There was nothing in his face except for cheerful interest. Brave, Hennea thought. She cleared her throat and answered from memory. “It’s in the north center of the city. Several miles away, if the map is to scale. Let me go look at it and find the shortest path there.”
If she hadn’t summoned them to continue through the city, Seraph thought that the others would have been content to spend the rest of the day exploring Old Town. But, once she’d caught their attention they were happy enough to mount up and set off to look for the library instead.
The horses’ hooves rang unnaturally loud on the cobbles, the sound echoing off the buildings that rose around them. As they got farther from the gate, the houses grew larger and more elaborate, some as large as the richest of the merchants in Taela, and, for the first time, Seraph saw the green pottery-tiled roofs that she recognized from the mermori.
On one street where all the houses were built wall to wall, there was an empty place where a building should have been. As they got closer to it, Seraph could see that not only was a building missing, but there was a hole half a story deep filled with the crumbled bones of a building. Seraph could see the marks on the walls where a roof had once touched on either side of the hole.
“It’s as if, in this one place, the magic didn’t protect this building, though the ones on either side are fine,” Hennea said. “These ruins are what the whole city should have looked like.”
They found other holes in the perfect preservation, places where buildings should have been but were no more. Sometimes there was nothing except bare earth, other places they could see stone foundations or piles of rubble.
“Papa, look. It’s an owl.” Rinnie said, pointing down a narrow side street that ended at the base of an open building made of granite. A pillar stood before the center of the building, in front of the door. On top of the pillar was an oversized carving of an owl, its wings half-furled, as if any moment it would take off in flight.
Unable or unwilling to miss the call of curiosity, Tier turned Skew down the street.
A few moments more or less would make little difference, Seraph told herself. Even if they found the library and managed to get into it—something not as promising after their troubles with the buildings they’d tried to explore so far—it might take months before she found what she was looking for. Years.
Tier wouldn’t have years. Maybe not even months.
She kept her face blank and rode after the others, reminding herself, a little desperately, that Brewydd had believed something here could help them.
“The door’s not closed,” announced Lehr, who’d taken the lead. He disappeared into the building before Seraph could caution him.
Seraph dismounted.
“Leave the horses,” suggested Tier, though Lehr had already done so. “Skew, Cornsilk, and Blade will all stand, and the other horses won’t leave them.”
He offered his hand to Seraph and escorted her up the half flight of stairs and through the double doors. Despite her worries, she found herself hurrying, eager to see the inside of one of the buildings here at last.
Mosaic tiles of vibrant colors covered the floor of a cavernous room. Great, sweeping arches lifted a ceiling far above them. There was light coming in from somewhere, and Seraph searched for a while before she saw how it had been done. Shaded by yellow glass, glowing stones cast their light as brightly as the sun had ever shone through an open window.
“It’s a temple,” said Tier, when no one else found words to speak.
“I don’t know anything about Colossae’s gods,” Seraph said. “None of the books in the mermori talk about them.” But all of the mermori books she’d read were about magic. They gave little insight into the lives of the wizards who had written them.
“Look over there.” Tier nodded toward the far side of the room, and she followed his gaze. She’d been too dazzled by the lights and color to notice the raised dais on the far side of the room. On the dais was a statue.
“She looks as though she might breathe,” said Phoran, striding across the room and bounding up the steps until he could touch the robes of the goddess caught in stone, then painted with such attention to detail that Seraph almost expected the fabric to move.
Phoran’s head just reached the goddess’s knee. Above him she rose, bare from the waist up. Her skirts, painted bright blue with green-and-yellow geometric patterns, were caught in a belt at her hip—the belt clasp was in the shape of an owl. In one hand she held a small harp, the other hand was stretched out toward the room.
Her hair, very nearly the color of Seraph’s own, was cut short, and either some quirk of accident or the subtlety of the artist made the fine strands look like the hairs of a feather. But it was her face that really drew Seraph’s attention. The artist had depicted her with a gamine grin so full of life Seraph had to fight the urge to smile in return.
“The goddess of music,” said Hennea. “Kassiah the Owl.”
Seraph turned to look at the other Raven because she’d sounded a little tense. “How do you know that?”
“It’s written on her belt.” Hennea sounded like her usual self again, and Seraph could read nothing in her peaceful mien.
“I always wondered why the Bardic Order was the owl rather than a songbird—like a lark or canary,” said Tier.
“It still doesn’t really explain it,” said Lehr after a moment. “I mean, why does she have an owl rather than a songbird?” He ran his fingers over the stone of her skirts. “I like her.”
“She’s dead,” said Hennea. “It doesn’t matter whether you like her or not.”
Tier frowned at her. “I thought Travelers didn’t have any gods.”
“Travelers don’t,” said Seraph. “But it looks like the Elder Wizards did. I wonder why they left them behind?”
“Dead gods don’t need believers,” Hennea said tightly.
Seraph frowned at Hennea’s odd agitation—she wasn’t the only one who noticed. Jes, who’d been wandering around the room, turned abruptly and strode across the room to Hennea.
“It happened a long time ago,” he said. “Don’t be angry.”
Hennea closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again she’d regained her usual air of peacefulness. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why this should…” Her voice trailed off as her gaze crossed Tier’s. “You’re right, Jes. It’s stupid to get upset about something that happened so long ago. Let’s let the past lie behind us, where it belongs. It’s just this city. It’s so empty.” She took a deep breath. “We need to find the library and see if we can get in.”
There were no sounds but the ones they made, none of the smells that Seraph associated with human habitation: beer brewing, bread baking, smoky incense mingling with the less pleasant smells of sweat, sewage, and rotting food. That was not to say that there were no smells, but they were the wrong smells.
The former inhabitants of Colossae hadn’t bothered with a small zigzag path up the cliffs like the Rederni. Instead they’d built a giant ramp. Seraph, looking up the gradual slope of the ramp marveled silently at the wealth that would allow such construction.
Though at first everyone had been pointing out the wonders of the city, they’d all eventually fallen silent. Not even the massive ramp, cobbled with rough-surfaced stones that gave hooves good purchase on the climb and must have required replacing on a regular bases, drew comment. Overwhelmed, she thought.
But she wasn’t here as a tourist. She let her eyes return to Tier, who was talking with Phoran. She’d have to put her faith in Brewydd’s foresight and believe that there were answers here.
The houses were more spread out on the upper reaches of Colossae than they had been below, and, to Seraph’s eye, the curious holes in Colossae’s magic where buildings had fallen into rubble were more common, too. Sometimes there were two or three in a single block.