Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

“I know I’m a kender, but how did you know?” the kender asked, sounding impressed.

“From reading,” Sorter said, though he hadn’t read very much about kender at all.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about.” The kender looked up at the gnome earnestly. “Have you actually read all those books?”

Delighted, Sorter smiled down at him. “Nobody reads these books. They review parts of them and then come to revise them. What is your name?” Sorter’s right hand picked up a steam-powered quill pen that had all its feathers singed off and hovered over the Visitors Log.

“Franni,” the small visitor said, but he wasn’t paying attention. His gaze took him through the shelves, the aisles, all the myriad books. “If nobody reads them, what good are they?”

Sorter was shocked. “What good? Why, they’re history. They’re the history of the progress of gnome engineering down through the ages. Did you really think anyone could read all these books?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure,” the kender said cautiously. “Do you at least know what’s in them?”

“By category at least,” Sorter said. “Is Franni your full name?”

Sorter marveled. A short name for a short being. He was thoroughly charmed.

Franni kicked at the desk, watching with interest as his kicks drove the top book bit by bit off the corner stack. “It’s all the name I’ve ever had. What’s your name?”

Sorter beamed and took in a deep breath and launched into his name, which took several hours and a large jug of ale to tell in full.

When he paused a good while later, Franni broke in, “Can’t we pretend I asked your nickname?”

Sorter stopped himself before launching into the second part of his full name. “Actually, it’s just that first bit-Sorter.”

The kender’s repeated kicking caused the book to slide off the corner stack. Sorter caught it nimbly.

“Careful, Franni. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

Franni’s eyes went round with interest and his ears twitched. “Is it dangerous here?”

“Oh, my, yes.” Sorter looked around proudly. “There is nothing more dangerous than the knowledge in any library.” He waved an arm at the shelves. “And this isn’t just any library. This is the Great Repository.” He saw the blank look in Franni’s face and explained, “A copy of every design a gnome has conceived is stored here.”

“And they’re all dangerous?” Franni repeated. He stared, fascinated, at the shelves. “Can I read one?”

“Of course you can. And no, they’re not all dangerous.” Sorter shook his finger with mock severity. “But just you watch yourself in North Central Lower Left. That’s the Large War Machines section. Killers, every book.”

Franni nodded vigorously. “I’ll remember,” he said solemnly, and walked away whispering, “North Central Lower Left, North Central Lower Left, North Central…”

Sorter chuckled and returned to his work. As stated, he had not read much about kender, or he might not have been so complacent.

Several hours later, Sorter was standing in the central portion of the Repository, confirming the shelving of a rarity in the Grinders and Meta-Rasps section, when he heard the thump of a bookshelf snapping back into the floor.

“Busy morning,” he said under his breath.

Then he heard another thump, and another, and another-

Then he heard a sound that began softly and grew until it was louder than the thumps: the thud of book after book being flung out of their shelves, slamming into the floor like gigantic hailstones.

The concussion of the books and the thumping of the shelves grew so severe that the vibrations caused the floor to shake. Sorter stood staring as if in a dream while the lever holding up the nearest shelf jarred free of its holding loop. He looked down a line of shelves to see row on row of levers coming unhinged.

An older gnome, hanging by his legs from one of the shelves, cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed over the growing din, “Threshold effect! Book avalanche!”

Sorter sprinted into the stacks. Diving underneath a thundering cascade of books, he slid to safety beneath a reading table.

Like many disasters, the book avalanche seemed to take forever but was actually over in moments. Sorter crawled uncertainly out from under the table and stared around the Repository, aghast.

He could see from wall to wall. Every last shelf section on the lower level had slammed into the floor. A veritable snowdrift of books lay on the floor, some almost the height of a tall gnome.

Teams of gnomes swung or dropped out of the upper-level rafters to examine the chaos.

“There hasn’t been a shelf avalanche of this magnitude in four generations,” said one, awed.

Another turned and bawled, “Stacker!”

“Stacker!” The others began shouting as well. “Stacker! Stacker!”

Sorter cringed. He was going to be blamed for this. He was certain.

A remarkably tall, thin, and long-armed gnome appeared from nowhere. Standing in the middle of the chaos, he judiciously surveyed the drift of books that extended from one end of the Great Repository to the other and said, “Congratulations, Sorter. You’ve given all of us job security for some time.”

“It wasn’t him,” said one of the stacking gnomes defensively. “It was that little person with the funny ears. I saw him in the epicenter.”

“Franni? Oh, no!” Sorter cried with heartfelt grief. He immediately began throwing books to either side of a pile. “The poor kender! Is he under there?”

“I don’t know,” said the stacking gnome dubiously. “The last I saw him, he was running from to stack to stack, pulling levers.”

“He did this on purpose?” Stacker had also not read much about kender.

“I’m sure the little fellow just panicked. Probably trying to find a way out,” Sorter said firmly. “Let’s keep looking for him.”

Stacker put two of his fingers in his mouth and gave a series of piercing whistles. The standing crew began methodically stacking books to either side of the avalanche. Sorter ran to and fro, moving books from the piles back to the drift and generally getting in the way. He was sick with worry over the kender.

It was sunset before the gnomes finally removed all the books from the floor. Miraculously, they found no bodies.

“We didn’t lose a single gnome,” Stacker said dryly.

“We should put up a shrine to someone.”

Sorter sighed with relief. “We didn’t lose any kender either. The little fellow is all right. Or at least he was all right enough to leave.”

“Not without taking something with him.” Stacker pointed to one of the piles of books.

“What do you mean?” Sorter asked.

“I mean,” Stacker said, scanning a scroll of parchment on which he had been making hatch marks, “that this morning’s shelf-census showed a grand total- counting the new entries-of one hundred and twenty thousand, five hundred, and fifty-seven books.”

He flipped the scroll over. “This evening’s count, taken as we stacked the books, totaled one hundred and twenty thousand, five hundred, and fifty-four.”

“The count’s wrong,” Sorter said, and he was instantly drowned out by a furious chorus.

“The count is never wrong!”

Stacker’s brushy eyebrows furrowed with righteous anger.

“You’re right, of course,” Sorter said meekly. “We must find out what’s missing.”

The gnomes set to work. Checking off books, sleeping in shifts, the gnomes had an answer by dawn. Stacker handed a sheet of foolscap to Sorter, who read off the titles with horror.

Walking Sledgehammer-for smashing small battlement walls. Complete plans, bill of materials. Additional plans for miscellaneous machines of destruction included, no extra charge.