Chapter 37: Chapter 36

Nose-picker and his fellow house guard had been left outside the library, and Nemari had stayed behind in the infirmary. Nym, Analia, and Malk were standing in front of the bookcase that hid a secret room. “This is it,” he told them.

“I’ve been in this library a thousand times and never noticed anything odd. I’ve read four different books off this shelf already,” Analia said. She peered at the shelf from various angles, walking to one side and then the other.

“I don’t see anything unusual. Same type of wood, same size.” She started pulling books off one at a time and handing them to Nym. “Here, put these on that table.”

Nym helped her empty the entire bookshelf out. Once it was bare, she resumed her investigation. She even went so far as to fly up to the top of the shelf and examine it from that angle. When she was done, she shook her head and said, “I don’t see anything here.”

“I can see the dimensions of the room with my scrying spell,” Nym said. “The doorway stretches from here to here. But there’s nothing in the walls around it. No switches or levers or anything. It’s just a hole cut into the wall behind this shelf.”

“Then I suppose the only way in would be to lift the entire thing up and move it out of the way.”

“The intruder doesn’t need to be here for this,” Malk said. “If this hidden room actually exists, whatever secrets inside of it are no business of his.”

“That… is actually a very good point. I’m sorry Nym, but whatever is in this room-”

“If it even exists,” Malk said.

“-is a family secret that I would not expose without my father’s permission,” Analia finished, ignoring Malk’s snide comment.

Nym decided not to point out that he could already see the layout of the room and had a fairly good idea of what was in there. There were books, lots and lots of books, which probably wasn’t a coincidence since the hidden room was attached to the library. He didn’t know what they were about, but he imagined it would be sensitive information about any illicit activities the family was involved in, restricted or forbidden magic, stuff like that.

There were also a few trinkets and curiosities. Some of it looked like jewelry, but Nym figured there was a reason it was stored separate from the main vaults. It might be magical in some way, but he couldn’t see any arcana infused into the objects through his scrying spell. He wasn’t sure he’d recognize it in person either.

Finally, there were a few worktables set along the back wall with a variety of tools. Nym had never seen anything like them and couldn’t even hazard a guess as to their purposes. Between them was a large cylinder, about five feet tall and three feet wide, which was completely opaque to his scrying spell. It was obviously magical in some way, and Nym was curious about what was stored in there.

“And so, I will lift this and see what is behind it. Malk, please wait over there with Nym.”

At first startled, Malk nonetheless nodded and escorted Nym to a far-off table. “Have a seat,” he said. Nym was sure he was just as curious, but the bodyguard took his duty seriously and didn’t take his eyes off Nym while Analia worked.

Immense winds whipped through the library, scattering loose books off the tables and knocking over a few chairs. Nym endured it for a few seconds, but as the wind got stronger, the books started taking flight. He quickly formed walls of air, channeling the wind up towards the ceiling where there was nothing to blow around except the light orbs. Those swayed back and forth, but it looked like the flight runes inscribed into them were stronger than the winds Analia was wielding.

Malk started to speak, probably to tell him not to use any magic because it was suspicious or whatever, but then he gave the rest of the library a second glance and saw how much of a mess it already was. Nym could practically see him rethinking his stance.

The bookshelf lifted a few inches in the air and wobbled as it slid forward. He didn’t have the angle to see into the room behind it from where he waited with Malk, but just from Analia’s body language, he saw the instant she spotted the hidden door. The shelf skidded across the floor and nearly tipped over, but she caught it half way to the ground and pushed it back upright.

“So far it appears you’ve been telling the truth. There is a hidden room behind this shelf.”

Nym hadn’t really felt anything like what the healer had described during the supposed truth-reading spell, but he figured there was no harm in going along with it. Analia wasn’t anything like he’d expected her to be, and he was starting to think he might actually come out of this ahead. Valgo would lose his blackmail leverage, and Nym could see him resorting to more drastic and violent measures, but if he could get on good terms with the heir to a noble house, it might not matter.

Nym looked around the library. This place was his dream. The Academy would be ideal, but that was never going to happen. Just getting access to the Feldstal family library would help him in so many ways. He’d seen dozens of titles for beginner mages that he would love to tear through and marked a few other more advanced tomes that seemed relevant. If only half of them proved useful, he’d be significantly better off than when he got to Abilanth.

That all assumed he managed to cash in on whatever goodwill he’d built up for going along with this whole thing. He took a moment to reflect on that thought. Half an hour ago he’d thought his best option was to starve or freeze to death a few hundred miles out of the city. Now he was plotting how best to pillage their library for magical knowledge, with assumed permission.

According to what Valgo had told him, Analia’s father was out of town on running some big important mission. Briefly, Nym wondered if it was involved with that big necromancer seal thing he’d stumbled into back in Zoskan. Leaf had seemed pretty sure that it was serious and they’d need some magical muscle to patch it back up. Abilanth was a good place to get a lot of that in a very short time frame.

More importantly, if Jaspar Feldstal was out of town, that meant his daughter could be running the place in his absence. Sure, there was probably somebody acting as a governor or castellan taking care of stuff, but nobody who would dare to contradict the young Lady of the House. At least, he hoped that was the case. It would be extremely convenient for him if so, since she seemed to like him for some God forsaken reason.

With the winds finally dying down, Nym dismissed his own spell and looked around. There were books everywhere, overturned chairs and tables, and half of the light orbs were wobbling around overhead, throwing weird shadows over the mess. Analia was ignoring all of it. She cast a simple spell and light started shining out from beyond the revealed door, and she stared ahead, mouth agape.

“What… what is this?” The words came out a whisper, only heard because utter silence had descended back on the library.

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“My lady?” Malk started forward.

“Stay where you are,” she snapped.

Then she walked into the hidden room, leaving Nym and Malk to stand there in silence. Nym had a general idea of what was in the room, and he knew what he was supposed to be retrieving. Jaspar Feldstal was researching something and there were a number of journals detailing his experiments that Valgo wanted. That, and only that, was his target. But the job was already blown to hell and back again, so he might as well salvage what he could from it.

About ten minutes later, Analia still hadn’t come out. Nym looked over at Malk and said, “You think we should start cleaning this up?”

“I think you should stay right where you are and keep your mouth shut.”

“Yep, I guess we could do that too.”

In truth, Nym had only suggested it to give him a chance to get a closer look at all the titles so he could start planning out which books he wanted to read. It didn’t hurt that he figured it would score some points with Analia, and also because, just a little bit, it hurt his soul to see the books so mistreated. There were a few loose pages lying around that had been torn out, and he was itching to collect them and try to match them to whatever books were missing them.

Malk was having none of that. Every time Nym so much as shifted in place, the bodyguard perked up like a dog and stared at him. It actually became something of a game to Nym, waiting for the tension to leave the man’s body, then moving his weight from one foot to the other just to watch Malk snap back to attention.

Nym confirmed that the bodyguard couldn’t detect him casting magic, or if he could, he was pretending otherwise for some reason. He used his scrying spell to watch Analia move around the room. She spent some time looking over the work benches, but the majority of it was spent flipping through books. Not for the first time, Nym wished the spell would show him printed text.

She spent an hour or so in the room, and when she came back out, she shuffled forward in a daze and collapsed into the nearest chair. After a few minutes of silence, she said, “Please put the book shelf back. Nobody is to know about this room.”

Nym lifted it back into place with considerably less collateral damage and started telekinetically throwing books onto the shelves at random. He had no idea what organizational scheme they used, but he prioritized the desk they’d emptied the shelves onto. Of course, the wind storm had scattered them, but he did his best to find them.

While he worked, new strands of telekinetic force radiated out from around him, righting chairs and tables and piling up loose books onto them. It took barely a minute to restore the library to some semblance of order, and he was quite proud of his speed. He could barely keep a half dozen objects rotating through a pattern when he first started. Now, he was moving upwards of thirty at a time in unique trajectories.

Analia watched the work with hollow eyes. “And for all that, you’re not even half spent, are you?” she asked Nym.

“It’s just a first circle spell.”

“I’d have given myself arcana poisoning three times over channeling that much. Basic telekinesis is good for one or two items, maybe three or four if you’ve invested a lot of effort into practicing it. I don’t even know how you did that.”

He had spent a lot of time working on that telekinesis spell. The only one he’d worked on more was flight. Analia was of the opinion that his magic was impossible though, and he suspected she’d been exposed to a lot more magic than him.

“Can I see you cast telekinesis?” he asked.

“Maybe later,” she said. “I’ve got… got a lot on my mind right now.”

Nym decided to ignore the hitch in her voice. Whatever she’d found out, she wasn’t happy about it. He liked the implication that there would be a later though. In his mind, that meant he wasn’t about to be booted out onto the street or handed over to the city guard.

“What happens now?” he asked.

Behind him, Malk shifted subtly. Nym only knew it was happening because he had his scry spell running and was watching in all directions using it. The man was gearing up to attack him, but unless he exhibited some magic that Nym hadn’t seen from him, he wasn’t worried about it.

Then again, Malk had shown up immediately when Analia had called for him, and he was a bodyguard for a very rich and very powerful nobleman’s daughter. He could be incredibly dangerous.

Nym started to mentally plan out the next few seconds if things turned sour. The first thing to do would be to get some distance, then find the first window and get outside. After that, he’d disappear into the night.

“Now, I’ll have a servant show you to the guest quarters. We can talk more in the morning,” Analia said. “I have a lot to think about right now.”

“Oh,” Nym said. That worked too.

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