Jonathan Strahan - Swords & Dark Magic - The New Sword and Sorcery

“Individually, this characteristic is harmless. But when you take grimoires…powerful grimoires, from the hands and minds of powerful magicians, and you store them together by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, by the millions …”

This last word was almost shouted, and Molnar’s arms were raised to the ceiling again, for dramatic effect. This speech had lost the dry tones of lecture and acquired the dark passion of theatrical oration. Whatever Master Molnar might have thought of the aspirants entrusted to his care, he was clearly a believer in his work.

“You need thick walls,” he said, slowly, with a thin smile on his lips. “Thick walls, and rough Librarians to guard them. Millions of grimoires, locked away together. Each one is a mote of quasi-intelligence, a speck of possibility, a particle of magic. Bring them together in a teeming library, in the stacks, and you have…”

“What?” said Laszlo, buying into the drama despite himself.

“Not a mind,” said Molnar, meeting his eyes like a carnival fortune-teller making a sales pitch. “Not quite a mind, not a focused intelligence. But a jungle! A jungle that dreams, and those dreams are currents of deadly strangeness. A Living Library…within our power to contain, but well beyond our power to control.”

Molnar stopped beside a low table, on which were four reinforced leather satchels, each containing a single large book. Pinned to each satchel was a small pile of handwritten notes.

“A collection of thaumaturgical knowledge so vast and so deep,” said Molnar, “is far, far too useful a thing to give up merely because it has become a magical disaster area perfectly capable of killing anyone who enters it unprepared!”

Laszlo felt his sudden good cheer slinking away. All of this, in a much less explicit form, was common knowledge among the aspirants of the High University. The Living Library was a place of weirdness, of mild dangers, sure, but to hear Molnar speak of it…

“You aspirants have reaped the benefit of the library for several years now.” Molnar smiled and brushed a speck of imaginary dust from the cuirass of his Librarian’s armor. “You have filed your requests for certain volumes, and waited the days or weeks required for the library staff to fetch them out. And, in the reading rooms, you have studied them in perfect comfort, because a grimoire safely removed from the Living Library is just another book.

“The masters of the university, as one of their more commendable policies, have decreed that all aspirant magicians need to learn to appreciate the sacrifices of the library staff that make this singular resource available. Before you can proceed to the more advanced studies of your final years, you are required to enter the Living Library, just once, to assist us in the return of a volume to its rightful place in the collection. That is all. That is the extent of your fifth-year exam. On the table beside me you will see four books in protective satchels. Take one, and handle it with care. Until those satchels are empty, your careers at the High University are in the balance.”

Lev passed the satchels out one by one. Laszlo received his and examined the little bundle of notes that came with it. Written in several different hands, they named the borrower of the grimoire as a third-year aspirant he didn’t know, and described the process of hunting the book down, with references to library sections, code phrases, and number sequences that Laszlo couldn’t understand.

“The library is so complex,” said Molnar, “and has grown so strange in its ways that physical surveillance of the collection has been impractical for centuries. We rely on the index enchantments, powerful processes of our most orderly sorcery, to give us the information that the Indexers maintain here. From that information, we plan our expeditions, and map the best ways to go about fetching an item from the stacks, or returning one.”

“Master Molnar, sir, forgive me,” said Casimir. “Is that a focus for the index enchantments over there?”

Laszlo followed Casimir’s pointing hand, and in a deeper niche behind one of the little armories along the walls, he saw a recessed column of black glass, behind which soft pulses of blue light rose and fell.

“Just so,” said Molnar. “Either you’ve made pleasing use of the introductory materials, or that was a good guess.”

“It’s, ah, a sort of personal interest.” Casimir reached inside a belt pouch and took out a thick hunk of triangular crystal, like a prism with a milky-white center. “May I leave this next to the focus while we’re in the stacks? It’s just an impression device. It’ll give me a basic idea of how the index enchantments function. My family has a huge library, not magical, of course, but if I could create spells to organize it—”

“Ambition wedded to sloth,” said Molnar. “Let no one say you don’t think like a true magician, Aspirant Vrana.”

“I won’t even have to think about it while we’re inside, sir. It would just mind itself, and I could pick it up on the way out.” Casimir was laying it on, Laszlo saw, every ounce of obsequiousness he could conjure.

But what was he talking about? Personal project? Family library? Caz had never breathed a word of any such thing to him. While they came from very different worlds, they’d always gotten along excellently as chambers-mates, and Laszlo had thought there were no real secrets between them. Where had this sprung from?

“Of course, Vrana,” said Master Molnar. “We go to some trouble to maintain those enchantments, after all, and today is all about appreciating our work.”

While Casimir hurried to emplace his little device near the glass column, Molnar beckoned the rest of them on toward another gate at the inner end of the Manticore Index. It was as tall and wide as the door they’d entered, but even more grimly functional—cold, dark metal inscribed with geometric patterns and runes of warding.

“A gateway to the stacks,” said Molnar, “can only be opened by the personal keys of two Librarians. I’ll be one of your guides today, and the other…the other should have been here by—”

“I’m here, Master Librarian.”

In the popular imagination (which had, to this point, included Laszlo’s), female Librarians were lithe, comely warrior maidens out of some barbarian legend. The woman now hurrying toward them through the Manticore Index was short, barely taller than Yvette, and she was as sturdy as a concrete teapot, with broad hips and arms like a blacksmith’s. Her honey-colored hair was tied back in a short tail, and over her black Librarian’s armor she wore an unusual harness that carried a pair of swords crossed over her back. Her plump face was as heavily scarred as Molnar’s, and Laszlo had learned just enough in his hobby duels to see that she was no one he would ever want to annoy.

“Aspirants,” said Molnar, “allow me to present Sword-Librarian Astriza Mezaros.”

As she moved past him, Laszlo noticed two things. First, the curious harness held not just her swords but a large book, buckled securely over her lower back beneath her scabbards. Second, she had a large quantity of fresh blood soaking the gauntlet on her left hand.

“Sorry to be late,” said Mezaros. “Came from the infirmary.”

“Indeed,” said Molnar, “and are you—”

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m not the one that got hit. It was that boy Selucas, from the morning group.”

“Ahhhh. And will he recover?”

“Given a few weeks.” Mezaros grinned as she ran her eyes across the four aspirants. “Earned his passing grade the hard way, that’s for sure.”

“Well, I’ve given them the lecture,” said Molnar. “Let’s proceed.”