Lilac and Garin stood in an enormous, circular room boasting a high, alabaster ceiling carved with gilded cherubs and other strange creatures not glimpsed in any sort of cathedral she’d seen. Torches lined the room, but so did several balls of blue-white light, floating throughout the shelves as if they were wandering patrons themselves. Several arches and pillars of the same pristine marble that made up the floor could be seen leading into different rooms and wings through the initial columns of shelves.
The sanctum they stood in offered shelf upon shelf of tome, folder, and scroll. Stacks of loose papers sat off to their right, beside boxes she assumed they’d be sorted into. The left bore shelves filled with heavier, thicker books, dyed in an array of deep jewel tones whose spines were inscribed with emblazoned script. Bottles of dry ingredients peppered the shelves sparingly, along with the occasional skull—human and animal.
What spanned before them was no mere library, Lilac realized, inhaling deeply the aromas of aged leather and worn parchment.
This was anarchive.
There was rustling at the head of the room; directly across from thefoot of the spiral staircase, there was a worn oak desk. A stack of papers floated, thumbing through and rearranging itself.
A low rumble warning began in Garin’s chest as his hand found hers, and the papers jumped—then put themselves down. “Oh, my. My apologies,” said the same voice that had rumbled up from the pond—quieter and more bearable this time. It no longer echoed in her skull.
There was a clang of metal, and a man appeared in front of the desk. Sort of.
The creature that stood before them seemed half-something her anglers might bring back from a long seafaring expedition—and half-human. Pale, green-blue skin, palm-sized fins and gaping gills that flanked his cheeks, right where his ears would be. Long gray hair hung down to its mid back with twigs and moist seaweed tangled in it. Lilac swore she’d spotted an orange piece of coral—yet, his features were clean cut, sharp and probing. He was strangely, oddly handsome.
Standing at nearly Garin’s height, it regarded them with saucer-sized, bulging, toad-like eyes at the front of its face above a wide mouth—with several rows of wide, jagged teeth, not like a vampire’s fangs but a shark’s.
Justlike the Morgens’.
The creature shrugged further into an oversized brown coat that had seen better days and placed a thick banded circlet with emeralds encrusting each spire down on the desk, and folded into a brisk bow. Lilac swore she could hear his bones creak, despite his nimble movements, like a fish in water.
“Welcome to my library,” he said, speaking with a distant yet familiar accent. Amortalone. “We’ll keep this quick and simple, won’t we?”
Lilac had heard the legends, which said the Bugul Noz had once been a guardian of sacred groves, but grew too lonely, too monstrous in its mourning to show its face. Some, according to her father, had said it walked after nightfall, weeping for those who strayed from their paths. Others would claim it stole memories to preserve them from the rot of passing time.
She’d never heard of it living underwater—in the courtyards of castles,hersnonetheless. But Lilac believed the last part now.
“This place is…” Garin trailed off, breathless as he gazed up at the ceiling. “Has it always been here?”
The Bugul Noz smiled at him, unsettlingly wide. “Astute as always, my boy. Her Majesty’s little lake is but a door. You sense that this is not of the world—your world, anyway. The many ponds and waterways ofBretenare accesses to my library and what lies beyond—with an invitation, that is. I don’t get much company.”
Garin snorted, but the sound was tight. He stiffened beside her. “I can’t see why.”
“It’s been a while—several decades since I’ve seen anyone, actually.” The comment was forlorn. “But I have a feeling that’ll soon change.” The Bugul Noz rubbed his slimy hands together. “And you two are most certainly invited, esteemed guests of mine.”
Lilac grabbed the hilt of her blade—but a low rumble shook the marble floor.
At the center of the atrium, a pale statue rose from the floor. It was covered in moss and roots—a half-nude woman adorned a towering, brittle crown. Iridescent scales covered patches of her body, and her hair had been meticulously carved in a way that captured the essence of the motion of it underwater, billowing out from behind her.
Itlookedlike stone, but something about it pulsed faintly.
Its hands were open in front of it. On it sat two small tomes—one bound in a deep red bark-colored hide, its clasp etched in gold. The other was a green leather book.
It looked familiar, though she couldn’t place where she’d seen it.
“Your wedding gifts,” he sang. “Two books in your favor.”
“We aren’t—” Lilac exchanged a reddened glance with Garin.
“We don’t need your books,” Garin said curtly, eyes fixed on the statue’s offering. “No one asked for them.”
“And I requested the company of the Breton queen and her vampire. I wasn’t expecting a Strigoi, yet here we are.” The Bugul Noz turned back to Lilac and offered a kind smile. “I collect books, letters, passages of experience etched in time and tome, everything one can read that is lost to the Breton sea, from the Channel to the seasouest. The Argent River, lakes, marshes. Ponds,” he added, looking extremely proud. “Oh, come on. It is merely a gift, and what one chooses to do with a gift is entirely up to fate herself, is it not?”
Garin exhaled in frustration. He marched forward to snatch the books,but another presence stirred, and the base of the statue began creaking. Beneath the altar, before their very eyes, the roots unfurled to reveal an inscription that had been grown—not carved—into the moss itself.
No truth is dredged without the tide taking its due.
No memory is opened that a forest does not mourn.
