Loyal Torm, it shouldn’t be this hard, he thought. It shouldn’t be confusing and I shouldn’t have to fight her on so much.
It shouldn’t take a goddamned book to get her to trust that he might have something to say. And, he thought, raising his eyes to the back of her head, well aware he was making himself blush, you should not have a crush on a girl with a tail no matter what her legs look like.
“Here,” she said, when they reached the alcove. She waved him toward the pedestal, and Brin pointedly didn’t look at the tormented-looking gnome that made the base. “Pick it up,” she urged. “Ask it something.”
Brin glowered at her and scooped up the Book, so roughly he must have sent a cloud of dust up into his eyes. He winced and coughed to clear his throat. Havilar stood by, watching eagerly and completely missing the fact that he was angry at her.
“How much time,” he said acidly, “is this wasting while we’re being tracked by Netherese and Zhentarim and the gods know what else?” Havilar smiled at him blithely-gods, she didn’t listen at all.
I believe you’re in a better position to answer that, the Book chided. The ink swirled, making pictures of scholars in a scriptorium. But is the search for knowledge ever truly time wasted?
It is if it’s the difference between living and dying, Brin thought irritably. “Thank you,” he said, and he dropped the Book back in its spot. “I don’t need more.”
No, no, the Book said. It’s my pleasure.
“Happy?” Brin said to Havilar. But when he looked up she was gone. “Havi?” he called. He could almost feel her watching from a distance. Or someone watching. “Havi!” he called again. There was no answer. “Damn it.” What in all the broken planes had that been about? Brin wended his way back to the camp at the center of the library.
She doesn’t listen, he told himself. She doesn’t care if you’re angry. She doesn’t bother to wait around when you’ve done as she asked. He could practically hear Constancia clucking her tongue. “It will run its course,” he could imagine her saying. “Just bide your time and ignore her ’til it does.”
The camp was empty by the time he made it back-a blessing and a pity, he thought. He didn’t want to talk about Havilar to anyone else … but he’d even talk to Dahl if it meant he could be distracted for a bit.
She probably went off to find him, a little voice in his thoughts chimed in. He shook his head-so what if she did? Bide your time. It will pass.
Stlarn and hrast, he thought bitterly. He couldn’t sit here waiting, all useless and full of nerves. There was a library full of paths, full of potential distractions. He set off into it, wending his way through the shelves and stacks, sunk in his own bad mood. He pulled a scroll or two, but none were in any language he knew-fitting, he thought. As if the whole place were keeping him from being diverted. Footsteps echoed through the caverns, his companions everywhere and nowhere. None of them crossed his path.
Brin walked until he found himself in an open space near the outer wall, a little courtyard with a statue of a wizard looking up at an enormous glowing rune. He followed the statue’s gaze-not a trap, he thought, if he remembered his lessons right. It looked more like a seal or a ward or-
“Well, here we are,” a woman’s voice said. Brin turned to see Pernika standing a dozen feet behind him, and his stomach dropped.
“You and I have business to attend to, Lord Crownsilver.”
Once again, Dahl thought, you’re stuck following orders that make no sense. He marked the end of his shelf with a cross of chalk. And wasting components, he thought grimly. How long had they been down here? A day and a half? Two? There was no way to tell, and though the piles of codices and scrolls were growing in their little camp, no one had found the promised spellbooks.
“Keep looking,” Mira had told him earlier, when he’d expressed his doubts. “The spellbooks are somewhere. But in the meantime … there’s not a thing wrong with seeing what else is here. Surely there’s something of interest to you. Some topic that strikes your fancy? Some question you want answered?”
Yes, Dahl nearly said. But he kept his thoughts to himself-what he wanted to know was surely not kept in an arcanist’s library.
The sound of voices bounced past him, and it took Dahl a moment to recognize them: Tam and the Book they’d found before. The Book Mira had said to leave where it was. He followed the curving shelves back to the alcove, where Tam stood over the text. “Such wonders,” he said to himself.
Dahl stopped short, eyeing Tam. “Thought you were supposed to be searching the inner shelves.”
Tam did not look up. “You haven’t consulted the Book yet, have you?” he said.
“I’ve been busy,” Dahl said.
“A pity,” Tam said. He looked up at Dahl with that patronizing expression. “You really ought to make time. There’s much here to be enlightened by.”
“You know,” Dahl said, struggling to guard his words, “you might find I’m not so utterly unenlightened.”
Tam shrugged, with that same bland smile.
“For example,” Dahl continued, biting off the words, “do you have any idea how many books and scrolls are in here? I’ve counted one hundred and twenty shelves radiating out from the center-and that doesn’t even address all the bits that seem to be tucked in here and there like afterthoughts. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of texts. Even if a tenth of them were Tarchamus’s spellbooks, we couldn’t find every one of them without a lot more time than you’re giving us.”
“I think you’re underestimating, actually,” Tam said.
“Then my point stands all the stronger. This is a futile effort-we have no time to search, and we have no plans for contingencies.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what in the bloody planes do we do when the Shadovar find this place if it’s so full of dangerous information? Even if we find the spellbooks, all you have are vague notions about sealing the doors and gaining reinforcements. Have you even contacted Everlund yet?”
Tam strode nearer and laid his hand on Dahl’s shoulder so lightly he hardly felt it. “Perhaps you should look for answers in the sources we’ve been left.” And with another patronizing smile, he turned and vanished into the stacks.
Watching Gods-Dahl fought the urge to kick something. He wasn’t a fool and he wasn’t an innocent. He didn’t need someone chiding him to do his research and check his sums. It didn’t take a seer to divine that the Harpers needed capable agents-so why was he being forced through paces so remedial he might as well have been a lame pony?
Tarchamus’s peers never truly appreciated him either, said the voice of the Book, breaking the silence. It’s partly why he hid all of his knowledge here. Not everyone is worthy of knowledge.
“All are worthy,” Dahl murmured. He looked back at the Book. “ ‘Knowledge is not to be hidden, not from the world and not from the self.’ ”
An Oghmanyte? the Book said. The text shivered into the shape of Oghma’s harp, the lines of hymns. Well, well.
“I … no,” Dahl said. “Once.”
Nevertheless, the Book said, we can agree-can we not? — that … display was unworthy of you. You are a bit old, by my reckoning, to be his apprentice.
“I’m not his apprentice,” Dahl snapped.
Precisely, the Book said. Why are you no longer an Oghmanyte?
“The gods are fickle.” He stared after Tam. “Have you texts on the worship of Oghma here?”
But of course. What do you want to find in particular?
Dahl hesitated. “Spells. Covenants. The laws of paladins.”
Paladins of Oghma? An interesting course of study, the Book said. One might surmise this is personal for you. If you ask the question you’re looking for answers to, I may be able to cut your search short.