All books contain magic. Some more than others, yes, but all books contain magic. The most powerful of them can change the very fabric of reality, lending some of this power to the reader...for a price.This is because the most powerful of books have wills of their own, and not all of them are benevolent. For this reason the Library of Scholar’s Spire was one of the most important, and, one of the most dangerous places, in all of the bastion cities.
The library, scholar's spire, was massive, 50 meters in radius, and rising thirty stories high, by far the tallest building in all the bastion cities, and it was decorated in grand fashion, with fluted walls and balconies on every third floor, where
Astronomers, master and novice alike, could be seen nightly, gazing at the stars, notebook in hand, fixing their magnificent light in place.
Inside was a veritable maze of crenelated walls,all lined with majestic Maplewood bookcases, more books than existed in the rest of the world.
As far as the scholars of the spire could determine, all the books that still existed in the world.
For this reason, the office of Librarian carried both, a great deal of importance, and a great deal of power.The right books in the hands of the wrong readers could easily destroy the Bastion Cities entirely. What’s worse, the books of the Spire could bewitch almost anyone, making them see and hear things that are not there. They could even, at times, posess the unsuspecting, directing their speech, their actions, beyond their control. For this reason, deaf, mute, blind sorceress, Madgera Creshook,was the perfect candidate for the position.
Madgera, called Blind Madge by most, and True Seer by those few who truly knew her, had walked these halls as Librarian for 30 years, and was a Sorceress in Training for 14 years before that, all the way back to the days when she still had her eyes. Then came a blistering day when fate came to test her, certainly not for the first or last time in her 62 summers, but up to that point, more direly than ever before.
She supposed it had all started with Silas’s visit, on that dreadfully hot summer morning. Summer in the bastion cities of the scorched lands were always hot, and Madge had always hated them, but Silas was having an even harder time of it than she was.
She could tell the man was sweating, feel his heart beating hard, and knew before he had even addressed her mind, speaking without words, but with through thought, as she had taught him,
“True Seer, there have been more sightings in the eastern reaches. Still distant but more of them, Can you not tell us what is needed?”
Beyond the all too thin magical barriers of the bastion cities, the blasted region of the world known as the scorched lands, no one knew what was left of the world, and none who’d ventured beyond the protection of the cities’ magic had returned since the world had been burned.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“The fire drakes are always more numerous in summer.” She could feel the face Silas made that clearly said he didn’t approve of her casual tone. Her friend’s thoughts carried a feeling of rage, and beneath it, a hidden fear, and it worried her to see Silas Stone-eyes so rattled.
“Not like this. Oh they keep their distance, but none alive now have seen them gather in the fringes in these numbers. The last time there were this many…”
Madge cut his thoughts off with a sharp, commanding thought of her own. “No.”
“But…”
“No, Silas.We shall not use the Elder Tomes as weapons, it is too dangerous.” Madge had answered similar calls from the sorcerer and his apprentices 7 other times just this week. She knew the pattern of it by now.
“We must have weapons to fight these monsters if we ever want to know if more of the world survived than a 500 mile square patch of barely habitable badlands full of monsters. How else will we ever find out without weapons? How can we ask our rangers to venture into that land unarmed?”
He was on his never ending quest to find the secret group of survivors who had made it beyond the scorched lands. It had seemed clear to Madge years ago that convincing him these mysterious survivors were a fiction was a hopeless cause. When a person truly wanted to believe something there was no stopping that belief. She envied him that.
She had believed like that til the fifteenth year with no outside contact. As far as She or anyone she trusted knew, it was now the 25th year of no outside contact.
“Humanity is here,” she said.“We must grow, thrive, survive,Here.” It was simply the way of things since the great calamity, the war that had blackened the sky, blighted the land and cursed and twisted all things that dwelt therein.
Having stopped halfway down the stairs to the first floor from the third, when Silas had come to that same point from below, she continued after this brief exchange without a backward thought, resisting the insistence of his sorcerer’s mind with the ease of long practice that the young call mastery.Silas turned to follow her, still thinking his thoughts, still communicating, though she had mostly stopped responding.
After following her several steps he changed tact. “Have you seen young Dedalus this morning, Mistress?”
“Titles? Silas, how long have we known each other? Learn to accept no. The young scribe was on the 8th floor when last I was near him” She liked to imagine what he looked like now, after so many years. She intentionally exaggerated these imaginings, both of Silas and all others, for her amusement. She pictured him flustered, huffing, and dripping sweat, and was not far off. His appetite must have finally outpaced his fitness, Madge thought.
She felt as Silas Stone-eye walked away from her and back up the stairs they had been descending, and thought about the man he used to be.She thought not for the first time about how often he’d read the Elder Tomes, and feared for her friend’s mind.
She continued her descent until she reached the ground floor, feeling the scholar’s tiresome ascent only in a distant way, and there went to her office, wherein she kept track of who had or was allowed to have what books.
On a central table lay a clutter of request forms, from not just Dedalus and his teacher, but from readers all over the tower. She did not intend to approve many of them. Not yet. However, even she,blind for 32 years, could see that things were changing in the scorched lands, and something bad was coming.
But,that could not alter the fact that using the books wrongly could destroy the cities faster than a swarm of Fire Drakes and an army of Inferno Walkers to as well.It was her responsibility to make sure that did not happen.
As overloaded as her requests were, surely some were actually reasonable. She pulled up a rickety wooden chair, and sat to ‘read’. Yet another thing her magical senses had taught her to do in a new way, given her lack of eyes. It took much concentration, and years of practice, but now when she picked up a piece of paper, she could actually sense each particle of ink upon it, and thereby visualize the words or pictures they represented. It did however require far more concentration than her old sight, but she had always had that in spades.
She read her request forms as she did everything; intently, and in silence.