Phantom of the Library - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,65

should.

“Well, we shall see,” she said. “There is an expression, isn’t there, along the lines of how a house divided cannot stand? Maybe it’s true. But—I digress. You came here to ask for my help.”

“Do you know about the familiar covenants?” Byron asked.

“Ahh…that is something the human wizards did,” Marisa said. “I wonder if I can remember…”

“You don’t have to remember right now,” I said. “We just could really use your help.”

“I hate it when I can’t remember…”

“Helena is right. We’re going to the Ethereal wizard library in London,” Byron said. “The covenants are held there. Would you be able to help us get in?”

“Of course. Leave it to me. Back to the library, Byron?”

“It seems so.”

“London…” He conjured up the Way of Paths and looked at it for a moment. “This is the passage,” he said.

“I see. Look at you, Abiron! Already wielding your maps like you haven’t missed a day. I can’t even tell you what a proud and grateful sister I am to see you at your craft again.”

Byron shrugged modestly.

“Take my hands,” she said.

I slipped my hand into hers. Mine was calloused; hers was cool and delicate. Byron’s hands swallowed ours and both of us were sweating a bit. I was glad to know he was nervous too. I didn’t really want a god. I wanted someone who felt the same things I did. But Byron’s face didn’t show his nerves; his expression was confident and lifted to the sky, like he was ready to fly.

“Into the Fixed Plane we go,” Marisa said, and I shut my eyes before I could see it all melt away and make me dizzy.

When I opened them, I was in darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Byron

I smelled books before I could see them. Helena conjured a light to the tip of her wand and the soft light played on the spines of ancient books bound in leather and cloth. This room could have been a twin to the forgotten stacks where I found the Arcana as a young man and uncovered the course fate had set for me.

I was in my element. And I was brought back to my younger days, when I thought I was an ordinary incubus, working alongside Graham’s future grandmother. We were just eager kids, really. The ancient library of Sinistral was full of countless treasures, each more interesting than the last.

“How huge is this room?” Helena whispered, as the light from her wand illuminated endless rows of books, scrolls, maps, and stone tablets…centuries of wizard chronicles and lore.

“There’s an echo,” I said. “It must be very vast.”

“You sound a little too excited considering that we must be in considerable danger,” Helena said.

“I’m here,” Marisa said. “You’re safe. Just hurry. My powers weaken when I spend too much time in the Fixed Plane.”

“The covenant Piers was holding was like a stone tablet,” Helena said.

“Of course, if it was meant to be binding magic forever, they would set it in stone,” I agreed. “They should be among the oldest artifacts in the library. And it sounds very much as if they didn’t know what they had, much like my maps. I wonder…” I conjured my own small light and started leading the way, bypassing the books. The room was definitely a basement, with a musty windowless smell to match, and had to occupy the floor of a substantial building above. The shelves went on and on. All the aisles put together were probably a couple of miles.

Eventually, the light caught an entire wall of stone slabs resting in their own niches in a huge shelf. Hundreds of them, if not thousands. Many of the stones had writing etched on the side so they could be identified like the spine of a book. They also had identification tags for cataloguing. And much of the writing was in a language I recognized—Cyprium.

“I’m getting chills,” Helena said. “These must be so old that I’ve never seen anything like it. And I know old stuff… Byron, do you know what these are?”

“Of course,” I said. “But I’ve never seen so many. Each one of these is a spell from early European wizards. Many of them are probably obsolete now. The stones were used from ancient times but their usage faded around the time…”

Marisa nodded. “After the worlds parted, and wizards began to keep libraries. These stones were not like books you would share, but kept in private as a marker of a spell cast.”

“So were they found in archaeological digs and things like that?” Helena