It didn’t take long tofind the Yith section; it occupied almost a complete bookshelf andconsisted of over a hundred volumes. The Old Hoary’s Encyclopaediawas next to it, as Featherdown had said it would be. Thisimmediately posed a problem. Had the High Wizard left theencyclopaedia in the general library, Aquitain would have probablynever bothered to find this secret library with the Yith books. DidFeatherdown want Aquitain to find the Yith books for some reason?If so, how would he know unless Aquitain was being watched?
There was one way tofind out. He caused all the light in the room to disappear, leavinghim standing in absolute darkness. He then changed to his Logiconform to use its more sensitive hearing ability. He heard nothingbut almost immediately picked up the scent of a gnome, then sent upseveral pseudopodia and waved them in the air to get a sense of thedirection of the gnome and slithered towards it. It knew it hadbeen spotted and darted quickly across the top of a bookshelf. Thistime he heard the faint scratching of claws. He stopped for amoment to think about this. The creature was smaller than a gnomebut had claws. Maybe it was a rat or perhaps a gnome pretending tobe a rat.
He shape changed backto his human form, turned the light back on and said ‘Show yourselfJaztrix. I know that you’re here.’
A gnome poked his headover the top of the bookshelf.
‘That was pretty good,Aquitain,’ she said. ‘I was sure you wouldn’t be able to detectme.’
‘Why are you upthere?’
‘I was here looking fora book when you came in. I was surprised, as I didn’t expect anyoneat this hour, so I went invisible and got up here to see who itwas.’
Aquitain looked veryclosely at the clothes that the gnome wore and the illusion broke.She was naked. So she had been a rat, and had shape shifted back toher gnome form to fool Aquitain. It wasn’t too hard to guess whothe rat sneaking into his workshop was likely to have been.
‘Well you know now, soyou can come down.’
‘I was tired anyway,’said Jaztrix. ‘I think I’ll turn in for the night.’ She floateddown to the floor walked to the edge of a bookcase, touched itsside and a teleport ring appeared, and she vanished.
‘Now how about youreally leave,’ suggested Aquitain. ‘Or tell me why you’re spying onme.’
Jaztrix reappeared atthe top of the bookcase. ‘I must be losing my touch. I could havesworn that you’d believe that I left,’ she said.
‘I have been spying onyou and everyone else because my master doesn’t trust anyone inTwin Towers. Why I don’t know. I also know he’s pretty interestedin you and your woman friend.’
‘I’d still like tolearn how to do illusions,’ said Aquitain.
‘I’ll think about it,’said the gnome. ‘What are you looking for in here, anyhow?’
‘The High Wizardsuggested that I check in Old Hoary’s Encyclopaedia for someinformation that I’m after, and there it is.’ said Aquitain,pointing at it.
He moved the book tothe little table and went to check the index for ideas as to wherehe should look, to find that there was no index. On carefullyexamining the volume he noted that the index pages had been cutout. He closed the book and looked carefully at it. One of thepages had been removed. He opened it to identify the missing page.The previous section was about chalices, describing different typesof magic often found in them, and mentioning notable namedchalices.
‘You’ll have to tellFeatherdown that someone has damaged his copy of Old Hoary’sEncyclopaedia, the index is missing.’
He returned theencyclopaedia to its place and began to go systematically throughthe titles on the shelves. Some were standard texts, others were inlanguages that he had never seen; and then he discovered some onmind magic. He moved the lot of them onto the small table and beganto read the first.
‘Are you going to readall of them?’ asked Jaztrix. ‘That’ll take weeks.’
‘Perhaps, but this isthe stuff that I’m interested in,’ said Aquitain.
‘I’d be interested inthe Yith stuff if I knew how to read it,’ said Jaz. ‘But there isone there with some interesting pictures in it. It’s the one thatlooks like it’s been torn in half. I think I’ll go to bed now.Bye.’
He read for a fewhours, skimming through a dozen books for anything new, and thenrealised that it must be past dawn and that Quab was expecting him.So he hurriedly returned the books he had read to the shelf,leaving the unread ones on the table and quickly returned to hisworkshop, only to find two notes on the door: one from Quab and onefrom Zephira.
Quab’s note said thathe had been urgently called away on business and would be back in afew days. He suggested Aquitain shape change into a snake andpractice travelling over different ground types, such as sand,swampy mud and water, which could all be found to the north ofQuab’s sanctuary. Zephira’s note stated that she had received somegood news. She would tell him tonight. Having no other commitments,he returned to the library and this time felt it was time to have alook at some of the Yith books to see if he could make any senseout of them.
He went to the Yithbookshelf and slowly worked his way through to see if there wasanything obviously interesting, and saw the book Jaz had mentionedwhich had been torn in half. He took it from the shelf and flickedthrough the pages to see if there was anything of interest, and hisheart almost stopped. There were the exact drawings of how to makepower crystals that he had diligently copied many years ago intohis workshop manual, with the strange exception that all thewriting was in the Yith language.
He looked carefully atthe following pages and recognised other figures from textbooks hehad seen. Then, as he turned the page, he saw a picture of a ballof clay accompanied by half a page of Yith writing. All he had todo was work out how to translate it.
‘Do I know any Yithlanguage, Alpha?’ he said almost automatically,
