“Glad I’m not the Spirit Keep then,” Saimenimus adds under his breath.
Those of us nearest to him chuckle.
Scholar Amon is so hard of hearing that he doesn’t notice. “We believe this is why they often attack places of poverty, where the dead are likely to have accumulated. They’ve even been known to attempt to infiltrate the catacombs at times.”
Saimenimus holds up his arms as if expecting a round of applause.
“Here?” Dimitri asks, straightening in his seat. His eyes dart to the dagger at my waist like he’s ready to grab it and march down there to defend it himself. “They’ve attacked the catacombs here at Nigh?”
I want to remind him two things: first, if he so much as even tries to take my dagger, I’ll jam it clean through his hand; and second, the scholar can hardly be talking about any other catacombs considering the rest of Arcathain burns their bodies on pyres.
But I keep quiet. In the week since my match with Güthric, I’ve tried upholding my promise to Dimitri to try and stay out of trouble, even if my mouth sometimes wants to have a mind of its own.
“Yes, even here,” Scholar Amon answers. “Their attacks have become more frequent in past months as the Blight has impinged on our lands.”
Now it’s Saimenimus who straightens, an alertness sobering his eyes more than I’ve ever seen. “Then why do we remain here? Shouldn’t we high-tail it out of here and go to another training ground?”
The scholar looks out over us, calculating and determining. “Ahh,” he says at last. “You haven’t had your lessons on the necro-ink yet, I see. Well, suffice it to say that when the mages abandoned Arcathain, some of the allies among them were unwilling to abandon the humans all together. They blessed the land—this land that the Castle of Nigh sits upon. This is the only place in all of Arcathain where necro-ink can be created.”
If no one else will say it, I will. “Necro-ink?” I turn to Maxwell, prepared for his helpful rants of useful knowledge.
He shakes his head though.
“Surely you’ve seen the Crusaders,” the scholar says. He brings a finger up to his eye and drags it down his cheek as if he’s marking it. “The paint they use—that’s necro-ink. It protects them while they’re in the Shadowthorn.”
“Protects them how?” Saimenimus asks.
But before the scholar can answer us, a brass bell tolls in the distance.
“I’m afraid that lesson will come in time. Until the ’morrow, my dear students, farewell. And please, remember to read your chapters tonight and come prepared for another riveting discussion about the creatures that lurk in the Shadowthorn.”
My classmates stand from their desks, some of them struggling more than others as these seats seem to have been made with teenagers in mind. I can’t imagine Güthric fitting into any of them. Even Saimenimus, who is as lanky as a birch tree, groans as he slides out from his.
Dimitri waits for me to stand, clutching a bag over his shoulder. “Where to?” he asks. “Are we studying in the library or are we headed to the courtyard for some midday shenanigans? I hear some of the other recruits will be borrowing some turnips and seeing who can carve the most accurate depiction of Scholar Amon.”
My eyes narrow on him. “You never want to partake in midday shenanigans. You’re testing me.”
His mouth falls wide in mock offense. “Who me? I’d never test you.”
With a roll of my eyes, I shove him aside and make for the door. “Wherever I’m going, I don’t need your annoying company to join me.”
“Ouch.” He laughs, jogging up beside me with a huge, cocky grin. When he finally catches up, matching my strides down the dark and dimly lit halls, he grows serious. “Really, it’s no test. We’ve been working hard this week, and as important as it is to read the chapters we’ve been assigned, I know you’re going stir crazy.”
“I am not,” I say innocently, turning down the next corridor. “I love spending my afternoons in the library. Who wouldn’t take the dusty, stuffy air of the packed bookshelves over the wide, open space and crisp coolness of being outside?”
He snorts but doesn’t prod me further. I know the last thing he wants to do is goof around for the afternoon, especially not if it means defacing turnips to mock one of our more pleasant instructors, let alone any of them, but more than wanting to pass Dimitri’s test, today I actually do find myself eager to go to the library. If Scholar Amon can’t give me the answers I seek, then I’ll have to find them on my own.
Three red oak doors line the wall before us, closed as they always are to ensure the utmost silence is maintained once inside the library. The doors, pointed to a tip and stained rust red, always remind me of bloodied claws reaching up through the floor, like they belong to some mystical book-loving creature who won’t let anyone enter who would otherwise be harmful to the ancient and precious tomes inside.
I hold my breath as we throw open the center door and enter.
Before coming to Nigh, I had seen a total of two books in my entire life. The first was the Tome of Earth and Magic belonging to the bishop at the cathedral in Gravenburg. It contained the teachings of right and wrong, of the wickedness of magic, and documented in great detail the age-old war between the mages and the humans. The other was less a book and more a pamphlet with information about the Shadow Crusade. I found it drifting down a stream of sewage while playing in the streets of the Wallows with Tor. At first, he grabbed it just to chase me around with it, holding it out and threatening to make me eat it, despite being soaked in waste. But upon closer inspection, from that pamphlet, his calling grew.
For almost two decades, I’d only laid eyes on two books. Now, I have seen thousands.
The library at Nigh is a scaffolding of history and knowledge, each distinct from the last. From the center of the room, one can see all the way up to the rafters at the top of the vaulted ceilings, past level after level of books. To the best of my knowledge, this place has been here since the dawn of time, and over the centuries they’ve stacked the shelves from the top down, so that the most archaic and obscure reside on the top floor, and more recent developments on the bottom.
Tens of thousands of books are illuminated by the skylight windows and the arched panes on every wall of the tower. Come nightfall, this place will be cast in darkness, but fortunately it sits on the west side of the compound, and therefore we still have a few hours before that happens.
We ascend the winding staircase in the center of it all. Since the only entrance to get into the library is through the main floor, we have a ways to climb until we reach the seventh floor, where our textbooks are kept.
But as Dimitri steps off the stairs and onto the seventh level, my neck cranes back. If I am to find the answers I need, something tells me I’ll need to go up even higher, perhaps even to the forbidden thirteenth floor. Those “texts” were written back when we only had the means of etching messages into stones, when we used pictures to depict meaning. If my answers are up there, I wouldn’t be able to decipher them, even if I did manage to find them. But perhaps the levels between here and there, the ones where we first began inking words into sheep hide, back when our language had more of a distinctive melody to it and more complex spellings. I might be able to decipher those.