Izzi followed Beena to the Grimoiren. It was always in the same place of course, beneath the northeastern black tower, but the route changed daily, dictated by a combination of predetermined sequences and watchwords.

There were other ways to get there—the Magekadeh was riddled with twisting passages—but straying from the sanctioned path would wake the wards and summon creatures best left undisturbed. And that was to say nothing of Kalu’s wrath or the unwelcome scrutiny of the other magians.

The precautions were not just magian paranoia. Twice under the last moon intruders had been caught—Kythian mages attempting to infiltrate. Izzi pushed from her mind the memory of what had been done to them, of where their bodies had been displayed, mounted for the birds of cleansing.

They descended the single slender staircase into the belly of the huge circular chamber. It was lit only sparsely where access was needed, but there was enough flickering lamplight to cast a glow across the golden carvings of the giant dome. All around, the towering walls curved with the knowledge of the magians—a treasure hoarded across ages. The higher up the walls, the older the monstrous tomes, slender journals, decaying scrolls, and other mouldering artefacts were. They’d been told that when space ran out, the room was simply dug deeper into Zakra’s rocky core.

Izzi suspected the only way they could have ever amassed such an enormous collection was by never throwing anything away, not even the most useless scrap.

“Half of those scrolls are probably just shopping lists,” she whispered.

“Shush,” Beena cautioned, but the word was half laugh.

When they reached the bottom the guard was waiting, crouching near the base of the stairs—but not just any guard. The magians had lured it from the sundered realm, where failed and half-born things wandered, creatures neither fully of one world nor another. It was a nasnas.

The nasnas hunched in the shadows beneath the stairs, shackled to an iron ring on a spike driven deep into the stone. Even crouched, its single elongated arm could reach unnaturally, magically high, even to the highest ramps, but its three bony fingers were now coiled against the floor like the claws of a carrion bird. What passed for its face turned toward them—half a skull, half a man, its single clouded eye unblinking, its split tongue curling as if not enjoying what it tasted on the air.

It was a wonder it sensed anything. The air reeked of old parchment and something else—something rancid, like flesh left too long in the sun.

Izzi gritted her teeth. She had passed by it before, of course, but each time she had to force back the gagging revulsion. The nasnas didn’t move like a thing that should exist; it tilted, stretched, and twitched in ways that defied balance, like a puppet with half its strings missing.

Those few fingers scraped the stone, and the chains rattled as it raised its half-hand to point at them. It whispered—a voice wet and broken, a sound that licked the ears like a slobbery tongue.

“Who comes? Friend or food?”