“Are you a librarian, sir?” I asked politely.

“Fourth librarian, if it please you, my lady.”

I didn’t overly care if he was fourth or fortieth, so long as he could help me find what I needed. “I am hoping you can help me with some… er…” I glanced at Élise, who was examining the titles on one of the shelves, “research.”

“On what subject, my lady?”

I took the librarian’s arm and led him deeper into the stacks. Élise seemed content to stay where she was, which was fine with me. I didn’t want to involve her unnecessarily. “Is there anything written on the Duchesse Sylvie’s prophesy?”

His eyes widened. “No, my lady. She would not consent to being questioned about the details. But His Highness was present – he knows precisely the words she spoke.”

I frowned. “What about the Fall, then? Or… the witch?”

“Anushka.” His expression was grim – this was not a topic the trolls liked to discuss.

“Was that her name?” I had never heard her called anything but “the witch”.

“Indeed, my lady. She was foreign-born, obviously, from the northern part of the continent. A favored courtesan and entertainer of the court of King Alexis III.”

We reached a pedestal with a glass case sitting on it. Inside there was a book, which the librarian removed: Chronicles of the Fall. He flipped carefully through the heavily illustrated pages and then paused. “This is her.”

I leaned over to get a better look and gasped. The redheaded woman on the page stared out at me with brilliant blue eyes.

“A few years older, but the resemblance is uncanny,” the librarian agreed.

“It is indeed,” I breathed. “Tell me sir, what is your name?”

“Martin, my lady.”

“Martin, will you leave me with this book and seek out others that might be of assistance to me?”

“Gladly, my lady.”

Before he went, he set the ponderous book on a table for me. I started at the beginning, the morning of the Fall. Just before noon, all of Trollus was alerted of their impending doom by the echoing crack of thunder. As countless tons of rock spilled down the valley, tens of thousands of trolls lifted their hands and magic to protect themselves and, in doing so, created a collective shield that protected the city as the rock blocked out the sky.

I pored over the illustrations showing beautiful, terrified troll faces with their arms thrown skyward as the mountain poured down on them. The drawings showed humans, too, all of them crouched in terror at the feet of the trolls. Helpless.

The city was organized into shifts of trolls holding up the rock and trolls digging a way out. Bodies of those killed by falling rocks rotted in the streets and the human population was quickly stricken by plague, which was exacerbated by famine and lack of clean water. The humans began to die out, and only the favored few were given what they needed to survive.