What about beneath this level? The library was probably too far away to connect to the tunnels attached to her rooms, but there could be more forgotten places beneath the castle. The polished marble floor gleamed under her feet.
Chaol had said something once about a legend regarding a second library underground—in catacombs and tunnels. If she were doing something that she didn’t want others to find out about, if she were some foul creature who needed a place to hide …
Maybe she was a fool for looking into it, but she had to know. Maybe this thing would be able to give her some clues as to what was going on in this castle.
She headed for the nearest wall and was soon swallowed up in the gloom of the stacks. It took her a few minutes to reach the perimeter wall, which was interspersed with bookcases and chipped writing desks. She pulled a piece of chalk from her pocket and drew an X on one of the desks. Most of the library would probably look the same after a while; it would be helpful to know when she’d made a full sweep of the perimeter. Even if it took her hours to cover it all.
She passed stack after stack of books, some of the cases plain, some of them ornately carved. Sconces were few and far enough apart that she often had to take several steps in near darkness. The floor had turned from gleaming marble to ancient gray blocks, and the scrape of her boots against stone was the only sound. It felt as if it’d been the only sound for a thousand years.
But someone must have come down this passageway to light the sconces. So if she became lost, she might not stay that way forever.
Not that getting lost was a possibility, she reassured herself as the silence of the library became a living thing. She’d been trained to mark and remember pathways and exits and turns. She’d be fine.
Odds were that she had to go as far back into the library as possible—to a place where even the scholars didn’t bother going.
There had been a day, she recalled—a day when she’d been poring over The Walking Dead, and she’d felt something under her boots. Chaol had later revealed that he’d been dragging his dagger along the floor to spook her, but the initial vibration had been … different.
Like someone drawing a claw along stone.
Stop it, she told herself. Stop it now. Your imagination is absurd. It was just Chaol teasing you.
She didn’t know how long she’d been walking when she finally hit another wall: a corner. The bookcases here were all carved from ancient wood, their ends shaped into sentries—guards forever protecting the books held between them. It was here that the sconces ran out—and a glance down the back wall of the library revealed utter darkness.
Thankfully, one of the scholars had left a torch beside the last sconce. It was small enough that it wouldn’t burn the whole damn library down, but also too small to last long.
She could end it now, and go back to her rooms to contemplate ways to pry information from Archer’s clients. One wall had been explored—one wall that revealed nothing. She could do the back wall tomorrow.
But she was here already.
Celaena picked up the torch.
Dorian jerked awake at the sound of a clock chiming, and found himself sweating despite the fierce cold in his bedroom.
It was odd enough that he’d fallen asleep, but the frigid temperature was what struck him as most unusual. His windows were all sealed, his door shut.
And yet his shallow breaths clouded in front of him.
He sat up, his head aching.
A nightmare—of teeth and shadows and glinting daggers. Just a nightmare.
Dorian shook his head, the temperature in the room already increasing. Perhaps it had only been a rogue draft. The nap was just the product of staying up too late last night; the nightmare probably triggered by hearing from Chaol about Celaena’s encounter.
He gritted his teeth. Her job wasn’t without risk—and though he was furious about what had happened, he had a feeling she’d only push him away further if he yelled at her about it.
Dorian shook off the last bit of the cold and walked to his dressing room to change his wrinkled tunic. As he turned, he could have sworn he caught a glimpse of a faint ring of frost around where his body had lain on the couch.
But when he looked back to see it more fully, there was nothing there.
Celaena heard a distant clock chime somewhere—and didn’t quite believe it when she heard the time. She’d been here for three hours. Three hours. The back wall wasn’t like the side wall; it dipped and curved and had closets and alcoves and little study rooms full of mice and dust. And just when she’d been about to draw an X on the wall and call it a day, she noticed the tapestry.
She saw it only because it was the sole bit of decoration she’d encountered along the wall. Considering how the last six months of her life had gone, part of her just knew that it had to mean something.
There was no depiction of Elena, or a stag, or anything lovely and green.
No; this tapestry, woven from red thread so dark it looked black, depicted … nothing.
She touched the ancient strands, marveling at the hue, so deep that it seemed to swallow her fingers in its darkness. The hair on the back of her neck rose, and Celaena put a hand on her dagger as she pulled the tapestry aside. She swore. And swore again.
Another secret door greeted her.
Glancing around the stacks, listening for any footsteps or rustle of clothing, Celaena pushed it open.
A breeze, musty and thick, floated past her from the depths of the spiral stairwell revealed by the open door. The light of her torch reached only a few feet inside, illuminating ornately carved walls depicting a battle.
There was a thin groove in the marble wall, a channel barely three inches deep. It curved along the entire length of the wall, extending beyond the limits of her sight. She swiped her finger in the groove; it was smooth as glass and held a faint residue of something slimy.
A small silver lamp hung from the wall, and she put her torch in its place as she took down the lamp, liquid splashing inside. “Clever,” she murmured.
Smiling to herself, making sure her torch was far enough away, Celaena placed the slender nozzle of the lamp into the groove and tipped. Oil poured out and traveled down the chute. Celaena grabbed her torch and touched it to the wall. Instantly, the groove glowed with fire, providing a thin line of light all the way down the dark and cobwebbed stairwell. A hand on her hip, she stared down, admiring the engraved surface of the walls.
She doubted anyone would come looking for her, but she still put the tapestry back into its original position and took out one of her long daggers. As she descended, the images of battle shifted and moved in the firelight, and she could have sworn that the stone faces turned to watch her go. She stopped looking at the walls.
A breath of cold air brushed her face, and she at last spied the bottom of the stair. It was a dark corridor that smelled of aged and rotting things. A torch lay discarded at the bottom of the step, covered with enough cobwebs to reveal that no one had been down here in a long, long time.
Unless that thing can see in the dark.
She shoved away that thought, too, and picked up the torch, igniting it on the illuminated wall of the stairwell.
Cobwebs hung from the arched ceiling, grazing over the cobblestone floor. Rickety bookcases lined the halfway, the shelves crammed full of books so worn that Celaena couldn’t read the titles. Scrolls and pieces of parchment were stuffed into every nook and cranny or lay unrolled on the sagging wood, as if someone had just walked away from reading them. Somehow, it was more of a tomb than Elena’s resting place.
She walked down the corridor, stopping occasionally to examine the scrolls. They were maps and receipts from kings long since turned to dust.
Castle records. All this walking and fretting, and all you’ve discovered is useless castle records. That’s probably what that creature was after: an ancient king’s grocery bill.
Beginning a chant of truly despicable curses, Celaena waved her torch before her and walked on until a hallway appeared on the left.
It had to lead even lower than Elena’s tomb—but how deep? There was a lantern and a groove in the wall, so Celaena once again lit the spiraling passage. This time, the gray stone depicted a forest. A forest, and—
Fae. It was impossible to miss those delicately pointed ears and elongated canines. The Fae lounged and danced and played music, content to bask in their immortality and ethereal beauty.