Chapter 15

Sunder consulted his notebook and tucked it back in his jacket with exasperation. “The last statue, which I have not seen, requires one of those staircases that makes me uncomfortable. Especially with an exalted presence in our midst, I hesitate. Perhaps, the prince would agree to wait in safety while we confirm the path?”

“No,” the prince declared with grimness. “We are close, and I will not run in fear now. Why do you fear these stairs?”

Sunder shrugged and shook his head, saying nothing.

Danel sighed before speaking. “Some of the stairwells are dynamic. They change direction or floor, or even location among the corridors of the Library of Ibados. Some are easy to predict because they only go between two landings. Others are more freeform, and a few are mind boggling. The power of the gods cannot be dismissed.”

“Still, I came to find the answer,” the prince. “I insist we continue.”

“Which staircase, Sunder?”

“Sixty-eighth hallway, east side,” he said softly. “We go up and then we descend again. This path is marked as particularly dangerous.”

They walked down the corridor to the expected staircase. The post read one floor up, which they took eagerly. They emerged in another basement corridor, one that Danel did not recognize, his curiosity unfurled. He made a mental note to return to this entrance at a later date. He led them back downstairs.

“How?” exclaimed the astonished prince. “The staircase didn’t change. I watched it and walked down the recognizable steps.”

“Such is the power of the gods,” Sunder said, bowing in reverence. “Weapons at the ready. We know there is danger, and we don’t know what.”

Danel read the markings on the walls. “We are in a different corridor, but in the same hallway. There is a symbol here I don’t recognize, three triangles with two on the bottom and one at the top balancing on their apexes. Next to it is a truncated arrow pointing northward.”

“Northward, then,” the prince said. “What do you think the three triangles signify.”

“Until we have more evidence, danger is the best guess,” Danel said.

Sunder led the way and Danel brought up the rear. The corridor was different, and it took Danel a moment to figure out why. The walls were tightly fitted, more so than in other parts of the basement he had seen. None of the great stones had the natural rounding he was used to seeing. The seams were so thin that when he ran his finger on them, he could hardly feel them. He wondered if this stretch of the corridor was hermetically sealed.

“There is an archway ahead,” Sunder announced. They picked up the pace.

The archway towered over their heads. A gargoyle perched on the keystone of the arch, looking down at them. His mouth was open, showing four fangs and a lolling tongue. Two sharply pointed ears perched on either side of its bony head while its body looked ready to spring down upon the unwary. The steel doors had a bar across them, a roughhewn plank reinforced with bands of steel. In the middle of both steel doors was an etching of the three triangles.

“This is not good,” Sunder grumbled. “Not good at all.”

All three grasped the bar and lifted it out of its cradle. The weight was a surprise and all of them struggled to rest the bar on the floor without dropping it first. Behind the bar was a small handle, typical of doors elsewhere in the Library of Ibados. The familiarity of the handle was incongruous with the door and archway, making the handle stand out as unusual.

Sunder grabbed the handle and pushed it down. Danel heard the interior bars release above and below. With a significant push, Sunder pushed the doors open.

The room soared above their heads. In front of them was the angel with a sword in a scabbard on its hip and a shield slung down its back, its wings were spread out above their heads. The eyes were blindfolded, and her human feet were unshod. The angel stood in the middle of a round bronze basin, which sat on a pedestal. The angel stood on a small foundation, that raised its feet above the rim of the bowl. The white marble statue captured the angel holding an amphora in its arms, tilting it to pour the contents into the basin. The basin was dry.

There were three chambers, each centered on the three walls of the room. Above each entrance was another gargoyle ready to leap upon the people below. Words were inscribed on the lintel just below each gargoyle. The one on the right was Rydallic letters, and if Danel remembered correctly, they were Rydall-A alphabet, the oldest of that family of languages.

Sunder had walked over to the left chamber, and Danel watched him shake his head.

“It is here,” the prince shouted. “The Archive of the Manukyan Plague; the symbols are clear to read.”

Sunder rushed over. “Do not jump inside! These gargoyles are warnings, and we must be on our guard. Yes, you have found your long-sought treasure, but let us ensure that you will retrieve it and return whole.”

The prince’s face of throttling anger morphed into astonishment. “Really? You think...?”

Danel stepped up to his side. “In there are the records of the most dangerous plague your kingdom has ever known. Whatever your ancestors learned of the plague, they thought it was so important and dangerous that they sought to have that learning lodged in the basement of the Library of Ibados. The plague itself could be in there. Let us honor your ancestors by adhering to the cautions they put in place.”

The prince raised an eyebrow. “You claimed you were from a lowly family of horse traders. Your words have me thinking otherwise.”

“I didn’t say lowly, my prince,” Danel said. “I may have hinted they had some underhanded ways about them, but they had many worthy lessons to teach, and I drank those lessons like good sour beer. Please, allow Sunder to enter first; this is one of his specialties.”

Sunder tapped the stones with an uneven cadence; he even rapped the gargoyle. The room was all stone. Clay baskets with lids, typical for storing scrolls, lay on the shelves on two sides of the room. The back of the room was a map molded into the plaster, that must have been executed when the plaster was drying. In the middle of the room was a large stone table.

“There is a dynasty symbol above the door,” Sunder called out, “and there is a guild sigil on the ceiling in the corner. To the best of my ability, this room is clear of traps. You may enter but stay on your guard.”

The prince stepped into the room with a new sense of caution. He looked up at the seal above the door and confirmed that it was the symbol of the old regime. As the prince took in the room, Danel entered and began counting the number of baskets; there were forty of them with eighteen on one side and twenty-two on the other. Each clay basket had a pictogram etched into it.

“Where do I start?” the prince asked.

“Can you read the writing etched on the front?” Danel suggested.

The prince walked over to the eighteen baskets. “This one reads, ‘Three Sisters Mountain’ and the next one says, ‘Two Rivers.’ What?”

“Towns or regions,” Danel guessed. “Those baskets contain the reports from these areas. If the cure is buried in the reports, our search will be prolonged. Let us see what is on the other side.”

The prince took a moment in front of the map before standing before the shelves on the other side. “This one here,” he tapped a basket on the third shelf, “says Dr. Li Hue.”

Danel looked at Sunder, who gave his silent approval. “Allow me to move the basket, my prince, and then we can examine the contents.” Danel pulled a pair of leather gloves from his backpack and put them on. He lifted the lid and peered inside. “I see two scrolls.” He rested the lid on the floor before lifting the paper out.” The paper was wood pulp, and the binding was a woven grass ribbon.

The prince went to reach for the documents and Danel swerved away from him before he could touch it. “Gloves,” Danel said. “We must not touch anything in this room without our gloves. They could have easily brought the plague with them.”

“Ah, I feel like an amateur,” the prince declared.

“I feel like a trained Librarian, and the training was long, hard, and deliberate,” Danel said. “You are not an amateur if you can read these pictograms. You are an esteemed visitor who has not been introduced to our protocols.”

The prince reached into his jacket and produced a pair of fine linen gloves. Together they opened the first scroll. The prince read the words with his finger guiding him for a few minutes. “I think this is an autopsy report. He describes cutting open the body, but I don’t know most of these terms except for the heart. He keeps repeating the word black, which makes sense. Our own doctors report that one form of the plague, the slower one which takes three or four days to kill a person, turns the insides of the stricken person black. He could be describing the same plague.”

“Let’s try the next scroll,” Danel suggested.

They unfurled the scroll only to discover that half of the scroll was empty. Even more, the original handwriting stopped, and another hand began recording. The second writer was not as neat. The prince began reading.

“He says he has done twenty autopsies; body-knife-look-think is the constructed pictogram for autopsy. He is sick with the Black Sickness. He says rats, mice, and cats are also dead. He thinks the cats got sick from the mice and rats. He says the Black Sickness comes from rats and mice. These are his last words.”

“Who wrote the other words?” Sunder asked, leaning over the back of the desk.

The prince continued to read. “I think, I guess, his daughter. She says it is not the rats but the ... things on them. I don’t know the word.”

“Rats have fleas and lice, and the bite of a rat can cause a life-threatening infection,” Danel said offhandedly. “Does she offer a cure?”

“No, she ends with the statement that her father died, and his body was burned. We can confirm that this handwriting is his daughter though.”

“We keep looking,” Danel said, rolling up the scrolls and retying them. He placed them back in their box and put the lid back. “Which box next?”