Chapter 45: The Old Roads

THE UNDERTHING WENT deeper than I’d ever realized.

Auri led me through passages I’d never seen—stone corridors that felt older than the University above. The walls were covered in carvings, faded by centuries but still visible. Yllish writing. Warnings. Maps.

“This was here before the University,” I said.

“Many things were here before the University. The builders of your school didn’t create this place. They just built on top of it.” Auri’s voice echoed strangely. “The old scholars knew what lay beneath. They chose this location deliberately.”

“To guard the doors.”

“To guard everything.” She stopped at a junction where five passages met. “The University isn’t just a school, Kvothe. It’s a lock. Every building, every wall, every corridor—they’re part of a binding. A seal that keeps certain things contained.”

“The four-plate door.”

“Is one of the locks. But not the only one.” She pointed down the leftmost passage. “There are seven places in the Underthing where the world is thin. Where the boundary between what is and what was almost doesn’t exist.”

“Like the door Meluan found.”

“Smaller. Less dangerous. But connected.” Auri began walking. “The old scholars stored things in those thin places. Books. Artifacts. Knowledge too dangerous for ordinary keeping. When the purges came, when the Amyr fell and their enemies hunted every trace of forbidden learning—”

“They hid it here.”

“Where no one would think to look. Where the University’s own binding would keep it safe.” She glanced back at me. “But the binding is weakening. What was sealed is coming unsealed. And the things that were hidden…”

“Are becoming accessible again.”

“For good and ill.” She stopped at a stone wall that looked no different from any other. “This is one of the thin places. On the other side is a library. Small. Hidden. Containing texts that were thought destroyed centuries ago.”

“How do we get through?”

“We ask nicely.” Auri placed her palm against the stone. “It’s still sealed, but the seal is tired. If you speak to it properly—if you show it that you’re not an enemy—”

She closed her eyes. Began murmuring in a language I didn’t recognize.

The stone beneath her hand shimmered. Then, slowly, it faded—not opening, not moving, but simply becoming less solid. Less present.

“Quickly,” Auri said. “It won’t stay open for long.”

I stepped through.

The hidden library was smaller than I expected.

Three walls lined with shelves. A stone table in the center. Dust thick on every surface, undisturbed for what looked like centuries.

And books. Dozens of books, their covers cracked and faded, their pages yellow with age.

“Be careful what you touch,” Auri said, stepping through behind me. “Not all of these are safe.”

“Safe how?”

“Some books are just words. Some books are bindings. Traps set to catch the unwary.” She pointed to a section of shelf marked with red cloth. “Those especially. The scholars who hid them didn’t want anyone reading them. Ever.”

I approached the safer-looking shelves. Pulled a volume at random.

An Examination of the Seven Seals, the cover read. Being an Account of Their Creation and Maintenance.

My heart began to race.

“This is it,” I said. “This is exactly what I need.”

“Then read quickly.” Auri sat on the stone table, legs swinging. “The seal won’t hold forever. And we’re not the only ones who know about this place.”

“What do you mean?”

“The woman who burned the Archives. She came here first. Tried to find this room.” Auri’s voice was matter-of-fact. “She couldn’t get through—the binding wouldn’t recognize her. But she’ll keep trying. And eventually…”

“The binding will fail.”

“Everything fails eventually.” She smiled sadly. “That’s why you have to read quickly.”

I read for what felt like hours.

The book described the seven seals in detail I’d never seen before. Physical, magical, conceptual—but more than that. The interactions between them. The ways they reinforced each other. The specific techniques used to create and maintain them.

The conceptual seal depends on collective belief, one passage read. It is the most fragile of the seven, but also the most renewable. When belief shifts, the seal weakens. When belief strengthens, the seal repairs itself.

To attack the conceptual seal, one must change the story. Make villains into heroes. Make heroes into villains. The greater the shift, the greater the damage.

To defend the conceptual seal, one must speak truth. Not convenient truth, not comfortable truth, but truth that burns. Truth that wounds. Truth that cannot be forgotten once heard.

I thought of my song. Of the true story of Lanre I’d been spreading through every town we’d passed.

Was it enough? Was truth ever enough against a carefully crafted lie?

I kept reading.

The binding seal is more resilient, but harder to repair. Once broken, it requires the combined efforts of multiple Namers—ideally seven, one for each aspect of the binding. The names required are: stone, iron, silence, shadow, fire, wind, and something harder to translate—perhaps “purpose” or “will.”

Seven names. I knew wind. I was learning silence. But stone? Iron? The others?

I wasn’t a Namer. Not truly. I’d touched the edges of naming, glimpsed its depths, but I wasn’t trained. Wasn’t ready.

The physical seal is simplest but most easily circumvented, another passage said. Keys can be stolen. Locks can be picked. Stone can be broken. For this reason, the physical seal should never be relied upon alone.

I thought of the Lackless box. The ring, the key, the fragment of the moon’s name. Physical components of a physical seal.

If Cinder got those…

I stopped reading. Looked at Auri.

“The Lackless box. I brought it with me from Severen. It’s in my room at Anker’s.”

“Then it should be moved.” Auri’s eyes were worried. “If the woman comes looking—”

“She will.” I stood. “I need to get it somewhere safe. Somewhere she can’t find it.”

“I can hide it.” Auri slid off the table. “There are places in the Underthing even I don’t like to visit. Places so deep and forgotten that nothing could find them. Not even—”

She stopped.

“What?”

“Someone’s coming.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “The seal is failing. She’s breaking through.”

I heard it then. A distant sound, like stone grinding against stone. The wall we’d passed through was flickering. Becoming solid. Becoming something else.

“Can we get out another way?”

“Yes. But we have to leave now.” Auri grabbed my hand. “And Kvothe—the books. You can’t take them with you. The binding won’t let them pass.”

“Then how—”

“Remember what you’ve read. That’s all you can do.” She pulled me toward the far wall. “Quickly. Before she gets through.”

I looked at the shelves. At centuries of hidden knowledge, about to be lost again.

Then I followed Auri into the dark.

We emerged in a part of the Underthing I didn’t recognize.

The air was different here. Colder. The walls were covered in frost, despite it being summer above. And the sounds were strange—distant music, almost too faint to hear.

“Where are we?”

“Close to the center.” Auri’s voice was barely audible. “Close to what the University was built to contain.”

“The four-plate door.”

“One of them.” She led me through the frozen corridor. “There are others. Most people never see them. Most people are lucky.”

“Are we going to see one?”

“We’re going to pass by one. Carefully. Quietly.” She looked at me with frightened eyes. “Don’t speak while we walk. Don’t make any sound. And whatever you do—don’t look through the door.”

“Why?”

“Because looking through might make you want to open it. And if you open it…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

We walked in silence through the frost-covered passages. The music grew louder—not melody exactly, but something that suggested melody. Something that made me think of Denna’s song, of the way it changed how people felt.

We passed an alcove. In it stood a door.

Not the four-plate door I knew—this one was different. Smooth black stone, unmarked, with no visible lock or handle. And yet I knew, somehow, that it could be opened. That something on the other side was waiting.

Come, a voice whispered. Not aloud—in my mind. Come and see. Come and know.

I kept walking.

You want answers, the voice said. I have them. Every answer to every question you’ve ever asked. The truth about your parents. The truth about Denna. The truth about yourself.

My steps slowed.

Just look. Just once. It won’t hurt. It won’t bind you. Just look and know.

Auri’s hand tightened on mine.

“Keep walking,” she whispered. “Don’t listen. Don’t look.”

I closed my eyes.

Put one foot in front of the other.

And eventually, the voice faded.

We emerged in a chamber I recognized—the place Auri called Mantle. Her safe place. Her home.

“You did well,” she said, releasing my hand. “Most people can’t resist the voice. It knows what you want. Uses it against you.”

“What’s behind that door?”

“Nothing you want to know about.” She sat on her stone, looking exhausted. “The boxes within boxes, Kvothe. The seals within seals. The University is built on horrors, and the horrors are built on worse.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I wasn’t always what I am.” She looked at me with ancient eyes. “Once, I was a student. A researcher. I went looking for things I shouldn’t have found.”

“What happened?”

“I found them.” She smiled sadly. “And finding them broke something inside me. Made me into this.” She gestured at herself. “But also gave me… sight. Understanding. The ability to navigate places others can’t see.”

“Auri…”

“Don’t pity me.” Her voice was firm. “What I lost, I chose to lose. And what I gained…” She looked around her chamber. “I’m where I need to be. Doing what I need to do. There are worse fates.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Go,” she said finally. “Find the Lackless box. Bring it here. I’ll hide it somewhere safe.”

“And then?”

“And then do what you have to do.” She lay back on her stone, staring at the ceiling. “Find the woman who’s being used. Speak her name. Break the binding if you can.”

“Will it work?”

“Maybe. Probably not.” She closed her eyes. “But you’ll do it anyway. That’s who you are. Someone who keeps trying, even when trying is pointless.”

I left her there, in the darkness, and climbed back toward the light.

The knowledge I’d read burned in my mind. The seven seals. The seven names. The truth about what had to be done.

I wasn’t ready.

But ready or not, the doors were opening.

And I was the only one left who might be able to close them.