“I know of that book. In my great-grandfather’s time, the crown prince sent it to his father, Harnigon II. He hoped to force the old king to abdicate.”
“And did he?”
“The king went mad and had his son killed. Does it still work?”
“The spell? You’ll have to tell me,” Hirizjahkinis said, chuckling. “I don’t feel any different. . . . Ah, Aruendiel, here are some of your notebooks! Let’s see, a collection of siegecraft spells, and an essay on magical landscape gardening.”
“Oh, yes. I laid out some of the palace gardens here in Semr, years ago.” He turned into the next aisle. “This is the end of the magic collection; the last two rows are the foreign books.”
“Let me see,” Hirizjahkinis said, following him. “This library used to have a good collection from my country, the only copy of the Book of the Five Stones outside of Hajgog—”
Nora wished sharply that she could join in. “I thought we were supposed to be looking for this person Bouragonr,” she said under her breath. Aruendiel must have heard, because he frowned. Nora went past them into the last aisle, next to the window. The books in this row were more eclectic in manufacture. On the lower shelves were clay tablets and engraved metal plates; the upper shelves held bound volumes and scrolls. Nora found a myriad of alphabets: one that was all concentric circles; pictograms of running animals and birds; signs that reminded her of Sanskrit or Arabic or Greek without looking exactly like any of those languages. Except that the lettering on the tag for one of the scrolls, lying by itself in a bin, did look very much like Greek. Nora picked up the brittle paper and unrolled it slowly. The first lines of a long poem. Yes, in Greek. She had translated these lines herself, the first year of graduate school, in Dr. Decker’s Homeric Greek seminar: ????? ????? ???.
Nora sang a brief, wordless note of joy. Aruendiel appeared at the end of the aisle. “Look,” she said, “Greek. It’s Greek! From my world.”
He took the scroll from her. “I don’t know this language,” he said. “You recognize it?”
“Yes, of course! I can read it. A little,” she said, wishing violently that she had not dropped Greek after Dr. Decker’s seminar.
Aruendiel did not seem to be terribly impressed. “Well, of course, there are books from other worlds in this library,” he said with a crooked shrug. “Micher Samle has donated some, I know. You might look around and see if any other books from your world have landed here.”
He turned and went back to the end of the aisle. An instant later Nora heard Hirizjahkinis say, “You didn’t tell me she was from another world! The things you keep to yourself, Aruendiel.” She couldn’t make out Aruendiel’s reply.
Nora began looking over the shelves more carefully. Ten minutes later, after searching most of the aisle, she had found a clay tablet inscribed with what
“Rats,” she said in English, putting the book back. And then, as her eyes traveled along the shelves, a jolt of recognition. Not so much the English words, the familiar title—although that registered quickly enough—but the worn spine, the bright colors: a cheap paperback, the kind you couldn’t give away at a yard sale. Not just any cheap paperback, either.
Nora eased it out of the bookcase. It had been wedged in so tightly that the cover almost came off—the same cover that had caught her eye back in the rental cabin. A line drawing of a simpering young miss with a parasol.
Nora turned it over and automatically read the blurb on the back, taking pleasure in how easy it was to understand the English sentences. But she was so agitated that she could hardly take in their meaning. The mere presence of the book seemed to be a validation of some sort. She felt like Schliemann unearthing the walls of heretofore mythical Troy. And then a clearer thought: How did this thing get here? It crossed her mind that the book could signal some kind of recovery, that she was about to wake from a long delirium and return to reality.
Aruendiel turned and looked down at her, his gray eyes curious, cool. “What do you have there?” he asked.
“This book, it’s from my world,” she said, giving him a challenging glance. He showed no signs of vanishing.
“Oh? What kind of book?” Hirizjahkinis said.
“It’s a—story,” Nora said, searching for an Ors word for “novel,” and failing to find one. “A very famous one. A comedy of manners that takes place in England—” The others looked blank; she amended the description quickly. “It deals with love and marriage.”
“Really? The whole book? What an interesting idea!”
“The odd thing is,” Nora said slowly, “this is my own copy. That is, I had it when I came into this world. But I lost it. I don’t know how it got into this library.”
Aruendiel’s expression was honed with interest. “But you only just now found it again?”
“Yes. I’m sure it’s mine, though.” Absently she opened the paperback to flip through the pages.
Her first thought was that the book was alive. That was impossible, but if it was not alive, how could it be looking up with that red-rimmed eye, wet and blinking? Just the one eye, roving wildly under wrinkled lids, where there should be nothing but neat lines of type.
She wanted to slam the book shut, but at the same time she had a squeamish fear of crushing the eye and feeling its gelatinous squelch through the thin cardboard of the cover. Then she saw that the eye wasn’t resting on the page, it was
“I think I found your Bouragonr,” she said.
Bent over the open paperback, Aruendiel and Hirizjahkinis experimented with a couple of different spells that had no apparent effect before trying one that made the book grow very large and then very small and finally left a gray-haired man in a brown velvet tunic tottering in front of them. He groaned and collapsed against the bookcase.
Aruendiel half dragged, half carried the newly freed prisoner into the reading room and went to summon help from the palace staff. Hirizjahkinis produced a silver flask from thin air and made Bouragonr drink it. In fits and starts, he told her his story: He had run across Ilissa in the library, and she had shown him a little book in a foreign language, which he had opened with mild curiosity. The next thing he knew, he was shut up in a dark place with no food or water.
The library quickly filled with people: a crew of servants, the palace chamberlain, one of the royal doctors, and a growing cohort of gawkers. The doctor attended to Bouragonr for some minutes, and then the patient was taken away on a stretcher. Nora was relieved to see him go. Unfair as it was, she felt a certain resentment toward Bouragonr. The shock of seeing his agitated eye looking out of the book had slightly tainted her pleasure in finding it again.
“He’ll be fine in a few days,” said Hirizjahkinis, fastening the leopard pelt around her neck again; she had retired the Kavareen after he snarled at one of the visitors.
“Oh, Bouragonr’s health will be restored easily enough. It’s his position that will feel the hurt,” Aruendiel said sourly.
“The king will dismiss him, you think?”
“His chief magician taken prisoner by the Faitoren within the very palace walls? Abele can hardly keep Bouragonr on after such a blunder. It’s too bad,” he added. “Bouragonr isn’t a bad magician, or at least he wasn’t before he spent so much time at court.”
Hirizjahkinis laughed. “You won’t be applying for his job, I believe?”
“Never! Although I almost wish that you would, Hiriz. It would ease my mind to know that a magician with good sense had taken the post. I want no more talk of Faitoren alliances.”
“I’m surprised you wish me so ill, Aruendiel. Never will I subject myself again to one of your terrible
