Astinus kept scribbling, never once looking to see them depart. The words on the page, meticulously recording every event, told all he ever needed to know.
…the farmer and the creature leave Astinus’s study. Neither says good-bye. Maltor takes them into the stacks of books…
From atop the ladder, Maltor finally sounded a note of triumph. “Ah, here it is!” the Aesthetic told the pair, who waited below. Prying a volume from the tightly packed shelf at the uppermost level of the stacks, where it almost brushed the ceiling, Maltor fastidiously wiped a layer of dust from its edges. The gray powder filtered down through the gloomy aisle like mist. “You have been most favored,” the monk continued as he struggled to lower his fat body down the ladder, book under one arm. “For Astinus to allow you to read one of his books, let alone meet with him, is a great honor.” Blowing out his breath, the Aesthetic reached the floor and led the pair to a bare table lit by a single lamp.
The room was almost solid bookshelves, more books than Teldin had ever imagined existed in all of Ansalon. The neat rows of black and brown bound volumes were crammed tightly onto the shelves, arranged and numbered according to dates and places. Dust seemed to coat everything, including the floor, where the three left their tracks. Teldin wondered how long it would be before those footprints faded. “This must be the Great Library,” he breathed in awe.
“A little of it,” Maltor casually answered. “Covering from five hundred to one hundred thirty-seven years ago. Teldin looked astonished that there could be more books than the hundreds found in just this single, unlit room. “Now, let’s see if I can find what the master intended. What should I look for?” The monk peered up from the densely lettered volume.
Teldin was stumped. Astinus had already declared his ignorance of the cloak, so the farmer really didn’t have any idea what he was looking for. Confused, he looked to the giff for suggestions.
“Spelljamming,” Gomja offered. “How can I go home?”
“Spell-jamming?” the Aesthetic mouthed as a traced his fingers down the page. “What’s that?”
Gomja briefly tried explaining the concept of flying ships and what he knew of space, which was very little indeed. Nonetheless, Maltor seemed to get a rudimentary idea of the process, enough to continue his search.
Teldin and Gomja sat patiently while the monk skimmed the work. The rich smell of burning lamp oil began to fill the stale air, warming the already stuffy chamber. The tired and dispirited farmer began to nod off.
“Ah, here it is,” Maltor said at last, echoing his earlier triumphant tone. “This looks promising. Listen.” The monk bent his nose close to the page, striving to make out the faded, cramped lettering by the lamp’s dim light.
"…this day, as above Afterwatch Hour climbing 10, a vessel arrived to the gnomes of Mount Nevermind. It came from the stars and was greeted by Tuwalricandilifchustra-”
Maltor stopped reading. “There is a very long name here and other details that may not be important. Perhaps it would be better if I summarized the master’s words”
“If you think that’s best,” Teldin allowed with a wave of his hand. Almost instantly he struggled to repress a sneeze brought on by a cloud of dust raised from the table. Maltot nodded quickly, his tic resurfacing. Burying his face in the book, he read on, skimming quickly over the pages.
More time passed as the monk studied the pages. He flipped forward and backward several times, as if puzzling out a strange reference. Teldin and Gomja watched the monk’s every move with eager expectation, as if these actions might in themselves reveal a secret of the universe. After turning through the pages for the fifth or sixth time, the Aesthetic finally pushed the tome aside. He rubbed dust from the corners of his eyes.
“I am not sure I understand what is written here” he offered as a preface. “Astinus knows many things the rest of us will never understand.”
“What does it say?” Teldin asked with an edge of impatience in his voice.
The monk turned the book toward Teldin and pointed to a passage. “As you can see, it seems to explain things right here-”
The farmer pushed the page back. “You explain it. I’m far too tired to read,” he lied. His small skill at letters was no match for the words of Astinus, though Teldin had no desire to let the monk know this.
The doorkeeper blew out a sigh that stirred up another cloud of dust. “Well, according to this, our world-Krynn, that is-is not the only place in the universe. It is one of many places separated from each other by-by nothingness.” The monk’s expression made it clear that he understood none of this.
“I know that,” Gomja muttered in vexation. Teldin hushed the giff and motioned for Maltor to continue.
“From what Astinus writes, Krynn, the moons, even the stars are enclosed in a sphere, one of many such spheres, like a glass ball.” Seeing Teldin’s puzzled look, the monk traced a circle in the dust. “Our world and all these other things are inside, while outside is some kind of a nothing called phlogiston.”
“A nothing with a name?” Teldin asked.
Maltor faltered, groping for just the right way to describe it.
“It is a great ocean of swirling colors, sir,” Gomja offered, based on his own experience. Teldin cocked an eye at the giff, skeptical of the creature’s sudden expertise. “I never knew how to describe it,” the giff explained.
“As he said,” continued Maltor, “there are other spheres floating in this phlogiston, but each sphere is supposed to be separate from the others. It says here that each is like a crystal orb, enclosed and independent, with whole worlds to themselves.” At this point, even Maltor could not suppress a tone of skepticism about his master’s words.
“So how does Astinus know all this?” Teldin demanded. The whole explanation sounded cockamamie to his ears.
Maltor threw up his hands. “How does Master Astinus know anything? He just does-but, from my reading, it seems the spheres beyond our own are unknown to my master. Of these other worlds he apparently knows only what has been reported by travelers.”
Teldin’s mind was starting to reel with confusion. He pushed away from the table and ambled a little way down the dust-clogged aisle. “Travelers? More than just Gomja?"
“Quite a few, from these records,” Maltor noted by tapping at a page. Apparently this was not the first ship to visit the gnomes of Mount Nevermind. The place is something like a port on an ocean. These travelers reach Krynn by the method your companion called spelljamming- sailing among the stars and through the phlogiston. The ship that crashed on your farm was such a ship-magically powered to fly through the sky.”
“Like the flying citadels during the war?” Teldin offered.
“I guess, but probably more so,” Maltor speculated. The monk’s scholarly interest was being excited by the very bizarreness of the research. “These ships travel beyond our sky even into the airless reaches of space. However it may be, your companion was part of a spelljamming ship.” The Aesthetic looked at Gomja with renewed wonder, just realizing the implications of his own conclusions. “Where do you come from?”
The giff started, taken aback by the monk’s sudden inquisitiveness. He answered slowly, as if fearful of betraying a secret. “I-uh-signed on at Dalweor’s Rock, sir.” The giff shifted uneasily from side to side.
Maltor seemed to make a mental note of this. “Dalweor’s Rock is your home, then? I am only asking for Astinus’s sake. I mean, just in case he wants to know.” The monk clumsily covered his own curiosity with this excuse.
Gomja hesitated again. “Well, no, sir. It belongs to the dwarves. We-I mean, the giff don’t really have a home. I’ve always lived wherever my sire’s-my father’s-platoon found work. Mostly that was on Dalweor’s Rock, I guess."