Anthology - The Search For Magic

Sorter winced in sympathy. “I’m sorry, Blastmaster. Did it hurt?”

“Double-reciprocating action,” Blastmaster murmured as he read, oblivious to Sorter. “Who thinks of these things?” He looked up. “What was that? Oh, not much.” He rubbed his head again, blinking as his fingers touched the bump. “I think that shelver’s stronger than it used to be.”

Sorter nodded vigorously. “I added a second windlass. You should see it whip books into the Upper Stacks.” He gestured to the high shelves, where gnomes on ladders and the odd trapeze read the books they were supposed to be shelving.

Sorter added shyly, “The same principle would apply to a larger machine-”

Blastmaster was already shaking his head. “Sorter, Sorter, we have discussed this before. You may not design or build. You are a librarian-a sorter, chosen and named from birth.”

Blastmaster patted the younger gnome’s shoulder. “It is a noble role, and you fill it well. Stacker has nothing but praise for you.”

“He does?” Sorter asked, astounded. Stacker had always seemed exasperated by Sorter.

“Well, he says you work his crews hard, and that’s all to the good.” Blastmaster smiled at Sorter. “Take joy in your work, son, for you will never leave it.”

Sorter tugged glumly at the lever beside an empty stack of shelves and didn’t even smile when it slammed into the floor with a loud thunk.

“I’ll try to find some joy,” he said, sighing. “Even if it kills me.”

Before returning to his desk, he felt obligated to ask, “Blastmaster, there was an explosion a few moments ago…?”

Blastmaster beamed. “That was mine.” He pulled a scroll from one of his many pockets and unrolled it. “There is a very old legend that with the right detonating device, you can detonate water. I was testing a new device this morning.” He shrugged and laughed proudly. “What a marvelous detonator! Blew itself into more pieces than you can imagine. Completely destroyed the work of thirty years. I’ll have to start over.”

Sorter nodded and returned to his desk, muttering bitterly, “Some gnomes have all the luck.”

Sorter had been at his work long enough to accumulate a few stray volumes and stack them on a corner of the desk when a voice from the stack said, “Excuse me.”

Sorter blinked. “Excuse me?”

“That’s what I said.” The voice said reproachfully. “You have to say something different.”

“Ah.” Sorter looked this way and that, but saw nothing but the books. “Excuse me-I mean, sorry.” He opened the topmost book cautiously, peered inside. “Hello?”

“Down here.” A hand waved above the edge of his desk.

Sorter leaned forward and saw a small face with large eyes staring back at him. At first he thought the face belonged to a child, but children weren’t usually allowed to go around carrying dangerous-looking sticks like that.

“A kender,” Sorter said with certainty and some wonder. “You’re a kender.”

“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.