by P. D. Kalnay
We weren’t planning to live or stay at the library longer than was necessary.
“Can you show us how to get to the dungeons?” I asked.
“The lower levels are closed to all but the council members. Scholars must receive unanimous approval to travel below. That almost never happens.”
Waiting months for the two missing council members to get back and then convincing them to let us in…
“We need to talk to somebody down there.”
“Few of the creatures held below are capable of speech and those that are include the most dangerous prisoners. I must return to the gates. Remember that the library will protect itself and do not try to trespass in forbidden areas.”
“How do we find the Hall of the Thousand Scholars?” Ivy asked.
“Follow me. It’s on the way back to the gate.”
Chapter 27 – Searching the Stacks
We walked halfway back the way we’d come. Then our course changed as we turned down a new, wider hallway which ran straight for several minutes before one wall opened, revealing an amphitheatre below. It was a half circle of stone benches with a stage and dais at the bottom, large enough for a crowd to listen to a lecture or watch a play. We met no other people on our walk, and the amphitheatre was empty too. Our destination was at the end of that hallway.
Nal Vador left us in a wide gallery with ten stories of railed terraces rising above and around us. A domed ceiling of coloured glass filled the centre of the hall casting a rainbow of light at our feet. I stared up at the intricate geometric patterns painted with stained-glass. They formed a single larger symbol I didn’t recognise, but it tickled at the corners of my memory.
“Jack?”
Ivy stood next to a bubbling fountain under the middle of the skylight. I pulled my eyes from the dome.
“Yeah?”
“There are many doors. You should begin.”
“I’m guessing a thousand, based on the name of the place, but do we really need a room? Why don’t we make for the dungeons, talk to this Vraith guy, and get out again?”
“The library stood here before the founding of the Shogaan Empire, before the Three Houses formed the Accords, and in a time when something other than wastelands spread south of the Dun.”
I hadn’t known the Black Wastes had ever been anything other than a horrible, monster-filled desert.
“What used to be there?”
“If there are records from those times, they only exist here. My point is that powerful enchantments must protect Anukdun for it to have stood unaffected for so many ages. The scholars here are engrossed in their work, no one has asked us why we’ve come, and our movement is largely unrestricted, meaning–”
“That something else protects the library,” I finished.
“Yes. It would be prudent to spend time determining what. If we must tarry, we’ll need a base of operations.”
“I guess we might as well start with the doors here.”
I tried over six hundred door handles, which was also over six levels of doors, before one opened. A few doors into level seven, I grew excited as a door handle turned and the door swung inward, seemingly of its own accord. Disappointment followed as the guy who lived there appeared on the other side. He’d been going out when I’d tried the door.
The man wore grey robes, of the same style, but bearing none of the embroidery of Nal Vadar’s robes. My assumption was that he was a more junior scholar or of lower rank. I’d already seen plenty of overt displays of wealth used to mark societal rank, and if equality or egalitarianism existed somewhere on the First World—we hadn’t visited there yet. The man was Valaneese and judging by wrinkles and slight portliness might have been of Captain Danar’s generation.
I stepped back.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Why are you at my door?”
He seemed friendly enough.
“Sorry,” I said again, stepping out of his way, “I was just trying the doors to see if any would open.”
In my time with the Danars I’d learned to read the birdish facial expressions their people. His face said he thought I might be some flavour of crazy.
“Nal Vador said I should, because I fall outside the Manual of Admittance, and she can’t just assign me a room.”
I shrugged.
“Fascinating,” the man said. We had different opinions about what counted as fascinating. “Do you wish to come in?”
“We don’t want to interrupt your studies,” Ivy said.
“You are my studies.” he said excitedly.
He stepped back, opened the door wide, and gestured for us to enter. There was nothing threatening about the pudgy scholar. Ivy gave me a non-committal shrug, and I went into the apartment. The door opened onto a sitting room containing padded chairs, a low table, and a fireplace with other doors leading off of it. Based on the placement of the doors facing the hall’s central fountain, each suite of rooms constituted a fair-sized apartment. A bright red door stood opposite the one through which we’d entered.
“Please sit and make yourselves comfortable.”
I’d almost done that when Ivy’s voice stopped me, “What did you mean, when you said we are your studies?”
“Ah, forgive me. I should have begun with introductions. My name is Dula Jeenar and I study the Fae, their history, and more specifically: the forming of The Accords and their effect on interfae relations.”
Ivy gave our names, and Dula did an excited little dance.
“Members of the royal families! And to think I was ready to make another futile try at conversing with Arenal.”
“Who’s Arenal?” I asked.
“Not counting Nal Vador, he is the only fae scholar in residence. While thirty-one of the current scholars are fae, they rarely stay here longer than it takes to search the stacks for a piece of information. Then they return home again. It seems unimaginable to me, but I suppose your kind have so much more… time. Please sit, I’ll get refreshments.”
Soon we sat around the low table, eating seed-filled biscuits, and sipping bitter tea.
“How did you gain entrance to the library?” Dula asked.
“We came in through the Scholar’s Gate,” Ivy said.
“Truly? Amazing!”
The riddles were challenging, and I couldn’t have done it without Ivy’s help, but amazing?
“Why are you so impressed?” Ivy asked. “Is it not the gate through which all scholars return?”
“No,” Dula said, “almost never, and not once in the years I’ve been here. In theory scholars are meant to return through that gate, to prove they have remained sharp of mind after their sabbatical from the library. In practice, they enter through the main gates. For you to use it, suggests the library recognises one of you as a returning scholar.”
He looked back and forth between us.
I pointed to Ivy and then myself, “Assistant, scholar.”
Ivy ignored that and asked another question of our host, “Why would you want to study our people?”
“Ah… in the early days, I began my studies to help my family and my own people. As you know, we struggled to maintain our trading fleets with the loss of access to Knight’s Haven. My father was unsupportive of my studying anything not related to trade, but learning the secrets of our enemies was acceptable to him. I must confess that my true reasons were a purely selfish, academic fascination with your kind. The library has many volumes of history, but I rarely get to speak with living fae!”
Ivy had told me that the scholars often had esoteric fields of inquiry, but studying our people would have been near the bottom of my list.
“It’s not that great, in my experience,” I said.
Ivy nodded.
“That’s because you’ve lived your lives around them, and most people seek novelty. I’d be happy to guest you here—I have spare rooms—if you wish.”
“What do you want in exchange?” Ivy asked.
Du
la spread his hands, “Only to converse with you and to ask an occasional question.”
That seemed like a good deal. We didn’t plan to stay long, and Ivy gave me her ‘he’s telling us the truth’ nod.
“Thanks,” I said, “That would be great.”
I thought I sensed something pass by on the far side of the red door. It felt familiar, but the feeling was so faint and short-lived that I didn’t know if it was my imagination playing tricks.
“Where does that door go,” I asked.
“That is a Masters’ Door. It leads to the back passages. Access to private routes was a greater privilege in the days when the library had more congestion. After thirty years of study, I’m still only a newly vested scholar and unlikely to rise to master, so I can’t open it. I don’t find walking a little further onerous.”
***
Ivy ended up paying the price of our accommodation. Dula was interested in court intrigue and the daily lives of fae. I was possibly the least informed person in the world about our people, and learned about fae life and traditions listening to them talk, but I didn’t know enough to understand the bulk of their conversations.
***
Ivy and I spent our first day exploring the library together. Anukdun was vast. Hall after hall of shelved books spread from shore to shore and climbed many stories above the Dun. It wasn’t only books either. Mr. Ryan told me that the place was part library, part museum, and part prison. Besides books, it appeared the library’s scholars had attempted to collect one of everything. The collections of arms and armour made Marielain Blackhammer’s collection seem paltry. I could have spent years studying them.
Some rooms were enormous and others more intimate, and I stopped counting at five hundred. A part of me coveted the knowledge surrounding us. I’d always loved books, and not just the ones with stories. From a young age I’d gravitated towards books that explained the world and how things worked. The rest of me felt daunted. The scale of the library was almost beyond comprehension, and even a long-lived person could never hope to read more than a small fraction of the collected knowledge.
We weren’t there to read, and over the course of the day we took every downward staircase we came to, attempting to find the entrance to the dungeons. Just asking someone seemed—as Ivy pointed out—foolish. There weren’t many people to ask. Dula told us that there were maybe a hundred scholars in total, and only a fraction were there at any given time. The library was more than large enough for a thousand people to walk around all day and never meet. We passed two other people on the first day.
Both were servants rather than scholars, and neither spoke to us.
Anukdun had hundreds of serving staff. They cleaned, restacked books, and took care of the physical needs of the scholars. Servants lived in Bookston and gained entrance to the library through the amulets they wore. Dula explained that most came from families that had served the library for hundreds if not thousands of generations. An amulet was granted when a new servant got the job (usually when their parent died or retired from the same position). As with Ivy’s necklace, no one else could steal or use the amulets.
I took a good look at one when we passed an Anubean woman with an armload of books. The stone in the amulets was the same mineral from which the gollen were carved.
***
Shortly before dinnertime we found a ramp that led downward in a wide spiral. If we’d been on Earth, I’d have thought it was for electric vehicles—the kind that bring in supplies to the underground layers of supervillains.
Lamps that were pervasive throughout the library hung at regular intervals in brackets along the walls. I’d been curious about them, but those were the first ones I could reach out and touch. I stopped a short way down the ramp to investigate a cylinder of glowing glass. It hung in a bracket, driven into the stone of the wall, but I could remove it by sliding the cylinder up through rings of steel.
“What are you doing?” Ivy asked.
“I’ve been wondering about these,” I said. I was careful not to bang the glass cylinder as I pulled it free. “They glow continually, but I can’t sense any enchantments. This is interesting.”
The sealed glass tube held a lumpy luminescent substance that had faintly visible folds every inch or so. The tube itself was as long as my forearm and as thick as my wrist. I could see at a glance that there were minor variations in the size of the light tubes. Up close, I could also see symbols etched into the glass. I recognised them at once. They were words from the language of the Titans, and came from the basic set used by all schools of enchantment.
“What is interesting?” Ivy asked.
“These enchantments just strengthen the glass tube, but as far as I can tell, they have nothing to do with making light or fire. I wonder how this works?”
“It isn’t an enchantment,” Ivy said “No magic is involved.”
“How do you know?”
“That is a living creature, trapped within the glass. It provides illumination because it is in its nature to do so.”
“Do you know what this is?”
“Not exactly. I have never seen it before, but I’m certain it’s the larval stage of a large insect.”
“This would grow into a huge butterfly,” I said.
The tube must have weighed five pounds.
“I don’t believe it will become a butterfly, Jack. Be cautious with the lamp.
“You’d have to work hard to break it. With these enchantments, I don’t think just dropping it would do anything.” I slid the light tube back into its holder. “Let’s see what’s at the bottom and call it a day.”
The bottom was a long walk down. I could sense that we were hundreds of feet beneath the surface and surrounded by stone. When doors and guards appeared around the last stretch of bend, it came as a surprise. Heavy doors that reminded me of those guarding Marielain’s workshop stood closed before us. A dozen long spears raised threateningly in the hands of the dozen gollen who blocked the way forward. I wasn’t sure if they could talk, but based on body language alone, we weren’t getting past. I took another step and shields lifted. When they moved to form a wall of shields, and the spears lowered to chest height, I stopped taking steps.
“Jack, we should go now,” Ivy said.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.”
We walked backwards up the ramp. When we’d taken maybe ten steps away, the gollen returned to their original positions and stood still.
“I think we’ve found the dungeons,” I said.
“Yes, but getting in will be difficult.”
I had a brilliant idea. Ivy was an incredible hider.
“Can you make us invisible with your florathen ninja stealth mode?”
Ivy stopped short and frowned up at me.
“What is it you imagine I can do?”
“Bend the light around us, and hide us, so we can sneak past the guards.”
“I don’t make myself invisible and cannot hide another. I veil myself by partially joining with nearby life so that only that other life is observed. That’s easy to accomplish in a jungle or forest where life is abundant. Possibly, I could hide against this wall if moss covered it, but I couldn’t do so and also move. Those gollen aren’t alive. My veil might be entirely ineffective against them under ideal circumstances.”
So much for Plan A.
“Then we’ll have to find another way.”
Chapter 28 – Wisdom and Wonders
A pair of goblin ladies delivered hampers full of dinner to Dula’s apartment. The food proved to be good, simple fare, and when we’d finished, Dula carelessly jammed the dirty dishes and uneaten food back into the baskets before setting them outside his front door.
That seemed wasteful, but the room service made clear the privilege of his position. Ivy had told me that the knowledge within its walls made the library both powerful and wealthy. Anukdun gave no information freely to outsiders, charged a steep premium for the knowledge they sold, and was filled with a bunch
of people who typically had little interest in wealth.
I figured there must be a sizable treasure room in addition to the visible, collected wealth. We hadn’t come for treasure. Dula spent much of dinner asking Ivy questions, having stored up a lot of them. After dinner, I asked questions of my own.
“What powers the gollen?”
I sensed enchantments within the stone guardians, but not of a petrathen variety, and my inner eye was unable to see their workings.
“Moonstone,” Dula said.
He sipped tea, which had also come in the hampers.
“Moonstone?”
“Yes, it’s said they cut each gollen from the same great chunk of moonstone. They’ve been here longer than any nation still standing, including the Fae kingdoms, and they don’t talk, making confirmation difficult.”
“Are they intelligent?” Sentient guards would be much harder to get past.
“Not as individuals, but a complex enchantment guides them along well defined paths of behaviour. They are more cogs in a great machine, but they aren’t set in their ways and will follow new commands given by the council. Provided, that those commands don’t threaten the library. Protecting Anukdun is their primary purpose.”
“Where does moonstone come from?” I asked to keep the information flowing.
“From one of the moons…” Dula said, “hence the name. Small samples of stone from each moon are on display in the Hall of Minerals. The sample from Mani and the gollen are the same, but the piece they were cut from must have been substantial. Legend says it fell during the final battle between Delanor and the Destroyer. I know of no evidence to support that, but it makes for a fine story, and, being so far in the past, is beyond proving.”
He hadn’t really answered my question, “But what powers the enchantment.”
Dula shrugged, “No one knows.”
***
Since the library seemed like the safest place we’d ever been, Ivy and I split up in the hopes it would speed the search for information. That was wishful thinking. Two people can count the grains of sand on a beach twice as fast as one, but…
