The canyon was made of dragons.
Selena almost forgot her cold in marveling at the craftsmanship that seemed impossible. She craned her neck to where the rock smoothed into curves of dragons’ necks, then higher, to four huge dragon faces. The stony faces were dulled by time and the elements, but Selena could still see the different aspects to each. One bore an intelligent, gentle bearing. Another wore a ferocious, almost maddened expression of hate. A third’s face was unreadable as its head craned upward, to the sky. The last, at the end of the canyon, was taller than the rest and seemed to glare at the others with an air of superiority. The superior-looking dragon had suffered damage. Half of its body was scored off where part of the cavern had caved in. The floor around its clawed feet was strewn with rubble.
“Who did this?” Selena asked.
Captain Tunney guided them to the superior-looking dragon. The debris from its fallen brethren had obscured a door set beside its remaining clawed foot.
“Too much wind fer talk. Let ole Byric tell it. He don’t get many visitors an’ yet his greatest joy is yapping ‘bout the canyon and the library.” Tunney hauled open the heavy oaken door. “This be his lucky day!”
Selena gave a final glance to the dragons, a strange longing in her heart. Just curiosity, she thought, and then hurried inside, out of the wind that made her eyes stream.
It was pitch black until Tunney, muttering a complaint about letting lanterns burn out, struck flint to tinder over a scrap of oil-soaked rag. This he used to light a lantern that hung just inside the door, and the space around them was infused with a dim yellow glow.
“This is a library?” Niven asked, glancing fearfully upward, and jumping when the door slammed shut behind them.
Selena understood his unease; a tunnel lay before them, like a black mouth where no light lived save what they brought with them. The weight of the entire canyon seemed to hang over their heads.
“Down, down, youngin’,” Tunney said, moving ahead of them to take point. “Down where the wind and snow cain’t distress our little treasure trove.”
Julian followed, and Selena clutched his arm. She gave her other hand to Niven, which he clung to like a piece of driftwood after a shipwreck. The group labored down into the airless black tunnel, the little glow of Tunney’s lantern kept the dark from swallowing them whole.
Selena could hear the breaths of her companions; they sounded sharp as her own. Their shuffling feet were a welcome sound as well for she thought that if they stopped moving, the silence would suffocate her. She could smell the stone; smell its age and its weight, and she held on to both Julian and Niven tighter as they walked. Captain Tunney didn’t seem at ease anymore either but kept up a constant chatter of cursing and grumbling under his breath.
It seemed they had been walking down the winding, downward sloping path for hours but was surely no more than a few minutes. Selena thought she would go mad if Tunney’s lantern gave out and she directed her gaze at its light and nothing else. She wished to weave her own light but Niven held her fast and she was too afraid to let go of Julian, even for a moment.
“Godsdammit,” Julian breathed and when he put his hand on Tunney’s shoulder in front of him, the older captain didn’t complain.
“Byric lives down here?” Niven burst out after a while, his voice sounding high and on the edge of panic. Selena tried to give his hand a reassuring squeeze but she realized she was already holding it as tightly as she could.
“It oft feels so,” Tunney said, his voice flat and low now where outside it had been boisterous. “We believe he’s half mole, he is.”
“He’s half cracked, you mean,” Julian muttered.
“Aye, that too,” Tunney groused. But then another door, also of oak with burnished brass hinges loomed in the darkness. “Aha! Gods be praised.” He pounded on the door three times. “Byric! Ye got guests, ye limey bastard.”
He didn’t wait for an answer but pushed open the door and ushered the others inside, into Isle Nanokar’s library.
The Library
Selena had never thought candlelight could look so beautiful. After the crushing dark of the passage, the candles placed around the library were little oases. She had the impression that the coronas of light were holding back the weight of the mountain around them. She breathed easier and thought Julian and Niven did as well. The adherent released his crushing grip on her hand with a sheepish smile under his ghostly windpaint.
The library was small; hardly more than fifty paces across and just as wide, but tall. Shelves carved from the natural stone rose all around them, twenty spans high, filled with tomes or stacks of scrolls. A rough-shod ladder cobbled of broken planks rested against one wall. The relief-bringing candles burned in neat tins at various places: on high, small tables, in sconces dug into the pale stone, and on wide wooden tables that hewn from the hull of a ship. These tables bore glass jars with strange objects floating in murky liquids. In fact, the library appeared as much a museum or a laboratory in the Guild.
A rough stairway arched to a second floor with a wrought iron railing on the open side. It led to an alcove or loft, and Selena could see more shelves of books there as well. A fire crackled somewhere in the loft; Selena could hear it but feel none of the heat. She guessed this time she wasn’t alone, as the breaths of her companions plumed from their mouths like the smoke of one of Julian’s cigarillos.
“Oi! Byric?” Tunney called, his humor returned. He set the lantern down on the long table between a jar of green liquid that appeared to have a seahorse floating in it, and a bone of some animal clutched on a wooden stand. “You didn’t go an’ croak on us, now did ya?” He winked at Selena.
There came a shuffling sound that, in the stony cavern, seemed to come from everywhere at once. Selena noticed movement, and a portly man of about sixty years, bundled in a fur seal coat and matching hat, emerged on the rocky loft above. He peered down at the visitors a moment, and then hobbled down, gripping tightly to the railing that creaked under his weight. His face was covered in windpaint, though it was flaking off as if he’d applied it days earlier. His bushy beard was littered with scraps of brown and white.
“There’s no need for bellowing, Tunney. I can hear you plain enough.” At the bottom of the stairs he examined the small assemblage. “So?”
Selena shared a glance with Tunney.
“Now, Byric,” the captain chided. “I been telling me friends here ‘bout yer great hospitality. They got plenty o’ questions fer you; just the sort you like. You aim to make a liar out o’ me do ya?”