Mercedes Lackey - Crown of Vengeance

It was the first time he’d called her by the eke-name that Melwen and the other Sanctuary servants sometimes used. It was the way a given name might be shortened by a lover, a child, a parent. Would Nataranweiya have used it, if she and Serenthon had lived and Farcarinon yet stood? Even to wonder was a painful thing.

“Come,” Thurion said again. “I will show you a world wider than all the Fortunate Lands.”

She followed him back inside the Sanctuary, grateful to pass out of the chill. Thurion led her to a passageway as narrow as any of the hidden ways within the walls, and suddenly Vieliessar could hear Maeredhiel’s voice, clear in the ears of memory: “This side passage leads down to the stairs to the Library. Perhaps someday you will see what lies within it.”

The staircase was as narrow as the passage, and it went down a long way—two floors, or perhaps three. Niches in the stone walls held lanterns that glowed with Silverlight.

“Anyone—anyone who is not in their Service Year—may come here,” Thurion said. He paused, as if he were listening to his words. “I mean … anyone of the Sanctuary. Even the servants. Lightborn from Graythunder Glairyrill to Great Ocean return here to study.”

Vieliessar let his remark pass without comment. She knew Thurion hadn’t meant to remind her that she was nothing more than one of the Sanctuary servants. To be a servant at the Sanctuary of the Star was to be placed above warlords and princes—so Morgaenel Mistress Kitchen-Cook always said.

At the bottom of the staircase was a latticework door, gleaming golden in the dimness. It was ornate enough, Vieliessar decided, but hardly very grand. In Bolecthindial’s castel the outer doors to the Great Hall were as high as three tall men, their opening wide enough that three komen in full war panoply could ride through them side by side. The images on their Mage-forged door panels told the story of Caerthalien’s great triumphs, and though they were cast of solid bronze, they were so perfectly balanced that the youngest servant could open and close them with a touch. This was merely an ancient door of cracked, painted wood, no larger than the door to her sleeping cell.

“This is the Library of Arevethmonion,” Thurion said. His voice was hushed, but his tone was as proud as if he were its master and ruler.

“It is named for the Flower Forest?” Vieliessar asked.

“Or she is named for this,” Thurion said, and tugged open the door to the Library.

When Vieliessar followed Thurion through the doorway, her nose was suddenly filled with the sweet scents of vellum and leather. Silverlight filled the chamber with a moon-pale radiance brighter than any full moon. The door was small, but the space beyond was as high as the stair had been long, and larger from back to front and side to side than Bolecthindial’s Great Hall—larger, perhaps, than the Sanctuary itself. Every wall she could see was filled with square storage niches, and each niche was filled with scrolls. A gallery halfway up the wall seemed to go all the way around the room, to give access to the niches higher on the walls.

Nor was this place unoccupied.

I had wondered where the Lightborn and the Postulants vanished to all the day, and now I know.…

The center of the chamber was filled with long tables—and because she had spent candlemark upon candlemark tending to the Sanctuary’s furnishings, she wondered who cared for all of this, for no one in the Servants’ Hall had mentioned the library as part of their duties. Several of the tables were covered with stacked scrolls, opened scrolls, and even maps, over which green-robed Lightborn and grey-robed Postulants bent in study.

“I … didn’t know…” she whispered.

“This is only the main room,” Thurion said, turning back and coming to her side. “The others—”

“So many scrolls,” Vieliessar interrupted. “It would be a life’s work to read them all!”

“Praise to Sword and to Star we Postulants do not have to,” Thurion answered, his voice low and amused. “It is a great enough task merely to learn the catalogue which tells us where they are.”

He stepped away from the doorway again, and this time Vieliessar followed him.

“Any text brought to the Sanctuary and deemed by Cirthoriach Lightsister to be of worth or interest is shelved here. There are poems, storysongs, travelers’ accounts … even histories that the Hundred Houses would not wish preserved, for the tales they hold are not, I am told, the tales sung at feast days,” Thurion said dryly, as the two of them walked along the right-hand wall.

Vieliessar’s eyes were stretched wide at all she saw—and even more at what she imagined. A hundred of these scroll niches would have held every scroll in Caerthalien’s library. And there were hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds more. All filled.

“There is a workroom beyond this to repair damaged scrolls,” Thurion said. “The spell of Keeping ensures nothing decays or fades, but it won’t prevent damage, or staining—or keep the Lightborn from making notes on the edges of the text,” Thurion said, the laughter in his eyes inviting Vieliessar to share the joke. “There is a chamber beyond the workroom which holds texts on spellcraft, locked away lest we be tempted to take a short road to our understanding of the Light. It would not work, in any case—and would certainly do great harm.”

“I don’t understand,” Vieliessar said. “If they are but scrolls … How can one be hurt reading a scroll?”

Thurion came to a stop, frowning with the effort of trying to explain. “It is … as if you or I were given all the articles of knighthood—sword and spear, armor and shield, spurs and destrier—and sent into battle against one who had earned them all through years of honest training. We would die.”

“I would not go into battle unless I were sure I could win,” Vieliessar said firmly.

“But you would think you could,” Thurion said. “Because of the—”

“I would not,” she retorted. “You make it sound as if the Postulants are fools. If a thing is a task beyond one’s strength, one should not attempt it.”

Thurion made a helpless gesture. “To…” He shook his head. “It is a temptation.”

“Those who are so easily tempted are better off without Magery,” Vieliessar said decisively. “But—are you not here to learn spells?” she added.

“There are no spells when one becomes one with the Light,” Thurion said.

Vieliessar nearly stamped her foot in exasperation. Not a handful of moments before, Thurion had spoke of a spell set to preserve the scrolls. “There are either spells or there are not,” she said tartly. “You said—”

“There are. There aren’t. It’s … one must learn to listen first.”

“To what?” Vieliessar demanded, and Thurion simply looked frustrated.

“To the world,” he said.

His words made no sense, though she’d become used to the idea that nothing the Postulants said when they talked about the Light ever did. “How long does it take to learn this … listening?” she asked instead.

“All your life,” Thurion answered. His face softened, and it was as if he gazed upon something beautiful she knew she would never see.

She did not know how long they spent wandering through this other Arevethmonion, as Thurion showed her its treasures with the joy and pride of a War Prince showing his Great Keep to his bride. He plucked scrolls from their niches, saying she must read this one or that. For the first time since she had come to the Sanctuary, her duties and obligations—even the injuries done to her Line—were forgotten. There was a set of scrolls containing a history of the Hundred Houses, one which was a copy of only the major songs of The Song of Amrethion , a scroll on games ( xaique and gan and narshir ), and the three scrolls of Halbaureth’s Journey , which Thurion said was about Halbaureth of Alilianne—as House Ullilion was once called—who had traveled farther east from the shores of Great Ocean than anyone had ventured since, crossing Graythunder Glairyrill itself. “If you never leave these walls, still, you will travel farther in Halbaureth’s company than anyone of the Hundred Houses can ever boast of,” Thurion said.