mind, and tried to do the same to Naida, and that we have to undertake this journey to deliver it to the Areon.
So when Olm starts muttering about the beauty of his book and the delicacy of its script, I ignore him.
Is this the sort of monster Naida expects to spring out of such books? If so, we will be fine. Olm doesn’t appear to be anything more than a snooty, immaterial voice. Worst case scenario, he will just annoy me to death.
“Are you ready, sis?” Eiras calls out.
“Almost!”
A change of clothes, hard bread and a wedge of cheese, the two remaining apples and a few pieces of jerky is all I pack.
Eiras has pocketed a few of the coins he has brought so we can buy more food on the way.
We can forage, Naida made sure we learned what the land and water can offer for nourishment, but who knows if it will be enough?
I’ve never traveled outside of Siris, at least not past the first fields you encounter on the outskirts.
I don’t want to admit it but Eiras coming with me is such a relief.
He has been journeying for months now, working his way through villages, towns and farmsteads. He has some experience in the matter.
The frown he’s wearing isn’t reassuring, though. And I don’t want to ask if it’s going to be okay, because I don’t want him to lie.
“We’ll pay to ride in a cart.” He slings his own bundle over his shoulder and it’s so sad because he just came back home, only to leave again.
And all this because I picked up this satchel with its cursed book.
Because he has a little thief for a sister.
“I know a man. He usually travels all the way to the last town before the mountains. That should save us time and legwork.”
Grateful, I give him a smile and sling my bundle over my shoulder, too. “Ready when you are, big brother.”
Despite Naida’s quiet instructions and calm demeanor earlier, despite Brogan’s light-hearted teasing, our goodbye is tearstained.
“My little girl,” Brogan whispers, sitting up in his bed and clutching me to his strong chest. “Be careful out there. And come back to us, do you hear me?”
“Yes. I will be back before you know it.” My face is mashed against his chest so my voice is muffled. “You and Naida take good care of each other, okay?”
“Daughter, let Eiras look after you, yes?”
“I don’t need looking after,” I scoff.
“Please. For me. Promise me.”
Biting my lip, I nod and I know he feels the movement. “Yes, Brogan. I promise.”
Then he releases me and getting up, I turn to Naida, opening my mouth to say something, not even sure what it might be.
She hauls me into her arms. “Look out for that book,” she whispers.
“I have faith in you, but it’s a dangerous artifact.
Don’t anger it, my sweet. And beware of the warrior guardian of the library, if you find yourself obliged to enter.
The current one is named Ersil Davara and has been there for a long time already. ”
“Why should I be afraid of the librarian?”
“Because in a world of monsters, you need to become a monster to survive.”