Chapter Twelve
Sitting in a floor-length taga of pale lavender silk, embroidered all over with the rainbow pei-slii teardrops representing each of the nine branches of the Hierarchy of Mendhi and decorated at her hip with the small golden labrys of her office, Elder Librarian Anya’thia sipped at her morning cup of tea and regarded the man seated across from her. Next to him, the new Elder Mage tried not to fidget, waiting for Anya’thia’s decision. Pelai had ensured her penitent charge had taken a bath, neatly combed and braided his hair, and donned a fresh kilt and matching vest in hunter green that brought out the green in the bands inked around his biceps, granting him greater strength and greater speed.
“Access,” Anya’thia finally said.
“Yes,” Pelai agreed.
“To the Restricted Archives.”
“Yes.”
“A penitent.”
“Yes.”
“Who is a Partisan.”
“No.” The reply to her flat-voiced, skeptical statement this time came from Krais himself. “I have broken away from my father’s influence. I no longer scribe down his beliefs in any way.”
“Hmphf.” The noise came out sarcastic, but her expression remained placid. Mostly placid.
Pelai had always thought Anya’thia to be a very handsome woman, the kind with excellent features that aged well. She had paler skin than most Mendhites, more the color of milk in strong tea than the darker, more usual sun-brown most sported; her medium brown hair had a distinct curl to it, and very little gray.
Those steady, assessing eyes boasted specs of green mottling their brown, like leaves scattered across wood. Some source of outlander blood gave her those exotic touches, though her face was as moon-round as any Mendhite could wish. Those lips were more suited for smiling, a trait echoed in the fine wrinkles along the edges of her mouth and at the outer corners of her eyes, suggesting she did so often. At the moment, she did not smile.
Neither did she frown, however. Pelai chose to take that as an encouraging s—
“I wish to read his soul.”
If she had been the one sipping tea, Pelai would have choked and spat it out. For anyone else, that would have been an impossibility; the marks of the Disciplinarian were for a Goddess-approved person to bear, and only another Disciplinarian could peer into a person’s soul via their own marks. Despite her great power and training as the Elder Mage, Tipa’thia could not have done so, and not even the current Elder Priest, Aleppo’thio—who had his own direct connections to the Goddess Menda—could read a soul like a Disciplinarian could.
To the Elder Librarian, however, Menda granted the power not only to understand any language, but to read anything. The knotted and beaded string-words of the Tilleshu Isles. The gestures and hand signs of the Thialian Monks of Silence. The most heavily encrypted codes used by assassins, thieves, conspirators, and military generals. All of it. The Elder Librarian could read, understand, and know the meaning behind any form of communication. That ability alone made the Elder Librarian very dangerous to encryption specialists around the world . . . but it also made her very popular with young children trying to explain their scribbled drawings to adults.
This was not a drawing contest. The Elder Librarian could not trigger the soul-reading—Anya’thia did not have the special tattoos for it—but she could “ride along” when a Disciplinarian did so. Considering the implications, the ramifications, and what she knew of Krais’ soul . . . Pelai breathed deep and nodded. “You have my permission. Penitent, do you grant permission?”
“I . . . have nothing to fear,” Krai stated, hesitating just a little. “So I do not object.”
Anya’thia gave him a pointed look over her mug of Aian tea. “But do you give permission?”
Squaring his shoulders just a little, he said, “I give you permission, Elder Librarian.”
Satisfied, Pelai commanded, “Stay seated, Penitent, and keep your eyes forward.”
“Yes, Doma.” He stared straight ahead, ignoring the way the two women rose in tandem and moved.
Pleated lavender hemline rustling over the wooden floor of her office, the Elder Librarian moved in front of Krais, and the Elder Mage and former Second Disciplinarian moved behind him. Pelai brought her hands down on his shoulders. That earned her a frown.
“What are you doing?” Anya’thia demanded, frowning at Pelai.
“ . . . I’m about to read his soul?” Pelai returned, quirking her brows. “Like you asked?”
“Not like that!” the older woman fussed. She fluttered her hand at Pelai’s wrists. “I can’t see a thing! They’re facing the wrong way. I need to see your Goddess marks.”
“Well, I’ve never done this before!” Pelai retorted, stripping off her bracers. “I didn’t think that you had to actually see the marks. I . . . hmm. Do you know how to . . . ?”
“I haven’t done it, either, though I do remember watching my predecessor doing it,” Anya’thia muttered. She frowned while Pelai tried to turn her arms this way and that, and finally sighed. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember the position the Disciplinarian used.”
Pelai couldn’t really turn her wrists so that the insides faced forward, and she couldn’t bend them the right way and still get her palms firmly on his body, which the tattoos required. . . . Finally, she gave up any pretense of dignity, crouched, laced her fingers together, and pressed her hands against the back of his head. “Can you see them now?”
“ . . .Yes, both of them. Thank you for having your hair braided tightly today, young man,” Anya’thia told Krais in an aside.
“You’re welcome,” he grunted, head pushed around a little by the way Pelai wobbled briefly on her toes, forced to use his skull as a temporary bracing post.
“Sorry,” she muttered, balancing herself better.
“Forgiven,” he returned.
“Right, then. Activate the reading whenever you’re ready, Pelai’thia,” Anya’thia directed.
Nodding, Pelai reached down into herself, then out to the skin of her wrists. The skin, the muscles, the tendons, the bones. The special tattoos that had been inked on her inner wrists in the same shade of tan as the skin found there, similar to the illusion-piercing tattoo around her left eye, glowed.
Pelai could not see it directly, but she knew what it looked like, for newly elevated Disciplinarians were required to clasp hands with a senior in rank, displaying their tattoos faceup, and show the effects while reading their senior’s soul, to prove the tattoes were true. At first, the specially inked pei-slii design shimmered in faint gold, lightening and brightening the skin-matched hue of the ink, then it sizzled from the pen-tip point to the scroll of the teardrop. But instead of a spiraling design, the center of that teardrop held a spiral encircling a closed eye.
Between one breath and the next, those closed eyes opened, shining iridescent gold light past each of Krais’ ears. Shining an inner light down into Krais’ soul. The light of the Goddess illuminated the faint wrinkles of encroaching age on the forty-eight-year-old woman’s face. Hazel eyes widening, Anya’thia sensed what Pelai did. Sensed what lay within the Painted Warrior’s soul.
Arrogance that had faded, sins scrubbed down to specks through hard mental, emotional, and philosophical work. New paths laid bare yet with care within the Painted Warrior’s life, while the old trails were left to vanish under neglectful weeds. A sense of purpose had removed his old ways, beyond selfish interests, bitter regrets for mistakes, replaced by a solid resolve to change his ways.
Dismay, disgust, and resolve-bolstering horror at the thought of their world being ravaged by demons from the Netherhells. Regret, shame, and discomfort at the realization that one of his brothers was fated to help, or perhaps just let that invasion begin. Uncertainty over his own role in all of this, but a determination to do the right thing, and not just whatever his father demanded.
This time, Pelai sensed a touch of stubborn defiance, even if he was not resisting their soul-searching. Rather, this was an awareness that he wanted to share with the two women examining his soul. A determination that he wasn’t changing for anyone in his life other than the Goddess . . . and for humanity itself as a whole. But not for either of them.
That determination amused her. Pelai considered it proof he was still the same Puhon Krais who had refused to submit over a decade ago. Now that the blindfold of father-worship and father-obedience had fallen from his eyes, he intended to be his own man. To forge his own choices.
There was little one could do to correct a man who had been correcting his own path for half a year. Maybe a little spanking, Pelai thought, amused. Or a little hot wax . . . mostly just for fun.
The eyes on her wrists closed, and the glow faded. Withdrawing her hands, straightening with some relief for her aching back, Pelai tugged her bracers back on archer-style, with the lacings placed along the outside and the solid leather covering her inner wrists. Warrior-style would have been with the solid leather on the outside. Warrior-style bracers would have also come with metal plates riveted to the leather, to catch and block blows from weapons.
She had seen Krais and his brothers wearing such things many times over the years, along with other bits of armor, some of it boiled leather scribed with protective runes, some of it adorned with very functional, protective plates. Not Gayn as much as Foren, since Gayn had only just reached his twenties, and not Foren as much as Krais; the middle brother sat in his middle twenties, and the eldest, her penitent, was her own age of thirty-one. Pelai was more certain of his age than his siblings’ because she had been one year into her own apprenticeship when she witnessed Krais fail the start of his.
But that failure was a lifetime ago. Or rather, a life-change. Enough of a change that Anya’thia came out of her trance with raised brows, and stared past Pelai’s shoulder with a thoughtful look while her fellow Elder tugged on and laced up those bracers. Finally, the Elder Librarian nodded.
“Very well . . . it is clear he passes this test. But I’m still not convinced you need fuller access.”
“I wouldn’t ask for fuller access under any other circumstance,” Krais replied dryly. “I’m not my mother. I’m not a librarian at heart.”
“Then what are you, Puhon Krais?” Anya’thia asked dryly. “You’re not a Disciplinarian, you’re not a librarian . . . what are you?”
With her wrist tattoos covered, Pelai moved to the side just in time to see Krais arching a brow at the older woman, his upper lip wrinkled in a little sneer. His voice stung with the scorn to match his expression, too.
“You make that sound like it’s a sin not to be anything,” Krais stated. “Do I lose my humanity, my very right to exist, if I’m not something you approve of?”
His demand hit the Elder Librarian like an invisible smack to her chest. She jerked back, blinking, her curls and her taga folds swaying a little. Unlike most other Elders on the Hierarchy, however, she did not bristle with a self-important level of indignation. Rather, she acknowledged the rightful chiding. “I . . . I didn’t—! . . . I apologize, if that was the impression I gave. The Gods Themselves gave you the right to exist. I am simply trying to ascertain what you think of yourself. What you’d call yourself, in order to give yourself definition, now that you’ve cut yourself adrift from being your father’s professional lackey.”
His answer came without hesitation. “I am a Painted Warrior.”
“And what does that mean, to you?” Anya’thia questioned him, pressing for details.
“It means my body is covered with the Writ of the Goddess, empowered by my magic and my will, and it is to Her that I will answer for all the deeds I have performed, once my life is through,” Krais recited. Then added tartly, “Right now, it means I owe Her reparations for all the wrongful deeds I committed, or attempted to commit, with the marks on my skin. That includes making sure I follow Her prophesied commands. Serving the Elder Mage is one of those commands.”
“So you’ll go from serving one person blindly to serving another?” Anya’thia muttered.
That narrowed Krais’ eyes. “On the contrary, I intend to challenge anything the Elder Mage does if it does not make sense.”
“And yet the prophecy says you must not protest any of your punishment,” the Elder Librarian countered.
“How did you—?” he asked, startled that she apparently knew.
Pelai answered for her. “It was in one of the messages I wrote out and sent yesterday. I do have to keep the Elder Librarian up to date on all prophecies.”
“Inter-hierarchical cooperation is an essential part of being an Elder of anything,” Anya’thia agreed primly. “Pelai’thia understands how these things work.”
Krais snorted at that. “You mean, every Elder Librarian since the dawn of the position has threatened everyone else to share any such material they may have, Or Else.”
“That, too,” the Elder Librarian confirmed, leaning back a little for a moment. “As I said, Pelai’thia understands how this works. Now . . . why didn’t you share it with me?” She swooped in and stooped enough to get her nose rather close to his with that demand.
“I hadn’t written it out yet. I thought it would be shared with you when Pelai shared . . . when Pelai’thia shared it with the other Guardians,” Krais stated, correcting himself on the slip of her title.
Pelai debated letting Anya’thia know he had her permission to call her by her given name in private. But that was just it: it was meant strictly for private. She held her tongue while they talked. She had the right to be given the ability to read anything in the Archives simply because she was the Elder Mage, even if she’d never be given the tattoo of the Elder Librarian. But that was because both the Elder Mage and the Elder Librarian were gauged carefully over years of training for their ethics, to a similar high degree . . . and a lot of information about magic was stored in the Great Library.
Anya’thia mentioned this now, in fact. “The Elder Mage holds the power, as Guardian of the Temple Fountain, to destroy the vast sprawling city of Mendham if she so desires. The Elder Librarian holds the knowledge of how to do the same without needing a Font or a Fountain, a singuarlity or magical wellspring. You say you don’t need access to my information under normal circumstances. What makes this situation claim to have such need?”
“Do you want the bluntly practical answer, or the one filled with sophistry?” Krais asked.
“Both.”
“I could claim that part of my punishment is how my Goddess has told me to do whatever my Disciplinarian tells me to do,” Krais said. “Pelai’thia is telling me to search the Archives for highly sensitive information she doesn’t have the time to look for herself, things pertaining to the functioning of the Temple Fountain. She also needs me to keep an eye out for the ex-Mekhanan priests who are prophecied to come here looking for information, things pertaining to their attempts to haul into this universe powerful demons to siphon magic from so they can once again be powerful and feared and live in luxury.
“But simply claiming it’s my punishment to obey is sophistry. The practical reason is simply that she doesn’t have the time to do these things herself, but I do,” he continued. “Doma Pelai’thia has gauged my soul and believes I am suited for this task as one of my punishments . . . and prophecy suggests I will have a hand in turning things the right way.”
“And if, in your searching through the Restricted Archives, you found something that would remove her Disciplinarian suppression spell from your magics?” Anya’thia asked, arching a brow.
“I wouldn’t use it,” he stated bluntly. “That would be resisting my punishment. If I do that, then I become the brother who betrays humanity. I will not allow that to happen.”
Pelai had to bite her lip at that, trying not to smile too visibly. It was such a Krais answer, full of arrogance, pride, determination. . . . Very much a trait of the family Puhon. He had become a better man than before, yes, but better didn’t mean perfect.
“What of other magics, things that could hand you untold power?” the Elder Librarian offered. “Or eternal life?”
“I already have enough power, and I don’t see the point in eternal life,” Krais countered. “Everyone ages. If I lived eternally, I’d just wither until I turned to a pile of bones and dust. I’d rather not still be alive like that.”
“What about if you had eternal youth coupled to it?” she asked next.
Krais frowned in thought for a long moment, then said slowly, “ . . . I remember my grandfather—my father’s father—talking about how he was very tired, after having lived seventy-eight years. How the days just blended into each other after a while. Despite having been a robust mage, he was grateful his body was finally failing him. He called it ‘the end of a very long day.’ My grandmother, his wife, agreed with him, and she was older by five years, had lived longer.
“I don’t want eternal life, not even coupled with eternal youth. I want to be able to go to bed at the end of the day. A proper-length day, when it comes to the span of a mortal life.” Krais shook his head. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone but a God . . . and even Gods die.”
Anya’thia studied him blandly a long moment, then nodded and raised her hand to his face. “ . . . Right, then. Hold still, Doma.”
A straight-quilled pei-slii glowed in brilliant gold on her forehead; like Pelai’s Discipline marks, it had a closed eye in the center. After a moment, it faded to nothing . . . but her hand glowed.
Before Pelai knew Anya’thia had moved, the older woman smacked her on the brow. Icy-heat seared her flesh, sank into her bones. . . . On reflex, Pelai flexed the freshly tattooed area, tried to get it to work—and found herself surrounded by runes. Sigils scribed on the walls, ceiling, floor, the books, the furniture, even floating ones.
Some of the lattermost were centered on her—all of them from the Fountain Hall—and the rest floated around Anya’thia, who moved to her desk, did something that opened a hidden drawer, and pulled out a single viewing lens on a simple cord. This, she passed to Krais while Pelai was still trying to touch the air around the new runes.
“This is enchanted to be able to read anything . . . and I am only loaning it to you because there are dozens of prophecies wrapped up in this demonic invasion.”
“Anything?” Krais asked, hand upraised but hesitating before actually taking it.
“Even the files in the Forbidden Annex . . . which is why I asked you those particular questions. Whatever you do while wearing that monocle, read silently. The tomes and scrolls and spells locked up in that the Forbidden Annex have to be read aloud to cast them successfully, not just read silently,” she explained, “but they’re not the only ones.”
“ . . . I won’t even go near that Annex,” Krais pledged. Then checked himself, remembering where it was located. “That is, I won’t go into it. I’m obviously near it right now, since it’s below our feet.”
“Glad to know where you’re not allowed to go, young man. Now. Lose this, and you lose your life . . . but with it, you will be able to see whatever she is cleared to see,” Anya’thia told him. “Like most enchanted monocles, it has a self-sticking charm, once you pinch it between your eyebrow and cheek and hold it there physically for a slow count to ten. After that, it’ll hover at the right distance for perfect viewing until you grasp it and pull it out of position. Pull to the side, following the direction of the point—it’s reversible, too, so you can use it on either eye, with the point curving slightly up or slightly down for whatever version is comfortable for you.”
Refocusing her gaze, Pelai looked down in time to see Krais tucking the pei-slii teardrop shaped monocle between his right eyebrow and cheek, with the pointed end of the glass angling up and off to the side. A moment later, she saw a hovering violet symbol inside the viewing lens. Junior librarians had one just like that eye-within-a-pei-slii effect, one that glowed visibly whenever they read deliberately obscured texts. That, Pelai knew, made it difficult for them to sneak looks at restricted information without someone noticing they were up to something.
This one, however, vanished when she blinked and relaxed the new tattoo. It just looked like a fancy reading lens now, the sort that jewelers might use to assess a gemstone. He looked this way and that, peering around the room at all the spots where she had seen runes . . . and even tried to reach for some of the ones floating around her, she realized after a moment. Runes that helped her to assess and control the Fountain, even if he could only read them, not manipulate them.
Reaching out, Pelai tapped him on the top of his head. He blinked and refocused his gaze, looking up at her. “Is this what you see all the time? As the Guardian?”
“Not always seeing it, no, but I do feel it all the time now,” she admitted. Rubbing her brow gingerly—the mark stung a little when she did that—Pelai’thia eyed her counterpart. “You had the ink all prepared for my tattoo, didn’t you, Anya’thia?”
Anya’thia gestured vaguely at her desk, where a dozen ink jars sat, along with many scraps of paper, scrolls, and tomes. It wasn’t super messy, but neither was it completely tidy. She might be the Elder Librarian, a job that required her to be a stickler for organization in the many branches of the Great Library, but the woman wasn’t a fanatic about it in her personal space. “I know how thorough you are as a Disciplinarian, Pelai’thia. I also knew you hadn’t come to me. I sent Librarian Dalen to you to double-check, in the first place.
“As for the monocle allowing your penitent to access the Hidden Files . . . Between your diligence and those prophecies, I figured you’d have scrutinized him carefully, judging him worthy before even thinking of making your request. Of course, I still had to verify for myself. I will be diligent in my own duties, young man,” she told Krais.
“It is appreciated, Elder,” Krais murmured. “Now . . . is there anything more to this lens than the ability to see special runes? Some sort of manual? Or . . . ?”
“The magics are intuitive. Just do not read aloud anything written in glowing dark purple that you cannot see with unaided eyes, and you’ll be fine,” Anya’thia stated. “Either of you.”
“Why? What happens?” Pelai asked, curious.
“They’re activation spells for the Library defenses,” Anya’thia explained. “It’ll cause whatever room you’re in to lock down instantly and prevent anyone from leaving—actually, that might be good, if we’re trying to catch attempted demon-summoners.”
“Except we have to let at least some of them go. I think,” Pelai amended, unsure just how much they were supposed to allow to happen. “ . . . I think I’m going to have to consult with all the other Guardians some more.”
The Elder Librarian threw up her hands with an expressive shrug. “Sometimes, I feel like all these Gods-be-given prophecies are nothing more than poorly written mystery stories plotted by hack writers. I swear by the pen and the page, sometimes it makes me want to throttle Them . . .”
Krais laughed at that. “Haha! I like it!”
Anya’thia arched one of her brows at that. “Whatever is so funny, Penitent Puhon?”
“I, uh . . . Forgive me,” he offered, though he couldn’t stop smiling. “I just had this image of you chasing the Gods Themselves down at the next Convocation, a pot of red ink clutched in one fist, a pen in the other, threatening to edit everything They say! Hahaha! Menda might be the Scribe of the Gods, but now we have Anya’thia, Editor of the Gods Themselves! Ha!”
Anya’thia gaped at him; for a moment, Pelai didn’t know if her counterpart was going to smite him for blasphemy. But then the older woman threw her head back and cackled with mirth. She pointed at him, struggling for breath between guffaws. “I would! You—you know I would! Ahahahahaha!”
Even Pelai had to grin at that thought. The Elder Librarian’s tirades on poor spelling, punctuation, and grammar among the members of her department had been legendary long before her elevation to the Hierarchy. “ . . . Or maybe you’d just chase Them down with a giant eraser?”
Krais choked on a fresh round of laughter, coughing and wheezing. Guffawing even harder, Anya swayed, caught her balance, then flexed her arms one at a time, patting each biceps like a professional brawler before a formal match.
Seeing that, even Pelai burst out in hearty laughter, breathless and teary-eyed. Despite the requirement of being skilled with the small but not-that-symbolic batttle-axe hanging at her belt, the elegantly gowned woman looked nothing like a Mendhite gladiator!
“You look . . . familiar. . . . Wait, yes! I know you!”
Foren glanced over his shoulder, arching a brow. It took him a moment to recognize the speaker, an outlander with a beakish nose, hazel eyes, and curly dark brown hair pulled back in a slightly untidy ponytail. Today, he had on an olive green tunic and a brown kilt that looked . . . odd.
“Pwan Forn! Yes, that’s you, isn’t it? Pwan Forn,” the pale man stated, smiling at him. Grinning even. He touched his chest, reintroducing himself. “I’m Brother Grell, of the Traveling Brotherhood, remember?”
“Oh yes! The refreshing room man!” Foren replied, pointing back at him and smiling. When the pale-faced outlander flushed and narrowed his eyes, the Mendhite added pointedly, “You are mispronouncing my name.”
“I . . .” No doubt about to argue, Brother Grell deflated with a sigh, and smiled ruefully. “I apologize, then. Translation pendants rarely assist their wearers in getting names right. How do I properly . . . ?”
Reshelving the book he had been idly studying—Domo Anso was once again spending time in the stacks of the Index Hall, on yet another wager with Domo Galen, but without stern restrictions on his penitent’s behavior—Foren attempted to teach the man his name. Unfortunately, the subtleties of Mendhite pronunciation were a bit lost on the fellow. Various attempts ended up either at pwan or poo-honn for his family name. Foren gave up and granted the man the right to call him Foe-ren, even though it was awfully familiar for an outlander nobody addressing someone of his family’s rank.
Eventually, Domo Anso noticed. “Penitent Puhon! What are you doing?”
Brother Grell immediately smiled and replied, “This gentleman was very kind to me yesterday! Some of you Mendhites are incredibly helpful and generous with your time.”
Nonplussed, the Disciplinarian blinked. “I . . . What exactly did he do? And when?”
“Oh, well, I desperately needed the you know yesterday, the refreshing room,” Grell chatted, “and this fellow kindly escorted me straight to it, and helped me with a few questions on the way back—speaking of which, Foe-ren, I was wondering if you could help me. My Brotherhood has narrowed down some of the knowledge we’re seeking, and Foe-ren, here, seems to have an excellent grasp of where everything is located. In fact, I was just about to ask him if he could help me find some of the annex buildings on my list. Are the two of you doing some research together, or is it alright if I wander off with your friend, here?”
“Penitent Puhon is hardly my friend right now,” Domo Anso stated quellingly.
“Oh, well then you won’t mind at all!” Grell stated happily.
Seeing Anso’s frown, Foren quickly explained. “I am being punished by Domo Anso for failing to perform a duty for the Hierarchy, the rulers of Mendhi. He is my Disciplinarian, I am his current penitent.”
“Oh.” Grell blinked a couple times, then frowned. “Well, that’s an odd sort of punishment. You’re just making him stand around?”
“I am teaching him how to obey my orders exactly . . . and since it took him and his brother six months to return to the Hierarchy for their punishment,” Domo Anso stated coldly, adding a sharp look at Foren, “I am making him wait.”
“Well, call me an outlander, but I think that’s just silly. If you have somebody who can do something for you, then you should put him to work! If you want, I can put him to work all day long, leading me all over the Great Library Complex,” Grell added.
Foren widened his eyes at the prospect of being stuck with the gregarious, oblivious outlander. Unfortunately, when he glanced at his Disciplinarian, he found Anso studying him with thoughtfully narrowed eyes.
“Actually . . . that is an excellent idea. Penitent Puhon, you are to assist this outlander—“
“Brother Grell, of the Traveling Brotherhood,” the priest or monk or whatever supplied helpfully.
“Yes. You are to assist Brother Grell of the Traveling Brotherhood,” Anso clarified, “in finding whatever books or Library resources he seeks, within the limits of your authority to access them, until sixth hour. When the bells toll for the sixth hour, the two of you shall be at the Disciplinarian’s dining hall, so that I may hear exactly how helpful you have been.”
Resigning himself to helping the charming yet irritating outlander for the rest of the day, Foren bowed. He could not quite stop the rolling of his eyes, but he bowed obediently. “As my Disciplinarian wishes.”
“Sixth hour? All the way after the noon meal?” Grell asked, eyes widening. “Oh, I’m not sure I’ll have that much work for—“
“—Find enough,” Anso ordered him. “My research will take me into restricted areas this afternoon. Penitent, you will guide and assist, and make sure both of you are at the dining hall when the Temple bells strike six. Prove to me you can follow orders and get your assigned tasks done . . . and you will have all of Family Day to yourself, not just one half.”
“As you command, Domo Anso, so shall it be done,” Foren murmured, bowing again under the weight of those biting, pointed words. By law, a penitent only had to have half the day off. He quickly turned to the outlander and spoke before Brother Grell could say anything more. “The sooner we get going, the more of your research we can get conducted. There aren’t enough librarians to service every single group, but my mother is a librarian, and I studied under her for a while. Your task may take far more time than you realize, otherwise.”
“Oh—good point. Right then . . . we’ll see you at the sixth hour, uh, Disciplinarian, sir. I guess. Lead the way,” Grell directed Foren.
As much as Foren wanted to point out he had no idea what the other man was looking for . . . prudence suggested getting immediately out of Domo Anso’s sight. So he gestured in the direction of the nearest refreshing rooms as a starting point. Grell followed, and they walked between the rows of shelves and reading stands until they were a couple of aisles away. Gesturing for the outlander to stop, Foren faced him. Brother Grell drew in a breath to speak, but stopped when Foren raised his palm.
“Please do not argue with a Disciplinarian. Especially on my behalf to the Disciplinarian who is assigned to punish me. That is not your place.”
“I’m sorry,” Grell apologized. “I don’t understand your culture.”
“When you don’t understand something, it is often better to listen, watch, and observe than just open your mouth and speak,” Foren stated dryly. “I had to learn that lesson the hard way the first time I accompanied my elder brother on a mission to track down a rogue mage who had fled outkingdom, accidentally insulting those we had gone to in search of their help. But enough of that. I thank you for wanting to defend me. So . . . what exactly are you looking for today?”
Grell wrinkled his narrow outlander nose. “Well . . . we’re the Traveling Brotherhood, you see. All of us so far are mages to some degree, though we’re beginning to attract non-mage followers. But as mages, we can’t even open up a simple mirror-Gate! Partially because we’re traveling constantly but also partially because such apertures have to be anchored in some sort of framework, most easily a mirror. But mirrors are not very portable. And for some reason, roughly six months ago the ability to open Gates of any sort or size has been greatly diminished.
“So my research assignment is multifold: I am to seek out the cause of this diminishing; I am to see if there is any way of ending, neutralizing, overriding, or countering it; I am to find a way to create portable mirror-Gates . . . and because we sometimes want to travel to new lands, and not just wherever is within a mile or so of a scrying location, we want to see if there are spells that can take you to some place that has already been used for safe Gating, but is not known and linked to, yet,” Grell finished.
Feeling his brows pinch together, Foren rubbed at them. “I’m hardly the best mage for that. I have no affinity for Portal magics, so I never researched much.”
Grell gave him a sympathetic look, and clasped his shoulder in comfort. “But you do understand the Great Library system. I understand Gating and Portals, and you understand how to research information in this place.” A wry, cajoling smile curved the outlander’s pale lips. “Between the two of us, we might make a competent research mage. Yes?”
Foren found himself chuckling at that. “Yes, we might. Though I warn you, I won’t be able to tell if a particular book is actually useful or if it’s just spouting gibberish. There should be Annotation Scrolls on most of the books at the end of each section, covering the truthfulness of what they contain, but that isn’t always available. It depends on whether or not that book was researched for veracity.”
Chuckling, Grell patted him on the upper back. “Then you’ll just have to trust me if I say that I do understand the gibberish revolving around Portal magics . . . presuming I have all the right translation pendants. And if I don’t understand a particular author’s works . . . I’ll just have to trust you to know where to look for a hopefully better tome. Agreed?”
Considering it would alleviate his boredom, Foren offered his hand. “Agreed.”
Grinning, Grell clasped it. “Excellent! Oh, and part of the research will be a recommendation on where to research a really good luncheon. My treat, since I don’t know if you penitents get to have coin for spending. You’ll be treating me to supper after all, in a manner. So, where do we begin?”
“In the section on Portals and Gates, of course,” Foren stated, since to him it was obvious where to begin their search. Orienting himself by looking around, he gauged their location and pointed at a set of stairs spiraling up around one of the larger load-bearing pillars. “We go up those stairs for two floors, then turn left, if I remember correctly.
“There should be a sub-index listing the different sub-headings once we get there,” he added, “so you can narrow your search. I don’t know how much of it is inside the Restricted Section, but I do know it’s one of the few where you can actually access quite a lot if you can prove to the librarians you have the right kind of magical strength to try.”
“Ah, yes, because if you try to open a translocational aperture and fail, you just waste personal energy. In a lot of potentially painful skin-burning heat if you’re strong, but untempered.”
“Yes, so don’t expect me to be able to do it,” Foren stated dryly.
The outlander clapped him on the shoulder again, a bit touchy, but not like Foren’s father, who tended to grip his son’s shoulders with bruising strength. Grell simply gripped for a bit, then patted twice and release. “Well, you’re in luck, Foe-renn, because I was quite good at opening mirror-Gates before the aether went wrong.”
“Are all the mages in the Traveling Brotherhood required to be able to open Gates?” Foren asked, curious.
“What? No, of course not. We explore all methods of travel,” Grell dismissed. “Speaking of which, we should probably travel now, as in from here to the section on how to travel swiftly.”
It is better than standing around, bored, Foren admitted to himself, and led the foreigner through the Index Hall shelves to the stairs in the distance.