A Tale of Infidels

by Erik A Otto

  Sebastian never did find Nala to tell her to collect her test results. He remembered seeing her after the monks woke him up at the ruin, so he knew the gargoyle hadn’t injured her, but since then she’d disappeared. He’d checked every inch of the keep. When he went to report of his failure, Fabian told Sebastian not to worry about it. He said that she’d left the keep.

  He could only assume that she’d failed the exams. She wasn’t the best student, so it made sense, but he was surprised she didn’t at least come to say goodbye. It could be that she was ashamed. Or perhaps she didn’t want to talk about the ruin, at the urgings of the monks. Maybe she was being cautious.

  Although, Nala didn’t strike him as a cautious type.

  After finishing his breakfast, he went back to his room to check the preparedness of his day satchel and also looked at the eyeglass mirror to digest his general appearance. The front of his head was clean-shaven and his long brown braided hair was devoid of lint or other detritus. Comfortable everything was in order, he paced with restrained excitement to the venerable Thomas’s chamber.

  There were four chairs outside of Thomas’s office, with two of them already filled. As Sebastian approached, the other apprentices rose to their feet and offered him blind bows.

  They were both similarly clad, wearing classic black apprentice robes with three red notches on the sleeves, indicating their apprentice level. Like Sebastian, they were clean-shaven on their faces and the front of their scalps, with long braided hair in the back. One apprentice had a large and rather ornate crest on his sleeve. It seemed to be imprinted on his robe without seam, the stitching revealing the pattern of a white dove. The other taller apprentice had a more basic crest without anything distinguishable other than overlaid geometric shapes, the workmanship looking more like the crests he’d seen on farming folk. This apprentice was spotted in the face and tired in the eyes.

  “I’m Fane,” the shorter one with the dove crest said. “I welcome you, Sebastian, and this is Hercibal. Please join with us as we wait for the venerable Thomas.”

  Sebastian closed his eyes and returned a low bow. “It would give me pleasure, Fellows.”

  Sebastian sat on the chair offered. He could sense Fane fidgeting next to him, looking at Sebastian or down the hall periodically, whereas Hercibal seemed in a cloud. Sebastian felt like he should make conversation with his new colleagues, but he was at a loss for words.

  Eventually the door opened. A Sandalier Sebastian didn’t recognize stepped out. All three of them stood up in unison and delivered blind bows. When Sebastian opened his eyes, the Sandalier was nearly gone, rounding a corner. Venerable Thomas then exited the room more casually, and they all bowed again. Thomas was tall, donning a neat clip of reddish braids, and his brow was wrinkled in thought. He ushered them to enter without even giving them a good look.

  “Apprentices, I trust you have met?” he said. “Yes, I’m sure you have, so I will not burden you with pleasantries. And everyone has seen the bulletin from Conductor Preto?” They all nodded. “Yes, the Red Rains are harrowing, but they musn’t distract us from our vocation as Matteo’s servants. If anything, it highlights the importance of our work.”

  “Yes, venerable Thomas,” Sebastian said.

  Fane added, “Matteo’s grace is with us.”

  Hercibal only performed a minor blind bow in acknowledgement.

  “Well, let’s get to it then,” Thomas said, and he abruptly walked past them through the door.

  In an excess of manners, there was a delay as each of the apprentices demurred to the other to follow Thomas first. Finally Hercibal turned after him. Fane and Sebastian fell in line as well and nearly had to run to catch up.

  They descended the central staircase, passed other dutiful apprentices and Sandaliers, and continued down to a great Albondo oak door with Matar bone bars crossing it. Thomas took out his key, unlocked it, planted his back foot for leverage, and heaved it open. He waited for them to enter, then closed and locked the door behind them.

  “We have entered the Holy Sanctum,” Thomas said. “As you may know, this leads down to the spiral stairs. This is also commonly referred to as the Well. You will soon see why.”

  As they circled downwards, Thomas provided the occasional sound bite in flat monotones. “Here is an old utility room where the gears for the drawbridge are housed.” They passed a large door on their left. “The drawbridge can be operated from the battlements as well, but it used to be that this was the only control room. If the gates were overrun, those in the Holy Sanctum could still pull up the drawbridge to prevent foes from entering the keep.”

  On the next level down, Thomas pointed to another, broader door. “From here you can enter the cellars. We keep at least three months of provisions at all times, and there is space for more than a year if needed. These cellars have served us well for the three sieges of the keep during the Second Jawhari War. They also act as a buffer to resource the surrounding area when we have a poor harvest. It’s rumored that the keep was spared from attack in the Third Jawhari War because they knew how long we could hold under siege. To this day the Jawhari refer to this keep as the Bone Mountain.”

  The spiral continued until the helix of torches around the Well abruptly came to an end. Across the great pit, a stone bridge was raised. “On the other side of the pit are the dungeons. There is room for one hundred prisoners, and if necessary, the catacombs can be opened to house a great deal more. And finally”—Thomas motioned to a corridor and turned to face them—“to our left is the library, but before we enter, you can see there, below us, is the end of the staircase and an old crankshaft. This was, indeed, a well at one point. Unfortunately, the water is sullied. It could be drinkable, but no one has the courage to try it.” Thomas flashed a cursory smile then banked to the left.

  Sebastian looked down. In the darkness it was hard to see how much farther the hole went. He was tempted to drop something or call out, but it wouldn’t be demure to do so.

  The torches returned to prominence along the hall, then abruptly gave way to wyg lamps, gaining in prevalence until no less than ten surrounded a large door in front of them.

  “No fire in here, ever, or you will be expelled from the keep,” Thomas said without looking back. Then he opened the door.

  There was another door after the first, and this one was all silverstone. Thomas braced himself and pulled at the crescent handle. The door belched out a sucking sound as it swung open.

  The inside wasn’t what Sebastian expected. The well was a dark, dank, gravelly hole, but here was an ornate chamber with sharp lines and flashes of polished silverstone. To his right and left were annals of books, and ahead of them was a balcony that overlooked even more shelves storing countless volumes. Most of the shelves were made of wood, but some were a patchwork of bone and silverstone. The railings and joists were laden principally with silverstone.

  Sebastian couldn’t help but smile at the wealth of knowledge at his fingertips. He was anxious to begin exploring.

  Thomas resumed his oration. “The library is exactly as it was when the Shepherd’s first Sandaliers built it seven hundred years ago. It even survived the siege of the Old Keep in the year 324—the year the librarians shut themselves inside. You may have noticed the prevalence of silverstone. The Shepherd and the first Sandaliers didn’t know how to exploit the bone mounds, so they must have had few options for suitable building materials. We tolerate the excessive silverstone because it’s one of the earliest preserved sites in existence from the Shepherd’s time.”

  A man sitting on the arched balcony rose to greet them, hunching as he walked. He wore the classic robe of a Sandalier but not the sandals. He peered at all the apprentices, walking among them, looking them up and down. When he looked at Sebastian, it better revealed his eyes. One was a piercing pool of green, and the other was a milky cloud of white with gray flecks.

  Thomas introduced him. “Apprentices, this is librarian Bonifas Saintjoie. He will be your sp
iritual guide for your daily work, and I will be consulting with him regularly. I leave you in his capable hands.” Thomas did a blind bow, turned, and was gone.

  The library door closed with the same sucking sound it had made when they came in.

  “Ha! Spiritual guide, he says. Don’t count on it.” Saintjoie paced around them in figure eights.

  “A few rules for you snivelings. First of all, I’m in charge here, not Thomas. Some of you may not know this, but the Guild of Scripture runs the Library. We don’t bend to the Sandaliers, the Conductor, or anyone else, and we don’t want them mucking about in our business. Scripture needs to be unbiased by the affairs of the Sandaliers, the militia, or nobles. What that means is, don’t go crying to Thomas if you don’t like it. If you want to cry, you will be crying to me.

  “But then, you don’t want to cry to me.” His smile revealed only two teeth, one on the top, one on the bottom, on opposite sides of his mouth.

  “Secondly, the library has survived for over seven hundred years for a reason. There is no fire in here, ever, or you will be expelled from not only the library, but the keep as well. As you can see, the library is kept airtight, so we can actually remove all the air in case of fire. No air, no fire.”

  He started to walk away from them and gestured with three fingers rolling toward the ground that they should follow. They made their way through the annals of books to a platform on the far left side of the chamber. Gusts of wind seemed to blow in from a hole in the ceiling, where a robed youth stood nearby turning a large crankshaft. Beads of sweat covered his temple, and his robe was drooping off his body.

  “No air makes it hard to breathe, so we have our turn at the crankshaft to move the fan that brings the air. If we don’t get enough, we start to feel light-headed. So if you see people sleeping in the library, someone isn’t working hard enough.” Saintjoie peered menacingly at the youth on the crankshaft, who picked up the pace.

  On the far side of the library, a flight of stairs ran down into the main shelves. A set of couches were also off to the side, where two Sandaliers were sitting reading ancient tomes. Saintjoie walked over and made a shooing motion with his hands. The Sandaliers abruptly closed their books, stood up, and left without a word.

  “Probably best if I have a seat while we go through the mundane task of explaining the library system,” he said.

  Hercibal made to sit down on one of the couches, but Saintjoie snapped, “I said I will have a seat. You haven’t earned a seat, sniveling.”

  Hercibal reacted before his bottom hit. He turned back to stand next to Sebastian and Fane.

  They stood there, with three empty couches in front of Saintjoie, for an hour. The couches were made of plush velour fabric. They were big enough for them to lie down, never mind sit on. The depression Saintjoie made into his own couch was revealing as to just how comfortable they could be.

  Saintjoie explained the cataloging system and the different sections of books, then went on to describe how they would be copying certain texts or preparing anecdotes for communications to the common folk. Mostly they would just be copying. He went on a lengthy explanation of penmanship and how usually their first full copy would have to be discarded, and by the looks of them, more likely the first ten.

  Then he walked with them through the library to their workstation, which was away from the main rooms and along a dimly lit corridor.

  “To the left are some of the more ancient texts. I never want to see you anywhere close to here unless you have my permission, understand?” Saintjoie checked the handle of a large oaken door laden with arcs and contours of silverstone. “Locked, good,” he said.

  Sebastian felt his heart skip a beat. Just behind that door were texts from hundreds of years ago. They were probably some of the oldest in Belidor. He imagined himself feeling the fragile pages, absorbing the wonders from long ago. In time he would be allowed inside.

  Finally Saintjoie took them to a set of wooden benches and tables where a number of volumes were splayed out. “Now you can sit,” he said.

  They all sat down. There were six books on the tables, with new parchment and quills, ready for copying.

  “Well, get started, then,” Saintjoie said, motioning with a flap of his hand. They all hesitantly reached for the books and quills. “One more thing,” Saintjoie added. “I guess I should know your names so I can call on you properly. Go, right to left.”

  They all recounted their names in turn. Sebastian was last in line.

  “Harvellian, eh? Isn’t there some Harvellian I’ve heard of before?”

  “Yes, librarian,” Sebastian beamed. “You speak of Thyros Harvellian, lead Apostle of Pyros, renowned for his trip to the Rim of Fire and rebuilding the faith in Pyros.”

  Saintjoie looked at him with a scowl, was quiet for a moment, then brightened. “Let it be known, all of you, that it matters not who you are or what your family has done. You’re nothing, an earwig in one of the great bookshelves or a blemish on a page. Maybe, maybe after you serve the Guild long enough, we will recognize your worth. So blemish, whose father is so pious and worthy, why don’t you go take the fan today.”

  Sebastian paused. Was he serious? Sebastian would take a turn if everyone had to, but it was an important time for him to learn—for him to be with the other apprentices. “Right away, librarian?”

  Saintjoie grew red in the face, accentuating the sickly contrast of his cataract-covered eye. “If I tell you to do something, you do it immediately. Get going, blemish!”

  Sebastian walked quickly back through the hall and relieved the skinny youth at the crankshaft. He began turning in earnest, exerting his anger into the task.

  Within an hour, Sebastian’s visceral anger was long gone, and he became dreadfully tired. Occasionally Saintjoie would come up the stairs and say, “Faster, blemish!” regardless of how fast he was turning. In all, he spent six hours at the crank, and by the end, his back was aching, his arm was numb, and he smelled ranker than a naustic on his third month in the pens.

  This Saintjoie was just a control monger, trying to bully the new apprentices. He could benefit from rereading the Canons. As he heaved the shaft round and round, Sebastian made mental notes about how when he was a Sandalier he would change the system so that librarians answered to the Sandaliers.

  The apprentices all left together. Thankfully his fellows said nothing of his drenched cloak or his pungent odor, gifting him with silence all the way back up the stairs.

  The subsequent days weren’t as bad. Saintjoie rotated the three of them onto the fan, even though he always seemed to keep Sebastian on for twice as long. The muscles in his arms were starting to get tight, like when he’d worked on the fence lines in Pyros. It wasn’t an outcome he would have expected when he applied for the library assignment.

  Saintjoie said they couldn’t read any of the library books. He said they would be granted the privilege if they did their duties properly. Sebastian accepted this with resignation, copying volumes and more volumes between bouts of turning the crank. But the books were so tantalizing. It was a painful temptation, and it required a great feat of will to not drop the copying quill and start delving through the nearby tomes.

  The tedium of copying was almost worse than the fan. It wasn’t like they were copying fascinating works of Belidoran literature. They were simplistic pamphlets summarizing the Canons for the masses, paper announcements, school textbooks, and even accounting ledgers. The ledgers were the worst—not even words, but numbers, copied over and over again. Countless times he would find himself losing attention, and his hand would stray ever so slightly across the page, requiring him to start that page anew on a fresh sheet. For each erroneous page, Sebastian would have to do two more full pages before he could leave at the end of the day. More often than not, he would have to stay an hour longer than the other apprentices.

  His apprentice colleagues were pious and humble enough. Fane was the most talkative of the group. In the mornings he would inqui
re as to their evenings; in the afternoons he would inquire as to their mornings. He would inquire as to where they were from and where they wanted to go. It was simple conversation, and though sometimes uncomfortable and boring, it was better than the prevalent silence. When Sebastian reciprocated some of Fane’s inquiries, he found out he was the son of a successful magistrate from Tardiff. His parents had wanted him to be taught in the ways of the faith before he started school to become a legal representative of the temples in Tardiff. He spoke of it with such confidence, as if the next ten years of his life were written into the Book of Canons.

  Sebastian had heard no more than twenty words from Hercibal. Hercibal would communicate more with nods and grunts. It wasn’t that he couldn’t speak. One day Sebastian was between Hercibal and a new batch of textbooks he was asked to copy. Sebastian purposefully had his back turned to Hercibal so he couldn’t grunt and point.

  Remarkably, when faced with this challenge, Hercibal’s mouth did open, and he said, “Fellow Sebastian, please pass me the textbook behind you.” So Sebastian did. Hercibal had clearly earned it by doubling his vocabulary.

  Sebastian had always wanted to do Matteo’s work, side by side other devout servants of the faith. Perhaps it was Saintjoie calling him a blemish, or the ledgers, or having to crank the fan for hours every day, but he found himself being less than gratified at day’s end. It tortured him to admit it—to admit he was anything less than grateful—but he couldn’t deny the feeling.

  Of course, he told no one of his discontent.

  It had to be the ledgers. If he could graduate from the ledgers, things would change. It was the ledgers and also working so close to such pervasive sources of knowledge yet being unable to read them.