You may see Barrani miscreants atany time. You might never see what the Arkon and Bellusdeo are seeing again.
And if I’m not looking at it, you won’t see it, either?
Exactly.
We’re kind of trapped in this place. So is your brother. We don’t have a lot of—She raised her free arm to cover her eyes as a flash of incandescent light reminded her of old admonitions about staring at the sun: don’t do it, or you’ll go blind.
Blinking, she felt the Arkon move and tightened her grip on his shoulder. He didn’t run; she didn’t lose him. But she forgot about the dining hall; she needed to see what was in front of her eyes, when she could see again at all.
The gold-white light was slow to clear, as if the light itself had been the detritus of an active Arcane bomb, and the light that remained, the aftershock of its explosion. She felt Hope’s wing bat her face and come to rest across her eyes. Since her eyes were watering, the wing didn’t immediately reveal any new visual information.
“Kaylin?”
“I’m here,” she said in response to Bellusdeo. “I’m attached to the Arkon’s shoulder, and my eyes are watering. Yours?”
The Arkon muttered something about mortal eyes, which was brief and not complimentary. It was, on the other hand, an answer.
Kaylin had expected to be in a room—a large room, like the first of Killian’s rooms had been. This was not where she was. She was now in a dimly lit room, much of the illumination provided by the rune she had deliberately lifted off her own skin.
The Arkon, however, spoke a terse word, which washed across her skin like moving sandpaper. The whole of the immediate view became instantly brighter and clearer. Kaylin tried not to resent it.
“The reason we did not attempt to cast a simple light spell,” the Arkon said, although Kaylin had said nothing, “is that we could not do it.”
“What?”
“I did try. Bellusdeo?”
The gold Dragon shrugged.
“Your light was necessary; it was not a test. While I have no qualms about tests, you are not my student. I was not attempting to waste your time. I believe it is safe to let go of my shoulder.”
Meaning let go of his shoulder right now. Kaylin was happy to do so; grabbing his shoulder reminded her a bit too much of foundlings and rope lines. She looked past the shoulder she’d just released, and the brighter light, combined with visual acclimatization, surrendered the image of a library. She released her hold on the mark and it returned to her skin.
A large, cavernous library appeared to go on forever.
They had entered through a wall; the wall itself was gone. When Kaylin looked back, she saw shelves. The shelves were built at least three stories tall, and there were ladders that appeared to float a few inches off the ground, as if waiting to be needed.
The Arkon exhaled for a long time.
“You recognize this library,” Bellusdeo said. Not a question.
The Arkon nodded, his neck craning up, and up again. “I do.”
It was empty of anything except books and the three people who had entered through a wall that no longer existed. “Can you see a door?” Kaylin asked.
The Arkon said, “No. And I do not advise you to search for one.”
“Meaning there’s no door.”
“Not in the strictly quotidian sense, no. There were portals by which we traversed the library itself. Very, very few of us were granted permission to enter this library. There were librarians,” he added, “some precious few whose responsibility was to see to the safety of the collection. But all such gatherings are comprised of people who have their own desires, their own interests.
“Those who had earned Killianas’s trust were allowed to remove books for personal perusal in the confines of their own offices.”
Kaylin looked at the arm in which the Arkon was clutching Larrantin’s book. As if that were a signal, the Arkon loosened that hold, letting Bellusdeo’s hand go in order to examine the message that Larrantin had intended for Killian—a message he had not accepted the only time his Avatar had appeared before the Arkon.
To Kaylin, the unbundling of the book produced a book, which is what she’d seen the first time and every time thereafter. She watched his expression, watched the smile change the shape of his mouth.
“A book,” he said quietly. “As you said, Corporal.”
