But Eirlana would have grown up with much different tales, ones like the priests had told of the Librarians’ dark powers. They could commune with beasts, transform people into them with a flick of their hand, and cast spells that would leave you walking in an endless loop until you died of thirst.
Eirlana would not look at this place with an ounce of wonder, but with dismay in the downward curve of her lips. It would be a mask, hiding the trepidation beneath. A trepidation that was not entirely false. Kasira might have marveled at this place as a child, but that was another lifetime. She had entered the Library as its enemy, and from the looks the mages in the room were giving her, they would not soon let her forget it.
To be here, these mages had to have beaten out countless applicants, all of whom would have spent years studying beasts, artifacts,and magical theory. In exchange, they were granted a piece of the Library’s magic with which they traversed the world protecting beasts and seeking ancient magical artifacts, or else dedicated themselves to years of research in the Library’s gilded halls. She was an untrained outsider, the first Kalish Assistant they had seen in nearly two centuries, and they not only didn’t trust her, but they likely resented her for her position.
“The group in the Gold Room needs more tea,” Iylis called. Kasira followed his gaze, expecting a servant, but it was a smaller leopard he spoke to, one of many scurrying about the library returning books to shelves and carrying away dirty dishes. They passed through bookcases and walls in a blink of silver light.
“And be careful with that volume!” he snapped at another. “It’s two hundred years old.” He shook his head, muttering about lack of respect and delicate covers as the offending leopard slunk away.
“Here we are.” Iylis herded her to one corner where a tall, lean figure studied a leather-bound book splayed out on a lectern. Iylis addressed the man as he said, “May I present Lady Eirlana Corynth of Kalthos.”
A line of tension rippled through the man’s broad shoulders, and a moment later he actuallysighed, as if the leopard had just announced they would be counting grains of barley for the remainder of the day.
Without looking up from his book, Allaster St. Archer waved a ring-laden hand and said in a lightly accented voice, “Welcome to the great Library of Amorlin, home of all creatures big and small, protectorate of ancient artifacts and more books than can fit on the shelves. Your room is upstairs. Breakfast starts at six. Try not to touch anything. Good day.”
Kasira stared at him, thinking this must be some sort of jest, but he only turned the page of his book and idly spun a black ring around one elegant finger. It was one of many, matching the smaller ones in his ears and the bands around his bare biceps and encircling his neck. She could see only a sliver of his olive-skinned face, revealing high cheekbones, a prominent brow, and an aquiline nose. It was the shorthair curling about his brow that drew her eye though. Such an odd, silken red, like gleaming copper.
She hadn’t anticipated a warm welcome, though she had expected more of one than that. But Lady Eirlana would handle such an affront deftly, even if Kasira just wanted to walk away. “I have to say,” she replied tightly, “when I envisioned visiting the great Library, I didn’t imagine being treated with such courtesy as that.”
The corner of Allaster’s full mouth twitched. “Is that so? I would have thought, being Kalish, you were used to such brusque treatment. What’s that old saying about Kalish hospitality? Knock once, don’t expect lunch. Knock twice, get fed to mice.”
“That doesn’t rhyme.”
“Sure it does. It just gets a little lost in translation.”
Kasira let a little frustration show through her mask, but Allaster paid her no heed. He had avoided calling a Kalish Assistant for as long as he could, and it appeared now that he had one, he intended to dance around the issue by simply ignoring her, a tactic that would make ingratiating herself to him nearly impossible.
Perhaps she needed to be more direct. At the very least, if she had reason to spend time with him, she could find opportunities to break down the wall he had already established between them.
“The least you could do is grant me a tour of my new prison,” she said.
At this, he finally looked up, and she was struck by the strangeness of his intense gaze. His kohl-lined eyes were an impossible color: pale turquoise, like sea glass set aglow in silver, and suddenly all the stories she had heard as a child of the Librarian’s great and terrible magic came swarming back to her.
He didn’t look more than thirty, but his eyes were ageless.
The corners of his lips turned up in a beast’s smile. “Very well. You want a tour? I’ll give you a tour.”
To which Iylis muttered an almost inaudible, “Oh dear.”
Then Allaster snapped his fingers, and everythingtwisted. The walls bent inward, the people spun away, even Iylis vanished, and witha crack like shattering stone, she and the Librarian reappeared in a different room entirely. Nausea rushed to fill the space air had once occupied in her lungs, and she reached for a nearby wall for balance.
“The reading room.” Allaster gestured at a cluster of well-used couches, currently occupied by a group of confused-looking mages. He snapped his fingers again, and the world twisted once more, her nausea redoubling. They appeared in an octagonal chamber with six identical doors, each marked by a different country’s symbol. “The portal room.” Another snap, and they rematerialized in an aviary. Kasira barely dodged a startled Dover Bird swooping past. The movement made her bile rise.
Snap.A cavern full of balestone.Snap.A pantry fifteen shelves high.Snap.An armory.Snap.A massive, wrought iron cage within which hung a creature of jet-black leather, two red eyes peering from between folded wings.
Snap. Snap. Snap. SNAP!
They appeared in a barren guest room with a narrow bed in one corner and a smudged opening that barely qualified as a window. Scorch marks stained the stone on the far wall of the room, which was only as long as the bed. A bucket waited in one corner. Kasira calculated whether she could make it there before her stomach lost patience with her.
Allaster turned for the door, his parting words hanging in the air. “Welcome to Amorlin.”
CHAPTER 5
ALLASTER
ALLASTER REAPPEARED IN THE MAIN LIBRARY TO FINDMAY WAITINGfor him by the lectern. He already knew what she was going to say, if not only because it was evident in the First Mage’s disapproving frown. May had quite the array of such frowns—all seemingly reserved for him—and this one quite clearly said,Either get your head out of your ass, or I’ll shove it the rest of the way up.
“That was unnecessary,” she said the moment he neared.
