This room was twice the size of the throne room, with no windows at all. Instead, the entire ceiling was a skylight that poured light into the room by day. And by night, hundreds of lamps provided light to anyone who prowled the shelves. Hundreds. Because the room was easily ten floors tall, and it had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. In order to have access to the books, there were beautifully crafted wooden walkways circling the room on every bookshelf level. There were roughly two levels per floor, and the sensation of standing down on the floor and looking up at all those books was of seeing all the knowledge of the world in one place.
While this was probably not true, it was true that there were treasures here that existed nowhere else, because this was the repository for all of the books and scrolls rescued from what could have been a terrible disaster hundreds of years ago.
It had happened that the Kings and Queens of a desert kingdom now no more had decided that the capital city would house the greatest library in all the world. Because their land had been rich in gold, their wishes were commands. Within the lifetime of the first King to make this command, it had become a scholar's pride to send a copy of his work there. By the lifetime of the tenth Queen, there were very few books in the literary world that were not preserved there.
Then, disaster. Despite clever negotiations, despite using her own beautiful body as a bargaining tool, her Kingdom was invaded. And the invaders, caring mostly only for warfare, did not care about learning. So when during a riot, someone set fire to the Great Library, nothing was done to save the books.
But fortunately for the world, the Godmothers did care. Not everything was saved, as Godmother after Godmother worked magic to pull the books from their doomed homes into her own, but most were, and those that were not, had copies elsewhere.
Eventually all those books, either the originals or copies, found their way here.
Here, where thirteen Godmothers and thirteen Fae — who also cherished learning — worked together to create the perfect home for them, protected from fire, water, worm and rot. And then they worked a further magic, so that any one of the Godmothers and great Wizards who needed to consult one of the books here had but to go to his own library and look for it. And there it would be — a copy, perfect in every detail. Thus, over time, they ensured that none of these books would ever be lost again. What was more, the library continued to grow, with new books added to it daily. This was not just the past being preserved; it was, insofar as possible, just what the Kings and Queens of that long-lost land intended.
The room had that special scent of a good library: old paper and parchment, a hint of dust, the smell of aged leather. Aleksia had an appreciation for it, although she was not the book lover that some people were. She had had one of those as a visitor once, and he had stood in speechless awe for a good hour, then broke down and wept with happiness. He had been a very easy visitor to care for; she scarcely saw him except at meals.
Needless to say, Kay was not permitted here. If he had known such a place existed, it might well have erased Gerda from his mind.
It would take someone who devoted himself or herself full-time for several lifetimes to learn all the books here. Fortunately, the library had such a person.
Well, “person” in the broadest sense of the term.
“Citrine?” she called.
From somewhere up near the top of the room there came a rustling sound. “Up here, Godmother!”
A moment later, something unfurled itself and descended through the air in a tight spiral.
The tiny dragon — tiny by draconic standards — landed next to Aleksia neatly and precisely. Citrine was a Book Wyrm, one of a rare breed of dragon whose treasure consisted of books, rather than gold and gems. They tended to be small, but Citrine was exceptionally small, being only double Aleksia's height when she stood on all fours. She was a gorgeous little thing, golden yellow shading to deep gold on her extremities, and deep rose-gold eyes with a kindly look to them. She was, in fact, a dwarf. As such, she was easy prey for dragon-hunters.
But the Godmother who had been in residence four generations ago had been quick to offer the young dragon a home in the library and to officially designate it as Citrine's “hoard.” Citrine had been in charge of the library ever since.
“I need to know how I can get into the Underworld and back out again,” Aleksia said carefully.
Citrine cocked her head to one side, and regarded Aleksia thoughtfully. “I could be flippant and say that it is easy to get into the Underworld, but very hard to get out again…but more to the point, I think, would be to ask which Underworld. There are a very great many.”
“The Sammi one,” Aleksia replied, after a moment of mentally placing where the villages destroyed by the Icehart were.
“Tuonela, hmm? Give me a moment.”
Citrine flew up to about the middle of the room, and landed on the railing, her long neck extending as she scanned the shelves. After some time, she selected one book, and then another and finally a third. She pushed herself off the railing and glided down to the floor again.
“Here you are!” Quickly she leafed through the first book and marked a page with a slip of paper, then did the same with the second and third books. She handed all three of them to Aleksia, who took them with a nod of thanks.
“Don't forget to bring them back, Godmother!” Citrine blinked owlishly, then bared her teeth in a draconic grin that Aleksia knew was friendly, but would probably look horrifying to an outsider. She nodded her head and flew back up to the top of the room where she had been when Aleksia entered — probably reading another of the new books that had arrived.
With a faint smile on her face, Aleksia took the books back to her study. She was not at all sure that Citrine knew her name. The Book Wyrm was entirely focused on the books and what was in them. She might not recall what the information was, but if you told her what you were looking for, she could find the book it was in, and probably the page it was on.
With all that to remember, it was probably not surprising that Citrine could not remember the name of the Godmother-in-residence. That, after all, was irrelevant. Well, it was, right until the moment that the Godmother in question did something worth remembering and putting in a book. At that point, Citrine would know the Godmother's name and what she had done. She still would probably not recognize the Godmother if she saw her, but by all that was holy, Citrine would remember her name and in what book she had resided.
And truly, what did it matter what the name of the Godmother here and now was for what Citrine did? Godmothers came and Godmothers went, but Citrine would be here for several more centuries at least, growing slowly with the library, learning the books and what was in them, and serving as the living index to all of them.
No open flames were allowed anywhere in or near the library, but here in her study, she had a cozy fire and scented candles filling the air with the aroma of cinnamon. She settled down with her books, first to determine what languages they were in.
The Sammi were not ones for writing things down, depending mostly on their oral traditions. So all three books were in different languages, but — much to her pleasure — one was an account by one of the Great Wizards, one was a Godmother collecting the first-person accounts of Sammi Shaman and the last was of collected tales passed down in the oral tradition — which, to be fair, was a source much less reliable. It pleased her even further to learn that all three were fundamentally alike.