Sister Gena, as it happened, served as a librarian at the central library in the College of the Apostles. Ae’s Great Works could be found here, and studied, even, under the watchful eye of the Librariarchs. The collections also held the originals of some of the most important documents in the history of the realm.
The public nexus of the library was a single long north-south hall with a vaulted ceiling and glossy wooden bookcases climbing up every available wall. Eight smaller halls branched out from here, four to each the east and west. Each of those would be flanked by rooms for as long as they continued, and within those rooms were kept the bulk of the library’s volumes.
The main hall itself hosted most of the study tables and therefore most of the traffic. Apostles and guests milled to and fro, conferring on subjects of study, ferrying books back and forth, and penning treatises of their own at the work tables. As Hester and I waited at a desk there, the whole hall was bathed in the afternoon light emitting from the windows near the apex, but what a sight it must have been at night, speckled with the little points of warm arcane light1, like dozens of bobbing fireflies about the shelves.
Sister Gena had disappeared past the counter at the north end crewed by no less than a dozen busy librarians. Behind that counter, and the halls beyond, could be found The Decree of the Dawn King, The Covenant of the First Wizards, and the Arcana Mundi, just to name a few.
I’m sure you can guess what was not back here.
Sister Gena returned to us. She looked just a touch pale.
“It’s not there,” she said.
Lord Hester nodded solemnly.
Gena met his eyes. “If someone had checked it out they’d be at one of the carrels here with three librarians fussing about them.”
“It is missing,” declared Hester.
“It is missing.”
Gena was watching Hester the same way a mountain lion sizes up prey. I fit together some truths and some logic through my mind, and I, in my youthful intrepidity and wisdom, intervened.
“Hester… Lord Hester? If this is what it seems to be, we should speak more about this dream of yours. In one of the study rooms.”
Gena’s predatory gaze fixed onto me.
“Should we not set about our quest to reclaim the tome?” Hester asked.
“So we shall,” I said, standing and grabbing a firm hold of his cloak. “And our noble quest brings us to the privacy of a quiet room over yonder for a moment of noble reflection. Sister Gena, I think we need to hear what he has to say.”
Hester and I sat across from each other, I at the chair and he upon a borrowed stool, huddled about a desk meant for copying and illumination work. The desk looked comically small in its current capacity as a two-person table, not to mention beneath Hester’s considerable height. But I’m used to having something to lean my elbows on when I talk, so the desk remained.
Gena perched at the corner of the tiny room near to the door. She had a duty to report this, immediately, to one of the Librariarchs, and I knew the only things keeping her in the room with us were Hester’s air of good charm and the power of her own curiosity.
“So,” I began2. “You are Lord Hester, and you have correctly identified that the Doctrina Tempestas is missing from the college’s central library. You say this came to you in a dream that also led you to a symposium led by Sister Gena.”
Hester crossed his arms and eyed me quizzically. “Yes.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Hester. But you might be able to tell that the good sister here does not. And if you look at those facts, you can see why, right?”
Hester thought. “I can tell she doesn’t trust me, but not… why.”
“The Goddess of Knowledge does not speak to us through dreams,” said Gena.
“So,” I said, before what I imagined might become Hester confronting her with a she does too, “if she doesn’t believe you could possibly have heard it from the goddess’s own voice, she believes you came across the knowledge in some other way. Perhaps some incriminating way.
“AND SO,” I continued with hopeful gusto, “I propose that you tell us more about yourself and your dream. There are any number of things we could learn that might cause Gena to reconsider.”
“You trust him?” Gena asked.
“I…” I sighed. “Well, yes. I’m a trusting sort. But look at him, sister.”
She glared at him. It didn’t seem to have a perceptible effect on her palpable aura of suspicion.
“Oh, come on,” I grumbled. “He’s… he’s not like us, Gena. He’s not well-read. He hasn’t been coated with the dusty cynicism of history or the tangled politics of academia. He doesn’t know about this stuff and wouldn’t be able to lie about it.”
Hester nodded solemnly, as was his habit. This was gracious of him, I thought; all of that had felt a bit insulting to say. I would have been insulted to hear that said of me, anyway. I’ve earned my dusty cynicism.
“He’s not a newborn babe, wizard.” (“Apprentice wizard.”) “You’ve seen how he can read a room. Read people. He knew how I lied making an excuse to not hear him out, earlier. Liars know each other.”
“Iiiimplications aside,” I began, already regretting that choice of prelude, “maybe he has an alibi, as a manner of speaking. We can learn here, Gena. We can get to the truth. Forget about me, if you think I’m some sort of doddering pointy-hat. Do you think you can’t get to the bottom of this?”
Gena smiled. It was the sort of smile with lots of edges and points. “Touché. Let’s hear it then. Ae’s wisdom and justice guide my eyes and hands.”
“Alright. Hester, tell us more about yourself. Lord Hester, I suppose?”
Hester leaned back slightly. “Yes. I am Lord Hester I of the House Eastmost.”
“You might have mentioned that earlier!” I smiled. “Magister Akabu Ai. My mentor says he’s a good sort.”
“Magister Ai always referred to me as the ‘adorable idiot’. I mislike him.”
“Well, doesn’t mean he can’t be a good sort.” Magister Akabu Ai, court wizard pledged to the House Eastmost, had a nickname for me, too, and it was timid youngling, a fact I was not eager to share. “Anyway, sorry, go on.”
“The House Eastmost, you may know, is a proud and powerful house. Ever a bastion against marauders as well as a protective shield for travelers and traders, Ivian and Yaria alike.”
“And you are Duchess Joan’s?”
“Yes. Her firstborn.”
“What are you doing here?” I said. I chanced a glance at Gena, who also seemed a bit taken aback by this revelation.
He grinned. “I think I know what you mean. I am here alone, yes. I was called to this place in a dream two weeks back. I informed my household and left that day.”
“And… your mother and father are not completely beside themselves?”
Hester shrugged. “My father was, anyway, and it pained me to see him that way. But I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
“Didn’t you?”
“If you think of it that way. I was called here by divinity; I know it. I knew I must heed the call. Everything else pales in comparison. And besides…”
Lord Hester of the House Eastmost paused, searching for the words.
“… I have always sensed that I am not yet fit for the mantle. We are the sword and the shield of the east. It would not be fitting for the duke to be fat and lazy.”
I stuffed my dusty cynicism away for a moment. “Admirable! So… the dream, then.”
I spared another glance at Gena, whose fierce gaze seemed somewhat less violent, yet no less intense. Her cougar-like eyes had become more falcon-like.
“Right, the dream,” said Hester. “It was a simple thing. It’s been… hmm… thirteen days and nights of tireless travel since that night. I was sleeping in my bed under comfortable sheets. I suddenly felt as though I were not sleeping. I was awake. Clothed. Armored, for that matter. My jousting outfit. I stood beside my horse, preparing to mount. My lance held by a squire nearby, though…” he thought for a moment. “No squire was present. Just myself. I was in a grassy plain of the veld, not a soul in sight.
“And then a voice called out to me. Only, I couldn’t make it out who it belonged to. It sounded almost like a choir in such a perfect unison that it could be a single voice. It boomed from above and below. It said, ‘Seek the missing work. Make whole the knowledge that is missing. The House of the East depends on it.’ Then, I woke with a start. Two things sat at the forefront of my mind. The words, whispered in my ear… Liber Doctrina Tempestas, and a vision in my mind, of Sister Gena speaking at the head of that auditorium.”
“Implausible.” Gena shook her head. But she was not running out the door. And she had not out-and-out called him a liar.
“How much of this did you tell your family? How much of this did you tell Magister Ai?” I asked.
“All of it…” he hesitated, then he turned his face up to Gena. “Except the part about Sister Gena. I did not know the meaning of it and it felt wise to hold my own counsel.”
“Your mother wants you to court one of the barons’ daughters, doesn’t she,” I chuckled.
Hester grew slightly red. “Something like that. I told them the rest, I promise you both that. What does Magister Ai have to do with this?”
I couldn’t contain my excitement. I felt that coiled, electric feeling you feel in your heart and at the very top of your throat when your anticipation for a gift or a victory reaches its peak.
“You’re not lying,” I declared. “We have a mystery afoot.”
Gena shot me a look.
“I have a feeling about this, Gena. And the good magister will be able to vouch for his wayward lord, won’t he?”
A few hours later, we reconvened in the study room. I banished Hester to the back corner of the room, opposite Gena who had resumed her roost near the door, to have the little desk all to myself. I unfolded a borrowed book: a book of astronomy and of meaning. Of astromancy.
It was not one of Ae’s Great Works, but it was still sufficiently rare that I was required to have a librarian accompanying me. Gena was kind enough to be that librarian, allowing us to carry on our little conspiracy without having to try to explain things to a Librariarch.
A spell is a complicated thing, and books of arcane secrets are a crucial element to the enterprise. To cast a spell is to unfold, mentally and in some ways physically or spiritually, layers of truth and meaning that normally lie dormant beneath the surface of the mortal world. And there are a lot of layers. Only the simplest spells can be truly, durably memorized. Most arcane magic worth performing requires either an amount of preparation at the moment it is needed, or else to be freshly remembered and frequently practiced, something like a musician and their repertoire. A wizard who doesn’t mind a spell for a few days quickly loses it and needs to study it anew in order to be ready to cast it.
And that’s what I was doing now. Magister Montigo had not been kind enough to send me here with my own book of spells and secrets—something I would be thankful for, but only much, much later3—so I would have to make do with what was on hand. Maybe that’s why I’m almost never far from a library.
An hour after that, I was ready. To the ancient stronghold of the House of the Eastmost, a metaphorical bedrock of the seven kingdoms since East Arc was first formed out of the squabbling petty kingdoms of the East, I flung a message. A tiny bit of meaning, flickering like a candle in the darkness, darted across the skies, over the foothills of Anteianum and over the vast green veld, over the hill country of western Orland, over the mighty Orlan Blue, and over the great Eastern Range, all in an instant.
Magister Akabu Ai would not miss it.
Apprentice Horwendell of Ilianath would ask Magister Akabu Ai. Hester has arrived at the College of Apostles, seeking a Great Work. Is this true?
When casting a sending spell, more is heavier, harder to carry. But it’s not about the words; it’s about the weight of the meaning. I began with three concepts: my identity, Akabu Ai’s identity, and the relation of our conversation (I would ask of him). Four more concepts: Hester’s identity, his whereabouts, that he is seeking something, that the object is one of Ae’s Great Works. One last concept: the question of truth. A pretty tidy little message, I thought. Lightweight, easy to send, and few ways for the Magister to misinterpret it.
The Magister’s reply was instant, the meaning drifting in the firmament before me. My glee and anxiety warred within me. I translated to my comrades:
“Magister Akabu Ai shall reply. He does so quest. The motive is mysterious, and in the mystery is danger.”
Hester nodded. Gena stared in disbelief. Gena would tell me later that I looked like the world’s finest idiot, torn between pride at my strategy and execution having worked and incredulity at the entire situation—a Great Work, simply missing, with none the wiser?—and so in the moment I looked simply astonished that I had successfully cast a spell.
We sat in silence for a few seconds.
“So… what now?” was the question I cast into that empty moment.
“We find it,” Hester replied.
“Oh.”
“Isn’t that… what is your deal, Lord Hester?” Gena sighed. “Shouldn’t we be reporting this to the Librariarchs?” But her complaint was limp, struggling even to leave her lips worded, as it was, as a question and not a statement.
Gena had joined the quest.
“Perhaps we should,” he said. “I see no reason to leave the faithful and righteous in the dark.”
Gena was staring at the door. “They’d task me to the archives looking for it for at least a week.”
“That will not do,” said Hester. “I was called to find you. I am sure you have a part yet to play.”
“I’m sure I do,” Gena muttered.
“In the mystery is danger,” I repeated. Both of them turned to look at me from their opposite corners of the room. “Magister Ai wouldn’t be wrong about that, of course. This message from Ae, or one of the other high powers, left a lot unsaid, don’t you think?”
Hester scratched his chin. “Such is their ways, I am taught.”
“Yes, exactly right,” I said. “This is a mortal quest, surely filled with mortal peril, which by its nature looms until fills every corner of the shadows of the unknown…”
“Such that every ray of the light of knowledge cast into it will drive them back. You’ve made good study of the Word, wizard,” Gena admitted.
“Apprentice.” I was showing off, so it was only right to be humble about it.
“Apprentice wizard. Nevertheless, your point is well taken. Lord Hester is asking for my help in earnest, and he likely needs that help. I’ll… contrive to have some other librarian examine the archives where it ought to be.”
“And the three of us will travel east tomorrow morning.”
“What?” Gena and I replied in unison.
“You’re coming too, Horwendell. You have proven yourself dependable and worthy already, I should think. More light to push back the darkness.”
“Oh, well, that, I suppose we needed to talk about too, but…” I began, fumbling.
Gena arrived at the point before I did. “Why eastward?”
“Oh. My vision placed me in the veld. I came here because of the vision of Gena at the auditorium at the college here, but now knowing that the tome is missing, I expect our journey to take us to or across the veld.”
I whistled. “Long way to go. Good thing I don’t have much else keeping me.”
“You don’t?” asked Gena. “Don’t you have apprentice wizarding to do?”
“This shall suffice.”
“Oh. Anyway,” Gena cut back in, shaking her head, “we have business here, first. Rays of light against the darkness, right? We should learn what we can here about the work’s disappearance before we leave this place. And I have arrangements to make for travel.”
Hester looked pleased. “So, tommor—”
“Lots of arrangements.”
“Oh. So, wh—”
“Both of you will want to seek out Brother Pious at the dormitories in the east hall. Make arrangements to stay here a few days. There should be ample room.”
Much better than candles when the thing you want to illuminate is as precious and as flammable as paper. ↩
Why do we begin things like this with the word “so?” I suppose it has something to do with the fact that they’re not true beginnings. So is the prelude to words and sentences that belong only in the right context. Something must have come before. So if you begin your story with “so there I was,” aren’t you leaving something out? ↩
And even then only in the abstract. When you really get down to it, it’s kind of a dirty trick even in the best light. ↩