Balruhn

Balruhn, known as the City of Libraries, is a city on the south-west coast of the Southern Continent. The famed Parvani Library is nestled amid the lush and spice-rich lands outside Balruhn. Nousha, the Head Librarian of the Torre Cesme, trained at the Parvani Library.

Chapter 10, TOD:

Yrene huffed a laugh, mostly at herself, and shook her head as she focused again upon the texts Nousha had dug up for her hours ago.
Yrene and the Head Librarian had never been close, and Yrene was certainly not inclined to seek out the woman if she spotted her in the mess hall, but …
Nousha was fluent in fifteen languages, some of them dead, and had trained at the famed Parvani Library on the western coast, nestled amid the lush and spicerich lands outside Balruhn.
The City of Libraries, they called Balruhn. If the Torre Cesme was the domain of healers, the Parvani was the domain of knowledge. Even the great road that linked Balruhn to the mighty Sister-Road, the main artery through the
continent that flowed from Antica all the way to Tigana, had been named for it: the Scholars’ Road.
Yrene didn’t know what had brought Nousha here all those decades ago, or what the Torre had offered her to stay, but she was an invaluable resource. And for all of her unsmiling nature, Nousha had always found Yrene the information
she needed, no matter how outlandish the request.
Tonight, the woman had not looked pleased when Yrene had approached her in the mess hall, apologies falling from her lips for interrupting the librarian’s meal. Yrene might have waited until the morning, but she had lessons tomorrow,
and Lord Westfall after that.
Nousha had met Yrene here after finishing her meal, and had listened, long fingers folded in front of her flowing gray robes, to Yrene’s story—and needs: Information. Any she could find.
Wounds from demons. Wounds from dark magic. Wounds from unnatural sources. Wounds that left echoes but did not appear to continue to wreak havoc upon the victim. Wounds that left marks but no scar tissue.
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.

Chapter 10, TOD:

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.
Yrene riffled through the pages, to another illustration. It was divided into
three panels.
Everything the lord had said—she had believed him, of course, but … it was
true. If the wound wasn’t proof enough, these texts offered no other alternative.
For there in the first panel, tied down upon an altar of dark stone … a
desperate young man strained to free himself from the approach of a crowned
dark figure. Something swirled around the figure’s hand—some asp of black
mist and wicked thought. No real creature.
The second panel … Yrene cringed from it.
For there was that young man, eyes wide in supplication and terror, mouth
forced open as that creature of black mist slithered down his throat.
But it was the last panel that made her blood chill.
Lightning flashed again, illumining the final illustration.
The young man’s face had gone still. Unfeeling. His eyes … Yrene glanced
between the previous drawing and the final one. His eyes had been silver in the
first two.
In the final one … they had gone black. Passable as human eyes, but the
silver had been wiped away by unholy obsidian.
Not dead. For they had shown him rising, chains removed. Not a threat.
No—whatever they had put inside him …
Thunder groaned again, and more shrieks and giggles followed. Along with
the slam and clatter of the acolytes leaving for the night.
Yrene surveyed the book before her, the other stacks Nousha had laid out.
Lord Westfall had described collars and rings to hold the Valg demons within
a human host. But even after they were removed, he’d said, they could linger.
They were merely implantation devices, and if they remained on too long,
feeding off their host …
Yrene shook her head. The man in the drawing had not been enslaved—he’d
been infested. The magic had come from someone with that sort of power. Power
from the demon host within.
A clash of lightning, then thunder immediately on its heels.
And then another click sounded—faint and hollow—from the dim stacks to
her right. Closer now than that earlier one had been.
Yrene glanced again toward the gloom, the hair on her arms rising.
Not a movement of a mouse. Or even the scrape of feline claws on stone or
bookshelf.
She had never once feared for her safety, not from the moment she had set
foot within these walls, but Yrene found herself going still as she stared into that
gloom to her right. Then slowly looked over her shoulder.
The shelf-lined corridor was a straight shot toward a larger hallway, which
would, in three minutes’ walk, take her back to the bright, constantly monitored
main atrium. Five minutes at most.
Only shadows and leather and dust surrounded her, the light bobbing and
tilting with the swaying lanterns.