When Silvan applied pressure to the left brace beneath the mantel on the hearth, the entire side of the hearth swung out, revealing a passageway behind it. He explained how Nellie had, one day in a fit of energetic cleaning, stumbled upon it whilst sweeping cobwebs from beneath the mantel and scrubbing black soot from the stone face of the hearth. She’d grasped the brace while scrubbing and the next thing she’d known the fireplace was moving, with her clinging to it.

“And why didn’t she tell us?” Dageus said, incredulous.

Silvan snorted. “She thought we knew and believed she wasn’t supposed to know.”

Dageus shook his head. “And ’tis another library?”

“Och, son, it looks to be our entire history, undisturbed for centuries.”

Stunned, and she suspected a bit forgotten by the two Keltar men for the moment, Chloe followed Dageus and Silvan into the dark void, down steep stone steps into a cavernlike chamber that was roughly fifteen feet across and twice that long. The chamber was lit by dozens of candles in wall sconces. It was lined from floor to ceiling with shelves, dotted with tables, chairs, and trunks.

Chloe’s head whipped left and right, back and forth at a dizzying speed.

Focus, Zanders. You’re going to make yourself sick from excitement.

No archaeologist entering a heretofore sealed and forgotten tomb could have felt any giddier. Her heart was racing, her palms sweaty, and she was not managing deep breaths very well. She strode forward, pushing past the two men, determined to see all she could before they remembered her and perhaps thought twice about letting her see it. She was in an ancient underground chamber, surrounded by her most favorite things: dusty relics from ages long past. Relics that would send the scholars in her century into paroxysms of joy, giving them topics to gnaw on and argue contentedly about for the rest of their lives.

There were stone tablets chiseled with Irish oghamic inscriptions. More stones with what looked like Pictish ogham script, a script modern scholars had never succeeded in translating, as Picts had adopted Irish ogham but hadn’t been able adapt it to their own language since Pictish and Gaelic were phonetically incompatible. Maybe they could teach her how to read it! she thought, dizzied by the possibility.

There were cloth-bound volumes, secured and tied in faded fabric, leather-bound volumes and scrolls, enameled plates, hand-stitched codices, bits of armor and weaponry, and—heavens—even that long-forgotten flagon was a relic!

After a few moments of breathless perusal, she glanced over her shoulder at Dageus and Silvan who’d paused just inside the chamber, their heads bent above a squat stone column upon which lay a sheet of gold.

“Da, is this what I think it is?” Dageus’s voice sounded strangled.

“Aye, ’tis The Compact, as legend told, etched upon a sheet of pure gold.”