Chapter 36

When he awoke, he was laying on a pallet with a thin blanket askew across his legs. He glanced to the side and spotted Frage sitting in a chair, reading a book. ‘How odd,’ he thought, ‘to be reading a book for pleasure, no pen at one’s side nor paper for notes.’

“Hey,” he called out. “How long did I sleep?”

“A proper amount,” Frage said. “Most of us slept as well. You were snoring though, and your betrothed is resting next door where all is quiet.”

Danel levered himself up on his elbow. “Did I embarrass myself in front of her?”

“You were cute, like a little boy being introduced to a puppy. Giddy is the word I would use, and it is so unlike you.”

“I should be upset that someone has arranged my marriage without my consent, Frage. I should have been raging. I’m melting instead. My first thought upon awaking was ‘please, don’t let this be a dream.’”

“Perhaps this journey has changed you and you’re ready for a woman like Aiya. She is the fifth daughter and the twelfth child of a powerful king; she is not a delicate ceramic doll to put on a shelf and admire. She is astute and she is demanding performance from you. She is unlike any woman you’ve sneaked up to the Third Floor.”

“You wound me while I lay on my sick bed,” Danel said, resting the back of his hand on his forehead.

“The verdict is clear: you will live, Danel,” Frage said, putting down her book. “We need to have a conversation, you and I, and we don’t have the time to wait for you to fully recover. Circumstances upstairs are not good.”

“What happened?”

Frage sighed. “The lights went out across the entire building first and then the air stopped coming out of the vents. Everyone not on the first floor was trapped because many of the staircases disappeared, replaced by an empty hold. Then the entire edifice shook, the walls were trembling. After that wave, the building went entirely silent. After many heartbeats, the lights began to weakly illuminate the corridors. Much later, the lights came on in the hallways. Only a full shift later did the lights return to the rooms and halls. Many of the staircases are back, but a good number of them have changed orientation.

“There’s been a mass exodus from the building; people are camping outside. The Orders are offering up mounds of sacrifices and legions of hosannas to their gods, in hope of I don’t know what. The Librarians are frightened to the core, unable to act and unable to return to their routines. They talk, draw up plans, and do nothing. Only the six of us, well, the five of us have banded together to canvass the building and make an assessment. Even I, me, am daring to take the dubious stairwells. Then Rahim appeared seemingly out of thin air. Only the six of us, our class, know his report.”

Danel sat up and leaned against the wall. “The staff?”

“About three-quarters remain and most of security are at their posts. They’ve had to subdue quite a few faux prophets and hotheads.”

Danel chewed on the facts for a few minutes. He stood and relieved himself in the chamber pot in the room behind his. When he returned, he took his former position by leaning against the wall while sitting.

“I want nothing more than to return to the grave of Ibados for a blessing and to speak with Rahim. That plan will have to wait. What must happen when we return upstairs?”

Frage gave him a sardonic smile. “We need to get the Library of Ibados up and running again.”

Danel shook his head slightly, “We cannot return to the ways of our elder Librarians. Up and running is going to be much more complicated than you expect.”

“I deduced as much,” Frage said. “We need a new system for cataloging, probably one based on numbers and decimals. We need to raise up new cadres of specialists to take over many of our daily tasks, a lot of people. We need to channel and redirect the gods’ orders; they obstruct far too much for no damn good reason. I would like to push out the wizards altogether, but Bello has almost convinced me the world is safer with them under our roof. We need a process to rotate out the old researchers clogging up the advancement pipeline and get the fresh minds in place. Librarians need to be retrained as directors or conductors instead of worker bees.”

Frage sighed. “It is a long list, Danel, and I only named the priority items.”

“Yes, and process-wise, Head will never go for any of it and Second is dead set against reorganizing her structures. They were promoted to their positions for their adherence to the status quo. We’re going to do some serious horse trading, or we will need to resort to the basest of the base, downright horse theft and barn burning.”

“A palace coup would be more direct,” Aiya said from the doorway. “This is a small kingdom, not a ranch on the steppes, Danel. You need to think bigger, much bigger.”

He smiled at her, “I would need an advisor to guide me. Do you have anyone to suggest?”

“Maybe. Let’s discuss this topic after breakfast,” she said, matching his smile. “After you went to bed, the goatman was explaining to me some of his better attributes and I believe a proper repast can be offered this morning. To think that I spoke with an artifact of a god, my siblings will never believe me,” her eyes were wide with astonishment. “The goatman says you will need another dose of his healing water and you will do better with food in your stomach. Come, Danel, come, Frage and let us plot on a full stomach.”

“You are in so much trouble,” Frage whispered to Danel as they walked over to the fountain.

“And you’re not?” he shot back. When he saw her smirk, he shook his head, “I guess not.”

Edel joined them, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. After a full breakfast under the gaze of the goatman, and a long conversation lasting hours, Danel felt torn. He took himself on a tour of Soldatorme by himself, poking his nose into empty buildings and checking the barren rooms. Strength was returning to his limbs, giving him hope that he would emerge from his geas intact. His entire scalp and his chest itched.

Plans and counter-plans they had discussed ran through his thoughts. How odd all these possibilities seemed after being single-minded and focused on one and only one task for so long. Something did not fit. He looked out from one of the cabanas, watching Frage, Aiya and Edel discussing something on the lip of the pool with the goatman and his creatures looking down upon them. The oddness gelled into a truth he had been avoiding.