Realms of the Arcane - Brian M. Thomsen [98]
After many scrolls and tomes, Jeffrey spotted a very thin leather-bound volume wedged behind a shelf and…
This time Wes did scream. He hurled the book across the room and huddled close over the table as his whole body shook.
"It's not real. It's just a story," he told himself over and over again. Rocking back and forth and mumbling the short litany, he soon regained control of himself and decided it was time he finished the cleaning in the reading room.
As he moved toward the door, keeping well away from the thin tome, Wes felt a tugging inside him. Despite his fears of the story, he just had to know how it all turned out. He crossed the room and picked up the book. Wes found his place and continued to read…
As Jeffrey, in the book, skimmed the thin volume he had found, he read a story of a young probationer who had been taken in by the library when he was orphaned. The monks thought him lazy and good for nothing, and he had been chastised by one of the brothers for failing to keep the dining room clean. The young man's name was Niles, and Jeffrey recalled tales of Niles's being the probationer who had mysteriously disappeared more than a hundred fifty years before. Jeffrey had thought them no more than tales to frighten other probationers, but on the chance that there might be some truth to them, he had read further. If he could solve the mystery of Niles's disappearance, Jeffrey saw himself becoming something of a hero at the library.
Wes fought down the urge to run away, and forced himself to keep reading. Whatever this was about, he was a part of it now. He was more than a little worried about the two probationers who had disappeared, and what they had been doing just before, but his curiosity was winning the battle. He went back to the story.
Jeffrey had also opted to continue to read Niles's story, and Wes was hardly surprised to learn that Niles had been sent by the abbot to this very room to clean it for some scholars who were expected the next day. Like Jeffrey and Wes, Niles had spent around an hour cleaning the room before taking a break, and like Jeffrey and Wes, Niles had found the secret room with all the scrolls and volumes about magical and arcane things.
Niles, too, had read many of the volumes before finding a slim tome bound with leather, wedged behind a bookshelf and covered with cobwebs. And, like those who were to follow, Niles had read the story of a young probationer, Edmund, who was considered lazy and worthless. He had served in the library two hundred years prior to Niles's time.
Wes had to stop for a moment to calm himself. Just how many probationers had disappeared from here since the library was built? The answer may well lie in this story. He took a deep breath and read on.
Wes's temples started to throb with confusion: just who was the reader and who the subject of the story? Each time the story started over, the new point of view made Wes's head spin. It took a few minutes for Wes to work out how to follow the story without getting confused. Each story so far began with a probationer finding the room, and soon after, there was a short description of the library as it had looked when that part of the story was written. This was not just a history of disappearing probationers, but a history of the library itself. By focusing on when the many extensions to the library had been built, Wes found the story much easier to follow.
Niles had been a probationer just after a time of great change. The library had acquired a huge collection from the king of Cormyr. Cormyr had been at war for almost four years, and had emerged victorious after one of its wizards found the key to ending the war in the library. A huge collection, part of the spoils of war, had been given to the library by the grateful monarch. There hadn't been room to house the new collection, and two new wings had quickly been built to accommodate