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. To offend one Baast Cat was to insult them all, and even though Yrene loved most animals—with the exception of some insects—she had been sure to treat the cats kindly, occasionally leaving morsels of food, or providing a belly rub or ear scratch whenever they deigned to command them.

But there was no sign of those green eyes glinting in the dark, or of a scurrying mouse fleeing their path, so Yrene loosed a breath and set aside the ancient scroll, carefully placing it at the edge of the desk before pulling an Eyllwe tome toward her.

The book was bound in black leather, heavy as a doorstop. She knew a little of the Eyllwe language thanks to living so close to its border with a mother who spoke it fluently—certainly not from the father who had hailed from there.

None of the Towers women had ever married, preferring either lovers who left them with a present that arrived nine months later or who perhaps stayed a year or two before moving on. Yrene had never known her father, never learned anything about who he was other than a traveler who had stopped at her mother’s cottage for the night, seeking shelter from a wild storm that swept over the grassy plain.

Yrene traced her fingers over the gilt title, sounding out the words in the language she had not spoken or heard in years.

“The … The …” She tapped her finger on the title. She should have asked Nousha. The librarian had already promised to translate some other texts that had caught her eye, but … Yrene sighed again. “The …” Poem. Ode. Lyric—“Song,” she breathed. “The Song of …” Start. Onset—“Beginning.”

The Song of Beginning.

The demons—the Valg—were ancient, Lord Westfall had said. They had waited an eternity to strike. Part of near-forgotten myths; little more than bedside stories.

Yrene flipped open the cover, and cringed at the unfamiliar tangle of writing within the table of contents. The type itself was old, the book not even printed on a press. Handwritten. With some word variations that had long since died out.

Lightning flashed again, and Yrene rubbed at her temple as she leafed through the musty, yellow-lined pages.

A history book. That’s all it was.

Her eye snagged on a page, and she paused, backtracking until the illustration reappeared.

It had been done in sparing colors: blacks, whites, reds, and the occasional yellow.

All painted by a master’s hand, no doubt an illustration of whatever was written beneath it.

The illustration revealed a barren crag, an army of soldiers in dark armor kneeling before it.

Kneeling before what was atop the crag.

A towering gate. No wall flanking it, no keep behind it. As if someone had built the gateway of black stone out of thin air.

There were no doors within the archway. Only swirling black nothing. Beams of it shot from the void, some foul corruption of the sun, falling upon the soldiers kneeling before it.

She squinted at the figures in the foreground. Their bodies were human, but the hands clutching their swords … Clawed. Twisted.

“Valg,” Yrene whispered.

Thunder cracked in answer.

Yrene scowled at the swaying lantern as the reverberations from the thunderhead rumbled beneath her feet, up her legs.

She flipped through the pages until the next illustration appeared. Three figures stood before the same gate, the drawing too distant to make out any features beyond their male bodies, tall and powerful.

She ran a finger over the caption below and translated:

Orcus. Mantyx. Erawan.

Three Valg Kings.

Wielders of the Keys.

Yrene chewed on her bottom lip. Lord Westfall had not mentioned such things.

But if there was a gate … then it would need a key to open. Or several.

If the book was correct.

Midnight chimed in the great clock of the library’s main atrium.