He followed Arish down the stairs and into the underground tunnels.
Two hundred suns ago, King Farzand had built them as an escape route when Jantar’s army had trekked its way through the dunes to lay siege on the capital. But he never had to use them. As the army approached, a storm had come at night. It started as a whisper, a slight touch against the skin, but in a matter of minutes, it snarled and wreaked havoc on Jantar’s soldiers, making them easy pickings for Farzand’s skilled desert raiders. When morning came, Jantar’s army lay scattered and dead.
Farzand’s successor, Queen Jumi, had taken a liking to the mystery of the tunnels and ordered their expansion. Soon, a vast network of tunnels and chambers snaked underneath Palace Hill, slithering into the desert and the city. Here she built the Royal Library, a tall, cool chamber that housed ancient scrolls and precious books.
Leo breathed in the musty scent of timeworn paper as they entered the vast room.
With a push, Arish sent the orb up into the darkness to reveal bookcases that rose farther than Leo could see. Scrolls upon scrolls, spines among spines, packed together into the dusty shelves. As the light rose higher, more lamps floating quietly along the wall awakened until the library basked in a warm, gentle light.
Leo scanned the multiple shelves, dread crawling up his throat. How in heavens could he decipher the runes when he did not even know where to start?
He had never had much use for books. He visited the library rarely and never for very long. The first time, he had been hardly more than a child, accompanying his father as part of his tutelage about his heritage. The second, he had brought his new bride to show her the wealth and richness of information she had just gained access to. And the last was when, a few months after his queen’s death, Leo had returned to the place that had brought her so much joy.
Aahnah had loved books. She studied and read the scrolls. She knew how to navigate these shelves. At some point, she had learned the truth about Ravence—and then she had taken its secret to the grave.
And this library kept the ghost of her. He could feel her in here, his rani, his queen, his lovely Aahnah. She had touched these shelves. She had run her deft fingers across these scrolls. The thought of her, the mere breath of her memory, sent a vicious, wicked pain through Leo.
How many times had she asked him to work beside her in the library? How many times had he been neglectful, too distracted by the demands of the throne?
Leo traced the lip of a shelf with a trembling hand. What he wouldn’t do to see her now, reading in this tall chamber. He would push aside his engagements if only to hear her talk about the conspiracies of Alabore Ravence one last time in that low, lulling voice of hers that made any tale, no matter how ridiculous or unbelievable, possible.
“I suggest we begin by searching for information on the Immortals,” Arish said softly, pulling Leo from the past.
It was a wise suggestion. The Phoenix was an Immortal, and it was the symbol of Her feather that had been burned into the priest’s back.
“All right,” Leo said. Grief twisted his heart like a cold, miserable rag as they followed the curve of the shelves to the westernmost point. Golden script inscribed into the wood told them that shelves 1 to 322 housed texts and histories of the Immortals.
Staring up at the looming wall, Leo swallowed his sorrow. He did not wish to stay in this library longer than he needed.
He had been a young king, with only a few suns under his crown, when Aahnah told him that she had found a peculiar scroll.
“It tells a story about the creation of the world,” she said. “That the world began not with the Phoenix, but with three types of fire.”
He had been listening halfheartedly, his eyes fixed on updates about the recent flare of anarchists who called for the end of kings. They had become bolder in the last few months. Arish had suggested ignoring the anarchists, but Leo could not run the risk of insurgency, not when he had a baby on the way.
“Does it really?” he asked, gesturing a holo closer. It was information about a young royalist by the name of Jangir.
You need your own men, loyal toyou, not the throne, to be your eyes and ears in the kingdom, his father had told him.
He often didn’t take the advice of a man whose health and mind were deteriorating, but Leo had to admit that at least in this, his father was right. Or, to put it another way, he thought Jangir could be bribed to infiltrate the insurgent groups. Maybe he should talk to Muftasa…
“Are you listening to me?”
“What?” He glanced at his wife, his eyes falling to the bump blossoming beneath her kurta.
“Mother’s Gold, Leo.” Aahnah sighed and reached for a chair. He sprang up to help her, but she waved him away.
“Aahnah, the baby.”
“Yes, yes, the precious heir of Ravence. You only care to listen when I bring it up.” And though her tone was unfriendly, a tender smile played across her face. “I can feel her kicking.”
“What, now?”
“No, when I read. When I found the scroll, she began to kick harder.”
“Well, what did it have to say?” he asked.
Her eyes, so clear back then, brightened. She laced her fingers together and leaned forward, and as she began to talk, her voice rising with excitement, Leo felt a rush of love, warm and fierce.
