“Such as yourself,” said Brian admiringly. He took hold of her hand, indicating her ink-stained fingers.
Lillith blushed, but she gave a matter-of-fact nod. Brian kept hold of her hand, as if by accident. Lillith smiled at him, the dimple flashed, and she gently slid her hand out of his grasp.
“What book or reference are you looking for, Sir Brian? Perhaps I can help you find it. I’m familiar with most of what’s down here, though not all, mind you. That would take several lifetimes.”
Derek gave Brian a sharp glance, silencing him.
“It is not that we do not trust you, Mistress Hallmark,” Derek said coolly. “But I believe we should keep this information to ourselves. We might put you in danger otherwise.”
“Just as you choose,” said Lillith. She came to a halt. “Here we are.”
“A blank wall,” Aran stated.
They walked through a shadowy archway that led to a dead end. A wall made of multicolored stones, rounded and weathered and set in mortar, butted up against a hillside covered over with long grass.
“The Library of Khrystann,” said Lillith.
She placed her boot on a flagstone in front of the wall and pressed on it. To the knights’ amazement, the solid stone wall gave a sudden jolt and slid off to one side.
“It’s not stone at all,” exclaimed Aran, reaching out his hand to touch it. “It’s wood painted to look like stone!” He laughed. “What a masterpiece! It fooled me completely!”
The knights looked back down the alley and saw it in a far different light.
“The alley is part of the library’s defenses,” said Brian. “Anyone trying to reach the library has to walk down it.”
“And the sewer grate I almost stepped on—it’s a trap!” Aran regarded Lillith with more respect. “You and your Aesthetics appear ready to fight and die to defend the library. Why? It’s only a bunch of books.”
“A bunch of books that contain the bright light of wisdom of past generations, Sir Aran,” said Lillith softly. “We fear that if this light is quenched, we will plunge into a darkness so deep we might never find our way out.”
She shoved aside the wooden door painted to look like stone. Behind it was another wooden door, this one of very old workmanship. Carved into the wood were the scales of balance resting on a book.
“The symbol of Gilean, God of the Book and Keeper of the Balance.” Lillith reached out her hand to touch the scales.
“You speak of him with reverence,” said Brian. “Do you believe the gods have returned?”
Lillith opened her mouth to reply, but Derek cut her short. “We have no time for such nonsense. Please proceed, Mistress.”
Lillith gave Brian a sidelong glance and a secret smile.
“We will speak of that later,” she said.
She pressed on one of the scales twice, then the other scale three times, then pressed four times on the symbol on the book. The second door slid open. A long staircase extended straight down into darkness. A lantern hung on a hook on the wall near the door. Lillith removed the lantern and, opening a glass panel, lit the stub of a candle inside. The flame burned clear. She shut the glass panel carefully and lighted their way down the stairs.
The air grew warmer. The stairway smelled of old leather and sheepskin and the dust of time. At the bottom of the stairs was another door, again decorated with the scales and a book. Lillith pressed on each again, only in a different order. The door slid into the wall. She entered the room, holding her lantern high.
The room was enormous. Long and wide, it extended far beyond the reach of the lantern light. And it was filled, floor to ceiling, with books. Shelves of books lined the walls. Shelves of books marched in long rows across the floor, row after row, on and on into the darkness. It was a veritable forest of shelves, and the books on those shelves were as numerous as the leaves on a forest of trees.
The three knights stared at the books in awe mingled with growing dismay.
“Are you sure you don’t need my help, Sir Derek?” Lillith asked serenely.
4
A hopeless search. The riot. Kender-snatching
“There are thousands!” Aran gasped.
“Thousands of thousands,” said Brian in hopeless tones. Derek turned to Lillith. “There must be a catalog of the books, Mistress Hallmark. The Aesthetics are known for their meticulous record-keeping.”
“There was,” said Lillith. “The books were catalogued and cross-referenced by title, author, and content.”
“You’re speaking in the past tense,” Aran noted ominously.
“The catalog was destroyed,” Lillith told them gravely.
“Who would do such a thing? Why?” Brian asked.
“The Aesthetics themselves destroyed it.” Lillith gave a deep sigh. “Right before the Cataclysm, during the time that the Kingpriest handed down the Edict of Thought Control, he threatened to send his Enforcers to the library to search the catalog of books so that his Enforcers could remove and burn all those deemed ‘a threat to the faith’. The Aesthetics could not allow this, of course, so they burned the catalog. If the Enforcers wanted to know what was in the books, they were going to have to read them. All of them.”
“And so, it seems, are we,” said Brian grimly.
Brian pointed to Lillith’s ink-stained fingers. “Not necessarily. You’ve been recreating the catalog, haven’t you, Mistress Hallmark?”
“I wish you would all just call me Lillith, and, yes, I’ve been trying to recreate the catalog. I haven’t gotten very far. It’s an enormous task.”
“Derek, we must tell her why we’re here,” murmured Aran.
Derek was determined to keep the orb a secret, and for a moment he looked obstinate. Then his gaze went to the shelves of books, shelf after shelf after shelf of books. He pressed his lips together a moment, then said tersely, “We’re looking for information concerning dragon orbs. All we know for certain is that they were created by wizards.”
Lillith gave a low whistle. “Wizards, eh? I don’t recall coming across any information on dragon orbs, but then, I haven’t started work on the books that deal with magic.”
Derek and Brian looked at each other in dismay. Aran, shaking his head, reached for his flask.
“I can show you the section where books on the arcane are shelved,” Lillith offered. “They’re all the way in the back, I’m afraid.”
The shelves were stacked closely together; the aisles between them were so narrow that occasionally Aran had to turn sidewise to fit. They moved cautiously, for the lantern light didn’t go very far. Brian fell over a crate in the dark and almost knocked down an entire shelf.
“Sorry about the mess,” Lillith said, as they edged their way around several shelves that had toppled over, spilling their contents onto the floor. “I haven’t started to work on this section yet and I didn’t want to disturb anything. Though it may not look it, there is order in this chaos.
“Which reminds me, gentlemen,” Lillith added in severe tone, “if you take a book down from a shelf, please put it back in exactly the same place you found it. Oh, and if you could make a note of the contents, that would be a big help to me. By the way, how many different languages do you speak?”
“Solamnic,” Derek answered impatiently, not understanding the reason for the question, “and Common, of course.”
Lillith paused, holding the lantern high. “Nothing else? Elvish? Khurian?”
The knights all shook their heads.
“Ah, that’s a shame,” she said, biting her lip. “We Solamnics assume everyone in the world speaks our language, or if they don’t, they should. Wizards come in all races and nationalities. Their writings are in many different languages, including the language of magic. Given the way our people feel about wizards, I doubt you’ll find many books written in Solamnic.”
“This just keeps getting better and better!” Aran remarked cheerfully. “We could take weeks to find a scroll on dragon orbs, only to discover it’s written in some obscure dwarvish dialect and we can’t understand a word! Here’s a toast to our quest!” He took a pull from his flask.