by David Cook
The doorman’s eyes widened. The look of scorn vanished and was replaced by dumbfounded amazement. “Wait here,” he squeaked, then scuttled away into the building’s dark depths. In his baste, he left the door open.
Just as Teldin was considering slipping through the doorway, the pudgy doorkeeper returned. The man, perhaps guessing Teldin’s intent, officiously blocked the entrance. The doorkeeper gulped but met the giff’s glower. “Well – he will not see you,” the Aesthetic pompously answered. His head twitched slightly with a nervous tic.
Teldin looked incredulously at the man. “He’s got to see me. I’ve come a long way and he can’t just turn me away now!” Gomja stepped closer to the door, reasserting Teldin’s words.
The chubby Aesthetic stood firm, momentarily regaining his composure. “Astinus does not have to see anyone, the doorkeeper answered, raising his voice with every word. “In fact, he has only had visitors once, as far as I know.”
“He can’t just turn me away!” Teldin insisted. “What about my friend here? He needs to see Astinus so he can get home.” Teldin laid a hand on Gomja’s arm. The giff stepped just a little closer, stooping to bring himself down to the Aesthetic’s level.
Looking up at the giff, the monk’s nervous tic returned. Still, even with his head jerking slightly, the doorkeeper adamantly refused. “Astinus has given orders not to he disturbed,” he said in a forced voice.
“We could force our way in, sir,” Gomja whispered into Teldin’s ear. The human quickly vetoed the suggestion with a curt shake of his head. While the farmer had little doubt that they could easily overpower the soft, pampered monk, he knew that would not win them an audience with Astinus and would more likely gain them one with the constables of Palanthas. They needed a more persuasive argument that would appeal to the library’s learned monks.
“Books!” Teldin suddenly said, though not too loudly. “Gomja, do you still have those books, those charts we found in the chest?”
“Yes, sir,” the giff answered slowly, not grasping Teldin’s intention. “I think I still have them... right here.” The last was said with understanding. Gomja hurriedly pawed through his gear and finally produced one slim volume. ‘This is all I have left, sir. I left the others in the mountains last night.” The giff held out the lone folio, a somewhat apologetic look on his face.
Teldin was relieved to see they still had even one of the books. “Don’t worry, Gomja,” he assured. Teldin held the book out to the doorkeeper. “Perhaps the donation of this rare tome would help?”
The doorkeeper, a curious expression on his face, took the slender volume, turned it over in his hands, and carefully opened the covers. A brief glance at the text obviously intrigued him; it was like none he had ever seen. His pudgy hands turned the pages with growing interest. “Wait here. I will check,” the monk finally offered. With that, he hurried away again.
It seemed that the monk was gone for hours, but Teldin did not worry. The monk’s reaction to the book had given him confidence. When the Aesthetic finally returned, Teldin’s patience was rewarded. The man’s manner had changed, for he now was solicitous and slightly amazed by the strange pair at the library’s door. “Astinus says he will give you a brief audience.” Teldin noted the monk’s words, but figured that getting in at all was an accomplishment.
The nervous monk ushered the pair through the door, and they found themselves in a marble corridor that ran along the front of the building. The white stone, age-worn and smooth, gleamed in the morning light, which poured through a bank of windows. Teldin had expected the library to be a dim and gloomy place, and the brightly lit reality was surprising.
The three walked the length of the corridor without encountering a soul. The route was away from the public halls and into the unvisited depths of the building. It made sense to Teldin that Astinus, famed for his privacy, would be found far from the open sections of the Great Library. The way took them past many doors, some closed, others open. At each, Teldin glanced in, not really knowing what he was looking for. Most rooms ontained books, shelved neatly and covered in layers of dust. Teldin marveled at the number of volumes in the library. A single room held more books than he had ever seen, and here there was room after room of musty albums.
Not all the rooms were empty of occupants. At one, Teldin carefully peered through the partially open door to find it filled with members of the Order of Aesthetics. They sat at rows of benches and intently copied texts that were laid out before them. The air was filled with the noise of quill pens on parchment. Teldin softly closed the door and moved on.
Finally, after taking a number of twists and turns, the monk stopped at a plain, unassuming door. Teldin was a little surprised that this was Astinus’s study. For a man of such importance, the farmer assumed his surroundings would be much greater. Tapping lightly, the doorkeeper called softly to the one within, “Master, I have brought them, as you requested.”
“Show them in, Maltor. I will see them for a moment.” The voice was cold and emotionless, showing no trace of either warmth or hostility. Maltor swung the door open with a slight creak, ushered Teldin and Gomja into a small study, and indicated stools where the two were to sit.
A man – young or old, Teldin could not be sure – sat at the desk on the far side of the room, writing carefully on a sheet of parchment spread before him. Every few moments he lifted his hand from the page to dip the quill into an inkwell. With no unnecessary delay he resumed writing, never once stopping to think of a word or puzzle out a phrase. Stacked beside him were two piles of parchment, one clean and untouched, the other carefully filled with lines of immaculate writing. As he finished with the sheet before him, Astinus sprinkled it with white sand to blot the drying ink, carefully set the sheet aside, and laid another clean page before him. Then the quill began its steady course over the page once again.
All during this time, Astinus never looked up to acknowledge his guests’ presence. “Wait outside, Maltor,” Astinus said without stopping the flow of words from pen to page.
“Yes, Master,” the Aesthetic said with a bow. He backed out of the room and quietly shut the door.
Teldin waited for the great sage to speak, to ask a question, but Astinus paid the pair no mind. The ink steadily flowed from his pen. Finally, with a nervous swallow, Teldin spoke, “Lord Astinus, I —”
“You are Teldin Moore of Kalaman, born the son of Amdar Moore and the woman Shari,” Astinus interrupted, still looking at his page. “Two weeks ago, your farm was destroyed by a ship that fell from the sky. I have made a note of this already. The one with you is called Gomja. He came on the ship. Before this, I knew nothing of him.”
Teldin and Gomja both let their jaws drop; mouths hung slack at the chillingly efficient recital of their histories.
“I know all these things, Teldin Moore of Kalaman, from what I have written,” Astinus continued in his pedantic, matter-of-fact tone. “Right now I am writing that you are here before me because I have become curious” — The sage rolled the word off his tongue with particular distaste — “about your misfortunes.” Astinus paused and finally looked up. A minor flicker of irritation shone in the sage’s eyes. “Ask your questions, and I will write those down, too, just as I will write the answers if I know them.” Without waiting for Teldin to speak, he resumed writing.
Teldin swallowed nervously again. Something about Astinus, his cold self-assurance, perhaps, filled Teldin with
terrified respect. “I was given this cloak and I can’t take it off,” he whispered.
“So I have noted,” Astinus said. “Explanations are unnecessary.
Teldin could not help but stare. It seemed there was nothing the great sage did not already know. It filled him with the hope that Astinus would provide him a solution. “I mean, how do I get it off?”
“I do not know.” Astinus stopped, realizing that he lacked a certain piece of knowledge. The sage closed his eyes and considered the implications. Finally, he spoke again, the faint
est tinge of puzzlement in his voice. “The cloak comes from beyond this world, beyond the range of my... authority.”
Teidin’s shoulders sagged with the sudden failure of his hopes. “Your authority? Then who does know?” he asked weakly, his confidence quickly draining away.
“For that answer you must go outside this sphere,” Astinus answered. He went back to looking at his writing, seemingly forgetting the pair’s presence.
“Sphere? What sphere?” Teldin asked. So far, the great sage Astinus had provided more riddles than answers.
“Your friend did not explain spelljamming?” Astinus asked with only mild interest.
Gomja nervously wetted his lips. “I’ve never understood it very well myself, sir,” the giff admitted.
“Ignorance of the world is no asset,” Astinus humorlessly remarked as he wrote in flowing strokes, “although too much knowledge may also be bad.” Carefully setting his quill into its holder, the impassive sage sprinkled the drying sheet with sand, then gently set it on the top of the stack. After the briefest pause, Astinus took up another sheet and began writing again.
Teldin remembered stories about the sage and his library. It truly was his library, for Astinus’s books were supposed to be the only works found here. According to tales, each day the sage wrote a precise number of pages and each night these were spirited away by his aides, bound into volumes, and shelved in the halls of the Great Library. In his works, the history of all the world was set down.
“You have delayed my work long enough. This audience is over.” The sage’s cold words shocked Teldin from his reverie.
“But our questions! We haven’t learned anything,” the farmer started to argue, half-rising from his chair.
“And how do I get home?” interjected the giff, his deep voice rumbling ominously.
Astinus appeared unmoved by their pleas, and continued his writing unabated. “Maltor,” he smoothly called, summoning the doorkeeper. The pudgy man hurriedly appeared, his nervous tic stronger than before. “Take these two —” Astinus noted that Teldin was ready to argue and rephrased his thought. “Help these two find their answers. Gnome history, one hundred and twenty-three years ago. Mount Nevermind. There ate some passages there that may be of use.”
“Yes, Master,” the Aesthetic answered reverently. He stood waiting for the guests to leave. Sensing that perhaps their visit had not been a complete failure, Teldin rose and motioned Gomja to follow.
Astinus kept scribbling, never once looking to see them depart. The words on the page, meticulously recording every event, told all he ever needed to know.
… the farmer and the creature leave Astinus’s study. Neither says good-bye. Maltor takes them into the stacks of books …
*****
From atop the ladder, Maltor finally sounded a note of triumph. “Ah, here it is!” the Aesthetic told the pair, who waited below. Prying a volume from the tightly packed shelf at the uppermost level of the stacks, where it almost brushed the ceiling, Maltor fastidiously wiped a layer of dust from its edges. The gray powder filtered down through the gloomy aisle like mist. “You have been most favored,” the monk continued as he struggled to lower his fat body down the ladder, book under one arm. “For Astinus to allow you to read one of his books, let alone meet with him, is a great honor.” Blowing out his breath, the Aesthetic reached the floor and led the pair to a bare table lit by a single lamp.
The room was almost solid bookshelves, more books than Teldin had ever imagined existed in all of Ansalon. The neat rows of black and brown bound volumes were crammed tightly onto the shelves, arranged and numbered according to dates and places. Dust seemed to coat everything, including the floor, where the three left their tracks. Teldin wondered how long it would be before those footprints faded. “This must be the Great Library,” he breathed in awe.
“A little of it,” Maltor casually answered. “Covering from five hundred to one hundred thirty-seven years ago. Teldin looked astonished that there could be more books than the hundreds found in just this single, unlit room. “Now, let’s see if I can find what the master intended. What should I look for?” The monk peered up from the densely lettered volume.
Teldin was stumped. Astinus had already declared his ignorance of the cloak, so the farmer really didn’t have any idea what he was looking for. Confused, he looked to the giff for suggestions.
“Spelljamming,” Gomja offered. “How can I go home?”
“Spell-jamming?” the Aesthetic mouthed as a traced his fingers down the page. “What’s that?”
Gomja briefly tried explaining the concept of flying ships and what he knew of space, which was very little indeed. Nonetheless, Maltor seemed to get a rudimentary idea of the process, enough to continue his search.
Teldin and Gomja sat patiently while the monk skimmed the work. The rich smell of burning lamp oil began to fill the stale air, warming the already stuffy chamber. The tired and dispirited farmer began to nod off.
“Ah, here it is,” Maltor said at last, echoing his earlier triumphant tone. “This looks promising. Listen.” The monk bent his nose close to the page, striving to make out the faded, cramped lettering by the lamp’s dim light.
“… this day, as above Afterwatch Hour climbing 10, a vessel arrived to the gnomes of Mount Nevermind. It came from the stars and was greeted by Tuwalricandilifchustra —”
Maltor stopped reading. “There is a very long name here and other details that may not be important. Perhaps it would be better if I summarized the master’s words”
“If you think that’s best,” Teldin allowed with a wave of his hand. Almost instantly he struggled to repress a sneeze brought on by a cloud of dust raised from the table. Maltor nodded quickly, his tic resurfacing. Burying his face in the book, he read on, skimming quickly over the pages.
More time passed as the monk studied the pages. He flipped forward and backward several times, as if puzzling out a strange reference. Teldin and Gomja watched the monk’s every move with eager expectation, as if these actions might in themselves reveal a secret of the universe. After turning through the pages for the fifth or sixth time, the Aesthetic finally pushed the tome aside. He rubbed dust from the corners of his eyes.
“I am not sure I understand what is written here” he offered as a preface. “Astinus knows many things the rest of us will never understand.”
“What does it say?” Teldin asked with an edge of impatience in his voice.
The monk turned the book toward Teldin and pointed to a passage. “As you can see, it seems to explain things right here —”
The farmer pushed the page back. “You explain it. I’m far too tired to read,” he lied. His small skill at letters was no match for the words of Astinus, though Teldin had no desire to let the monk know this.
The doorkeeper blew out a sigh that stirred up another cloud of dust. “Well, according to this, our world – Krynn, that is – is not the only place in the universe. It is one of many places separated from each other by – by nothingness.” The monk’s expression made it clear that he understood none of this.
“I know that,” Gomja muttered in vexation. Teldin hushed the giff and motioned for Maltor to continue.
“From what Astinus writes, Krynn, the moons, even the stars are enclosed in a sphere, one of many such spheres, like a glass ball.” Seeing Teldin’s puzzled look, the monk traced a circle in the dust. “Our world and all these other things are inside, while outside is some kind of a nothing called phlogiston.”
“A nothing with a name?” Teldin asked.
Maltor faltered, groping for just the right way to describe it.
“It is a great ocean of swirling colors, sir,” Gomja offered, based on his own experience. Teldin cocked an eye at the giff, skeptical of the creature’s sudden expertise. “I never knew how to describe it,” the giff explained.
“As he said,” continued Maltor, “there are other spheres floating in this phlogiston, but each sphere is supposed to be separate from
the others. It says here that each is like a crystal orb, enclosed and independent, with whole worlds to themselves.” At this point, even Maltor could not suppress a tone of skepticism about his master’s words.
“So how does Astinus know all this?” Teldin demanded. The whole explanation sounded cockamamie to his ears.
Maltor threw up his hands. “How does Master Astinus know anything? He just does – but, from my reading, it seems the spheres beyond our own are unknown to my master. Of these other worlds he apparently knows only what has been reported by travelers.”
Teldin’s mind was starting to reel with confusion. He pushed away from the table and ambled a little way down the dust-clogged aisle. “Travelers? More than just Gomja?”
“Quite a few, from these records,” Maltor noted by tapping at a page. Apparently this was not the first ship to visit the gnomes of Mount Nevermind. The place is something like a port on an ocean. These travelers reach Krynn by the method your companion called spelljamming – sailing among the stars and through the phlogiston. The ship that crashed on your farm was such a ship – magically powered to fly through the sky.”
“Like the flying citadels during the war?” Teldin offered.
“I guess, but probably more so,” Maltor speculated. The monk’s scholarly interest was being excited by the very bizarreness of the research. “These ships travel beyond our sky even into the airless reaches of space. However it may be, your companion was part of a spelljamming ship.” The Aesthetic looked at Gomja with renewed wonder, just realizing the implications of his own conclusions. “Where do you come from?”
The giff started, taken aback by the monk’s sudden inquisitiveness. He answered slowly, as if fearful of betraying a secret. “I – uh – signed on at Dalweor’s Rock, sir.” The giff shifted uneasily from side to side.
Maltor seemed to make a mental note of this. “Dalweor’s Rock is your home, then? I am only asking for Astinus’s sake. I mean, just in case he wants to know.” The monk clumsily covered his own curiosity with this excuse.