Chapter Twenty-One #2
“If she knew that, I think she might have me arrested.”
“I will say nothing. You have my word.” Tyrael stepped away from the librarian and paced with his hands steepled in front of his chest, head down, fingertips pressed against his chin.
He had no idea why the subject of titans would be of such interest to Myrina, but he felt alarmed by her secrecy, especially given the journal’s mention of the Horadrim.
The volumes she had confiscated from the library may have revealed much more.
Finding the Crypts had become an even greater imperative, for reasons he hoped would become clear along the way.
“Maziel, days ago you mentioned a passage by which you could leave the cloister.”
The librarian nodded. “That’s true. Why?”
“I need you to show me this passage.”
“But—”
“If you are asked later, you may say I coerced you, or whatever you feel you need to say. I don’t wish any harm to come to you, but I must leave the palace undetected. Can you help me?”
Tyrael knew he was taking a risk—the librarian had already demonstrated a limited resolve in the face of confrontation—but he had few options.
Finally, Maziel nodded, and then he led Tyrael down the tower stairs to the first level. He moved aside a wooden screen standing in the gap between two bookshelves, revealing a trapdoor in the floor.
“This leads to the tower’s cellar,” the librarian said.
“And from there?”
“I will show you.”
He took down a lantern hanging from a hook in the wall nearby and lit it.
Then he lifted the trapdoor, and Tyrael followed him down a narrow flight of steps into a storage room so packed with rows of bookshelves, they had to turn sideways to move between them.
Against one of the walls, a locked grate blocked access to what appeared to be an old drainage tunnel.
Maziel produced a key and opened the squealing grate. Then he handed the lantern to Tyrael.
“Take this,” he said. “Follow the tunnel. Turn right twice, left once, then right again. You will come to an exit into the city. Have a care before you leave the tunnel. Be sure no one is there to see you.”
“Thank you,” Tyrael said.
“I won’t say anything unless I am asked.” He bowed his head a little, as if in shame. “But if I am asked, I must reveal what I know.”
Tyrael clasped his shoulder in parting. “I meant what I said. I would not want you to suffer on my account. You do what you must.”
With that, he bade farewell to the librarian and entered the tunnels.
The low ceilings forced him to walk in a crouch, almost sideways, like a crab, bent low at the waist. He followed the turns Maziel had given him.
Though the passageways were dry, he was surrounded by the sound of trickling water.
A short while later, he came to the promised exit, where another grate blocked his path, with a catch that allowed him to open it from inside the tunnel.
He waited until he saw no pedestrians passing, then he went through, closing and latching the grate behind him.
He stood next to a dry fountain in a small square, the palace walls above and behind him.
He extinguished the lantern and brought it with him, making his way downward toward the Great Harbor while keeping to the alleys and back ways as much as he could.
He even wrapped himself in a filthy cloak that he found discarded in a gutter.
He would hopefully have some time yet before anyone noticed his absence in the library cloister, but he took no chances and ducked out of sight whenever he glimpsed the Askarra Guards.
The journal had not been highly specific in describing the location of the titan Crypts, but he knew the surface entrance to the underground complex lay somewhere near the foundation of Temis’s eastern seawall.
It was evening by the time he reached that towering landmark and began his search, and night had fallen by the time he found what he hoped to be the correct ingress.
He had a difficult time imagining this entrance could lead to anything else.
Its exterior resembled a natural sea cave, sculpted and hollowed by the forces of wave and wind, but a short distance inward, the walls took on a hewn appearance, carved with intention and design.
Ornamental features gilding the worked surfaces resembled the Firstborn architecture that Tyrael had observed throughout the island.
He relit the lantern Maziel had given him and pressed on, following the cave ever deeper.
The sounds of the sea behind him faded, and he became surrounded by an ill-defined chthonic susurration, as if he were suspended in the slow, almost imperceptible inhalation and exhalation of the earth.
He began to encounter piles of rubble and slag, evidence of the excavation that had taken place to open the cave centuries before, and after picking his way over and around them, he came to a door of stone set into the rock wall.
The symbols carved into its face represented an admixture of angelic sigils and demonic scrawl.
With only a little difficulty, Tyrael was able to decipher the message and speak the proper incantation to open the door, though he wondered how the Askari historians had managed it.
On the other side, he entered a subterranean complex that seemed subtly familiar, reminding him of somewhere he couldn’t quite place.
In its ancient sculptural and decorative elements, he saw the influences of humanity’s parentage, demon and angel, the Heavens and Hells.
It was clear now that Maziel had not exaggerated, and the interior of Temis was indeed a warren of grand corridors, soaring staircases, mammoth pillars, and vaulted galleries.
The willing light of his little lantern lacked the strength to reach the distant ceilings and walls of the chambers through which he passed.
It would be easy to get lost in such a place, so Tyrael used El’druin to carve markings into the black stone as he traversed the cave, leaving a trail with his blade by which he could find his way back out.
The Askari historians had left a wake of their own in the form of abandoned equipment, campsites, and other signs of their exploration, all moldering and covered in dust. Tyrael followed these clues downward, led by instinct and the few details contained in the journal, making his way toward the Crypts and whatever they contained.
It seemed he walked for hours, surrounded by the echoes of his own passage and the ambient presence of the living rock, until at last he reached a space like a cathedral built for giants, and he smelled the sea.
Down each side of the central nave stood doors the height of the tallest trees he had ever beheld in Sanctuary, each of which opened onto a vast, lifeless chamber.
Tyrael entered one, trying to imagine a beast large enough to require such a stable.
There were eight of them, all opened, all empty, but the last of them struck him differently.
The smell still lingering within was that of something living, an ancient musk like ambergris.
Also, behind the ponderous doors were fresh scrapes along the floor, as if they had only recently been opened—he could not say when, but certainly within the last months or years.
The intuition he formed was that a titan had slumbered for eons within that cell, outliving its creators, and had now escaped or been intentionally set free.
At the end of the nave, a black lake the size of a harbor lapped the edges of the carved stone.
The lantern could reveal nothing of its depths, but phosphorescent creatures drifted far below the surface, flickering as distantly as stars.
Tyrael assumed the inlet would eventually grant access to the open sea by way of a submerged channel.
He had found no sign of the Horadrim in the caves, but his disappointment over that was of little importance compared to his fear over what else he had discovered.
It could not be coincidence that Myrina had taken possession of all the books on titans from the archive at a time when it seemed just such a creature had been freed, although her motives for doing so remained unknown to him.
Tyrael left the Crypts to return to the surface, following the marks he had carved with his sword.
By the time he reached the boundary of the sea cave, he could tell by the glow at the end of the tunnel that he had passed the night underground, and he now emerged into the slantwise golden light of dawn.
After exiting the cave, he extinguished his lantern and sat among the shadows beneath the high seawall, contemplating what he had learned and what he must do about it.
He had no direct evidence of a living titan, only a very strong suspicion, and he certainly had no evidence that Myrina had been involved in the release of the beast. What report could he make to Queen Etara, or to the Oracle Queen, assuming they knew nothing about the Crypts to begin with?
He recalled the leviathan he had witnessed in the crossing from Kingsport and wondered whether he had already seen the titan without knowing it, as well as what should or could be done about such a beast.
As he considered all of this, he watched the Great Harbor coming to life with the morning tide, the passage of ships and the bustle on the docks.
The sun had risen above the horizon by the time he glimpsed the familiar silhouette of the Arabel sailing into the port.
Tyrael considered the timing of its arrival to be a rare event of good fortune but felt the need to intercept it before Lorath and anyone else aboard the sloop went up to the palace.
He rose to his feet, and he watched as a cutter met the Arabel and towed it toward one of the piers.
Tyrael moved toward its anchorage as quickly as he could while attempting to remain inconspicuous.
He came close enough to witness Lorath disembark, only to then observe as a company of Askarra Guards bound him and took him into custody.
Confused and dismayed, Tyrael feared for a moment that he was to blame and the palace had already been alerted to his activities, but if that were the case, he thought it unlikely they would have acted this quickly.
Adreona stood on the dock with some of her Amazons, watching as the Askarra Guards took Lorath away, and she did not appear at all pleased. It was possible she was angry with Lorath, but Tyrael believed it more likely that her ire was directed at the warriors who had taken him.
He needed to know what had happened, so he decided to take a risk and make himself known to the captain. He waited until she and her warriors had left the Arabel and its pier and approached her in the midst of the throng on the docks, the hood of his cloak raised.
“Adreona,” he said.
She looked up at him, at first appearing surprised to hear her name spoken in the crowd, but then she recognized him. “Faysal?”
“We need to talk.”