The next night, Celaena examined the door to the library catacombs, her ears straining for any hint of sound on the other side.
Nothing.
The bloody Wyrdmarks had turned flaky, but beneath the crust, as if welded onto the metal, was the dark outline of each mark.
From high, high above, the muffled bellow of the clock tower sounded. It was two in the morning. How did no one know that the tower sat atop an ancient dungeon that served as the king’s own secret chamber?
Celaena glowered at the door in front of her. Because who would even think about that as a possibility?
She knew she should go to bed, but she’d been unable to sleep for weeks now and saw no point in even trying anymore. It was why she’d come down here: to do something while sorting through her jumbled thoughts.
She flipped the dagger in her right hand, angling it, and gave a light, tentative tug on the door.
It held. She paused, listening again for any signs of life, and yanked harder.
It didn’t budge.
Celaena pulled a few more times, going so far as to brace a foot against the wall, but the door remained sealed. When she was at last convinced that nothing was getting through the door—in either direction—she loosed a long breath.
No one would believe her about this place—just like no one would believe her wild, highly unlikely story about the Wyrdkeys.
To find the Wyrdkeys, she’d first have to solve the riddle. And then convince the king to let her go for a few months. Years. It would take careful manipulation, especially since it seemed likely that he already had a key. But which one?
They hear wings …
Yellowlegs said that only combined could the three open the actual Wyrdgate, but alone each still wielded immense power. What other sorts of terrors could he create? If he ever got all three Wyrdkeys, what might he bring into Erilea to serve him? Things were already stirring on the continent; unrest was brewing. She had a feeling that he wouldn’t tolerate it for long. No, it would only be a matter of time before he unleashed whatever he’d been creating upon them all, and crush all resistance forever.
Celaena looked at the sealed door, her stomach turning. A half-dried pool of blood lay at the base of the door, so dark it looked like oil. She crouched, swiping a finger through the puddle. She sniffed at it, almost gagged at the reek, and then rubbed her finger against the pad of her thumb. It felt as oily as it looked.
She got to her feet and reached into her pocket, looking for something to wipe off her fingers. She drew out a handful of papers. Scraps was more like it—bits of things that she’d carried around to study whenever she had a spare moment. Frowning, she shifted through them to sort out which one she could spare to use as a makeshift handkerchief.
One was just a receipt for a pair of shoes, which she must have accidentally tucked into her pocket that morning. And another … Celaena lifted that one closer. Ah! Time’s Rift! had been written there. She’d scribbled it down when she’d been trying to solve the eye riddle. When everything in the tomb had felt like a great secret, one giant clue.
Some help that had been. Just another dead end. Cursing under her breath, she used it to wipe the grime off her fingers. The tomb still didn’t make sense, though. What did the trees on the ceiling and the stars on the floor have to do with the riddle? The stars had led to the secret hole, but they could just as easily have been on the ceiling to do that. Why make everything backward?
Would Brannon have been so foolish as to put all the answers in one place?
She uncrumpled the scrap of paper, now stained with the creature’s oily blood. Ah! Time’s Rift!
There was no inscription at Gavin’s feet—only Elena’s. And the words made little sense.
… But what if they weren’t meant to make sense? What if they were only just logical enough to imply one thing, but really mean another?
Everything in the tomb was backward, rearranged, the natural order in reverse. To hint that things were jumbled, misarranged. So the thing that should have been concealed was right in the open. But, like everything else, its meaning was warped.
And there was one person—one being—who could possibly tell her whether she was right.