Crown of Midnight (42 page)

The hallway went on and on, until she reached the door at the far end, the cells on either side numbered ninety-eight and ninety-nine.

Beyond them was a final, unmarked door. She set her torch in a bracket beside the last door and grabbed the ring on the door to pull it open. This one was significantly lighter than the first, but also locked.
And unlike the doors lining the hall, this one seemed to
ask
her to unlock it—as though it needed to be opened. So Celaena sketched the unlocking spell again, the chalk bone-white against the ancient metal. The door yielded without a sound.

Perhaps these were Gavin’s dungeons. From the time of Brannon
. That would explain the Fae depictions on the staircase above. Perhaps he’d used these iron-gated cells to imprison the demon-soldiers of Erawan’s army. Or the wicked things Gavin and his war band hunted down …

Her mouth went dry as she passed through the second door and ignited the torches along the way. Again, the light revealed a small set of stairs leading down into a hallway. Yet this one veered to the right, and was significantly shorter. There was nothing in the shadows—just more and more locked iron doors on either side. It was so, so quiet …

She walked until she reached the door on the other end of the hall. Sixty-six cells this time, all sealed shut. She unlocked the end door with the Wyrdmarks.

She entered the third passageway, which also made a sharp right turn, and found it to be even shorter. Thirty-three cells.

The fourth hallway veered right again, and she counted twenty-two cells. The slight throbbing in her head turned into a full-on pounding, but it was so far to her rooms, and she
was
here already …

Celaena paused before the fourth end door.

It’s a spiral. A labyrinth. Bringing you deeper and deeper inside, farther belowground
…

She bit her lip but unlocked the door. Eleven cells. She increased her pace, and swiftly reached the fifth door. Nine cells.

She approached the sixth door and halted.

A different sort of chill went through her as she stared at the sixth portal.

The center of the spiral?

As the chalk met the iron door to form the Wyrdmarks, a voice in the back of her mind told her to run. And though she wanted to listen, she opened the door anyway.

Her torch revealed a hallway in ruin. Parts of the walls had caved in, and the wooden beams were left in splinters. Cobwebs stretched between the broken shafts of wood, and tattered scraps of cloth, impaled upon rock and beam, swayed in the slight breeze.

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.

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.