Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [17]
Vastly comforted, he returned to his reading, beginning with the same paragraph he had been beginning to read for a week and which never failed to put him to sleep about halfway through.
This time was no exception. His nose was actually touching the page when there came the rustling, shuffling sound again.
This Deacon had seen marvelous things in his youth, having witnessed a skirmish between the kingdoms of Merilon and Zith-el. He had seen the skies rain fire, the trees sprout spears. He had seen the Masters of War transform men into centaurs, cats into lions, lizards into dragons, rats into slavering monsters. The rat having now grown in his mind proportionate with his memories, the Deacon rose, trembling, from his chair and hastened for the door.
Leaning his head out of the library, but not venturing out himself (let it never be said that he abandoned his post!) the Deacon started to call to the Duuk-tsarith for help. But the sight of the tall black-robed and black-hooded figure standing still and motionless, its hands clasped before it, gave him pause, filling him with a fear almost equal to that of the mysterious noise. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps only a small rat …
There it was again! And this time, a sound of a door shutting!
“Enforcer!” hissed the Deacon, gesturing with a palsied hand. “Enforcer!”
The hooded head turned his direction. The Deacon was aware of two glittering eyes and then, within the drawing of a breath and without seeming to move at all, the black-robed figure stood silently before him.
Though the warlock did not speak, the Deacon heard, quite clearly, a question in his mind. “I—I’m not cer-certain,” stammered the Deacon in answer. “I—I heard a noise.”
The Duuk-tsarith inclined his head, as the Deacon could see by the tip of the black, pointed hood shivering slightly. “It—it sounded rather large, not the noise, that is. I mean, as if it were made by something rather large and—and I thought I heard a door shut.”
A breath of warm, moist air whispered from the black hood.
“Of course not!” The Deacon appeared shocked. “It is Resting Time. No one is allowed in here. I have dispen—dispensation,” he added, fumbling over the word in his nervousness.
The hooded head turned to look into the shadowy corridors formed by the crystalline shelves and their valuable contents.
“Th-there,” quavered the Deacon, pointing toward the very back of the Library. “I didn’t see anything. I only heard a sound, sort of a rustle, and then—then the door—”
He paused, at another whisper of breath. “What’s back there? Just a moment. Let me think.” His entire bald head wrinkled as he laboriously traversed the Inner Library in his mind. Eventually his halting mental footsteps evidently led him to a startling realization, for his eyes grew wide, and he stared at the Duuk-tsarith in alarm. “The Ninth Mystery!”
The Enforcer’s black hood snapped around.
“The Chamber of the Ninth Mystery!” The Deacon wrung his hands. “The forbidden books! But the door is always sealed. How—What—”
But he was talking to empty air. The warlock had vanished from his sight.
It took a moment for the Deacon, in his rattled state, to assimilate this occurrence. Thinking at first that the Duuk-tsarith might have fled in terror, the Deacon was about to join him when more rational thought took over. Of course. The Enforcer had gone to investigate.
Visions of the giant rat loomed into the Deacon’s