The Poison Pie Publishing House presents:

November 23, 2015
On Tea with the Warlord
Eventually, the warlord accepted that the diabolist was gone. Having observed the unlikely but undeniable power of librarians, he commissioned that a grand library/temple be built in the city square. It was of such vast dimensions that it would take over twenty years for the construction to be completed. Still, the warlord believed he had that much life left in him before he ceded power to his son, when the next diabolist, then come of age, would make her appearance at the coronation. In that time, the apprentice librarian might have come to discover a means to defeat his own devil, as had the foreign librarian before him.

The warlord never stepped foot in what came to be known as the Grand Temple Library, not during its construction, nor in the celebrations that accompanied its opening to the public, nor afterward, though he had his son and heir educated daily by scholars laboring within the library.

It was rumored that the warlord, in his old age, when he had all but officially handed over the reins of the kingdom to his son, instead made clandestine visits to the old libraries at the rear of the palace compound. There he sat with the aged, one-legged librarian, whom he had always admired for the stoicism with which he had accepted his lot. There, it was said, the two men who had begun their careers as soldiers, shared tea in the light of second-floor window. They exchanged stories of old wars, when the bordering nations did not all offer tribute and the threats to the capital had seemed genuine.

It was even said that the warlord, who of course could not read, asked the librarian to read to him accounts of the heroics of his father and grandfather, from books which had been spared from the fire only at the command of generations of diabolists.

There was no witness when the crippled librarian led his lord into the oldest library and showed the dark room in which the unholy texts were still kept. “Here, from this room,” said the librarian, “Hong Samud stepped forth.”

“I am told,” said the warlord, “that the Grand Temple Library contains a similar room, which connects to the foreigner’s library, floating in the æther.”

“That is true,” confirmed the librarian. “My nephew oversaw its design himself.”

“If that little old man still lives and he comes to visit our new, great library, what do you think he will make of it?”

“Oh, forgive me, my Lord, for you may find my answer offensive, but that librarian will see in your library a great triumph.”

“A triumph over devils?” asked the warlord, confused.

“No, my Lord,” said the librarian, “a triumph over you, for your way was that of war and yet, in this library, you have surrendered your arms.”

The warlord considered the librarian’s daring words and noted that a younger lord would have ordered him executed for voicing such treason. However, the old lord who sat beside him only nodded. “I did not think all my victories should lead in the end to this defeat, nor that I should find being subjugated in this way as palatable as I do.” He allowed a rare smile to escape. “I knew when the diabolist had me appoint you the first librarian, that librarians would be the end of me.”

“Do not judge us too severely,” he answered, pouring another cup of tea from the kettle, though it had cooled considerably. “It is through the work of librarians that your story, in all its glory and shame, shall continue to live.”

October 29, 2015
A Denouement
Hong Samud stood in the central corridor of his perfect library, contemplating the eternity that lay before him. Recalling the words of his daughter, he stepped though one of the doorways, number 37,996, though he did not know its destination.

He arrived in the poorly lit stacks of a library, where the smell of old journals suffused the air like an incense. This was precisely the kind of environment that, before the invention of the internet moved much of its content into digital formats, was the domain of dedicated graduate students, poring over accounts of research, historical and contemporary. After being gutted of that information deemed most useful, such stacks were nowadays the haunts only of nostalgic, old professors, who themselves no longer deemed utility a prerequisite for virtue.

In such a stack, Hong Samud encountered me, the narrator of this manuscript. He cordially invited me into his library and I readily accepted. Standing in the endless, spiraling corridor, he offered to share with me any book in the entirety of his holdings, which my fondest wish should desire.

I asked him not for the contents of a book but rather to empty his very heart. Thus, one short fragment at a time, a half an hour each morning over a period of several months, Hong Samud dictated to me this story of his first triumph, which I have now shared with you, Gentle Reader. Ultimately, I am strictly an amanuensis. That my role will be interpreted otherwise is only a consequence of the difficulty in locating the real author.

On the morning when he finished relaying the final passage of his story, Hong Samud accompanied me back to the stacks of my local library. He did not explicitly forbid me from returning to visit him, nor did he directly extend an invitation. I doubt I shall succumb to the temptation to return to see him again, for it seems to me that whatever good was to have come from our interaction has already been made manifest, entered the world and left us behind.