Heaving it to the side, she opened up a private cavern filled with handmade shelves. On every one of them, books upon books were stacked. Scrolls covered the table, unorganized and haphazard, as if the space had fallen into disuse.
“What is this place?” I asked, stepping inside and running my fingers over one of the dust-covered scrolls laid out on the table. It was a map of Nothrek, and my fingers traced over the cities as I stared down at it. The cities like Calfalls, Tuevine, and Pralis, that had been destroyed in the war, were crossed out with red. “Is this from the war? How is that possible?”
“Our ancestors built this refuge during the war. The Marked couldn’t trust the King to keep them safe, so we did it ourselves. For the most part, they tried to stay out of the fighting and just keep to themselves as we do now. But they liked to document everything, and they kept it all here. These books are entire histories from before the war, and what we’ve been able to collect since,” she answered, watching as I stepped away from the table and moved to the rows of books on the shelves lining the walls.
I slowly pulled one out, the weathered binding cracking beneath my touch as I set it gently on the table. The lettering on the front of the book was like something from a nightmare.
Creatures of Alfheimr.
“This is a forbidden book,” I said, flipping the cover open gently. The drawings within were horrific, my fingers running over the image of a monstrous creature that was half man and half scorpion. His pinchers and tail were dripping blood while his mouth curved around the throat of a victim.
“A great many things you’ll find in these tunnels are forbidden. Unfortunately, most of this knowledge is wasted on us. Not many can read at all, let alone in a way that would allow them to understand these books. Do you speak the Old Tongue?” she asked, tipping her head to the side as I stared down at the name for the creature at the top of the page.
“Some,” I admitted. “I’m not sure how much of this I would be able to understand. If all these books are in the Old Tongue…”
“Only the oldest ones, but it would be very helpful if you could translate them to the best of your ability. I’m sad to say that I’ve been trying to do it slowly, as one of the last people who speaks it, but there’s only so much I can accomplish with everything else requiring my attention. My sister was our family historian, and she was the one who was working to translate the old texts.” She moved to one of the shelves at the side, which seemed removed from the rest. “These are the books she managed to get through before she was taken from us.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“We were on a supply run to gather new books when we encountered a man who needed help. He was half-starved, so we offered him food and a place by our fire for the night. We didn’t realize that he had the flesh-eating fever until we’d already returned to the tunnels the next morning. We lost half our numbers over the course of the next week, my sister and the other historians among them.”
“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. I’d seen the damage the fever had caused when it tore through my village when I’d been a girl. It was the one time that living on the outskirts of the town had worked to our advantage, sparing us from the nightmarish sickness that killed almost everyone it touched.
“This is far more valuable to us than another fighter or a harvester. Perhaps at some point I can choose someone for you to teach and we can rebuild our historian numbers. Knowledge is power, Estrella. What you can give us is a far better weapon than your hand on a sword,” she said, stepping back toward the doorway. “Think about it. Spend some time with the books. I’ll check on you in a little while.”
She retreated out, leaving the door pulled back so I could leave if I wanted to.
But I didn’t want to. I turned back to the shelves of books behind me, perusing the spines until I found one of the biggest volumes. It drew me to itself, compelling me to pull it out and gently set it on the table. The pages were worn at the edges, as if someone, sometime, had spent a great deal of energy leafing through them.
Libnor non Diathar.
The Book of the Gods.
Opening to the first page, I read the words aloud, translating them slowly as I went. It had been years since Byron had instructed my tutor that I would have no need of the Old Tongue anymore, and that it was a relic she should stop teaching. He was too late; deep down it lingered within me, the harsh sounds so different from the New Tongue that had been adopted as our official language centuries before.
Even before the war.
“In the beginning, there was nothing,” I murmured, the familiar words touching something inside me. They were the exact same words that Caelum had told me, the beginning of his story that night by the fire. The drawing on the first page was a swirling mass of shadows. An inky darkness so black that nothing seemed to exist within it.
There was no man, no face to the ancient Primordial, Khaos. He existed in nothing. He was nothing, and he’d been the very first thing to exist, until his loneliness drove him to create his wife. I flipped through the pages, every word confirming the story Caelum had told me.
The Primordials passed me by, each of the eighteen original Gods striking in their own way. As the generations continued, they became more human in form. These were not the Gods we’d worshiped. These were the Gods the Gods worshiped.
I continued through, uncertain what I was looking for until the moment I landed on her page. Mab’s drawing was stunning, with her long raven hair falling to her waist. Despite the lack of color on the page, her lips and eyes were shadowed in darkness. Upon her head, a bright crown gleamed, shadows seeming to drip from it and blend into her hair itself.
I shuddered, slowly reading aloud the words scrawled onto the page beneath her likeness.
“The Queen of Air and Darkness is the sister to the Seelie King, Rheaghan of the Summer Court. According to Faerie legends, when the two siblings were children, the dwarves of Elesfast brought a glittering dark gemstone to the castle as a peace offering during a time of war. Mab was immediately taken with the gem, requesting it be placed within the crown atop her head. Her mother would have done anything to please her daughter and arranged for it to be done. The gem had been fashioned by Edrus, the Primordial of Darkness himself, and it slowly corrupted the Seelie Princess until there was nothing but the cold, unfeeling shell of a girl who sought power above all else.”
Raising my eyes back to the sketch, I stared intently at the dark gem glittering at the center of her crown. Swallowing down the pit in my stomach, I moved on to the next page. I’d read enough of Mab already, not even daring to dive into the atrocities she’d committed.