Chapter 88

The archive was the only place in Ellisar that went down.

Everything else in that city climbed. The archive lay among the roots of the oldest tree, at the bottom of a stair that wound down inside the trunk until the pale wood gave way to stone, and the stone to roots thick as a man, holding up the ceiling the way a hand holds a bowl. It was dry and cool, and it smelled of old paper and lamp oil.

I stopped at the foot of the stairs, and the archivist said, without looking up, “You’re letting the damp in.”

***

He was sitting at a long table under three lamps, in a coat that had once been green, with a page held so close to his face that his nose was very nearly reading it. He was the oldest person I had ever seen. Elves do not show age; this one had given up pretending. His face was folded like a letter that had been opened and read and folded again a great many times, and his hair, which was white, was twisted up on the back of his head and held there with a p