42. Chapter 42
There were more books lining the walls of the Great Library than Isla had ever seen in her life.
Countless shelves lined the walls, filled with neatly stacked leather bound tomes and fragile looking scrolls.
Lyra led them through the main alcove, their footfalls echoing throughout the stacks.
The smells of leather, parchment, and a faint mustiness filled the air.
A memory of Lyra’s small bedroom at home rose suddenly to mind, every inch taken up by books, stacked just so on every surface.
Ever since she’d been a small child, Lyra had begged Mother and Father to bring back texts from the Market when they happened to venture to the Pass.
Over the years, her appetite for knowledge had only grown, the books filling all the lonely spaces in her room, her world.
Isla’s eyes ran over endless shelves of leather-bound tomes… no wonder Lyra was happy here.
Isla’s eyes followed the massive spiral staircase that stood in the middle of the room. It climbed, twisting upward in what seemed like an endless corkscrew, reaching for the domed glass ceiling, which was even more astonishing standing beneath it.
Wordlessly, Lyra led them through an arched doorway at the back of the library.
A large, oval table sat in the centre of the room, with more than enough seats for them all tucked around it.
Asmarin stood at the head of the table, as mysterious as ever, her hands clasped together before her.
She raised them now, in a gesture of welcome.
“Please, sit.”
The scraping of chair legs along the stone floor filled the room as most of them took their seats, Aurelia to Isla’s left, Vaelin on her right.
Lyra took up a seat next to Asmarin, placing her tightly clasped hands on the table.
Isla’s eyes narrowed with concern as she marked the whites of her sister’s knuckles, the stiffness in her body language.
Isla leaned forward in her seat, resting her arms on the table.
As she did so, her arm brushed Vaelin’s.
She glanced to him. He was almost shockingly clean, having apparently taken advantage of his own bathing chamber last night.
He had trimmed his beard so that it lay close to his jaw, and she was now able to fully appreciate the deep bronze of his skin, free of dirt and sweat.
He leaned back in his chair, the arm closest to Isla stretched out on the table, fingers drumming on the wood, the other propped on the arm of his chair, jaw resting in his hand.
His eyes met hers and the memory of his hand slipping slowly up the back of her leg last night rose sharp in her mind’s eye.
One corner of his lip quirked up as though he knew exactly where her thoughts had gone.
“Not until you explain why the Shifter is here.”
Isla’s attention snapped to the opposite end of the table, where Evric stood, rigid as a board.
He leaned forward, both hands splayed flat on the table, standing directly opposite Asmarin.
Drae snorted from where he leaned casually against a bookshelf, his arms crossed, and half in shadow, directly across from Isla, Vaelin, and Aurelia.
Isla’s eyes slid to Asmarin, whose expression betrayed nothing as she surveyed Evric.
“He is here because he needs to hear this as much as you do,” she replied simply.
“That’s not an answer,” Evric growled.
“Nonetheless, it is the one I am prepared to give.”
A beat of silence passed as Evric ground his teeth.
“Sit down, Evric,” Vaelin said. “We came for answers. Let’s have them.”
With a sharp look at Vaelin, Evric relented, throwing himself into his chair and fixing Drae with a glare that could melt metal.
“Aw,” Drae said softly, with false sympathy.
“Not. Helpful,” Aurelia muttered, glaring at him. He shifted his gaze to her, and smirked.
“I trust you all had a restful evening,” Asmarin intoned from the head of the table, drawing attention back to her. “Now, let us speak of the reason for your visit.”
The air in the room seemed to thicken with anticipation as the woman fixed her stare on Isla.
“As you have already learned, I’m afraid you have journeyed here for a cure that we do not possess.
For the illness afflicting the realms is not an ordinary disease, but a symptom of something much larger. ”
Isla felt Vaelin still beside her. She hadn’t had an opportunity to tell him what she and Aurelia had learned from the Novices yesterday about the illness.
“You already know some things about the illness,” Asmarin continued.
“That it is rampant, having spread to all corners of the continent. That it is fatal, and responds to neither earthwielder magic nor human healing remedies. You are also aware that it manifests differently in magic users compared to humans.” She paused then, glancing around the room as though looking for confirmation. Beside Isla, Vaelin nodded stiffly.
“You said the illness is a symptom of something… larger,” Evric said, carefully. “Care to elaborate?”
Isla shared a glance with Vaelin. Did Asmarin know of Sereth Starfire’s Dreamwalker vision? But to Isla’s surprise, Asmarin turned to Lyra.
“It’s called The Shattering. At least, that’s what it’s referred to in the ancient texts I’ve been scouring for the last two years.”
Isla’s brow knitted, “I thought you were studying history.”
“I am. The Shattering is a historical event, detailed in fits and starts in numerous texts across decades, centuries. I’ve been able to find accounts dating as far back as before the forming of the fae courts.
And,” she paused, swallowing, “those accounts bear a striking resemblance to what we are now seeing now.”
Isla blinked, her mind feeling sluggish. Now that she found herself relatively safe within the walls of The City, the exhaustion she had been forcing down over the last several weeks seemed to be rising to the surface. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“A little over two years ago, something in one of the books Mother brought back from the Market caught my eye. It bore whispers, incomplete accounts of some ancient calamity, little more than nonsensical ramblings, and yet… it had planted itself in the back of my mind. I had already read, of course, of the Scholars and Seers in Dunovar, and after Mother and Father died…” she trailed off, clearing her throat, and Isla felt an answering pang in her own chest. “It kept gnawing at me. So, I decided to keep studying it,” Lyra finished.
Isla shook her head. Her chest and throat felt tight with emotion.
All this time, she had thought Lyra had left for The City simply to get as far away from Isla’s overbearing tendencies as possible.
In reality, Lyra had been following a calling of her own.
Isla’s voice was thin as she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me? ”
Her sister’s eyes flashed with sudden irritation. “I tried,” she said. “But you never listened. You never had time to listen to me ramble on about historical accounts. You always had a patient.”
Isla flinched, the stab of guilt burying itself beneath her ribs like an arrow. Beside her, Vaelin shifted so that his knee pressed against hers beneath the table.
“Besides,” Lyra continued. “What limited information I had learned from those texts was of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. I felt - in my bones - that it meant something, that something was coming, but I didn’t have enough information to draw any definitive conclusions.
There was only one place where I could potentially cobble together enough pieces of the puzzle to make sense of things.
So I left. When I arrived in the City, a picture began to form, the connections finally becoming clear.
It was like, once I started I couldn’t stop the threads from weaving together like a forgotten tapestry.
By the time I had enough information to tell you something real…
you were already on your way. Asmarin Saw you coming. ”
The woman’s words floated back to Isla. I’ve been expecting them.
“Perhaps it is time to tell them the truth of what you have learned,” Asmarin instructed.
Lyra nodded stiffly, glancing to each of them in turn.
“From what I’ve managed to gather… The Shattering is a cyclical, world-ending event.
It was imposed by the Gods as some sort of cosmic reset when the earth’s inhabitants pushed the earth so far that it snapped, fracturing.
It has happened before, and it is fated to happen again. And again.”
Silence reverberated through the room, stretching beyond possible limits.
Vaguely, Isla became aware of pain in her hands.
She looked down to see that her nails had bitten into her palms far enough to draw blood.
Slowly, she flattened her trembling hands on the table, looking up to meet her sister’s piercing gaze.
Lyra swallowed. “The texts describe four harbingers of the calamity — four signs that signal its coming: war, conquest, famine, and death.”
Vaelin leaned forward in his seat, both elbows on the table now, his brow drawn and jaw set in an expression of grim determination. Pulse thrumming in her throat, Isla looked to him. She couldn’t seem to form words, but he hadn’t needed her to.
“And what happens when all four of these… harbingers… come to pass?” he asked, his eyes never leaving Isla’s.
“Then comes the breaking of the world,” Lyra finished, her voice quiet.
Isla blinked once. Twice. Trying and failing to process what she was hearing. Then Vaelin spoke, low at her side, cutting through the dull buzzing that seemed to fill her head.
“Do you remember when I told you of Sereth’s vision?” he asked.
“You said she foresaw ‘catastrophic natural disasters amid a rampant illness and rogue magic and armies of shadow decimating the continent,’” Isla said, without hesitation.
Evric’s eyebrow lifted, “Gods, that’s specific. And not wrong. But the four harbingers piece is new.”
“Is it?” Vaelin asked, his jaw tight.
“What do you mean?” Aurelia asked.
“There’s always been war — the fae and the Shifters have been at each other’s throats for a century, dragging the humans into a fight they never wanted.
And…” he paused, running a hand roughly over his jaw, eyebrow twitching.
“I have concerns about Lunaris, the Shadowborne Lord,” he added to Isla, “He grows bolder in his attempts to push the King toward fae conquest.”
Isla stomach became strangely unmoored, as though she’d suddenly fallen a great distance.
“What?” she rasped, her throat tightening.
Aurelia squeezed her forearm from the left and Isla’s wild gaze swung to the fae healer’s as she soothed, “It’s just Shadowborne posturing.
And certainly not something everyone is in agreement about. ”
“Right. Just the ruling nobility and their spymasters,” Drae drawled from behind them. Aurelia shot him a glare.
“Don’t worry, even the Shadowborne don’t want your barren rock of a realm,” Evric snarled.
Vaelin held his hands up as if to halt the argument in its tracks.
“None of us wants anything of anyone else’s,” he said.
“As Aurelia said, the desire for fae conquest is something almost entirely posed by the Shadowborne Court. Discussion about it reaps nothing but discomfort among almost all other courts, and the Starfire have shown little evidence of being swayed by Lunaris’ whisperings. ”
At this, the tension in the room seemed to soften, if only a fraction. And then Lyra spoke from across the table.
“Little evidence,” she said, her eyes on Vaelin, “Not no evidence.”
Isla looked at him. His eyes were still on Lyra, and nothing in his expression betrayed his discomfort — but that muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Vaelin,” she pleaded.
He winced, as though simply saying his name had shattered his resolve. “I witnessed an exchange between The King and Lunaris at Court. After Sereth fell. The King didn’t… push back… as I would have expected him to, as he usually would — and has, before. But that is not confirmation of anything.”
“While there’s no denying that the harbinger of war has come to pass,” Aurelia said, her voice grim, “Only the barest rumblings of conquest seem evident, at best. And there’s been no evidence of famine—”
“The texts use the word ‘famine’ to refer not only to a lack of nutrition,” Lyra interrupted, “but to the earth itself.”
Aurelia’s brows drew together as confusion gathered in her eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Evric snapped, frustration bleeding through his tone. Isla frowned at him.
Lyra looked at him, supremely unbothered. “In the texts, writers speak of the earth stalling, or wilting, or slowing - the translation is variable. The effects of these things — the slowing or halting of the growing season — can of course lead to famine if the agricultural impact is large enough.”
Isla shivered, a chill running through her as she thought of suddenly wilting crops, of herbs falling dormant long before their typical season’s end, of wan, early-turned leaves curling in on themselves. Even the sage has wilted - it’s like the earth has stalled.
“— it may also refer to more dramatic changes in climate,” Lyra was continuing. “Natural disasters, like the larger sandstorms we’ve been seeing here, far more violent than usual.”
“The flash flood you were caught in,” Evric said, looking to Vaelin.
“The quake that led to the landslide in the Pass,” Aurelia supplied.
“Not to mention that nothing has grown in Askeldrath for decades,” Drae snapped, “Famine may not be a reality for you, but the same cannot be said for others.”
Something twisted in Isla’s stomach as she looked to the Shifter, the furious lines carved across his expression. A tenuous silence fell again, like a weighted blanket that snuffed the air from the room.
“What part does the illness play in all of this?” Aurelia asked quietly, and Isla drew her eyes back to Lyra.
But it was Asmarin who answered.
“The illness is death.”