Antebellum Awakening (The Network Series #2)(77)

“Over here,” she said, gesturing with a jerk of her head to a lonely bookshelf against the far wall, swathed in shadows. She pulled a wooden chest off the bottom shelf. “The oldest records that the Central Network has are here. They are mostly first-hand accounts of the Mortal Wars. Rachael told me that the High Priestess has Esmelda’s journal.”

My eyes popped open. “Esmelda’s journal? Really?”

Leda nodded.

“That’s what Rachael said. I don’t know if it’s true or not.” She grabbed the lid and pulled it open. It protested with an ominous groan. Dozens of scrolls tied with twine or leather strips awaited inside.

“No books,” I observed, my hope sinking.

Leda shook her head. “I told you we didn’t have any. Besides, they used mostly scrolls back then. The magic and culture were different back around the Mortal wars. It was a rougher, less precise magic. They used it for big things, not little ones.”

Probably more powerful that way, I thought of saying, my mind slipping to Michelle’s reluctance to use magic for anything but what was necessary.

I knelt in front of the chest and pulled a scroll out. Miss Mabel had me learn several of the ancient languages while earning one of the marks in my circlus, the Esbat. I’d studied Almorran and Declan, two secret languages that few people inside or outside our Network ever cared to learn. It wasn’t until now that I realized how strange it was that the Almorran language was even a part of the Esbat curriculum. Why would they want us to learn the language of a race destroyed because of inherent evil?

“Are any of these scrolls written in Almorran?” I asked.

Leda’s face clouded over.

“Perhaps. Mostly Declan, I think. In addition to the common tongue that we speak now, Esmelda and her people spoke Declan. The Almorrans used their own language, of course. What book are you looking for again?”

Her eyes had taken on a suspicious glint.

“I’m looking for a book about a book,” I corrected, shuffling through the scrolls, avoiding her studious eyes. Surely there had to be some information in the aged papers. “It’s an Almorran book.”

Leda bit her bottom lip. “Are you sure it’s not a scroll?”

I recalled the conversation between Miss Mabel and the mystery woman in the Western Network. It was hard to know what I was working with. Really, I sought a legend, a tale conjured in the darkest night meant to scare children. But I couldn’t be sure anymore that reality wasn’t just an extension of what I once thought was fantasy.

Honestly, how difficult can it be to find a book?

“I’m sure.”

One particularly ragged scroll stuck out. I grabbed the thin paper and unrolled it while Leda shifted on her feet and dazed out into one of her visions. The paper of the scroll was brittle. It had been curled so long I had a difficult time holding it open without shattering it. The ink had faded, but I could just make out a few words in Almorran.

“It’s a letter,” I said. Leda shook her head, snapping out of her vision. She stood up.

“I have to go,” she said. “Come on. We need to leave.”

“No!” I cried too loudly and lowered my voice. “I can’t go yet. I just found a scroll that may help.”

“I have an appointment I can’t be late for,” Leda said.

“I’ll stay without you. I promise I’ll be quiet and leave soon. Please, Leda?”

She hesitated, one foot already headed toward the doorway.

“What are you going to say if a librarian finds you in here?”

“I’ll tell them that I overheard the incantation from a different librarian. I’ll be fast, I promise. I just want to look through these scrolls.”

“Fine,” she muttered, one finger raised in warning. “Make it fast.”

She cast one last look at me over her shoulder, then left by the entrance we’d come in through. It whispered shut behind her and I dove into the tattered scrolls with earnest. Most of them were letters. Fathers to sons. A witch to a mortal, warning of a raid on his village. A few lovers. Two of the scrolls were notes from a meeting with Coven Leaders. I couldn’t read at least five of them. Time and humidity had taken their final toll, blurring out the words entirely. The pile of unreadable scrolls grew, as did the pile of scrolls that didn’t help me at all. It wasn’t until I unfurled the second to last scroll that I found a clue, a little note hidden in a line of a letter from an Almorran witch to his wife.

There was a great fire in the library, Anjel, started by our enemies. Almost all the books are gone. Oh, how I wept! The Great Histories of the World, as transcribed by Coven Leaders of the past, all burned into ashes. A few of our Almorran treasures have been lost as well, the Book of Spells amongst them. I tried to salvage as much as I could from the wreckage, but most had turned to soot and cinder. The loss of our connections to those that have gone before us are deep and devastating indeed. We can never regain our lost knowledge. No, never.

I sucked in a deep breath. The Book of Spells. Like the wicked Almorran priests of legend and lore, it was almost a myth. The dark magic that defined the Almorran race was reputed to have existed in one grimoire. All the spells and incantations, all the secret potions and charms, gathered as a single volume. But, as the letter said, it had been lost.

Or so the stories went.