They moved to a much wider boulevard. The buildings became more elaborate, taller, often with facades of chiseled columns. Pillars lined the avenue, tall monoliths covered in detailed engravings, epigraphs and images of men, women, and animal figures. One very large building was totally shattered, forcing them to climb over a mountain of rubble. The going was treacherous, with slabs of broken rock the size of houses that were loose enough to shift with their weight. Driven to inch along ledges and crawl through dark holes, they all welcomed a rest on the far side.
They sat on what had once been a great flight of marble steps, which now went nowhere and looked down the city’s main road. Each building was tall and made from finely carved stone, usually a white marble or rose-colored granite. Fountains appeared intermittently along the wide thoroughfare, and as he stared, Hadrian could imagine a time when children ran in the streets, splashing in the pools and swinging from the spear arm a statue held out. He could almost see the colorful awnings, the markets, the crowds. Music and the smells of exotic food would fill the air, much like in Dagastan, only here the streets were clean, the air cool. What a wonderful place it must have been, what a wonderful time to have lived.
“A library,” Myron whispered as they sat, his eyes fixed on a tall circular building with a small dome and a colonnade surrounding it.
“How do you know?” Arista asked.
“It says so,” he replied. “On top there: IMPERIAL REPOSITORY OF TOMES AND KNOWLEDGE, roughly translated, at least. I don’t suppose I could…” He trailed off, his eyes hopeful.
“If you go in there, we might never get you out,” Hadrian said.
“We need to camp and we still don’t know anything about the horn,” Arista said. “If Myron could find something…”
“I’ll take a look,” Royce said. “Hadrian, come with me. Everyone else wait here.”
Just as if he were on a job, Royce circled the library twice, making a careful study of the entrances and exits before moving to the two great bronze doors, each decorated in ornate sculptured relief depicting a bisected scene of a man handing a scroll and a laurel to a younger man amidst the aftermath of a great battle. Hadrian noticed a river and a familiar-looking tower at the edge of a waterfall in the upper right. The doors were marred badly, dented and bent, bearing marks from a large blunt hammer.
Hadrian slowly, quietly drew one sword. Royce set down and hooded the lantern, then pulled the doors open and slipped inside. One of the many rules Hadrian had learned from the start was never to follow Royce into a room.
That was how it all had gone so bad in Ervanon.
Royce had slipped into the Crown Tower as delicately as a moth through a window. Yet unlike on the previous night, the room was not empty. A priest sat in the small outer chamber. It did not matter, as he had not seen or heard Royce, but then Hadrian blundered in. The man screamed. They ran—Royce one way, Hadrian the other. It was a coin flip that Hadrian won. The guards came around the tower on Royce’s side. While they were busy chasing and wrestling Royce down, Hadrian made it back to the rope. He was safe. All he had to do was climb back down, retrieve his horse from the thickets, and ride away. That was exactly what Royce expected him to do, what Royce would have done in his place, but back then Royce did not know him.
Hadrian heard the three taps from inside the library and, grabbing the lantern, crept inside. It was black and he was met with a terrible confluence of smells. The dominant odor was a thick burnt-wood scent, but a more pungent rotted-meat stink managed to cut through. From the darkness, he heard Royce say, “We’re clear, light it up.”
Hadrian lifted the lantern’s hood to reveal a scorched hall. Burned black and filled with piles of ash, the room was still beautiful beyond anything else Hadrian had ever seen. Four stories tall, the walls circling him were marvelously crafted tiers of marble arcades. Towering pillars ringed the coffered dome and supported the great arches joining the arcades to each other. Around the rim, a colonnade of white marble was interspersed with lifelike bronze statues of twelve men, each of which had to be at least twenty feet tall. From the floor they appeared life-sized. Great chandeliers of gold hung around the perimeter. The black cracked remains of tables formed a circular pattern of desks with a great office in the center. A fresco painting of wonderful scenes of various landscapes formed the lower part of the dome, while the greater portion, made of glass, now lay in shards scattered across the beautiful mosaic floor.
In the center of the room, near the office bench, was its only inhabitant. Surrounded by a few singed books, papers, quills, three lanterns, and an oilcan lay what remained of an old man. He was on his back, his head resting on a knapsack, his legs wrapped in a blanket. Like Bernie, this man was dead, and as he had Bernie, Hadrian recognized him.
“Antun Bulard,” he said, and knelt beside the body of the elderly man he had befriended in Calis. He was not as ravaged by death as Bernie—no sea crabs here. Bulard, who had always been pale in life, was now a bluish gray, his complexion waxy. His white hair was brittle and spectacles still rested on the end of his nose.