The library appeared to be completely deserted. I called out a few times, and no one emerged from the towering stacks to hush me. Molly stared about her, gaping openly. I nodded, understanding. The sheer size of the library always hit new visitors hard.
"Welcome to the Drood family library," I said just a bit grandly. "No shouting, no running between the stacks, no peeing in the shallow end. And no, it isn’t as big as it looks; it’s bigger. Takes up the whole lower floor of this wing. The whole world is in here, somewhere. If you can find it."
"It’s…huge," Molly said finally. "How do you find anything in here?"
"Mostly we don’t," I had to admit. "William was the last librarian to try and put together an official index, and most of his papers disappeared with him. We’re always adding books, losing books, and misfiling them. At least the sections are clearly marked."
"You look for family history," said Molly, pulling herself together and putting on her most efficient manner. "I’m going to work my way through the medical section. There must be something here I can use to help you. Even if it’s just to slow down the progress of the strange matter till we can get you to someone who can help you."
"Molly…"
"No, Eddie. I don’t want to hear it. I’m not giving up, and neither should you. I won’t let you die. Not when you risked your life to save me. I can’t…There has to be someone out there who can put you right! Hell, if all else fails, I know half a dozen people who can bring you back from the dead as a zombie."
"Thanks for the thought," I said. "Medical section is down there; twenty stacks along, third right, then follow the—"
"Oh, hell," said Molly. "I never was any good at directions. I’d better use a locator spell, or we’ll be here all night." She pulled a pendulum on a silver wire out of a hidden pocket and set it spinning. The pendulum slammed to a halt pointing right at me. Molly frowned. "That’s…interesting. It’s reading a power source on you, and it’s not Oath Breaker. In fact, I’m picking up quite a lot of undischarged magic still attached to the key the Armourer gave you."
She put the pendulum away as I pulled out the key and looked at it. The Armourer had made a point of giving me the key, even though he had to know I could just armour up and kick the doors in. Was the key a clue of some kind? To some secret he couldn’t quite bring himself to say in person? I studied the key with my Sight, and there was a second spell written on it so clearly even I could tell what it was. A spell to work a hidden lock, to open a hidden door. Here, in the library? There’d never been even a whisper about a secret door in the library…
I turned the key back and forth, and the spell flared up briefly when it pointed in one particular direction. I followed the key through the stacks, Molly trotting along at my side. Until finally we came to the old portrait on the southwest wall.
It was the only painting in the library. A huge piece, a good eight feet tall and five feet wide, contained in a solid steel frame. It was centuries old, older than the Hall itself, some said; artist unknown. The portrait depicted another library whose many shelves were packed with massive leather-bound volumes and parchment scrolls tied with colourful ribbons. There were no people in the painting, no symbolic objects, no obvious arrangement of important items. No meaning, no message; just the old library. Molly and I stood before the painting, considering it.
"I’m no expert," said Molly, "But that…is a seriously boring painting. Is it significant to the family?"
"Sort of," I said. "This portrait shows the old library, the original repository of Drood knowledge. In this first library was held all the early history of the Droods, perhaps even knowledge of our true beginnings, long lost to us. You see, the old library was destroyed in a fire set by our enemies. One of our greatest tragedies. The whole house burned down with the library, which is why the family moved here, in the time of King Henry V. This portrait is all that remains from that time, to remind us of what we lost."
"There’s something weird about this painting," Molly said slowly. "I can feel magic in it. In the frame and the canvas, in the paint and the very brushstrokes. Can you feel it?"
I studied the painting closely with my Sight, holding the key tightly in my hand, and the whole portrait seemed to blaze with an inner light. And finally I noticed something I’d never seen before. There was a small, carefully disguised keyhole in the silver frame, hidden in some ornate scrollwork. I pointed it out to Molly, and then slowly eased the Armourer’s key into the hole. It fit perfectly. I turned the key, and just like that the whole portrait came alive. I wasn’t looking at a painting anymore but a scene from life, an opening into another place. A doorway into the old library. I took Molly by the hand, and together we stepped through.
The old library wasn’t lost, wasn’t gone, just hidden in plain sight. Hanging in front of all our eyes, for all these years. The old library, real and intact, all its ancient history and knowledge preserved after all. (Preserved for whom? No. Think about that later.) I stood very still just inside the doorway, looking about me. The old library stretched away in every direction, endless towering stacks and shelves packed with books and manuscripts and scrolls for as far as the eye could see. I looked behind me, and beyond the open space of the doorway I could see more stacks, more shelves.
I walked slowly forward down the aisle before me, almost numb with shock. The greatest tragedy in my family’s history was a lie. I shouldn’t have been surprised, after everything else I’d learned, but to deliberately conceal so much knowledge, so much wisdom…was a sin almost beyond understanding. I took down some of the oversized books, handling them very carefully, and opened them. The leather bindings creaked noisily, and the pages seemed to exhale dust and ancient smells. They were handwritten, illuminated manuscripts, the kind monks laboured over for years. Latin mostly, some ancient Greek. Other tongues, equally old or obscure. There were palimpsests and parchments and piles of scrolls, some so delicate looking I didn’t want even to breathe too heavily near them.
"There’s some kind of magic suppressor field operating in here," Molly said suddenly. "I can feel it."
"I’m not surprised," I said absently, absorbed in a scroll concerning King Harold and the Soul of Albion. "Must be a security measure, to protect the contents."
"I could probably force through a few small magics, if necessary," said Molly. "If we have to defend ourselves."
"Will you relax?" I said. "We’re the only ones in here."
I rolled the scroll up again, retied the ribbon, and carefully put in back in its place. The answer to my earlier thought was clear. The only people who could have hidden the old library like this…were the inner circle of the Droods. The Matriarch, her council, and her favourites. Our history and true beginnings weren’t lost, weren’t destroyed; they were deliberately hidden away from the rest of us for the benefit of the chosen few. But what could be here that was so important, so dangerous, that it had to be hidden away? That they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, share with the rest of us? I moved on through the stacks, opening books and scrolls at random, almost drunk on the prospect of so many answers to so many questions, and all mine for the taking. (Maybe that’s why they kept it just for themselves…so they could feel like this.) As I moved deeper into the stacks, I discovered histories written in languages no one had used for centuries; works put down on parchment and tanned hide by the Saxons, the Celts, the Angles and the Danes and the Norse. And other tongues so old nobody had spoken them aloud in centuries.