Abaddon's Call

Chapter Fifty-Five

"Forty queries, reading lists, and then we look under the pot?" Graydon asked.

"Lid," his father said. "Technically we're looking into the pot."

"Is it a literal pot?" Graydon asked before he turned to Magi Yole. "Is it a literal pot?"

"No," Magi Yole said. "A more formal inspection is one thing, but in this first round, you walk into the library's core, deliver your queries, it responds, and then your father takes hold of it. If anything is amiss, it will show up in the room and draw you a map. Makes it simple to cut out the problem."

"The library cannot alter itself," his father said as Magi Yole shifted nervously. "It's not... what is that?"

Graydon hesitated, senses reaching around him.

"What?" he asked.

"If you don't recognize it, then it's new," was the murmured response. "Come, now."

Terror flitted through Graydon as Lord Pan led the way. He fell in behind, aware that if something did happen, the others would understand. He was also aware that his father felt there was a real threat at play. There was no other reason for him to be there.

Which meant the lords knew something Graydon didn't. Something, perhaps, that had weighed in on their decision regarding Naena's betrothal. He half expected someone to pull him into a room and give him an order he didn't want to follow, but one he wasn't sure whether he could disobey.

"What is that?" Graydon demanded before he realized what he was seeing.

Magic was working its way through the air, flooding the hallway before them. As Graydon stared, the air began to glow as if in warning.

"Sometimes it glows," Magi Yole said.

"Like hell it does," his father muttered in response.

Lord Pan led and Graydon followed a step behind. They stepped through the misty glowing air and into an empty room that felt like Arcdon's study in the basement.

The room wasn't real, not in the sense that he knew a room to be real and physical in existence. Yet all of his senses, even those trained to detect magic, advised him that he stood in a small cube like room with walls, a floor and ceiling and light source. At the same time, he was aware that there was nothing around them.

Nothing at all existed.

"Done," his father said. "The library detected a fatal error and has discharged it. We'll have the full report in forty years, the partial will be available in approximately six months and going forward. I've been assured it cannot happen again."

Magi Yole's hands worked nervously into his robes.

"A fatal error?" Magi Yole asked. "Whatever for? When?"

"It reported the error to Selifer, who holds the library. Selifer can't read the library, just like he couldn't read your complaints, hence we hadn't reacted earlier. He wasn't the cause of the error, but the library insists that Selifer delivered the solution."

"The library insists?" Graydon asked. "What do you mean? It does queries. It doesn't insist."

His father looked at Magi Yole expectantly. When the librarian stared back, his father's head tilted slightly, and he focused on Graydon.

"The library was one of the first attempts at sentient magic," his father said. "It is one of the only remaining examples of that magic. Yet it could not obtain self-actualization. It had to be buddied with," he motioned to Magi Yole. "And its buddy says, does, and reacts, acts even on its behest. Magi Yole has access to the library's magic and the library's magic is magi in origin."