Totentanz

Book 3 Chapter III: Nichts

Author's Note: Spot the brief crossover with The Power and the Glory! (Here's a hint: Lian shows up in the darnedest places.)

NICHTS
German, "nothing"

A hoarse shout from within and a small china ornament whizzing past my head informed me that my old friend was at home. -- P. G. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning

It turned out Diarnlan was right. There were many more books still undiscovered. The ones they'd unearthed were all new to them, and not remotely useful. She skimmed through no less than three tomes entirely devoted to dress-making spells. Another book was full of useful household spells, which were variations on already-used spells like "make the dishes wash themselves". The most eyebrow-raising one was a lengthy treatise on how to forge money, disguised as an anti-forgery lecture. By far the most entertaining was a book of childish pranks, like how to make someone croak like a frog for an hour. But there were exactly no books that could help her.

Karandren had long since gotten distracted by a spell-book about metalwork. He was testing its spells on his statue, which had begun to look much more like a dragon. Scales now decorated its sides. Its legs were properly formed and its feet no longer looked like shapeless chunks of metal (though instead they looked like a duck's feet).

Diarnlan still thought it was a ridiculous waste of time. They weren't going to be able to fight the skrýszel with it, so what was the point?

After another fruitless search through the books she gave up and went to the High Priest's library. She didn't expect to find anything useful -- the Bone-Worshippers would never have allowed their people to know the skrýszel existed, much less how to fight them -- but at least the books there were less dusty than these ones.

As she expected the shelves were full of religious books. She picked one up out of morbid curiosity, opened it at random and skimmed a few lines, then dropped it in shock. Far from being a treatise on some obscure bit of doctrine, it was a pornographic novel disguised as a religious book. Judging by the lines she'd read, it had been written by a particularly inventive pervert with a bizarre interest in vegetables.

Was the priest's entire library full of nothing but pornography? She looked at the number of books and decided this was impossible. Not even the most dedicated pervert could collect over five hundred obscene works.

Diarnlan went to the other side of the library, chose another book, and opened it warily. She slammed it shut again at once. Apparently she was wrong. A dedicated pervert could collect over five hundred obscene works.

She calmly removed all of the books from their shelves. She piled them up in the middle of the room. Then she set fire to them with extreme prejudice.

~~~~

By the end of the next day Diarnlan was absolutely certain that Vanadel was toying with them. This was all a plan to drive them mad, possibly to make them either kill themselves or murder each other. And the only way she could think of to put an end to it was to draw Vanadel out.

But how? He wasn't a spirit or a demon that could be summoned with the right rituals. He wasn't even a ghost that could be called up by a necromancer -- and besides, the only necromancer Diarnlan had met had been a very strange man. He had visited the academy many years ago when she was still a student. The memory of his eyes, the colour of silver and eerily empty, still made her shudder.

No, necromancy was out of the question.

~~~~

"I have an idea," Karandren said after another fruitless day in the library.