“So you’re an assassin,” said Praxle.
“I’m someone who took a vow,” answered Teron. “And I always keep my word.” The two stared at each other for a long time, testing each other’s will. At last Teron broke the silence. “I’m going to scout the library,” he said. “And I’ll do it alone.”
He turned to leave the room, then patted his shoulder and tsked with his tongue. Flotsam stirred from where he slept in the corner, rose, stretched, then leapt up Teron’s vest and clawed its way the last little bit to perch on his shoulder.
“I’ll be back in an hour or two,” he said.
Praxle twisted his mouth into a crooked, angry sneer. He pulled a chair over to the window, climbed up, and peeked out between the curtains. He watched Teron leave the building, walk down the street, then turn a corner.
He hopped off the chair and grabbed his coat. “I don’t care, monk,” he growled. “I don’t trust you. Jeffers? Come.”
Teron glided silently in the shadows of an alley across from the Camat Library. The building loomed over his head, illuminated a ghastly shade of yellow at the base by the ubiquitous everbright lanterns that shone in the street, and fading to a dark shadow against the starlit night sky. Vult did its best to bring a healthy shine to Flamekeep, but its light was no match for mortal invention.
He turned his head slightly and nuzzled Flotsam, perched on his shoulder. “Time for me to go,” he whispered, and gave the cat a little push with his head. The cat hopped down, landing rather more heavily than a cat perhaps ought. It rubbed up against Teron’s leg for a moment, purring, then sauntered off into the night.
Teron looked at the library again. Various shrubs ringed its base, lovely vegetation grown with magical assistance to be large, dense, and beautiful. It also served as a first line of defense against someone trying to approach the building, but at the same time it provided cover to those who managed to get past. Teron got his bearings, then walked down the side of the library, angling his path to draw close to the spot he had chosen for his infiltration. He stretched as he walked, using the motion to camouflage a quick check to the rear to ensure no one else was near enough to see him. At his chosen spot, equidistant between the nearest glowing street lanterns, he dropped into a shoulder roll and ended up on his belly almost under the shrubbery.
He lay beneath a robust evergreen shrub with prickly branches and a pervasive odor of compost. He oriented himself toward the wall, and then scooted under the shrub using the “snake walk,” a technique that involved propelling oneself forward using hands, feet, elbows, knees, hips, chest, and head. It was awkward and slow, but required minimal overhead clearance (when the head was turned to the side) and left no telltale drag-mark trail.
There was a good two-foot clearance between the shrubbery and the masonry of the library wall, but Teron did not enter that gap. He shifted his position, then gently extended one hand. Slowly it moved forward, almost too slow for the eye to see. He began to feel a bit of static pressure on his palm, a tingling sensation of warning: a ward of some sort, a magical barrier to deter intruders, either by raising an alarm or direct application of power. Teron pulled his hand back.
As part of his training in the Quiet Touch, Teron had had to learn to bypass security measures both magical and technical. “All traps have triggers,” Keiftal had taught him. “The body triggers tangible traps. Magical traps are more dangerous; many wards are triggered by the soul. You can bypass a physical trap by avoiding the trigger: do not do the action that the trap awaits. Bypassing the magical triggers is much the same; you must ensure that you use nothing that might set off the spell. You must have an empty soul.”
Achieving that had been always the hardest part of training for Teron. Most of his peers in the Quiet Touch emptied their soul by becoming as placid as a morning lake. Teron had always emptied his soul through sheer force of discipline: he willed himself void. Of course, once empty, he no longer had the will to force his soul to quiescence, so his window of opportunity was always small.
The evergreen shrub afforded him enough room to rise to his knees without entering the zone of the magical alarm. He did so, forcing his head into the resistant, prickly branches of the magegrown shrub. He placed his hands in front of him until he felt the pulse of the magical ward again, then he crushed his thoughts beneath ritual discipline. They fought, as always, stray concepts and ideas that demanded he remain focused and alert, but he forced them out, hooking them aggressively with every available tool, in much the way that he might force a pack of hungry dogs back out the door of a building.
For a brief moment, all was at peace. He relaxed utterly.
The shrub pushed him forward, seeking to extend its branches once more. Teron felt himself fall. He tried to will the doors of his mind to remain closed, but the dogs charged back in, baying their alarm. His hands flew up to the wall, deflecting his fall so that he landed beside the building instead of cracking his forehead on the stone. He yanked his feet to him, out of the zone of the magical ward, hoping that the instinctive reflex of the motion did not hold enough intent to activate the spell. He lay on the ground and waited, unmoving, one bare arm pressed up against the cool stone of the library. Vult slowly crawled across the sky directly over his head, and he remained motionless until its glow had been utterly hidden by the Camat Library’s roof.
Satisfied that no alarm had been raised, Teron stood. Even standing, he was well concealed by the high bushes that landscaped the perimeter, so for the moment, he felt secure.
The exterior of the building was ornate, as one might expect for the centerpiece of all magical scholarship in Thrane. Aside from Flamic ornamentation, periodic narrow ridges adorned the walls, each long vertical strip engraved with symbols of fire. Teron approached one of these ornamental crests. The ridge did not even extend so much as a full span from the wall, but for Teron, that was enough. He grasped the ridge with his hands, gave a slight jump, and gripped the ridge with the flats of his feet.
He scaled the narrow ridge, hand over hand, scooting his feet up as a pair. He reached the top, pulled himself over, and took a moment to flex his tired muscles and look around. A selection of statues graced the perimeter of the rooftop, neither as grotesque as the gargoyles of Karrnath nor as beautiful as the half-attired deities of Aundair. They were idealized martial sentinels that watched over the streets below, tirelessly bearing their greatswords aloft.
The roof had an orchard of jagged iron spears pointed skyward to protect the library from being assaulted by sky brigands. At the very center of the roof, a small fortified tower stood guard.
At the four corners of the roof, stairwells, rotating about their bases with a slow grinding, extended up and out to small towers. Judging by their small size, the towers were likely not used for research or storage. Teron thought it most likely that they were just for show, an exhibit of expertise.
Teron crept up to the tower, keeping low to avoid silhouetting himself against the night sky. The tower was clearly built for defense, short and squat, with arrow slits for windows. Looking up as he circled the base, Teron saw the tips of three ballistae jutting forth, illuminated by a weak light from inside the tower. He presumed some other defensive weapon fired directly up, an alchemical bomb thrower or a battery of magical wands.
There was one door into the guard tower, small, solidly built, and shielded by an enclosure of heavy stone. The door lacked any external mechanism to open it. Teron gently placed his hands on the door and opened his awareness. He felt no tingling sensation to mark a magical aura, so he surmised that the lack of an external latch was a simple mechanical security measure, not an indication that the door was opened by a special password or arcane trinket.