Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,48

she focused again upon the texts Nousha had dug up for her hours ago.

Yrene and the Head Librarian had never been close, and Yrene was certainly not inclined to seek out the woman if she spotted her in the mess hall, but … Nousha was fluent in fifteen languages, some of them dead, and had trained at the famed Parvani Library on the western coast, nestled amid the lush and spice-rich lands outside Balruhn.

The City of Libraries, they called Balruhn. If the Torre Cesme was the domain of healers, the Parvani was the domain of knowledge. Even the great road that linked Balruhn to the mighty Sister-Road, the main artery through the continent that flowed from Antica all the way to Tigana, had been named for it: the Scholars’ Road.

Yrene didn’t know what had brought Nousha here all those decades ago, or what the Torre had offered her to stay, but she was an invaluable resource. And for all of her unsmiling nature, Nousha had always found Yrene the information she needed, no matter how outlandish the request.

Tonight, the woman had not looked pleased when Yrene had approached her in the mess hall, apologies falling from her lips for interrupting the librarian’s meal. Yrene might have waited until the morning, but she had lessons tomorrow, and Lord Westfall after that.

Nousha had met Yrene here after finishing her meal, and had listened, long fingers folded in front of her flowing gray robes, to Yrene’s story—and needs:

Information. Any she could find.

Wounds from demons. Wounds from dark magic. Wounds from unnatural sources. Wounds that left echoes but did not appear to continue to wreak havoc upon the victim. Wounds that left marks but no scar tissue.

Nousha had found them. Stack after stack of books and bundles of scrolls. She’d piled them on the desk in silence. Some were in Halha. Some in Yrene’s own tongue. Some in Eyllwe. Some were …

Yrene scratched her head at the scroll she’d weighted with the smooth onyx stones from the jar set on each library desk.

Even Nousha had admitted she did not recognize the strange markings—runes of some sort. From where, she had no inkling, either, only that the scrolls had been wedged beside the Eyllwe tomes in a level of the library so deep beneath the ground that Yrene had never ventured there.

Yrene ran a finger over the marking before her, tracing its straight lines and curving arcs.

The parchment was old enough that Nousha had threatened to flay Yrene alive if she got any food, water, or drink on it. When Yrene had asked just how old, Nousha had shook her head.

A hundred years? Yrene had asked.

Nousha had shrugged and said that judging by the location, the type of parchment, and ink pigment, it was over ten times that.

Yrene cringed at the paper she was so flagrantly touching, and eased the weighting stones off the corners. None of the books in her own language had yielded anything valuable—more old wives’ warnings about ill-wishers and spirits of air and rot.

Nothing like what Lord Westfall had described.

A faint, distant click echoed from the gloom to her right, and Yrene lifted her head, scanning the darkness, ready to leap onto her chair at the first sign of a scurrying mouse.

It seemed even the library’s beloved Baast Cats—thirty-six females, no more, no less—could not keep out all vermin, despite their warrior-goddess namesake.

Yrene again scanned the gloom to her right, cringing, wishing she could summon one of the beryl-eyed cats to go hunting.

But no one summoned a Baast Cat. No one. They appeared when and where they willed, and not a moment before.

The Baast Cats had dwelled in the Torre library for as long as it had existed, yet none knew where they had come from, or how they were replaced when age claimed them. Each was as individual as any human, save for those beryl-colored eyes they each bore, and the fact that all were just as prone to curl up in a lap as they were to shun company altogether. Some of the healers, old and young alike, swore the cats could step through pools of shadow to appear on another level of the library; some swore the cats had been caught pawing through the pages of open books—reading.

Well, it’d certainly be helpful if they bothered to read less and hunt more. But the cats answered to no one and nothing, except, perhaps, their namesake, or whatever god had found a quiet home in the library, within Silba’s shadow.