But the old man would get back in the morning and find that door unlocked, and he would know who had done it.
Surely he had locked it.
But he could not remember even taking the key from his purse.
He stuck a foot out, and another, and slipped from the bed. He hadn’t undressed, more than to take off his coat and belt and boots—the country habit, though lords did differently. He hadn’t waked Paisi, getting up. He quietly located his coat in the dim light of the banked fire in the other room, found his boots in the shadow of the bed, his belt, with the purse and the key, hanging from the chair at the table, and dressed.
Then he as quietly left, taking the same route he had used coming home, and this time he did run, on tiptoe, and lightly. No one was about the upper hall—no guards or even servants visible at this hour. He ran upstairs at the end of his hall, the circuitous route, and along the servants’ hall, where not even the servants were stirring. He ran down the dark little stairway to the library hall without ever passing the haunt or his mother’s guards.
The servants had renewed the candles: only one burned, in this area, and a new one, white and unburned, stood on the ledge. He tried the door latch, and it did open: he had not, indeed, locked it, and he began to reach for the key to lock it safely, then take himself back upstairs to his warm bed as quickly as he could.
But he hadn’t proved that the library was still safe. He didn’t know if anyone had gotten inside, did he?
He took the new candle and went to the midpoint of the short hall, lit it from the single burning candle in its sconce, and brought it back again. He opened one eagle door carefully, wide-awake now, and held the candle aloft to see if there might be any disturbance of things as he had left them.
A sudden draft blew his candle out. His heart skipped a beat. Only a draft, he said to himself. It was only the door being so narrowly open.
Something glowed red, in the deep dark near where he had sat—a glow like a windblown coal where it ought not to be, but not well-defined, either. The light was diffuse, like a ward, with a solid center. It was a color he had only seen in the tangled Lines in the Quinaltine, where horrid things had warred to get out.
He waited in the doorway, with his dead candle. He was afraid even to breathe, and tried to tell himself the light was his imagination but it persisted, cold red fire, when the Lines of the room itself failed to appear, or were so dim, beside that glow, that his eyes failed to see them.
It wasn’t right. Something in that area wasn’t at all right, and it came from underneath the bookshelves, from underneath a table, the counter on which that small bookcase rested. He could see wards. Not everyone could. If something was wrong, he had to know where it was, to report it.
He took a few steps forward, gently letting the door shut, in the draft that blew. He walked a few paces to the side to find the source of the light.
Right underneath the shelf that held the book he had been reading, and right beside the table where the History of Amefelstill rested—something was there, something that, for no conscious reason, terrified him. It glowed like one baleful eye, of something which, if it were a beast, was too large to be in the room.
His ring tingled. But it protected him. He kept an eye on the glow and saw it neither grow nor shrink as he edged around two tables away, with those barriers between him and it, and looked under all, to see nothing but a glowing spot on the plaster.
It was something that wanted to be found, there was no other way to think of it: he had felt a need today to be at that table, that shelf, and he had sat there reading, searching, had he not? But he had never found what satisfied him, not even reading on into the dark.
He squatted, below the level of the tables and watched it, and moved forward one table, on his knees.
What glowed was not in the room. It was behind the plaster, as if a fire burned there. It was everything he wanted. It made no sense, but he knew it was. He crept all the way to that wall, and touched the plaster, feeling nothing but the tingle of the ring on his finger, and an answering tingle from what was behind the wall.
He had no tool to use, could think of none in the library that he had seen. He took off his belt and tried the only metal he had about him, the capped end of his belt, against the plaster, which was soft, but it was not nearly soft enough, and it would take time. He had marked the place—he could find it, even if the glow vanished with light, and now he sought to find a sharper tool somewhere in the room.
He crawled out, went to the fireside, and took a sharp bit of kindling from the little pile of wood that fed the library fireplace, but that would not be sharp or stout enough. He cast it into the coals in frustration, then, indeed, the fireplace poker offered itself. He took it, and brought it back to the counter, and knelt and dug into the plaster.
Powder fell onto the stones, damning evidence. He knew—he knew in the back of his mind that if he didn’t get this thing now, before the librarian came in, he could never get at it. He could pile books there. If he got whatever it was and got out, he could pile books where the plaster had fallen and conceal the hole. Hadn’t Paisi had taught him how to go quietly, how to cover his traces? Paisi had said he was teaching him hunting and woodcraft, but Paisi had confessed that he had been a thief, when there had been only Paisi to support Gran, and Paisi had said he could be a thief, for a good reason—
Hehad to be, now. It was his needto have what was buried here; it was his rightto have it, when fate and his mother’s spite had taken every other thing away from him. If he and Paisi were to find their way in the world, he had to know all the truths people kept from him, and he had to protect them both, the way Paisi had protected Gran as long as he could. Now it was his mother’s sorcery that threatened their lives, and he had to have this thing to protect them all, before his mother’s spite could do worse to them than it had already done…
He reached stone, and where mortar should have been, found only more soft plaster binding the stones together. He dug out one ill-set stone, and opened a hole where light failed to reach, and a small glow within. It died like a fading coal. He extended the poker into the darkness, and disturbed something hard and light, that lifted a little and slipped back in. The poker felt only cold to the touch when he drew it out.
He reached into the gap blindly, fearing to touch he knew not what noxious thing, but feeling he must. His fingers found a little flat and very dusty packet.
Carefully he worked it about and drew it and his hand out of the narrow gap undamaged.
He turned around, sat angling his prize toward the starlight from tall, uncurtained windows. It was a codex, scarcely bigger than his palm.
He clambered back to his feet and opened the little book in the middle, but there was not enough light on this side of the room to read what was in it. He took it to the fireside, where the stick he had thrown in had taken light.
The letters crawled in front of his eyes, refusing to take shape, as if tears blinded him, or as if his eyes had grown as dim as Gran’s.
He felt the burning of his mother’s attention, felt it bearing down his back, as if she were standing there right at his back.
Get it! she seemed to say to him, as fiercely as she had ever spoken. You’ve gone this far. Now bring it to me.
“Boy,” another voice seemed to say to him—a faint, far voice, that for all the world was Gran’s.
He looked up. He saw Gran, standing right there, like a figure in smoke. “Boy, don’t dare let her have it.”
He felt as if he were smothering, as if he could not get his next breath. The fire crackled and snapped, and part of the stick fell, flaring bright flame as it did.