Chapter 5 #5
She read the etching in the massive, circled stones beneath her feet, shaped like a sundial:
Magna Annalis
Repository of All That Is Real
“Real,” she murmured under her breath. Nothing about Infinita Mori was incidental, not a detail. Not a word.
Trust with scrutiny, her father used to say. Wilder Hawthorne had been an incurable gambler who’d fed his disease by reading other players and exploiting their weaknesses, but he had never shown cruelty or unkindness to either of the children he’d raised as his own.
What else could she do anyway? She’d been allowed to enter the grounds.
Time and distance aside, the foundational systems of Infinita Mori had been fairly consistent so far.
Anyone who wanted work could find it. The rules of the havres and cloisters were respected unilaterally.
Pacification of the masses was the backbone of any successful rule.
It stood to reason that the library would never contain the full truth, but part of it? Enough of it to keep her “pacified”?
Even small truths were more than she had now, and she wasn’t just fighting for herself anymore.
A man and a woman flanked the bolted-open doors that served as an entrance to the library’s courtyard.
Neither acknowledged her as she stepped through and entered a wide-open space.
When she reached the center of the square, she looked up.
The points of each building seemed to prop the sun in the sky, each touching with equidistant precision. It was an incredible illusion.
A handful of others milled about the quad. She deliberated how to approach someone for help, but they all had the dogged, purposeful stares she recognized from busy Whitechurch, where people kept to themselves and expected the same from others.
Elloven spotted a signpost, sparing her an uncomfortable interaction. Hall of Spectaculars, Hall of Unmentionables, Hall of Rubrics, and Hall of Chronicles. She ruled out the first two, and rubrics would probably be legal in nature.
Chronicles, though, were records.
Hall of Chronicles then.
Like the courtyard entrance, the door to the Hall of Chronicles was open. But this time, a female guard stopped her. She wore an unwieldy box attached via a halter.
“Please record your purpose,” she said pleasantly. Her partner on the other side of the door, another woman, watched the square.
“My...” Elloven frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Is this your first time?”
Elloven nodded.
The woman opened the box and tilted it toward Elloven.
Inside were thin bars that looked like gold.
“To gain access, you must record your purpose, and I will give you a pass. You will hand it to the steward, who will record your name and purpose in his annals, and you will use this pass to enter the floor and section you have indicated. It will open no other floor or section. You may enjoy the results of your perusal in a central area, upon the chaise or chair of your choosing. The pass is good for a full two days, which begin the moment you record your purpose with the steward inside. There are no timekeepers, so you’ll need to watch the sky yourself. ”
So it was no ordinary library, not that she’d expected it to be. They would closely monitor and control anything she read, and there’d be no wandering if she couldn’t find what she needed. “I was hoping to...” Please don’t let this be the wrong thing to say. “Read about the Infinitum.”
“Spectaculars, Unmentionables, Rubrics, or Chronicles?”
Elloven hedged her next words. “Am I not already outside the Hall of Chronicles?”
“Spectaculars, Unmentionables, Rubrics, or Chronicles?”
“I just said...” Elloven replied, flustered. “Which will tell me about the place? How it was built? How big it is? How to understand it? The Hall of Chronicles sounds right, but I suppose I was hoping for some confirmation.”
She knew she’d said too much, and the guard’s chary expression immediately confirmed it. “Those records require official sanction, which I am assuming you did not bring?”
“No,” she said quietly, defeated. Had she really expected to just walk in and read all the secrets of the place? Without resistance?
“Is that all?”
Elloven’s gaze traveled toward the towering structure on the hill, where past pretors, curatrices, lords, ladies, stewards, stewardesses, kings, and queens took residence. “The... uh, chronicles. What is there that I can access?”
“From what world do you hail?”
“What world?”
The guard sighed in annoyance. “Which world, yes.”
Rivenholde had first introduced her to the multiple-world possibility, but listening to whispers in the Infinitum had been the real eye-opener.
Tenestela, Antar, and Pasay were all names she’d heard for the first time in a cloister.
But she didn’t know the name of her “world.” They’d always just called it one thing. “The kingdom. The White Kingdom.”
The guard’s eyes fluttered, followed by a groan half suppressed.
“You’ll find the chronicles resemble your Book of All Things, records of all that is or was.
Ours are more thorough and substantial and lack the censorship and copious editing your monks and scholars practice in their own dubious recordkeeping. ”
“That,” Elloven said swiftly. “That’s what I want.”
The guard dug out a bar from her box. She brought it to her mouth and whispered something unintelligible, then handed it to Elloven.
It was heavier than it looked, immediately drooping her hand, and it radiated a warm, almost uncomfortable vibration, like how a bell felt after being struck. “Take this to the steward.”
Elloven thanked her and entered the Hall of Chronicles.
She moved down a long, narrow hall, where even the ceiling seemed to box her in.
But when she reached the end, it opened into a world of light and books.
The tiny windows at the top shed a surprising amount of illumination upon the floors and floors of tomes.
The place was bursting with the promise of learning and possibility, and she remembered that, once, she’d been a curious girl with a spacious mind.
“Pass?” an old man outstretched his hand.
Elloven broke her daze and handed the bar to him. Her hand immediately felt lighter, though the vibration resonated. “I’m requesting access to—”
“I can read,” the man barked, eyeing the bar with a lens he held in place with a frown.
“Apologies, geez,” she muttered.
“Through this door behind me,” he said and walked away.
The door was small and tucked into a corner, like a closet. It seemed to lead away from the books, but she approached it anyway, and it opened before she could reach for the handle.
Elloven stepped through and turned around. She approached a railing and looked down at where, hundreds of feet below, she’d just been standing. The steward, much smaller from so high up, was back at his desk.
Her hand that had been holding the bar lit up, and the strong vibrations returned. She turned her palm, noticing how when she angled it a certain way, the sensation was weaker. On a hunch, she started moving that direction and the discomfort lessened even more.
Whatever else the bar had been, it was also a compass of sorts.
Or a leash.
She followed the sensation down aisle after aisle, passing tomes without words upon their spines, realizing they weren’t needed.
There’d be no wandering even within her “section.” She’d read what they chose and nothing more.
To test this, she reached for one of the books she passed, but her hand yanked her forward, tripping her.
Elloven was pulled around another corner, her hand rattling harder than ever. She tried to steady it, but it rose toward a shelf just within her reach. It tapped one spine. Two. Three. All three tipped down from the shelf, and she caught them in a clumsy spread before they hit the floor.
Her hand stopped moving and glowing, though it felt like she’d struck it against a wall.
She shook away the pain and disorientation and studied the unlabeled stack she carried in her other arm.
Beneath her, an arrow of light pointed to the left.
She followed it until it opened into a small, circular nook with brightly colored cushions and a steaming pot of tea. A single mug sat beside the kettle.
Not a chance I’m drinking that, she thought and picked a cushion. It was soft and pillowy, better than anything she’d slept on since she’d died. The urge to put the books away and curl up, sinking into the deliciousness of it all, was almost enough to distract her.
But daylight wouldn’t last forever.
Elloven cracked open the first book. Chronicles of Flora.
She closed it. Opened the next. Chronicles of Fauna.
Also not what she was looking for, but she still had one more.
Chronicles of Rulers and Domains.
The first half of the chapter list, spanning many pages, was a glossary of places, some she knew, most she did not.
The second half were people.
She skimmed from bottom to middle out of order, searching for something she’d recognize when she saw it.
Ducal Clans, The Kaizha, Realeza da Arbora, Lords & Ladies, The Reinar, Stewards & Stewardesses, The Nachtfalken, The Meduwyn, The Medvedev, Rhiagain Kings, Coventicular dos Sete, Coventicular of the Seven—
There it was. Coventicular of the Seven. The chapter was a glossary of names. As she flipped the pages, she watched the trailing scrawl of ink appear with each turn.
Elloven hesitated. The book was writing itself, portioning only content she was allowed.
There was nothing subtle about what she was witnessing.
They wanted her to know, and to continue meant acknowledging she’d have to decide for herself what was fact and what was fiction, which wouldn’t be easy. Still, it was all she had.