Mark Newton - The Book of Transformations

A couple were walking arm in arm to one of the benches at the far end of the courtyard, where they sat enveloped in each other’s attention. Rising up around the scene were some of the finest buildings in the city, limestone houses with vast windows that overlooked the glass flowers. Some were glowing warmly with firelight, and it highlighted just how cold it was outside.

‘Here it is,’ Fulcrom said. At the far end of the courtyard was the central library of Villjamur, indicated by a wide-arched entrance at the top of a stairway.

There was a member of the city guard standing at the bottom, blond-haired and round-faced, clutching his sword with one hand and gazing sternly at some point in the distance.

‘Sele of Urtica,’ the guard said.

‘Sele of Urtica,’ Fulcrom replied, flashing his medallion. ‘I didn’t realize they were guarding this place as well?’

‘Every major landmark in the city is being guarded now,’ the officer replied. ‘Someone’s here day in, day out.’

Fulcrom nodded and continued up the steps with the priest. ‘This is the place you’ll find the oldest books in the city,’ Fulcrom said to him. ‘There are a thousand legal texts going back thousands of years, which we in the Inquisition are forced to use from time to time. But I’ll see that the librarians treat you right — they can be a brutal bunch.’

*

Four storeys high, and banking into the distance over an uneven topography, the library was intimidating in size and bewildering in its layout. Lit by glass lanterns, spaced regularly at every fifteen feet, it looked like a settlement all of its own. Thousands of books bound in varying shades of leather were stored here, and among them Ulryk seemed more relaxed than usual, as if finally having returned home. A few custodians shifted intermittently like ghosts between shelving units and smaller, more concealed vaults of books. Fulcrom knew of many more rooms underground, too — sepulchres containing texts sacred to the Jorsalir church, as well as tomes in which the foundation of the Empire had been detailed. Some were said to hold clay tablets and books written in rare script that no one alive could decipher.

Fulcrom flashed his Inquisition medallion at the main desk and had a quiet word with the librarian. Presently, Ulryk was granted access to all areas of the library including sensitive areas normally open to only those in the Inquisition or those attached to the Council. But when offered a custodian to guide him around, the priest declined. Ulryk’s only question was the location of the scriptorium, the room in which texts were copied from language to language, and distributed across the Archipelago.

Fulcrom followed Ulryk around the first floor. Any expectations of revelations or dramatic magic suddenly being uttered from the priest’s lips rapidly diminished, and it wasn’t long until he became bored with constantly loitering, prodding the spines of books, or blowing away dust to read the various titles:

Languages of the West, The Second Book of Poetics, Voyniches.

‘So what exactly are you looking for?’ Fulcrom whispered. He leant on one of the rails from which he could see the tiers above and the level below, where a handful of Villjamur’s citizens were either milling about or seated at dark wooden desks, studying by lantern light.

‘I told you, the other copy of The Book of Transformations,’ Ulryk replied, not annoyed at all at having to repeat himself. ‘It’s the only text that I desire, but I don’t expect to find it easily. And I have a casual interest in most other texts, theologies of course, to see if there are any deviations to aid my own research.’

‘So,’ Fulcrom gestured at the sheer expanse of the place, ‘you simply start at the bottom and work your way up, through a million books?’

The priest chortled quietly. ‘That could be the case, though I suspect I will be heading downwards, not up. No, for now, I am merely browsing — I feel so at peace here, amongst all this… recorded knowledge, this history.’

‘Didn’t you say most of it was fake?’ Fulcrom teased.

‘Oh, yes, some of it is, some of it isn’t. Each text should be studied in isolation. And each will bear the stamp of the author and, if one knows how to look, the way it has been constructed will reveal its origins. But none of this concerns me currently. Tell me, there are hidden rooms, I take it? Sections where the public are not permitted?’

‘There are, yes. And I’ve seen that you have free access — if you have any more trouble I can help you.’

‘If I may be so bold, I doubt you will be able to help.’

‘Sorry?’ Fulcrom asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ulryk closed the book he was scanning and came close to Fulcrom. ‘Do you think, in a repository of knowledge, you will know where everything is kept? The power in such words is immense. There are barriers everywhere to stopping the uninitiated from accessing such information. Why, you yourself know that the citizens of the city are limited in what they can see in terms of political goings-on. Do you think that this isn’t a tiered system of access?’

‘I’d never thought of it like that, and I’m still not quite sure I follow.’

‘We had such a system back at Regin Abbey. Even most of our own clerics were not permitted access to the more sacred texts, and those who were could not read them. Barriers to knowledge exist everywhere — it is one of the greatest methods of information control.’

‘So what do you plan to do?’

‘Find what I am not allowed to find,’ Ulryk replied mysteriously. He picked up a book nearby, closed his eyes and inhaled the aromas from the leather and then flicked through to smell the paper.

*

Fulcrom decided to leave Ulryk to his personal crusade to find his book. He was experiencing a sudden doubt about what the priest had said concerning the history of religion. Against so many books, so many opinions, there was a lot to overturn, despite the magic that Ulryk had shown him the other day.

Keep an open mind, Fulcrom told himself. The moment you shut out the improbable is the moment you fail as an investigator.

Fulcrom stood at the top of the stairs waiting for another bout of snow to ease off. Footprints littered the courtyard like dark entrails, and at the far end of the glass flowers someone was in the process of being helped to their feet, presumably having slipped on the ice. The couple on the bench had departed. But something was out of place.

The soldier on guard… Fulcrom thought, looking around. He said, ‘Someone’s here day in, day out.’

Fulcrom walked quickly down the steps of the library and, to one side, he spotted a group of twenty or so people huddled in a close circle. Some of them were clearly in distress, and one man was holding back his young child from seeing something, but the kid kept pushing through the coats and robes to get a better look.

‘Stand aside,’ Fulcrom called out as he approached. ‘Villjamur Inquisition.’

As two women parted, Fulcrom squirmed through the circle to see a dozen expressions of disgust, a body on the floor, and a slick pool of blood under the head and abdomen.

It was the guard who had been posted on the library steps.

His throat had been severed in a clean cut, the sign of a professional, and there was an open wound from his left shoulder to his right hip. His sword still sheathed, his hands were stain-free: the man had probably not even seen his attackers, probably wasn’t even alive long enough to clasp at his wounds.

Fulcrom immediately called everyone back, but he knew it was far too late to find any footprints. The public had long since trampled on any clues. Shit.

Back to the body and blood was still pooling. This was recent, very recent.