“I should have warned you to dress more warmly for our visit here,” he muttered in self-deprecation, and then wrapped an arm around her.
We finally reached the first level of the archives where an older man with pale skin and a long grey beard sat hunched over a desk. The candles on his desk created a flickering halo of light in the oppressive darkness.
“Ah! Your Majesty! That time already?” cried the old man as he tried to straighten, but he seemed eternally bent from leaning over his desk so much.
Chronos was the mysterious Keeper of the Archives who never left his post. Some even said that he was part of the archives somehow now. No one had any idea how old he was or how long he had been in this place.
“It is good to see you, Chronos. I hope you are well,” Riordan inquired as carefully as he had the last time we were here. Spending so much time alone in the dark was not something my king could conceive of, and I knew the old man had rattled him the last time we had come down. Riordan questioned his sanity.
“Very well! Tell me, what brings you to the archives? Can I help you find something?” Chronos asked eagerly.
Some might have assumed his excitement was from having visitors, but I suspected he was just trying to get us moving so he could return to his solitude.
“The Sylvan,” said Riordan, and the request seemed to genuinely intrigue the strange Keeper.
“The Sylvan!Oh my!” he crowed entirely too loudly, and it echoed. “Nowthatis an interesting request!”
“Do we have anything?” Riordan asked.
“We do, but it is not much,” Chronos said as he finally scrambled from his seat, still hunching over in a way that looked painful. “Come along!” he urged, snatching up a lantern with which to guide us to what we sought.
Chronos began lighting sconces on the ends of wornbookshelves along the way, and the ancient, underground library slowly took shape from the darkness all around us. All I could see at first were the weathered runners on the stone floors and the ends of the stacks on either side of the aisle. But as light illuminated more and more, I could see the shelves and cubbies filled with books and scrolls. They had to stand at least fifty feet tall with ladders that could be pulled across the fronts to reach upper sections, and above that was a cavernous ceiling. Between shelves were arched doorways into entire rooms left in the dark, and I even saw balconies overlooking the other levels that plunged into pitch black.
We descended a wide set of stairs with no discernable walls on either side to another level and passed through a sitting area into more stacks. On and on we went through all manner of levels and rooms. Some had endless rows of books while others contained displays of art and weapons and stone tablets. One floor even consisted entirely of a massive aquarium, which we could only pass through by way of a long glass tunnel.
“What… um… used to live inthere?” Amira asked, her voice a whisper as she stared up at the black water.
“Used to?” Chronos chirped back, glancing at her with a wicked smile that made me and Riordan instantly sidle closer to her sides. “Whatever makes you believe they do not still reside within? Actually, perhaps we should not walk so close to the glass,” he added as an afterthought, and we all shifted wordlessly into the middle of the hall.
I was quite happy to move on to another level that was filled with giant marble statues that stood about twice the height of me or Riordan. The gargantuan pieces seemed to loom out of the darkness as the firelight fell on them.
“You could get lost down here forever,” Amira said in awe as she stared up at the underside of what must be a life-sized statue of a dragon.
“Certainly! Plenty of old magics have gone feral after being locked down here so long, and I suspect they would rejoice ina new plaything,” Chronos told her. The way he said it made me wonder if he was actually one of those ancient magics given form. “Should such things seek you, mind that you stay close to His Majesty, for everything is bound to his bloodline,” Chronos added reassuringly.
“You keep everything immaculate here,” I observed just to change the chilling subject. Although much of the fabric and wood were worn, there was not even a speck of dust anywhere that I had yet seen.
“As I said, there is powerful magic here,” said the old man with a deep pride.
We finally reached the place that Chronos was leading us to, which seemed to be one of the smaller rooms.
“Here we are! This is all that we have on the Sylvan,” he said as he swept a hand over the room. Although it was a little stuffy, the dark wood of the mantels and shelves, along with the plush furniture and a table with trinkets and scrolls on it seemed oddly homey.
“It is messy,” Riordan noted.
“Yes, it would seem that the last person to come here might have been in a bit of a hurry,” mused Chronos.
“What is over there?” asked Amira, drawing all of our attention to a small stack of cubbies in the corner. It was no more than a foot wide and three feet tall with a sparse collection of scrolls, and yet, I knew exactly what she was referencing. “They feel… cold,” she said with a shiver.
I concurred as I was drawn nearer out of curiosity and saw strange symbols etched into the shelves.
“Ah,” said Chronos with gravity, “those would be all we have on the counterparts to the Sylvan,” he explained.
“The Mavaari,” Amira guessed before looking at me and then at Riordan excitedly. “Rian’s ancestors.”
“Every scroll here is written in dead tongues, but themetafrázowill help,” Chronos offered. He indicated one of several circular glass pieces on the table, which I knew wouldtranslate the words beneath it into Aeolian.
“Thank you,” Riordan said, dismissing the old man who left us with the lantern. I took it and got to work lighting all the sconces in the room while Riordan seemed to try and decide where to get started. Amira had already wandered over to the scrolls about the Mavaari Elves.
