“Astinus?” he finally managed to croak.
“Master Bertrem?” the intruder responded in a voice tight with its own fear.
Bertrem relaxed, realizing with a profound sigh that it was just one of the Aesthetics. He wondered what terrible thing had caused the young scholar to disturb his sleep. Fire? Flood? Rats devouring the books? Kender?
His answer came as two darkly clad figures stole in behind the young Aesthetic. They rushed at the old man in his bed, and despite his advanced age (rumored to be closer to a hundred than to ninety), he nearly climbed the wall trying to get away from them. Brother Gillam spun, dashed out into the hall to call for help, and fainted before the first cry had passed his lips.
Alynthia wrestled the old Aesthetic back down on his bed and clapped a gloved hand over his mouth before he could find his voice and raise an alarm. She turned to Cael and hissed, “Drag that other one back in here, and shut the door.” The elf complied, unceremoniously dumping the brown-robed scholar on the square rug beside the bed.
“Bind him and gag his mouth,” she said.
Cael made quick work of him, tying his wrists behind his back with the black cord they had used to scale the library’s wall, then stuffed one of Bertrem’s dirty socks into the Aesthetic’s mouth and took up a position beside the door.
Alynthia turned back to Brother Bertrem. The old man trembled like a reed. His spectacles had slipped off his nose and hung comically from one ear. His feet were hopelessly tangled in his own bedsheets.
“I’m going to remove my hand now, old man,” she said gently. “We’re not here to hurt you or to steal anything. We simply want some information, to look at a book or two for a few hours in peace and without any warning raised. Do you understand?”
For a moment, Brother Bertrem hesitated, but as his assailant’s dark eyes hardened, he nodded. Alynthia lifted her hand, but left it hovering over him, ready to clap down again. Bertrem kept his lips pressed firmly together, though few other parts of his body remained as still.
“We are looking for information about the items taken from the Thieves’ Guild on the Night of Black Hammers,” the female thief quietly informed him. “Do you know of this?”
“I compiled the information myself,” Bertrem whispered.
“Will you take us to it?” she asked.
He nodded.
Warily, Alynthia removed herself from atop the Aesthetic and helped him untangle his feet from the bedclothes. Throwing a robe around his frail old shoulders, she guided him towards the door, which Cael stood ready to open. Brother Bertrem paused and settled his spectacles back atop the bridge of his nose. Then he nodded. Cael opened the door.
The hallway beyond led past a long row of doors to their right, beyond which lay the private chambers of the Aesthetics of the Library, while to their left the wall was lined with tall, narrow, stained-glass windows that looked north toward the city’s center. Brother Bertrem led them quietly along the hall, his long robe swishing around his slippered feet. Behind some doors, they heard rattling snores, behind others, the scratches of pens across parchment or the rattles of turning pages.
This hallway eventually left the Aesthetics’ quarters behind and, passing beneath an arch, continued until it ended at a large ornate door. Halfway down this hall, another door opened to the right. Bertrem stopped here, opened the door, and entered the library’s Research wing.
This wing was actually one cavernous room, the great arched roof lost in shadows high overhead. Down the center of the chamber ran row after row of desks, tables, and cubicles, with here and there a lamp or candle burning for any who might come late to study. All around the outer walls of the room, rows of bookshelves towered up into darkness. Wheeled ladders, attached to rails above and below, provided access to these shelves. Some of the ladders reached four stories high, so great had been the collection of books, tomes, and scrolls in the library’s heyday. Now, sadly, many of the shelves were empty.
Above the ladders ran a narrow iron-railed balcony, adding yet another level of shelves. This room was but one chamber of the Great Library. There were others, many far larger.
Alynthia stared about her in awe. Even Cael, who had frequented the public sections of the Library before his capture and induction into the Guild, was nearly overcome by the sense of grandeur this chamber instilled in those who first entered it. There was a templelike quiet here, a feeling of presence, almost a watchfulness. This place was one of the private sections of the library, reserved for the Aesthetics, entered by the uninitiated only by invitation and under close supervision.
Had they come here without a guide, probably they could have spent years searching for the books they sought, but Brother Bertrem led them unerringly to their goal. Up a twisting stair of wrought iron to the high balcony above, he climbed, puffing with the exertion. Alynthia followed on his heels, and Cael came behind, bearing a lamp taken from one of the tables. Along the balcony for half its eastern length they went to a shelf as similar to all the others as a tree is to other trees in a forest. But with hardly a scan of the bindings, he quickly withdrew three large tomes, turned, and dropped them into Alynthia’s waiting arms.
Brother Bertrem yawned like a cave. He missed his sleep, but he didn’t dare leave the two thieves alone with his precious books. Not that he could have stopped them if they decided to steal the books, but he knew that as long as they were here, he wouldn’t be able to close his eyes.
Alynthia slammed a book shut, sending a boom echoing through the cavernous chamber, disturbing the reverent silence. “Nothing,” she snarled. “There’s nothing here either.”
Blinking back sleep himself, Cael shook his head sympathetically, then scratched at the prickling beneath his mask for perhaps the thousandth time that night. Without thinking, he tugged the mask aside to better scratch the unaccustomed facial hair.
Brother Bertrem gasped, and, looking up, Cael found the old man staring at him in horror. Quickly, his face shading to scarlet at his careless mistake, he jerked the mask back over his face.
Alynthia looked up from the book she had just opened. A half dozen others were stacked beside this one on the table around which they sat. “What is it?” she asked.
“N-nothing,” Brother Bertrem stammered. “l thought I saw a ghost, was all. A ghost of an old hero.”
The elf’s eyes narrowed at these strange words, but Cael said nothing.
Brother Bertrem continued, “There are ghosts here, of course. One meets them sometimes at night among the stacks, ghosts of old scholars still trying to solve the mysteries that consumed their lives, ghosts of historians….” His voice trailed off as his gaze wandered to a small, nondescript door in the northwester corner of the chamber.
Alynthia shrugged and returned her attention to the book. Cael watched the Aesthetic closely now, and found the old man’s gaze riveted upon him.
An hour later, the book slammed shut, booming noisily. Alynthia picked it up and shook it as though she would tear it in half. Brother Bertrem half-rose from his seat, reaching out in his concern for the book, his fingers twitching. He grabbed it away from her before she could harm it and clutched it to his chest.
“This is impossible,” Alynthia complained.
“What exactly is it that you seek?” Brother Bertrem asked wearily. He had already asked this same question a dozen times in the hopes of speeding the departure of the thieves, but every time he asked it, Alynthia snarled to mind his own business.
“Information on one of the items found in the Guild treasuries after the Thieves’ Guild was destroyed,” Cael said quickly before Alynthia could repeat her customary answer. “They call it the Reliquary. I suppose it holds some old bones or something.”