Teidin’s shoulders sagged with the sudden failure of his hopes. “Your authority? Then who does know?” he asked weakly, his confidence quickly draining away.
“For that answer you must go outside this sphere,” Astinus answered. He went back to looking at his writing, seemingly forgetting the pair’s presence.
“Sphere? What sphere?” Teldin asked. So far, the great sage Astinus had provided more riddles than answers.
“Your friend did not explain spelljamming?” Astinus asked with only mild interest.
Gomja nervously wetted his lips. “I’ve never understood it very well myself, sir,” the giff admitted.
“Ignorance of the world is no asset,” Astinus humorlessly remarked as he wrote in flowing strokes, “although too much knowledge may also be bad.” Carefully setting his quill into its holder, the impassive sage sprinkled the drying sheet with sand, then gently set it on the top of the stack. After the briefest pause, Astinus took up another sheet and began writing again.
Teldin remembered stories about the sage and his library. It truly was his library, for Astinus’s books were supposed to be the only works found here. According to tales, each day the sage wrote a precise number of pages and each night these were spirited away by his aides, bound into volumes, and shelved in the halls of the Great Library. In his works, the history of all the world was set down.
“You have delayed my work long enough. This audience is over.” The sage’s cold words shocked Teldin from his reverie.
“But our questions! We haven’t learned anything,” the farmer started to argue, half-rising from his chair.
“And how do I get home?” interjected the giff, his deep voice rumbling ominously.
Astinus appeared unmoved by their pleas, and continued his writing unabated. “Maltor,” he smoothly called, summoning the doorkeeper. The pudgy man hurriedly appeared, his nervous tic stronger than before. “Take these two-” Astinus noted that Teldin was ready to argue and rephrased his thought. “Help these two find their answers. Gnome history, one hundred and twenty-three years ago. Mount Nevermind. There ate some passages there that may be of use.”
“Yes, Master,” the Aesthetic answered reverently. He stood waiting for the guests to leave. Sensing that perhaps their visit had not been a complete failure, Teldin rose and motioned Gomja to follow.
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.