tests, you are not my student. I was not attempting to waste your time. I believe it is safe to let go of my shoulder.”
Meaning let go of his shoulder right now. Kaylin was happy to do so; grabbing his shoulder reminded her a bit too much of foundlings and rope lines. She looked past the shoulder she’d just released, and the brighter light, combined with visual acclimatization, surrendered the image of a library. She released her hold on the mark and it returned to her skin.
A large, cavernous library appeared to go on forever.
They had entered through a wall; the wall itself was gone. When Kaylin looked back, she saw shelves. The shelves were built at least three stories tall, and there were ladders that appeared to float a few inches off the ground, as if waiting to be needed.
The Arkon exhaled for a long time.
“You recognize this library,” Bellusdeo said. Not a question.
The Arkon nodded, his neck craning up, and up again. “I do.”
It was empty of anything except books and the three people who had entered through a wall that no longer existed. “Can you see a door?” Kaylin asked.
The Arkon said, “No. And I do not advise you to search for one.”
“Meaning there’s no door.”
“Not in the strictly quotidian sense, no. There were portals by which we traversed the library itself. Very, very few of us were granted permission to enter this library. There were librarians,” he added, “some precious few whose responsibility was to see to the safety of the collection. But all such gatherings are comprised of people who have their own desires, their own interests.
“Those who had earned Killianas’s trust were allowed to remove books for personal perusal in the confines of their own offices.”
Kaylin looked at the arm in which the Arkon was clutching Larrantin’s book. As if that were a signal, the Arkon loosened that hold, letting Bellusdeo’s hand go in order to examine the message that Larrantin had intended for Killian—a message he had not accepted the only time his Avatar had appeared before the Arkon.
To Kaylin, the unbundling of the book produced a book, which is what she’d seen the first time and every time thereafter. She watched his expression, watched the smile change the shape of his mouth.
“A book,” he said quietly. “As you said, Corporal.”
“Do you know where it goes?”
“I believe so. It is not immediately in front of us,” he added. “Larrantin was a scourge upon the librarians and the student body. This book is not—was never—meant to be in circulation at all. He must have had permission to take it, but not even the librarians would have been able to grant that permission.”
“Killian?”
“Killianas, yes.”
“What is it about? I couldn’t see much on the pages.”
“It is about interdimensional travel.”
“Really?”
“No. I am simplifying to a ridiculous degree. But to read it at all, one must be current with languages that are considered long dead.”
“Meaning, not me.”
“Indeed. One must be current in those languages, which is a scholarly feat in itself, and must also be adept at small shifts in personal placement. The words written in this particular book are on a page that is slightly displaced. I could not read it as a student. It must have been germane to Larrantin’s specialization.”
“What was his specialization?” Bellusdeo asked.
The Arkon laughed. It was a bold, rolling sound, one of genuine amusement. “I do not know,” he said. “It was the question most asked by the newer students, who considered him a walking legend, a mystery, something almost as impossible as the Ancients themselves.”
Kaylin froze.
“He was considered Barrani,” the Arkon said, correctly guessing why. “He was not of the Ancestors that preceded the Barrani; there is a single word at his core, a single, complex rune. Or so we were told. But at the time, the Ancestors were still present, if few. The earliest of the wars I remember involved their presence. They were not our wars,” he added. “They were not wars that required the mobilization of the flights.”
“One of the Ancestors is at the heart of Castle Nightshade,” Kaylin said.
“Yes. But that Ancestor’s duties are not the duties of those who woke in the depths of that castle. They are gone.”
“Gone?”
“Gone to Ravellon. Gone to death. The words that were the source of their life and thought are lost to us now.” He began to walk. Bellusdeo and Kaylin joined him, and even Bellusdeo—who never seemed impressed by the Imperial Library—had a hush about her that spoke of