Page 97 of The Viking in the Vault
“I’m okay,” Elena says, voice thin and reedy. “I think.”
Fenrik is already at our side, licking Elena’s hand to comfort her as I set her gently on her feet. She blinks up at me, stunned, face pale. “Ragnar…you absolute maniac.”
“You are unhurt,” I murmur.
“Physically, sure,” she says. “But psychologically? Please never do that again.”
I cannot help but smile. “If it means reaching my people, I will always jump.”
Elena groans. “You’re lucky you’re hot.”
“I am lucky you love me.”
She blushes, eyes twinkling for a moment…then her eyes slide away from mine toward the room behind me.
It’s easy to forget about the world when I’m with her—but somehow, she keeps pulling me back.
I turn around to take in the space we’ve found ourselves in, mist curling around the edges…and I find the source of the glow. Lights glimmer, effervescent in shades of blue and gold, illuminating a circular room lined with frost-covered bookshelves…and at its center is a large table with a starmap.
“I recognize this place,” I murmur. “I have…been here before.”
Elena’s eyes dart toward me once again. “What is it?” she asks.
“A…” I pause. “It’s a reading room from the first years of Grand Library…one of the ones constructed by Thorne’s cohort.Mine.”
“And the map?” she asks.
I take a hesitant step toward it, reaching out—and it responds to me as if it was made to do so. Perhaps it was, though I do not remember anything this vast outside of Mythara. As I get closer, the table trembles and spires emerge from certain points on the map, making the whole chamber shudder.
“Did you just cause another earthquake?!” Ves calls from overhead. “What’s going on?”
“It wasn’t an earthquake!” Elena shouts back as I continue to examine the table. “There’s some kind of map down here and it’s responding to Ragnar!”
Above us, the scholars go silent. Then Davina speaks up. “Perhaps this is the origin of the seismic activity in the Eiskammer…related to the reading room in Mythara?”
Elena responds, but her words escape me…because I am thoroughly distracted by Fenrik. My skarnhound is sniffing around on the opposite side of the circular table, following a trail. I see what he’s found a moment later: footprints in the frost.
Fresh ones.
There is someone else down here.
And I think I know exactly who it is.
34
ELENA
This data…it could change everything.
While Ragnar explores the room—the archive—I linger at the console, fingers hovering over the shifting interface as glowing script flickers like embers on ice. My translator, now outfitted with updates from Thorne that allow me to read ancient Skoll, slowly makes sense of what I’m seeing.
Centuries-old research on planetary stabilization, ecosystem bootstrapping, adaptive biosphere layering. Actual,functioningterraforming theory.
I could spend weeks here…I want to.
“Ragnar,” I whisper. “You…I didn’t know your crew was working on terraforming. This stuff…remember when I told you about the hurricanes back on Earth? This could help my planet, it could save my home. I’m?—”
“Someone has been here,” Ragnar interrupts, entirely in his own world.
