Serpent Mage

16

Alfred, accompanied by the dog, left the council meeting as soon as he possibly could and began to roam about Surunan. His joy in his newfound realm had been destroyed. He looked at beauty that could no longer touch him; listened to a language that was his own, yet sounded foreign to him; felt himself a stranger in what should have been his home.

“Find Haplo,” he muttered to the dog, who, hearing the beloved name, began to whine eagerly. “How do they expect me to find Haplo? And what am I to do with him if I find him?”

Distraught and confused, he wandered the streets aimlessly.

“How can I find Haplo when even you can’t find your master?” he demanded of the dog, who gazed up sympathetically but was unable to supply an answer. Alfred groaned. “Why don’t they understand? Why can’t they just let me alone?” He stopped, suddenly, looked around. He had traveled farther than he had intended, farther than he’d ever been before. He wondered bleakly if his body—as usual—had decided to run away and had not bothered to inform his brain of the decision.

“ ‘We only want to ask the Patryn questions.’ Samah’s words, and the Councillor wouldn’t lie to me. He couldn’t lie. One Sartan can never lie to another.

“Why, then,” Alfred asked the dog unhappily, “don’t I trust Samah? Why do I trust him less than I trust Haplo?”

The dog was unable to say.

“Perhaps Samah’s right.” Alfred continued, a prey to misery. “Perhaps the Patryn has corrupted me. I wonder if they have the power to do that? I never heard of a Sartan falling under a Patryn’s enchantment, but I suppose it’s possible.” He sighed, passed his hand over his bald head. “Especially with me.”

The dog saw that Alfred was not, after all, going to produce Haplo on the spot. Panting in the heat, it flopped down at the Sartan’s feet. Alfred was tired and hot himself. He looked about wearily for a place to rest. Not too distant stood a smallish square building made of the eternal white marble that the Sartan loved and which Alfred was beginning to find a trifle boring. A covered porch, supported by innumerable white marble columns, surrounded it, gave it the stolid, formal look of a public building, not the more relaxed air of a private residence.

Strange that it should stand so far from the other public buildings, located in the heart of the city, Alfred thought as he approached it. The cool shadowy portico offered a welcome respite from the bright sunlight that shone interminably on the Sartan city. The dog trotted along after him. Reaching the porch, Alfred was disappointed to find no benches where he could sit and rest. Assuming that there must be some inside, he waited until his eyes had adjusted to the shadowy interior, then read the runes inscribed upon the large, bronze double doors.

He was puzzled and considerably startled to find runes of warding. The sigla weren’t very strong, nothing like the ones that had tried to bar their way into the Chamber of the Damned on Abarrach.[28] These runes were far milder, advised Alfred in a friendly fashion that the nice, polite, and proper thing for him to do would be to leave. If he had business inside, he was told to seek permission to enter from the Council.

Any other Sartan—Samah, for example, or Orla—would have smiled, nodded, and immediately turned around and left. Alfred started to do just that. He fully intended to do just that—turn around and leave.

In fact, half of him did turn around. The other half, unfortunately, chose that moment to decide to open the door a crack and take a peep inside, with the result that Alfred stumbled over himself, fell through the door, and landed flat on his face in the dust.

A game, thought the dog, and bounded in after the Sartan. The animal began licking Alfred’s face and biting playfully at his ears.

Alfred endeavored to induce the playful animal to remove itself from his person. Kicking and flailing on the dust-covered floor, he accidentally struck the door with his foot. The door swung shut, closing with a boom that sent dust flying into the air. Both Alfred and the dog began to sneeze. Alfred took advantage of the dog’s preoccupation with the dust up its nose to rise hurriedly to his feet. He was uneasy without quite knowing why. Perhaps it was the absence of light. The building’s interior wasn’t cloaked with the absolute blackness of night, but it was shrouded in a murky duskiness that distorted shapes, made the ordinary seem strange and consequently ominous.

“We’d better leave,” said Alfred to the dog, who, rubbing its nose with its paws, sneezed again and seemed to think this an excellent idea. The Sartan groped his way through the gloom to the double doors, started to open them, discovered that there was no handle. He stared at the entrance, scratching his head.

The doors had shut completely, not a crack remained. It was as if they had become part of the wall. Alfred was quite perplexed. No building had ever done this to him before. He peered intently at where the doors had been, expecting sigla to light up, advising him that he was wrongfully attempting to enter an egress and suggesting that he take the back stairs.

Nothing of the sort appeared. Nothing of any sort appeared. Alfred, uneasiness growing, sang a few runes in a quavering voice, runes that should have opened the door, provided a way out.

The runes shimmered, then faded. Negating magic at work on the door. Whatever spell he cast would instantly be countered by a negative spell of the same power.

Alfred groped about in the dusky shadows, searching for a way out. He stepped on the dog’s tail, bruised his shin on a marble bench, and scraped the flesh off his fingers trying to open a crack that he thought might be another door, but turned out to be a flaw in one of the marble blocks.

Apparently whoever came into this building was meant to stay in this building. Odd. Extremely odd. He sat down on the bench to consider the matter. Admittedly, the sigla on the outside had requested that he not go in, but it had been a request, not a prohibition. Also admittedly, he had no business inside here, nor had he obtained permission from the Council to enter.

“Yes, I’m in the wrong,” he said to the dog, petting it to keep it near him, finding comfort in its presence, “but I can’t be too wrong, otherwise they would have laid far stronger warding spells on the door that would definitely keep people out. And obviously people come in here, or at least they did once long ago.

“And because it doesn’t say anything about there being another way out,” he continued, thinking, “that must mean that there is another way out and everyone who came in knew about it. The way out was common knowledge and therefore they didn’t bother to put up directions. I don’t know about it, of course, because I’m a stranger, but I should be able to find it. Perhaps there’s a door on the side or around back.”

Feeling more cheerful, Alfred sang a light-shedding rune that appeared in the air over his head (absolutely fascinating the dog) and headed for the building’s interior.

Now that he could see clearly, Alfred was able to get a much better picture of his surroundings. He was in a hallway that ran the length of the building’s front and, from what he could tell by advancing to the end, then turned a sharp right angle, continued on down the side. Dim light filtered in through several skylights in the ceiling—skylights that, observed Alfred, could use a good cleaning.

He was reminded of one of Bane’s toys—a box that had another, smaller box nesting inside it, and another smaller box inside that.

A door in the center of the wall opposite the doors through which he had come offered entry into the next smaller of the boxes. Alfred studied this door and the walls around it carefully, telling himself that if there were runes of warding upon it, he would heed their warning. The door was smooth, however, had no advice or help to offer.

Alfred pushed on it gingerly.

The door opened, swinging easily on silent hinges. He entered, keeping the dog close at hand, and propped the door open with his shoe, when it seemed likely to shut behind him. Hobbling, one shoe on and one off, he entered the room and stood looking around in amazement.

“A library,” he said to himself. “Why, it’s nothing more than a library.” Alfred wasn’t quite sure what he’d expected (vague thoughts of nasty beasts with long, sharp teeth had been lurking in the back of his mind), but it wasn’t this. The room was huge, open, airy. A large skylight of frosted glass softened the glare of the sun, provided light to read by that was also easy on the eyes. Wooden tables and chairs filled the central portion of the room. The walls were honeycombed with large holes bored into the marble, and in each of these holes was housed neat stacks of gold scroll tubes.

There was no dust at all in this room; strong runes of preserving and protection adorned the walls, to prevent the scrolls from deteriorating. Alfred spotted a door on the far wall.

“Ah, the way out.”

He headed for it, moving slowly in order to make his way through the maze of tables and do as little damage to them and himself as possible. This proved difficult, for he discovered, as he traversed the room, that the various scroll compartments were labeled and catalogued for ease of access, and his attention kept wandering.

The Ancient World. He read the various categories: Art . . . Architecture . . . Entomology . . . Dinosaurs . . . Fossils . . . Machines . . . Psychology . . . Religion . . . Space Program (Space? What did that mean? Empty space? Open space?) . . . Technology . . . War . . .

Alfred’s footsteps lagged, came to a stumbling halt. He gazed about him in ever-increasing awe. Nothing more than a library, he’d said to himself. What a fool! This was the library. The Great Library of the Sartan. His people on Arianus had assumed it was lost in the Sundering. Alfred looked to another wall: The History of the Sartan, And, below that, much less extensive, though with numerous subcategories: The History of the Patryns.

Alfred sat down rather suddenly. Fortunately, a chair happened to be in the vicinity or he would have fallen to the floor. All thoughts of leaving vanished from his head. What wealth! What richness! What fabulous treasure!

The story of a world he knew only in his dreams, a world that had been whole, then was wrenched violently apart. The story of his people and that of their enemy. Undoubtedly, the events that led up to the Sundering, Council meetings, discussions . . .

“I could spend days here,” Alfred said to himself, dazed and happy, happier than he could remember being in vast eons of time. “Days! Years!” He felt moved to express his homage for this vault of knowledge, for those who had kept it safe, perhaps sacrificed objects precious to them personally to save what would be of immense value to future generations. Rising to his feet, he was about to perform a solemn dance (much to the dog’s amusement) when a voice, dry and brittle, shattered his euphoria.

“I might have known. What are you doing here?”

The dog leapt up, hackles bristling, began barking frantically at nothing. Alfred, the very breath scared out of him, clutched weakly at a table and stared around him, eyes bulging.

“Who . . . who’s there? . . .” he gasped.

One figure, then two, materialized, in front of him.

“Samah!” Alfred heaved a sigh of relief, collapsed into a chair. “Ramu . . .” Removing a handkerchief from a shabby pocket, Alfred mopped his head. The head of the Council and his son, faces grim and accusing, came to stand in front of Alfred.

“I repeat—what are you doing here?”

Alfred looked up, began to tremble in every limb. The sweat chilled on his body. Samah was obviously, dangerously, angry.

“I ... I was looking for the way out . . .” replied Alfred, meekly.

“Yes, I imagine you were.” The Councillor’s tone was cold, biting. Alfred shrank away from it. “What else were you looking for?”

“N-nothing . . . I—”

“Then why come here, to the library? Shut that beast up!” Samah snapped. Alfred reached out a shaking hand, grabbed hold of the dog by the scruff of its neck, and pulled it near. “It’s all right, boy,” he said in a low voice, though he wondered why the dog should believe him when he didn’t believe himself.

The dog quieted, at Alfred’s touch; its barking changed to a rumbling growl, deep in its chest. But it never took its eyes off Samah and, occasionally, when it thought it could get away with it, its lip curled, showing a fine set of sharp teeth.

“Why did you come to the library? What were you looking for?” Samah demanded again. He emphasized his words with a blow of his hand upon the table, causing both it and Alfred to shiver.

“It was an accident! I ... I came here by accident. That is,” Alfred amended, withering beneath Samah’s burning gaze, “I came to this building on purpose. I was hot . . . you see . . . and the shade ... I mean, I didn’t know it was a library . . . and I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be here ...”

“There are runes of prohibition on the door. Or at least there were, the last time I looked,” Samah stated. “Has something happened to them?”

“N-no,” Alfred admitted, gulping. “I saw them. I only meant to take a quick peep inside. Curiosity. It’s a terrible failing of mine. But . . . well ... I tripped, you see, and fell through the door. Then the dog jumped on me and my feet must have . . . that is, I think I probably . . . I’m not sure how, but I guess I . . . kicked the door shut,” he finished miserably.

“Accidentally?”

“Oh, yes, of course!” Alfred babbled. “Quite ... by accident.” His mouth was drying up. He was drying up. He coughed. “And . . . and then, you see, I couldn’t find the way out. So I came in here, searching for it—”

“There is no way out,” Samah said.

“There isn’t?” Alfred blinked like a startled owl.

“No. Not unless one has the key-sigil. And I am the only one with the key. You obtain it from me.”

“I—I’m sorry,” Alfred stammered. “I was just curious. I didn’t mean any harm.”

“Curiosity—a mensch failing. I might have known you would be afflicted by it. Ramu, check to see that nothing has been disturbed.”

Ramu hastened off. Alfred kept his head lowered, his eyes looking anywhere, at anything, to avoid meeting Samah’s. He glanced at the dog, still growling. He glanced at Ramu, noted absently that he went straight for one certain compartment under History of the Sartan and examined it carefully, even going to the trouble of magically checking to find out if any of Alfred’s presence lingered in the vicinity.

Acutely wretched and unhappy, Alfred thought nothing of this at the time, though he did note that Ramu spent far less time checking the other compartments, barely giving most of them a glance, until he came to the ones marked Patryns. These, too, he inspected thoroughly.

“He hasn’t been near them,” he reported to Samah. “He probably didn’t have time to do much.”

“I wasn’t going to do anything!” Alfred protested. He was beginning to lose his fear. The more he thought about it, he decided he had a right to be angry at this treatment. He drew himself up, faced Samah with dignity. “What do you think I was going to do? I entered a library! And since when is the collected knowledge and wisdom of my people forbidden to me? And why is it forbidden to others?”

A thought occurred to him. “And what are you doing here? Why did you come, unless you knew I was here . . . You did know I was here! You have some sort of alarm—”

“Please, calm yourself, Brother,” Samah said soothingly, his anger seeming to suddenly evaporate, like rain when the sun comes out. He went so far as to start to lay a conciliatory hand on Alfred’s arm—a move the dog didn’t like, apparently, for it thrust its body protectively between Alfred and the head of the Council.

Samah cast the dog a cold glance, withdrew his hand. “You have a bodyguard, it seems.”

Alfred, flushing, attempted to shove the animal to one side. “I’m sorry. He—”

“No, no, Brother. It is I who should be making the apology.” Samah shook his head, sighed ruefully. “Orla tells me I am working too hard. My nerves are frayed. I overreacted. I forgot that, being a stranger, you had no way of knowing our rules concerning the library. It is, of course, open to all Sartan.

“But, as you can judge”—he waved his hand toward the ancient-history section—“some of these scrolls are old and very fragile. It would never do, for example, to permit small children to get hold of them. Or those who might be browsing through out of idle curiosity. Such people, inadvertently, of course, and meaning no harm, might yet do irreparable damage. I don’t think you can blame us, if we like to know who enters our library?” No, Alfred had to admit, that sounded reasonable enough. But Samah wasn’t the type of man to rush here because he feared children were smearing grape jelly on his precious manuscripts. And he had been afraid. Angry and afraid, his anger covering his fear. Alfred’s eyes, of their own accord, strayed to that compartment, the first compartment Ramu had checked.

“Serious scholars are welcome, certainly,” Samah was continuing. “They have only to come before the Council and request the key.”

Samah was watching him closely. Alfred tried to stop his eyes from looking at the compartment, tried to keep them focused on Samah, but it was a struggle. They kept wanting to dart in that direction. Alfred wrenched them back. The strain was too much. His eyelids began to twitch, he started to blink uncontrollably.

Samah stopped talking, stared at him. “Are you well?”

“Forgive me,” Alfred murmured, shading his eyes with his hand. “A nervous disorder.”

The Councillor frowned. Sartan did not suffer from nervous disorders. “Do you understand, Brother, why we like to monitor the comings and goings of all who enter?” he asked somewhat tightly. It was obvious his patience was wearing thin.

Do I understand why a library turns into a trap, sounds an alarm, and holds those who enter hostage until the head of the Council comes to interrogate them? No, thought Alfred, I really don’t understand that at all. But he only nodded and mumbled something that might have been certainly he understood.

“Come, come!” Samah said, with a forced smile. “An accident, as you say. No harm done. I am certain you are sorry for what you did. And Ramu and I are sorry for nearly scaring you to death. And now, it is dinnertime. We will tell our tale to Orla. I’m afraid, Ramu, your mother will have a laugh over this mistake at our expense.”

Ramu gave a sickly chuckle, looked anything but jocular.

“Please, be seated, Brother,” Samah said, gesturing to a chair. “I will go and open the way out. The runes are complex. It takes some time to render them and you appear to be fatigued. No need to stand around waiting. Ramu will remain here to keep you company in my absence.”

Ramu will remain to make certain I don’t spy on you, discover the way out. Alfred sank down into the chair, placed his hand on the dog’s head, stroked the silky ears. I might be doing more harm than good, he considered, but it seems to me that I have a right to ask.

“Samah,” he called, halting the head of the Council on his way to the far door. “Now that I know the rules of the library, could I have your permission to enter? The mensch are somewhat a hobby of mine, you see. I once did a study on the dwarves of Arianus. I note that you have several texts ...” He knew the answer, saw it in Samah’s eyes.

Alfred’s voice dried up. His mouth opened and closed several times, but nothing more followed.

Samah waited patiently until he was certain Alfred was finished.

“Certainly you may study here, Brother. We would be most happy to make any and all documents relative to your work available to you. But not now.”

“Not now,” Alfred repeated.

“No, I’m afraid not. The Council wants to inspect the library and make certain that no damage was done during the long Sleep. Until we have time to devote to this task, I recommended to the Council that the library be closed. And we must take care that, from now on, no one enters ‘by accident.’” The Councillor turned upon his heel and left, disappearing out the door on the far wall that opened to a spoken sigil, a rune uttered in a voice soft and low. The door shut behind him.

Alfred heard, beyond it, the sound of chanting, but he was unable to distinguish any of the words.

Ramu sat down across from Alfred and began to make friendly overtures to the dog; overtures that were coldly rebuffed.

Alfred’s eyes slid, once more, to the forbidden scroll compartment.