Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1)(64)

I had only seen the library from the outside. In fact, I had never been inside a library before, and nothing could have prepared me for the magnitude of the place. Rows and rows of shelves stretched through the building, some so tall that their tops were obscured by darkness. I would have been at a loss about where to begin, but fortunately, the library was not empty.

Leaving my guards at the front, élise and I walked towards the telltale glow of troll-light until I came upon a man bent over a large book, quill in hand. He leapt up at our approach, and I noticed he had an ink stain smeared across the bridge of his nose.

“My lady.” He bowed awkwardly and pushed his thick spectacles back up his nose. They promptly slipped back down again.

“Are you a librarian, sir?” I asked politely.

“Fourth librarian, if it please you, my lady.”

I didn’t overly care if he was fourth or fortieth, so long as he could help me find what I needed. “I am hoping you can help me with some… er…” I glanced at élise, who was examining the titles on one of the shelves, “research.”

“On what subject, my lady?”

I took the librarian’s arm and led him deeper into the stacks. élise seemed content to stay where she was, which was fine with me. I didn’t want to involve her unnecessarily. “Is there anything written on the Duchesse Sylvie’s prophesy?”

His eyes widened. “No, my lady. She would not consent to being questioned about the details. But His Highness was present – he knows precisely the words she spoke.”

I frowned. “What about the Fall, then? Or… the witch?”

“Anushka.” His expression was grim – this was not a topic the trolls liked to discuss.

“Was that her name?” I had never heard her called anything but “the witch”.

“Indeed, my lady. She was foreign-born, obviously, from the northern part of the continent. A favored courtesan and entertainer of the court of King Alexis III.”

We reached a pedestal with a glass case sitting on it. Inside there was a book, which the librarian removed: Chronicles of the Fall. He flipped carefully through the heavily illustrated pages and then paused. “This is her.”

I leaned over to get a better look and gasped. The redheaded woman on the page stared out at me with brilliant blue eyes.

“A few years older, but the resemblance is uncanny,” the librarian agreed.

“It is indeed,” I breathed. “Tell me sir, what is your name?”

“Martin, my lady.”

“Martin, will you leave me with this book and seek out others that might be of assistance to me?”

“Gladly, my lady.”

Before he went, he set the ponderous book on a table for me. I started at the beginning, the morning of the Fall. Just before noon, all of Trollus was alerted of their impending doom by the echoing crack of thunder. As countless tons of rock spilled down the valley, tens of thousands of trolls lifted their hands and magic to protect themselves and, in doing so, created a collective shield that protected the city as the rock blocked out the sky.

I pored over the illustrations showing beautiful, terrified troll faces with their arms thrown skyward as the mountain poured down on them. The drawings showed humans, too, all of them crouched in terror at the feet of the trolls. Helpless.

The city was organized into shifts of trolls holding up the rock and trolls digging a way out. Bodies of those killed by falling rocks rotted in the streets and the human population was quickly stricken by plague, which was exacerbated by famine and lack of clean water. The humans began to die out, and only the favored few were given what they needed to survive.

Drawings showed emaciated humans on their knees begging, corpses littering the streets around them. And in the midst of them stood the trolls, their eyes focused on the rocks overhead, not on the misery surrounding them. I shuddered to think of what it must have been like: to be starving in the dark, to be shown no mercy because my life was considered worthless.

It took them four weeks to dig through the rock. King Alexis was the first to cross into the sunlight with his human mistress, Anushka, at his side. But as he turned to welcome his people to freedom, Anushka slit his throat and uttered the malediction binding the trolls to the confines of Trollus for as long as she drew breath. All the surviving humans walked into the sun, but no troll could pass the boundaries of the rock fall.

But why? Was it because she’d grown bitter over the way her fellow humans were treated during the crisis? That didn’t make sense – by breaking the mountain, she was the one who’d put both races in such dire straits in the first place. A personal vendetta, then? Revenge against the trolls for something that had happened to her? By all descriptions, she was treated even better than the Queen. What could Alexis have done to inspire such an enormous act of evil?

Martin reappeared and set a stack of books down next to me. “You may find these interesting,” he said.

I nodded and pointed to the enormous portraits lining the library walls. “Which is King Alexis?”

“The Third?”

“Yes. The one Anushka killed.”

Martin’s light flew along the portraits until he found the one he was looking for. I rose and made my way over to it. King Alexis was handsome, with strong, straight features, and black hair that fell to his shoulders, but his good looks were marred by his haughty expression.