him with her dagger, weeping, and kept running.
When they finally reached daylight and burst into the ruins of Requiem, Agnus Dei fell to her knees. The scrolls fell from her arms, rolled across cracked cobblestones, and sizzled in the rain. Agnus Dei lowered her head, sobbing. Thunder rolled, and mud flowed around her.
Father knelt beside her, breath ragged. The rain streamed down his face. He embraced her, and Agnus Dei clung to him, weeping against his shoulder. He smoothed her hair.
"Their torture is over now," he whispered to her. "They are now among our forefathers in our halls beyond the stars."
Agnus Dei trembled. "There were so many. So many remained...."
Father nodded. "They bred in the tunnels."
Agnus Dei pulled her head back from his shoulder. She stared into his eyes, still holding him. "Papa, are they all dead now?"
He nodded. "They are. I promise."
It was long moments before she could stop trembling. She could still imagine those screams, the hisses, the eyeballs. Finally the rain softened, and she saw a rainbow over the ruins. Even here, in this land of ruins, skeletons, old curses and pain... even here there was beauty. She looked at the rainbow, and calmed her breath, and pulled herself free from Father's embrace.
"I burned most of the scrolls," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."
He squeezed her shoulder. "But we recovered a few scrolls. Let's look at them."
They pulled the scrolls from the mud and cleaned them as best they could. Several yards away, they found a mosaic floor. Most of the floor lay buried in mud. Bones, ash, and dragon teeth covered the rest. They brushed an area clean, revealing part of the mosaic; it showed a scene of dragons flying in sunset. Agnus Dei and Father unrolled the scrolls there and examined them.
They were badly burned. Several crumbed in their fingers. Others were burned beyond reading. A few had survived the fire, but they contained no knowledge of nightshades; one was a prayer scroll, three others contained musical notes, and another two traced the lineage of Requiem's kings and queens.
"We might have come all this way for nothing," Agnus Dei said, head hung low. She hugged herself in the cold and stared, eyes finally dry, at a broken statue of a maiden holding an urn.
"Here, daughter. Look at this." Father brushed off one scroll and unrolled it. At the very top, in delicate ink, appeared a drawing of a nightshade.
Agnus Dei gasped. "You found it, Father! You found the right scroll."
He gave her a wan smile. She wanted to jump onto him, to hug and kiss him, but froze. Father looked so tired. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks stubbly and haggard. For the first time, Agnus Dei realized that Father was growing old. He was no longer the young man who'd led Requiem to war. Gray filled his black curls, wrinkles appeared on his brow, and the cares of the world and a fallen race filled his eyes. She gave him a small kiss on that rough, prickly cheek.
"Let's see what it says," she said.
When they unrolled the scroll further, revealing its calligraphy, Agnus Dei frowned. Burn marks covered the parchment. Some bits had burned away completely. The scroll had more holes than a suit of chain mail. She groaned.
"There's not much left," Father said with a sigh.
They huddled over it, blowing ash and dirt away, brows furrowed. Only one paragraph was legible, and even that one was missing half its text. Agnus Dei read it over and over, but it made little sense as it was.
"In the days of the Night Horrors, King T______ite journeyed to the southern realms of G____nd sought the Loomers o_______olden pools. The Night Horrors stole the souls of Osanna, and cast them into the d___ness, and Ta__________________________omers, who were wise above all others in the land. He spoke with the Loomers, and prayed with them, and they crafted him th_________________e returned with th_________anna, an_____________m upon the Night Horrors. He tamed them, and drove them into Well of Night in the Marble City, and sealed it. He placed guards around it, armed wit___________________cape."
"What do you make of it, Father?" Agnus Dei asked, raising her eyes from the scroll. After reading it several times, it still made little sense to her.
He scratched his chin. The wind blew his cloak, which bore as many burn marks as the scrolls. "I think you'll agree that Night Horrors refers to nightshades."
Agnus Dei nodded. "That must be how the ancient Vir Requis called them."
"And Marble City