On one night in the quiet hours between Matins and Lauds, when my companions in the infirmary slept soundly, I tugged on boots and gown and crept through the darkened abbey. Three times I dodged around a corner and peered into the night behind me, imagining I’d catch someone following. But the only sign of life was a flare of light from the church. Someone’s lamp illuminated a sapphire outline from one of the colored windows. The wavering light set the blue-limned figure moving. I signed Iero’s seal upon my breast and took a long way around the cloister walk, offering a prayer for Brother Horach’s spirit.
The small, many-windowed library building nestled in between the domed chapter house and the long, blockish monks’ dorter in the east reach of the cloister garth. The scriptorium occupied the ground floor. One reached the actual library by way of an exterior stair.
A rushlight borrowed from the infirmary revealed the upper chamber to be unimposing. The white-plastered walls were unadorned, save for two tiers of deep window niches that overlooked the cloister garth. On the opposite wall, an arched doorway opened onto a passage linking the library with the adjoining chapter house and dorter. Backless stools of dark wood stood alongside five long tables, and deep, sturdy book presses with solid doors and sliding latches lined the side walls.
I opened the cupboard farthest from the door. A locked inner grate of scrolled brasswork revealed shelves crammed with scrolls and books. A careful examination through the grate indicated that the book of maps was not among them. I moved on to the next.
In the third book press, near the bottom of a stack of large volumes, I spied a leather binding of the correct color, quality, and thickness. No gryphon lurked amid the gold elaboration of grape leaves and indecipherable lettering on its spine, but then I’d never actually examined the thing edge on.
In hopes my search had ended, I assembled the spell components for manipulating locks: the feel of old brass tarnished by greasy fingers, the image of the bronze pins and levers that might be inside this type of lock, my intent in the rough shape of a key, ready to be filled with magic and applied to the lock. Then I began to step through the rules for binding these elements together to create an unlocking spell.
With lessons and practice the pureblood bent for sorcery could be used to shape spells that had naught to do with familial talents. Though my childhood indiscipline had prevented me learning the rules for many spells, I’d had a great deal of experience breaking locks as a boy and become fairly accomplished at it. Yet years had gone since I’d done much of any spellworking. Beyond my vow to forgo magic and thus avoid the fatal weakness of most recondeurs, I’d needed to hoard my power. Without sufficient time for the well of magic inside me to be replenished, I could find myself lacking enough to empower the doulon, and my nasty habit used almost everything my particular well could produce. But surely I could scrape together enough to break a lock.
I held the spell ready, touched my fingers to the keyhole, and released a dollop of magic. Nothing happened. The brass wasn’t even warm to the touch.
I tried again, adjusting my expectation of the inner workings of the lock to something simpler. Feeling the press of time, I applied a much healthier dollop of magic. With a loud snap, blue sparks and bits of brass and bronze shot from the keyhole. The grate hung loose, a severely bent latch dangling from the brass frame.
“Holy Mother!” I waggled my stinging hand. Mumbling curses at my ineptitude, I twisted the latch back into shape the best I could, pulled off the most noticeably broken pieces, and brushed the metal chaff under the edge of the cabinet with my boot. Gingerly, I pulled open the overheated grate and extracted the book. It was not mine.
I stuffed the book back in the stack and slammed the grate, using a bronze shard to wedge it shut. Once the outer door was latched, I proceeded to the next book press. And the next…
So many books. Useless things. Searching those damnable cupboards felt as if I walked down a street of noble houses, where lamplight and singing spilled out the windows, knowing I’d not be allowed through any door. Not that I yearned to read about the world in place of living in it. It just would have been nice to know I could get in if I chose.
With nothing to show for my search so far but a broken lock and a stinging hand, I came to the last cupboard.
“We would be happy to provide you books, Valen, did you but ask.” Pale light flared and died behind me.
I dropped my walking stick with a clatter and spun about, backing into a table that immediately began sliding out from under me. “Father Abbot!”
Abbot Luviar glided across the room and rescued the rushlight before I dropped it. “I’m sorry to startle you.”
How the devil had he gotten to the far corner of the library without me seeing him? He’d certainly not been lurking there the whole time. I straightened my gown and backed away from him until blocked by the yawning door of the book press. “I was just…restless. I’ve slept so much.”
“Understandable.” Smiling, he set the rushlight on the nearest table and retrieved my dropped stick. He carried no lamp of his own. “This is a fortuitous encounter. I’ve been intending to thank you for your service on Black Night and since. Your warning saved lives. Your tales lift hearts. Even the digging—”
“I didn’t help. Don’t thank me.” The last thing in the world I desired was any share of what this man had wrought on Black Night. “Perryn of Ardra should have stood with his men. Died with them.”
“Indeed, he should have,” said the abbot, using my rushlight to ignite a wall lamp, flooding one study table with pale illumination. “Events demanded otherwise.”
“Is he still here?” Anger worked as well as strong mead to embolden my tongue.
Revealing naught but weariness, Luviar propped his backside and his hands on the table. “The prince is safe. I’ll not say where.”
“I’d have thought holy monks would stay removed from sordid politics,” I said.
“Fleshly needs oft intertwine with the spiritual. How can a woman think of heaven while her children starve, or a man contemplate Iero’s great love as his vines wither?” His furrowed gaze fixed somewhere in the emptiness between us. “We cannot always see the full span of history as it unfolds. Sometimes I fear that to attempt it is to infringe the role of the One who sees all, past and future. Yet, if the Creator grants us sight—”
His hypocrisy forced a choking sound from my throat. He jumped up and offered me his hand. “Here, Valen, are you ill?”
“Must have jarred my wound when I stumbled,” I murmured, waving him off. “I’ll be all right.”
He passed me the rushlight. “You should get back to bed. Rest. Heal. Despite its current troubles, the world is a wondrous place, the earth itself God’s holy book. Each man must discover his place in the great story. May you find your place…your peace…at Gillarine.”
I bowed and hobbled toward the door. Behind me, Luviar unlocked one of the brass grates, pulled out a book, and sat down to read. His composure only pricked my fury.
Boreas had been right. Monks were naught but self-righteous thieves. No Cartamandua gryphon marked any binding in that library.
My days of sanctuary expired. As the only way a man of sixteen years or better could stay at the abbey beyond a fortnight was to take vows, that was what I resolved to do—at least until I could put my hands on my book. The monks insisted that my face revealed Iero’s joy coursing through my veins. But truly, my good cheer stemmed from imagining the faces of anyone who had ever known me upon hearing of my intent.
“Good morrow, Valen! Iero’s grace is full upon you this glorious morn!” Only two days after his return from Pontia, I had already learned that Brother Sebastian was excessively cheerful in the early morning. My mentor, a ruddy-cheeked monk with a round head, a neat fringe of gray hair bordering his tonsure, and an ever-immaculate habit, as might be expected of the son of a ship captain, had just come from chapter to disturb my morning nap.