Grief pressed down on him suddenly-ages of sadness, far too much for a boy his age. “Must we?” he asked, his throat aching with the effort of not crying. If they just stayed where they were, if they didn’t go to the bier then perhaps, perhaps, his father would still be alive and everything wouldn’t be falling to pieces.
Constancia sighed. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.” She beckoned and turned down the hallway.
Brin followed, and found himself wishing that she’d taken his hand. That little gesture … it would have meant the world. He watched the drape of her skirt spread over the stone floor as she walked and walked and walked.
It had meant the world, he realized. Because she’d done it. She’d taken his hand in hers and walked as slowly as he wanted, and the dour squire they’d made his nursemaid had suddenly changed from a monster, a symbol of everything that had gone wrong, to a friend.
And they’d gone to the gallery, behind the screens, to watch his father’s funeral from where no one could see that Brin was still alive, still Helindra’s tool, and he’d wept great spots into the soft wool of her dress. Then she’d given him the little flute she’d rescued from the midden heap-one of his father’s carvings. Brin carried it all the years after.
A decade, he thought. It’s been a decade since this happened.
“Where are we going?” he asked hoarsely. The hallway had become impossibly long, the muffled tap, tap, tap of Constancia’s hard-soled shoes beneath her skirts interminable. She didn’t turn. She didn’t answer. “Constancia?” he tried again. “Where are we going?”
He reached out to grab her shoulder, but she seemed to skip out of reach, as if he’d blinked too long and missed her motion. She looked back over her shoulder, her mouth open, but hesitating, wordless.
“What is this?” he asked.
Again, in the space between blinks, she went from girl to woman, her dress traded for polished and well-worn armor. “I think you ought to see it,” she said, her voice shifting as wantonly as snow on a cold road. “You’re never really alone. You haven’t been.”
She beckoned again, and again she was the girl in mourning, and there, behind her was the balcony behind the screens. Brin crept forward and put his eye to the gap in the panels. There on the bier lay the cold, bloodless body of Halance Crownsilver, a tapestry drawn up under his beard to hide the dozens of burning arrow wounds that riddled his chest and arms.
Brin’s throat tightened and his eyes welled with tears again.
It’s not real, he reminded himself. He’s already gone. He looked back at Constancia, who was regarding him with a grim expression.
“There’s nothing here worth dying for,” she said in Tam’s voice.
And all at once, Constancia, the hall, the screen, and the sunshine disappeared, and Brin was left standing all alone in a corner of the library he hadn’t explored. Where the screen had been, there was a shelf loosely stocked with books bound in very soft leather.
And beyond it, where his father’s bier had lain, there was a body.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
For the second time since they’d arrived, Tam waited just beyond the doors to Tarchamus’s library for an answer to his sending, but still there was no answer. He studied the ceiling of the smaller cave, and wondered if his messages had even reached Everlund and Waterdeep.
He gathered his supplies and returned to the camp. He would simply have to broach with Mira the subject of retreating. The hours went by, quicker than any of them could appreciate, and while searching the whole of the library for a few spellbooks had originally seemed like trying to empty a lake with a beer mug, having attempted it made it clear “a sea with a teaspoon” was a more apt comparison. They were running short of supplies and very likely short of time. At the very least, they needed a report on where the Shadovar might be.
The library was a fraction of what Netheril had known. The sprawling empire of wizards had gained more knowledge than mortals were meant to have, and so had collapsed under the weight of their own hubris. All that remained was the City of Shade, which escaped to another plane as Netheril fell. And now Shade wanted what Netheril had possessed. Shade felt entitled to an empire and all its trappings.
It is a wonder, Tam thought, as he reached the camp, that they haven’t found this place and torn it apart.
The camp was empty except for Farideh, sitting on her bedroll with an assortment of scrolls and books open in front of her. Tam cleared his throat, and she looked up guiltily. She all but threw the book in her lap onto the pile of scrolls … but not before Tam marked the map that lay nearest to the top, the descending spiral used to illustrate the layers of the Hells.
“Enjoying the rarities of Tarchamus?”
“While I can,” she said.
“Which, I hope, won’t be much longer,” he said. “We need to contact Everlund. You need to go back to Mehen.” She nodded absently. Tam frowned. “What are you doing with all of those scrolls?”
“Brin’s looking for you,” she said and did not answer his question.
Tam cursed to himself-he’d forgotten Brin was asking for something earlier. This is why you work alone, he thought.
You’re a link in a chain, a knot in a silk rug. You haven’t worked alone, truly, since you took up with the Harpers, Viridi might as well have said.
“Tell me what you’re doing,” he said. Farideh looked up at him skeptically, as if he were trying to trick her. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Good gods. When’s the last time you slept?”
“Just a bit ago,” she said. She looked past him. “You’re missing Brin.”
The younger man walked past the camp. Tam cursed again. “Stay here,” he said to Farideh. “We’re not done.” He sprinted to catch up with Brin, coming to a stop just before him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find you,” Tam said. “It’s been rather busy. But I’m …” Brin walked right past him, staring fixedly at something just ahead. “Farideh said you were looking for me,” Tam tried again. The younger man kept walking, his pace quickening.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
The hairs on the back of Tam’s neck stood on end. Something wasn’t right. He unpinned his holy symbol and started after Brin.
They followed the aisle for another thirty or forty feet, when Brin drifted right between two shelves. Tam sprinted to catch up, glimpsing the blue sleeve of the younger man’s shirt as he wove through the maze of shelves-left, then right, then right again. Tam stepped out into a narrow passage, towered over by shelves packed tightly with thick tomes. Brin was nowhere to be seen.
“Brin!” he shouted. He ran one direction for a dozen feet, then back the other way. The door that led between the shelves was all but invisible until he came right up on it. A narrow shelf of small leather-bound volumes, dripping a trim of ribbon placeholders, stuck out from its neighbors. Behind the books, Tam could see Brin, standing stock still, and peering through a gap in the shelf in front of him. He could also smell the corpses.
He pulled on the shelf, which swung open smoothly on hidden hinges, just as Brin cried out and leaped back from the shelf. Tam caught him, and he shouted again.
“It’s all right! It’s all right. What happened?”
Brin shook his head dumbly and swallowed hard as if he’d been overcome. “I don’t … Where are we?” He glanced back at the gap in the books, at the dead body of a man in inky leathers and a deep emerald cloak who lay sprawled on the floor, looking up at them with staring, hollow eyes. His belly was a ruin, rotting around a deep cut that his hand was still buried in. The stench was powerful but peculiar-the sweet rot of death smothered and blunted by a staleness, an almost muskiness …
“Oh, Loyal Torm,” Brin swore and clapped a hand over his mouth. Tam guided him back out the door and down to the ground.
“Put your head between your knees,” he instructed. “And breathe.” He pushed his sleeves up and went back behind the partition, fearing the worst with the scent of shadows in the air.