The Lost Crown

Cabinets and Doorways

The next afternoon Walliam went to the library, high in the Archon.  There were lanterns burning around the front part of the library.  Walliam called out to master Cambert who shuffled into view from a door at the side of the library.  Walliam realized he had never noticed the door before.  

He explained to the librarian that he was looking for books on Eperna.  The librarian nodded and looked around the room.  “You know, young man, we don’t have many volumes on that goddess.  The royal library is your best bet.  Or the Wilding library.  They sponsor that goddess and I believe they have a large collection of writings about her.  Most of the First Families collect writings about their house god.  It was fashionable to do so a few hundred years ago, so I understand.  I doubt any of them know what books they have, though.”  He coughed into his hand and then laughed.

Walliam thought about going to the royal library to look at their collection when another Magian entered the library.  Master Trumble frowned for a moment and then smiled at Walliam.  “Brother Walliam, I’m glad you’re here.”

He took a lantern and led Walliam to a far corner of the library.  In the corner stood a tall, wooden cabinet.  It made Walliam think of the one he had seen in the Chapter House in Sundjahar.  “This is a cabinet of doorways,” Trumble said as they drew up to it.  Trumble set the lantern on a nearby bookcase.

“Each door opens a doorway, into another library,” the Magian explained.  “There are many of these cabinets spread around the Kingdom.  Indeed, around the whole world.  The Sorcerers developed the ability to build these, an art which was lost after the defeat of the Mastikons.  All of these cabinets are a thousand years old.  As I have explained to you, a Magian may open a doorway that opens in another physical location, not in the hidden world.  There are several kinds of doorways we can create, you see.  The doorways you have seen us draw all opened in the same place where we were standing, but they opened inside that place as it exists in the hidden world.  

“It is also possible to draw a doorway that opens in another place, still in the physical world,” the Magian continued.  “The Sorcerers built these cabinets with the doorways set in them.  It’s a permanent doorway.  For instance, this cabinet has doorways that open in other libraries, all still inside the physical world.  This door, on the side facing us, opens in the library in the royal palace.  It’s not fixed on the other end.  In other words, when you go through and let the doorway close, then it is gone, and you are stuck where you are.  Although you can then draw a doorway that is the same, and come back to this same room.  Some cabinets have doorways that open in other cabinets, and those doorways remain open, so you can go back through.  This one does not.  Allow me to demonstrate.”

Trumble opened the door of the cabinet and Walliam saw that it was empty, just like the one he had gone through in Sundjahar.  The back of the cabinet was plain wood, darkened with age.  There was a little hole on the left side, half way up, just like the one Walliam had seen before.

Trumble reached out and put his finger in the hole and drew the back wall of the cabinet aside, like a curtain.  Walliam saw the library of the royal palace on the other side.  Harknull stepped through, and Walliam followed him.  When he stepped out in the royal library he looked at the hole they had stepped through.  It made him slightly queasy to see the hole in the air.  Harknull let go of the doorway he was holding and it fell back in place, like a curtain, and disappeared.

“What if someone were standing here, where the doorway opened.  What would happen to them?” Walliam asked.

Trumble shook his head.  “The doorway would not open.  Any living object will block a doorway if it is placed where the doorway is trying to form.  If it’s an inanimate object, then it just becomes part of the doorway.  Now, we must get back.”