Crown of Midnight

Death had been here. And not too long ago. If this place were as ancient as Gavin and Brannon, most of the cloth would be dust.

She looked at the three cells that lined the short hallway. There was one more door at the end, which hung crookedly on its one remaining hinge. Darkness filled the void beyond.

But it was the third cell that held her interest.

The iron door to the third cell had been smashed, its surface dented and folded in upon itself. But not from the outside.

Celaena raised Damaris before her as she faced the open cell.

Whoever had been within had broken loose.

A quick sweep of her torch across the threshold revealed nothing save for bones—piles of bones, most of them splintered beyond recognition.

She snapped her attention back to the hallway. Nothing moved.

Gingerly, she stepped into the cell.

Iron chains dangled from the walls, broken off where manacles would have been. The dark stone was covered in white marks; dozens and dozens of long, deep gouges in groups of four.

Fingernails.

She turned around to face the broken cell door. There were countless marks on it.

How could someone make such lines in iron? In stone?

She shuddered and quickly stepped out of the cell.

She glanced back the way she had come, which glowed with the torches she’d lit, and then at the dark, open space that led onward.

You’re near the center of the spiral. Just see what it is—see if it yields any answers. Elena said to look for clues …

She swung Damaris in her hand a few times—only to loosen her wrist, of course. Rolling her neck, she entered the gloom.

There were no torch brackets here. The seventh portal revealed only a short passageway and one open door. An eighth gate.

The walls on either side of the eighth door were damaged and claw-marked. Her head gave a violent throb, then quieted as she stepped nearer.

Beyond the portal lay a spiral staircase that led upward, so high that she couldn’t see the top. A straight ascent into darkness.

But to where?

The stairwell stank, and she held Damaris before her as she ascended the steps, taking care to avoid the fallen stones that littered the ground.

Up and up and up she climbed, grateful for all her training. Her headache only grew worse, but when she reached the top, she forgot about fatigue, forgot about pain.

She raised the torch. Shimmering obsidian walls surrounded her, reaching high, high, high—so high that she couldn’t see the ceiling. She was inside some sort of chamber at the bottom of a tower.

Twining through the strange stone walls, greenish veins glittered in the torchlight. She had seen this material before. Seen it—

The king’s ring. The ring on Perrington’s finger. And Cain’s …

She touched the stone, and a shock went through her, her head pounding so badly she gagged. The Eye of Elena gave a pulse of blue light but quickly died, as if the light itself had been sucked toward the stone and devoured.

She staggered back toward the stairs.

Gods above. What is this?

As if in response, a boom shuddered through the tower, so loud that she jumped back. It echoed and echoed, turning metallic.

She raised her gaze to the darkness above.

“I know where I am,” she whispered as the sound subsided.

The clock tower.

Chapter 44

Dorian stared at the odd spiral staircase. Celaena had found the legendary catacombs beneath the library. Of course she had. If there were anyone in Erilea who could find something like that, it would be Celaena.

He’d been just about to go to lunch when he’d seen Celaena strut into the library, a sword strapped across her back. Perhaps he would have let her go about her own business were it not for her braided hair. Celaena never tied back her hair unless she was fighting. And when she was about to get messy.

It wasn’t spying. And it wasn’t sneaking. Dorian was merely curious. He followed her through long-forgotten hallways and rooms, always staying far behind, keeping his steps silent as Chaol and Brullo had taught him years ago. He’d followed until Celaena had disappeared down that staircase with a suspicious glance over her shoulder.

Yes, Celaena was up to something. And so Dorian had waited. One minute. Five minutes. Ten minutes before following after her. To make it seem like an accident if their paths crossed.

And now what did he see? Nothing but junk. Old parchment and books tossed around. Beyond was a second spiral staircase, lit in the same manner as the previous one.

A chill went through him. He didn’t like any of this. What was Celaena doing here?

As if in answer, his magic screamed at him to run in the opposite direction—to find help. But the main library was a long way off, and by the time he could get there and back, something might happen. Something might already have happened …

Dorian quickly descended the staircase and found a dimly lit hallway with a single door left ajar, two marks written on it in chalk. When he saw the cell-lined hallway beyond, he froze. The iron reeked, somehow—and made his stomach turn.

“Celaena?” he called down the hallway. No response. “Celaena?” Nothing.

He had to tell her to get out. Whatever this place was, neither of them should be here. Even if the power in his blood wasn’t screaming it, he would have known. He had to get her out.

Dorian descended the staircase.

Celaena half ran, half jumped down the stairs, getting away from the interior of the clock tower as fast as she could. Though it had been months since she had encountered the dead during the duel with Cain, the memory of being slammed into the dark wall of the tower was still too near. She could see the dead grinning at her, and recalled Elena’s words on Samhuinn about the eight guardians in the clock tower and how she should stay far from them.

Her head ached so badly that she could barely focus on the steps beneath her feet.

What had been in there? This had nothing to do with Gavin, or Brannon. Maybe the dungeon had been built then, but this—all of this—had to be connected to the king. Because he had built the clock tower; built it out of—

Obsidian the gods forbade

And stone they greatly feared.

But—but the keys were supposed to be small. Not mammoth, like the clock tower. Not—

Celaena hit the bottom of the clock stairs and froze as she beheld the passage that contained the destroyed cell.

The torches had been extinguished. She looked behind her, toward the clock tower. The darkness seemed to expand, reaching for her. She wasn’t alone.

Clutching her own torch, keeping her breathing steady, she crept along the ruined passage. Nothing—no sounds, no hint of another person in the passage. But …

Halfway down, she stopped again and set down the torch. She’d marked all the turns, counted her steps as she came here. She knew the way in the dark, could find her way back blindfolded. And if she wasn’t alone down here, then her torch was a beacon. And she was in no mood to be a target. She put out the torch with a grind of her heel.

Complete darkness.

She lifted Damaris higher, adjusting to the dark. Only it wasn’t wholly black. A faint glow issued from her amulet—a glow that allowed her to see only dim shapes, as if the darkness were too strong for the Eye. The hair on the back of her neck rose. The only other time she’d seen the amulet glow like that … Feeling along the wall with her other hand, not daring to turn around, she eased back toward the library.

There was a scrape of nail against stone, and then the sound of breathing.

It was not her own.

It peered out from the shadows of the cell, clutching at its cloak with taloned hands. Food. For the first time in months. She was so warm, so teeming with life. It skittered out of the cell past her as she continued her blind retreat.

Since they had locked it down here to rot, since they had gotten tired of playing with it, it had forgotten so many things. It had forgotten its own name, forgotten what it used to be. But it now knew more useful things—better things. How to hunt, how to feed, how to use those marks to open and close doors. It had paid attention during the long years; it had watched them make the marks.

And once they had left, it had waited until it knew they weren’t coming back. Until he was looking elsewhere and had taken all his other things with him. And then it had begun opening the doors, one after another. Some shred of it remained mortal enough to always seal those doors shut, to come back here and form the marks that again locked the doors, to keep it contained.

But she had come here. She had learned the marks. Which meant she had to know—to know what had been done to it. She had to have been a part of it, the breaking and shattering and then the brutal rebuilding. And since she had come here …

It ducked into another shadow and waited for her to walk into its claws.

Celaena stopped her retreat as the breathing halted. Silence.

The blue light around her grew brighter.

Celaena put a hand to her chest.

The amulet flared.

It had been stalking the little men who lived above for weeks now, contemplating how they would taste. But there was always that cursed light near them, light that burned its sensitive eyes. There was always something that sent it skittering back here to the comfort of the stone.

Rats and crawling things had been its only food for too long, their blood and bones thin and tasteless. But this female … it had seen her twice before. First with that same faint, blue light at her throat—then a second time, when it hadn’t seen her as much as smelled her from the other side of that iron door.

Upstairs, the blue light had been enough to keep it away—the blue light that had tasted of power. But down here, down in the shadow of the black, breathing stone, that light was diminished. Down here, now that it had put out the torches she’d ignited, there was nothing to stop it, and no one to hear her.

It had not forgotten, even in the twisted pathways of its memory, what had been done to it on that stone table.

With a dripping maw, it smiled.

The Eye of Elena burned bright as a flame, and there was a hiss in her ear.

Celaena whirled, striking before she could get a good look at the cloaked figure behind her. She glimpsed only a flash of withered skin and jagged, stumpy teeth before she sliced Damaris across its chest.

It screamed—screamed like nothing she had ever heard as the ragged cloth ripped, revealing a bony, misshapen chest peppered with scars. It slammed a clawed hand into her face as it fell, its eyes gleaming from the light of the amulet. An animal’s eyes, capable of seeing in the dark.

The person—creature—from the hallway. From the other side of the door. She didn’t even see where she had wounded it as she hit the ground. Blood rushed from her nose and filled her mouth. She staggered into a sprint back toward the library.

She leapt over fallen beams and chunks of stone, letting the Eye light her way, barely keeping her footing as she slipped on bones. The creature barreled after her, tearing through the obstacles as if they were no more than gossamer curtains. It stood like a man, but it wasn’t a man—no, that face was something out of a nightmare. And its strength, to be able to shove aside those fallen beams as though they were stalks of wheat …

The iron doors had been there to keep this thing in.

And she had unlocked all of them.

She dashed up the short stairs and through the first doorway. As she veered left, it caught her by the back of her tunic. The cloth tore. Celaena slammed into the opposite wall, ducking as it lunged for her.

Damaris sang, and the creature roared, falling back. Black blood squirted from the wound across its abdomen. But she hadn’t cut deep enough.

Surging to her feet, blood running down her back from where its claws had punctured, Celaena drew a dagger with her other hand.

The hood had fallen off the creature, revealing what looked like a man’s face—looked like, but no longer was. His hair was sparse, hanging off his gleaming skull in clumpy strings, and his lips … there was such scarring around his mouth, as though someone had ripped it open and sewed it shut, then ripped it open again.