Three days had passed since Imogene had taken her last breath.
Three entire days of pouring over hoards of books, and, when that hadn't been enough, two days of hounding Eilibir's healing ward for any and all medical journals. Still, Sebastian had no answers to show for what had happened. There were written records of muscle rigidity, people going as stiff as a board, spasms that would cause a person's muscles to jerk unexpectedly. But to lift bodily off the ground?
Sebastian slammed his latest book shut.
Perhaps if his mother's muscles had locked tightly enough to generate just the right amount of friction...and the wind, his brain reminded him in a voice that sounded oddly like Abel's, how do you explain that wind?
The book flew across the small table and fell to the floor. It landed with a thump that sounded as hollow as his head felt.
This whole experience felt like an extended nightmare. Sometimes, he thought that maybe he really was trapped inside of one. It would explain what he had felt since the day before, at least: that with each shift of the leaves in the breeze, with each echoing cry of the wind whistling through the cracks in the house's floorboards, he was being called.
Called by the rumored singing Spirits of the Eyelesene Glaciers.
And it always shoved him westward. To Halorium. The capital city on Mount Halum.
Though he wasn't sure of much these days, he was confident in his knowledge of geography.
A soft breeze ruffled his unkempt, wild curls, and his body reacted so suddenly that he nearly toppled right out of his chair and onto the floor before he realized that someone had simply opened the front door.
"I finally caught some game," Abel announced, a small pot held in her arms. "It was a squirrel, but it made a surprisingly passable soup."
Sebastian rubbed at his eyes before turning to look at her. Her long, auburn hair was loose, her amber eyes narrowed as she glanced around his surroundings. He knew what she would see: shutters, usually opened to welcome the sunshine, were now closed and secured; Imogene's tidy bookcase thrown over the empty armchair, its books strewn around the floor; the stew Abel had brought him the day before still lay untouched by the sink.
His arms crossed under her scrutiny. "I'm perfectly fine."
She placed the pot directly beneath his nose. "No, you're not." She shoved the ladle into his numb fingers, moved a ragged book off the last remaining chair, and tossed it onto the floor in a motion of one who cared little for academia. Her eyes snagged on the other books already gathered there. "You scattered your books everywhere. On the floor even." She appraised him with a haughty expression. "You've lost your damned mind."
"So what if I have?" It snapped out of him in such an atypical tone that he was sure Abel flinched. He tried to lower his voice. "I've lost everything else. It only stands to reason I'd lose that as well."
Abel met his outburst evenly. She toed a rather useless book titled Elements of Fables and then knelt and began to pick up the discarded books. It was hard not to gape at her. Sebastian could count the number of times she'd even held a set of books on one hand.
"You can't study this away, Bash."
Sebastian watched as she stacked the books into neat piles and placed them back onto Imogene's shelves. "Thank you," he muttered, "for the soup."
She grinned at him over her shoulder. "I salvaged what I could from my brothers. Nearly got my wrist bitten cleanly through the bone for it."
"For a girl with such a pleasant face, you sure can be a gruesome foe."
Abel fanned herself with the pages of the book she'd kicked earlier, batting her eyelashes. "Why, Sebastian, is that how you go about sweet talking a woman?"
A piece of folded parchment fell from between the pages of the book and onto the floor, right beneath Abel's foot. Sebastian leapt from his chair. He'd only noticed it because of how closely he'd been watching Abel mishandle Elements of Fables; it had been one of Imogene's favorites to read to him as a child.
"Don't move!"
Abel paused mid-sentence, no doubt shocked by the highest sign of life he'd portrayed in days, the book dangling from her grasp. "What? What is it?"
He knelt, his fingers brushing her ankle as he swept up the fallen parchment out from beneath her feet. "You nearly stepped on it," he said.
Abel huffed at him, stepping out of his reach, for his hand was still braced around her ankle. "Honestly, Bash, I thought something was actually wrong—" but Sebastian had already tuned the rest of her words out because, as he turned over the thick parchment in his hands, he saw a single word written in a familiar, elegant hand:
Carissénas.
Dearest one.
Sebastian's hand shook as he unfolded the note. Foreign words blurred across the page as his vision swam. Imogene had used the Scribal tongue. Of course she had. A bout of sardonic laughter choked him as he read:
Carissénas,
Today marks one year since your father passed away and both our lives changed forever. I remember watching you as you processed how the world we created together had changed. You were so brave for me. It is my turn to be brave for you. Rest assured, that no matter what may have happened to us, we were always honored to raise you.
I know you consider this tongue a dead one, but I've long held the belief that it is the only language that truly lives. Even your father wondered why I insisted you learn it, but he understood it was the only language that ever truly spoke to me. Can you hear it, too? I know if you listen, you will.
Your life is more than this one, son. You have a soul for curiosity. Go find the truths the world has forgotten, seek your knowledge, and never forget to hope for greater things. Never doubt where your soul leads you, carissénas. Our souls hear the land's call, and it calls to you strongly.
Lastly, remember the story of Eilibir's Singers: just because the fish could not be seen, it did not mean they were not there.
Will all my love,
Ma
It was hard to swallow, as if the words from his ma's letter pressed against his windpipe. Feeling Abel's eyes on him, Sebastian wordlessly held out his hand and then sank into Imogene's favorite armchair. He braced his elbows on his knees and tried to breathe evenly as Abel read the letter behind him.
The ancient sound of the Scribal words pushed within the crevices of Sebastian's soul. The temples of his forehead pulsed against the questions, attempting to break them down, analyze them because what if he hadn't translated them correctly? After all, it had been years since he'd bothered to study—
Abel made a soft sound in her throat. "You forgot I can't read this."
Startled from his thoughts, Sebastian raised his head from his hands. "Oh, right." His fingers fumbled over the worn edges of the letter when Abel handed it back to him. "It's the ancient language of the Scribes. Some obscure historians even claim it was one of the first, written languages. Here. I'll read it to you."
It didn't take long to read back through the letter, but saying the words out loud solidified a knot inside Sebastian's chest with each line he translated. Tighter and tighter it became until he knew exactly what he had been called to do.
For Imogene.
Sebastian refolded the letter carefully. "I'm leaving." He announced it as surely as he would declare the color of the skies on a summer eve's day.
Abel gaped at him. "What?"
"You heard my ma, what she wrote. I'm getting out of here." He tucked Imogene's note into the waistband of his pants. When she failed to respond, Sebastian glanced at her shortly. "I wouldn't mind if you came with me."
She half-laughed."Oh, you wouldn't mind—Sebastian, stop! What are you doing?"
Sebastian paused mid-motion, a thick shirt half-folded over his arm. For a second, he stared at it, confused. He didn't remember grabbing it nor the open canvas bag that flopped open on the floor, his jacket already shoved inside. But that knot in his chest burned, Imogene's letter stuck in his pants yanking him onwards. He spared Abel a quick blink. Her cheeks were flushed, her hands fluttering at her sides in the same motion she used when skinning a rabbit with her favorite carving knife. It was a nervous tick of hers, and her fingers were moving so quickly that he realized he must look rather deranged. He knew his hair had gathered into matted clumps over the past few days, his bronzed skin duller than normal, but his eyes felt wide for the first time in days, his heart thumping with such a restless anticipation that he finished shoving the shirt into his traveler's bag without further explanation.
Abel yanked the canvas bag out from under him. "You need to explain to me what's going through your head."
He pulled at the strap, but Abel held firm. Sebastian scowled at her. "Don't be dense; it should be obvious I'm packing."
The only response she deigned to give him was a quick click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth and a tilt of her hip. Sebastian loosed a breath before tossing the book, which had held the letter, into the bag as well. Just in case.
"I've decided to leave Eilibir for Halorium. "
"And when did you decide this? Two seconds ago?"
"Five, actually." He looked over at her and gave his bag a final tug. She let him have it. "I know you think I've lost my mind."
"I have, but not because of your hasty plan to go to Halorium." She knelt beside him, pulling a short dagger from her boot and placing it into his canvas bag. "I think you're crazy because, somewhere along this hasty timeline of your nonsensical plan, you apparently think you would be able to survive this journey without me."
The knot within him loosened when he looked at her determined expression. "You're serious? You'll come?"
Abel shrugged, but a grin flickered across her lips. "As long as you actually have a better plan than simply going to Halorium. You realize it's on top of a mountain, don't you?"
"Of course I do," he said. "I have a plan. I want to be an Archivist in the Halorian Library—" Abel snorted in surprise, but, despite that, voicing his desire sent Sebastian into a sudden, determined motion. He jumped to the wash basin and grabbed the wrapped packages of dried meat that had been stored in the cabinet beneath, adding them to the increasingly stuffed bag. "I'll ask Norham for a letter of introduction to the library. He likes me well enough."
"The Halorian Library?" Abel said incredulously, a slim eyebrow raised. "The only people rumored to be allowed in are of noble birth. No offense, but you're—" She looked him up and down—"you."
He pulled a face at her and then went to his room, grabbing personal effects. The longer this idea solidified into his mind, the stronger he knew this was what he was meant to do. Besides, he'd always dreamed of seeing the Halorian Library. It was discussed mostly in hushed whispers, referred to as The Grand Library. It was rumored to be a city of books underneath the Ice Fortress in Halorium.
"The library is said to have a copy of every single book ever written. Ever written, Abel. Can you imagine? But to gain access, it's said that you must have a letter of introduction from an apprentice or a former apprentice in good standing."
Abel laughed outright. "And you think Norham is a man in good standing?"
Norham was Eilibir's unofficial scholar and professor. He tutored children who he deemed smart enough to have half-a-thought in their fish-sized brains. When Sebastian had been young, Norham had picked him out as being "at least intelligent enough to walk and think without falling over." At the time, where Sebastian went, Abel did as well. She had thrown a fit loudly enough that Norham had begrudgingly agreed to teach her as well. Unfortunately, he'd decided not even a month in that Abel was the most stubborn pupil who had ever crossed his path and refused to acknowledge her existence with each lesson. Whenever she'd spoken, Norham had developed a cruel joke of claiming the old village poltergeist was causing mayhem again.
Perhaps that was why Abel hated the old man.
But Sebastian grinned fondly at the thought. His hands moved quickly now as he sorted through his belongings. "When I tutored under Norham, he mentioned the library. Said he knew a Halorian there. Despite what you may think of him, Norham is the best option I have. It will work. It'll have to."
When he finally paused long enough to gage Abel's reaction, she was staring at him with a finger to her lips. "Okay, so, let me get this straight: this idea of yours is to travel up a bloody mountain to Halorium, find a Halorian in this library of yours, hope he actually knows Norham—which, let's be honest, is most likely one of Norham's tall tales— and maybe, possibly, on a fool's faith, you'll get into said library, which may or may not exist?"
Sebastian nodded. "Norham often said you were a failure at summarization because you liked the sound of your own voice too much, but that was wonderfully succinct, Abel."
She threw a book into his smirking face, but he noticed she couldn't keep from grinning at him.
It wasn't until Abel left to begin making preparations for their departure that the silence of the house settled around Sebastian once more. He stared at the walls, ones as familiar to him as his own skin, but the longer he looked at them, the more he realized that, without anyone else there, they all seemed foreign. Built wrongly. A wayward foundation that threatened to upheaval him. A wind pushed through the window, bringing with it the smell of pines and saltwater. Abel must have opened it before she left, assuming the fresh air would do him some good. Instead, it made his muscles jittery. He looked towards his packed bag by the hearth.
Our souls hear the land's call, and it calls to you strongly.
Sebastian frowned at the bag, but it was difficult to scoff at his mother's words when Imogene was no longer there to defend them. Perhaps it was time for him to leave, to get out, to explore the land that Imogene had always talked about with such wonder. But land was just that: packed earth that lay trodden beneath travelers' feet. Wasn't it? The blue shutters Imogene had painted so carefully creaked softly against the push of the wind, and Sebastian watched as it ruffled the pages of an open book on the table. When he thought of staying in the relative safety and familiarity of his books, the same feeling arose in him that he felt every time he was on a boat. It was a feeling of instability, of weightlessness, of the knowledge that even the slightest motion of a restless sea could disrupt the studious stability he carefully maintained with the use of his logic and factual evidence.
Magic didn't have a space in all of that, yet it was the sea that had threatened to overturn him since his mother's death. For what had actually happened, Sebastian wasn't sure, but if there was ever an instance that would have driven Sebastian to believe in an unseen power, it would have been that one. After all, what made death more tolerable other than believing it occurred by a force that Sebastian wouldn't have been able to prevent even with all the preemptive time in the world? But he hadn't shared those thoughts with Abel, and guilt twinged in his chest at the part of his plan he'd kept from her. Yes, he'd always dreamed of being a Halorian scholar. That much was true. And, yes, the Halorian Library held thousands of books on every topic imaginable. But one of them had to explain the impossibility of what he had seen that night: the wind, the shutters, Imogene's body lifting. Somehow, he doubted the answer would be something as nonsensical as magic.
The blood in his veins churned in response, pressing against the confinements of his veins. Sebastian rubbed the encroaching headache with his fingertips and leaned back into his mother's favorite chair.
With his other hand, he gently covered Imogene's letter. "I hope you're right about this," he whispered into the night.
As he drifted into a restless dream, Sebastian could have sworn that he heard her spirit answer him with a soft breeze across his cheek.
O O O
"I never thought I'd live to see such a precious sight," Sebastian said to the trees.
The trees cursed surprisingly vulgar words at him as, without her usual hunter's subtlety, Abel stomped into the clearing, a stack of scrolls and books jumbled in her arms. "You should be forty pounds heavier with how often you carry these monstrosities around," she huffed. "Blasted parchment worth a weight of gold."
Grinning, Sebastian leapt to his feet to assist her, but she'd already upended her load onto the leaf-strewn ground. It was a testament to the high spirits he'd awoken in that he didn't immediately scramble to ensure the safety of those books. Nevertheless, he did pick up a rather lofty scroll and held it back out to Abel. "What is all this?"
"Well, I figured, since we're going on this grand adventure of yours, we should figure out how to get there without losing a limb to hypothermia." She plopped herself down with no regards to the dirt around her and unrolled the scroll. She peered at him over the top of it. "You seemed too busy manically packing to think with even an ounce of clarity you normally show. Whereas I've been packed practically since my birthing day, so I took it upon myself to do some research."
Sebastian leaned closer, reading the scroll over her lean shoulder. "There are actual maps here with the royal seal of authenticity and everything."
Abel snatched the scroll out of his reach with an affronted roll of her eyes. "By the Scribes, Bash! I do know how to read, you know."
"I know that," he said in surprise. "You can read routes and maps better than even I can. Now, show me what you found."
Appropriately mollified by his sincerity—because Sebastian truly knew that Abel's knowledge of the land could rival even the best of the Scribes—Abel flattened the map of Rainier before them. Sebastian tried not to cringe when she used two mossy rocks as weights to hold down the curled sides.
"Well, there's no mention of your library shown on any map I found," Abel explained, motioning towards a collection of symbols that pinpointed the capital of Halorium, "but that could be because it's found beneath that behemoth monstrosity of an Ice Fortress. Gaudy for my taste, if you ask me. However, the route to Halorium is fairly straightforward—" her finger ran along a dotted line that zigzagged nearly to the top edges of the map—"except for the fact that it goes straight up. It won't be easy, Bash. Especially since this blasted, dry summer is finally coming to an end, though I suppose that hardly matters since it's always winter on Mount Halum."
Sebastian followed the switchback route with a critical eye. "It looks deceptively easy. I've read that the roads to Halorium are paved. Warming huts made from the natural hot springs are even interspersed along the route at almost even intervals."
Abel nodded. "But what no one mentions is that the most recent maps we have on record were created over one hundred years ago. You can tell by the use of these outdated navigation symbols. These maps are nearly older than the Scribes—"
Sebastian held up a hand to disagree with her timeline, but she shot him a look as sharp as one of her arrows, and he fell silent once more. "Regardless of the factual debate that's currently arguing itself to death in your head, it seems odd, doesn't it? For all we know, the roads could no longer exist or could be overrun by fallen trees. Who knows if the queen even allows visitors into Halorium. Either way, it may be safer to travel a more indirect path, through the wilderness, so I've plotted out a basic route that should get us there only three days longer than if we used the main roads."
When she turned her gaze from the map to him, she must have seen the admiration on Sebastian's face because she patted his cheek fondly and said, "Yes, it is a good thing you have me, isn't it?"
"Abel." He scanned the notes she'd dictated in the margins of the map. "You're brilliant! Where did you get all these?"
"Norham," she said without missing a beat.
"You nicked them off him, didn't you?"
With a sly glint to her eye, she began to roll up the scroll. "I can be rather charming when I wish to be."
"Scribes know it," he muttered, pulling one of the books she'd hauled up the hill towards him distractedly. "Except Norham has always been immune to it."
She shrugged delicately and tossed her auburn braid over her shoulder. "Unfortunately for him. Perhaps if he weren't, he wouldn't have recently been thieved."
There would be no arguing with her, and he would never convince her to return them to Norham. Besides, they needed those maps. So, Sebastian brushed off the guilt and flipped over the book he'd been holding in his lap. In gold stitching, across the leather binding of the cover, were the words Royal Genealogies: Power of Names.
He wasn't quite sure why Abel had found it important to take this one, but it did remind him: he had a letter to obtain from Norham. He just hoped that the old scholar really did know an Archivist with enough power to his name to get Sebastian in.
O O O
It hadn't taken much to convince Norham to write him a letter of introduction. In fact, it had been so simple that Sebastian was beginning to think that the typically obstinate older man had somehow heard Abel's accusations against him and strived to prove that he did, in all actuality, have connections to the Halorians. Sebastian crested the small mound of grass that hid Norham's cottage from sight. It lay on the very outskirts of Eilibir, and the tiled roof—a material that was foreign to the rest of the village—was always covered in so many leaves that Sebastian thought the land wished to reclaim it.
He shook his head at the thought before knocking on the front door right above the small inscription of a quill filled in with crushed black stone. The Black Quill, Norham had explained once in such a way that made Sebastian believe his tutor was part of some secret society for writers.
The door opened without a preamble. "Never thought you'd have the gall to leave."
Norham had the type of gaze that always looked as if it was constantly displeased by what it saw. His back stooped, hunched over a walking cane that he used to smack the walls and floors when he got especially worked up. A shock of white hair stood up upon his round head, and his hooked nose had a smudge of ink on it. Sensing Sebastian's stare, he swiped at it roughly with a gnarled hand before ushering him over the threshold.
"I suppose you're here for that letter I promised you," he grumbled. His cane made a pointed snap against his floorboards with every step. "Ol' Lambert will be pleased to hear I'm still alive after all these years. Not every man has the privilege of studying safely beneath the pretentious fortress of Rainier." He chuckled gravelly to himself as Sebastian followed him into the house.
It held a constant smell of abandoned books and the bitterness of spilled ink. Sebastian ran a familiar finger along the western wall. All of Norham's walls had been built from books. Normally, the sight and touch of them brought Sebastian stability, but his fingers shook along the bindings as he felt them now. A dull thump caused Norham to whip around on the tip of his cane with an agility of a much younger man. He scowled at the three books that now lay, half-opened and bent, across the floor to Sebastian, who stared at the pages that had leapt to the ground by his touch.
"Boy, you have a hairsbreadth to replace those to their shelves before I burn your letter over my reading candle," Norham said.
Heart thumping illogically, Sebastian stared at the fallen books before scrambling to pick them all up. When he stumbled back to Norham's side, his old tutor held a thick letter out to him; it was sealed shut with a wax stamping in the insignia of Rainier's royal family. He watched Sebastian in a thoughtful way before he shoved the letter of introduction into Sebastian's dazed fist.
"I—I have something else to ask you."
The words blurted out of Sebastian before he could think better of them. He bit his tongue, his next words bubbling up his throat, burning his esophagus.
Norham rapped his cane against the leg of the rickety table when Sebastian continued to hold back. "Fools don't know when to shut their mouths," he said. "A wise man knows when to open it. Are you a fool or a wise man, Sebastian?"
Norham's dark eyes bored into his own, reached into his soul, and seemed to drag the question from him. "Do you believe in...magic?"
The flame that flickered on the candle atop the table sputtered and went out as suddenly as if someone had just huffed at it. Norham glanced at the ashy wick, licked his fingers, and then snuffed the struggling ember out completely. Sebastian could taste blood in his mouth, and he realized he was chewing on his tongue as if he could eat the ridiculous words that had just sprouted from it. Wearily, he met Norham's blank expression.
"Why do you ask?"
Sebastian busied himself by tucking Norham's letter into the band of his trousers to join Imogene's. "I don't quite know," he muttered. "That night, with my ma, I saw something that I can't make sense of, and Abel—"
Norham grunted. "That girl has nothing to believe in, so she grasps for that which cannot be seen. A woman like that could walk straight off a cliff with nothing but the hope that someone would catch her."
"I think she'd catch herself," Sebastian countered.
With a steady, stern expression, Norham observed him without so much as a blink. Sebastian tottered from foot to foot, worrying the hems of his sleeves. Norham finally sighed in a pitying exhale, leaning heavily on his left side into the cane. "You understand I cannot tell you what to believe. I can only provide the tools needed to help a man make a belief for himself. But here's a belief of an old man who has seen much and lived little: magic gives those who believe in it a hope for incomprehensible power. Hope, in itself, can be a power of its own. Now, I've looked far and wide for proof that the magic of old existed—the Elementi who could use the power of the lands, the Scribes who could collect and study it, and the authors who could disperse it throughout the kingdoms. If it did once exist, it has long since disappeared from living memory."
"But my ma—"
Norham dismissed Sebastian's protest with an impatient swing of his cane. "Of course there are those who believe it still exists, that it simply fled during the Great Purge of the Academy and Queen Davina's fight against them, but if history is to be believed, that war occurred not even thirty years ago. So, if magic existed not even half-a-century ago, why have we all but forgotten it?"
"Because it didn't exist," Sebastian said.
Norham peered at him from beneath bushy, untrimmed eyebrows. "Didn't it? Or have we been forced not to remember?"
Sebastian scowled, but his head spun against it. Everything he'd studied about the Great Purge and the Soleita Kingdom where the Lost Academy had once stood ran through his brain, boiling his curiosity into a near frenzy that set his limbs quaking. Norham's attention snagged on the visible signs of restlessness, and Sebastian curled his fingers into fists, hiding them beneath his cloak. With another grunt, Norham turned his back on Sebastian and reached into a cluttered drawer behind him.
"Of course, I say all this to prepare your mind for the debate you'll find among the Halorians. As always, you must forge your own path, and this seems as good a start as any."
He pushed another sealed letter into Sebastian's chest. He looked down at it curiously, and when he raised his head to look back at his tutor, Norham's weathered lips twitched into an unpracticed grin. "This second copy is for that stubborn arse of a girl to carry—" Surprised, Sebastian opened his mouth to ask how Norham knew Abel would be accompanying him on this journey, but Norham lowered a wrinkled eyelid into a semblance of a conspiratorial wink. "After all, a wise man knows when to share a burden."
The wick of the candle flickered to life between them. Sebastian's stomach lurched as the flame sputtered and grew.
"And tell that stubborn arse to take care of my maps," Norham grumbled, and didn't so much as spare the suddenly blaring candle a wandering glance before he turned his back on Sebastian in dismissal, neither a torch nor match in hand or sight.