“Enormous?” Olm supplies. “Obscene? Insane? Come, take me out of the bag. I want to see.”
Without a word, my hands shaking, I unsling the satchel from my back and lower it to the ground. I take the book out, not even caring to argue.
“My word,” Olm says. “Obscene was right.”
We’re standing on a ledge, a platform that seems to jut over the void, and below… below is a city.
Sedrig had said the library is a whole world, but I thought he was making this up. I mean, is it an illusion? Am I seeing things that aren’t there? Streets, squares, houses, trees, stables, gardens, it’s all there. A palace sits at the center of the city.
And beyond…
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I whisper.
“You mean the world beyond the city?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s magic,” he says. “Told you.”
“Like a mirage?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What, then?” I breathe. “Is it real?”
Beyond the city spread green meadows and brown hills as far as the eye can see, and on the other side, blue lakes shimmer and mountains rise, capped with snow. The horizon is smudgy, and I can’t tell where this world inside a cavern ends. It just looks… endless.
“It’s like books,” Olm says, a strange wistfulness in his voice. “They are thin and flat but they open deep into other dimensions.”
“Magical books, you mean?”
“All books.”
He’s right. Maybe. I’m too stunned for coherent thought. This isn’t a cave or a library, at least not in any sense I’m used to. Instead of shelves filled with books, there is an entire kingdom in here.
So where am I supposed to take Olm’s book? Who would know what I need to do? Who would?—
“You solved the riddle,” Olm interrupts my thoughts. “Entered the Areon. Now what?”
“Sleeping Gods. Of course.” I almost slap my forehead.Use your head. You know who you need to find, who has all the answers.“I must ask the librarian.”
Finding him hadn’t seemed so daunting before I knew how large the library is. Naida once took me with her to visit the royal library at the palace. Now I know how privileged I am to have been raised by a famed storyteller and former head librarian. In retrospect, the trip to the palace should have clued me in. Everyone treated us with deference, valets opening doors for us and servants bowing.
As for the library, it was a fantastical place, spread over two levels, with rolling ladders of wrought iron, shelves of oak, and a cranky librarian who looked after the books as if they were her babies.
But this… this place is extraordinary and I haven’t absorbed its enormity yet.
I rub my eyes, walking back from the ledge. “Where will I find him? I need to climb down to the city, somehow, and find its center. A library within the library, perhaps? He may have his seat there.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to try, I suppose,” Olm says.
“See any way down?”
“Not really.” He pauses. “To be honest, I’d rather you placed me back in the satchel if you’re thinking of scaling those rocks. I wouldn’t like to witness my own death.”
“There you go again with the negativity. Not to mention, you’re not alive, Olm.”
“That’s relative.”
