The Poison Pie Publishing House presents:

October 1, 2015
On a Book of Mythology
Before the age of men, gods composed the entirety of existence. They manifested across broad spectra of phenomena and behavior. There were good gods, evil gods and one god who could not tell the difference between the two. The chaos that resulted when incompatible gods mixed was deemed unsatisfactory by the gods of virtue. A subset of these gods devised a plan by which a mosaic of tantalizing orbs was scattered through-out infinity. Gods of short attention spans and other vices were easily distracted by these shiny baubles. Gathering around them they soon discovered that they were trapped on the orbs in a kind of divine gravitational field from which they could not pull free. The gods of virtue celebrated for they had rid themselves of their nemeses without resorting to violence. In only a single case was coercion required and that regarded the god who could not tell the difference between good and evil, who was militantly encouraged to make a home for itself on one of the orbs.

Thus populated, these orbs became isolated hubs of evil. At first the gods on a given orb fought among themselves for power over the domain. The victorious consumed the vanquished, ingesting their energy, nutrients and memories. On one orb in particular, this winnowing process continued until there were only three gods left, one of whom happened to be the god who could not tell the difference between good and evil. These gods assessed each other with measured gazes. They next examined the seemingly boundless expanse of evil in which they were suffused. They mutually decided to coexist, each taking control of a portion of evil. The first evil god was a demon of voracious appetite. The variety of evil that appealed to its base nature was one of sating its desires with no regard for the needs of others. It claimed as its domain all evil directly and peripherally related to this cause. The second evil god was a devil of sadistic cunning, who was drawn to a very different sort of evil, which found amplification precisely through the misery of others. It too claimed that portion of evil that suited it. The last god, who could not tell the difference between good and evil, was left the ambiguous but sizeable portion of evil defined by negation and unclaimed by the other two gods.

When the age of men arrived, these gods gathered to them mortal adherents who sought out darkness. To the demon, men who clung to shadows were drawn. The god created for them an entire realm constructed exclusively of shadow. There his followers dwelt for so many ages that they came to be distinct beings, venturing only into the world of men to reveal their directionless fury in the carnage left in the trail of their rampages. The devil claimed a race of men who had been cast out from society and driven by force to dwell in subterranean darkness. These men and women found succor in depravity, kidnapping surface dwellers and subjecting them to torments, the misery of which we shall neither honor nor extend by recounting here. The ambiguous god claimed a third darkness, neither shadow nor subterranean, but that of night. There his followers mingled with the human populace, hiding from their brethren the ritualistic madness they practiced beneath cold stars.

The rise of civilization further isolated communities devoted to evil. It was said that these three cults, still existed, though each remained carefully hidden in umbra, in the black depths of caverns and the pitch of moonless nights. These cults were most established in forsaken lands, where the three-pronged doom was expressed in the meager bounty of a miserly earth, stained with heavy metals, in the chill of the ceaseless wind that scoured the steppes and in the violent culture of the children born to misfortune upon this accursed land.

October 2, 2015
On Lunch with the Prospector
As the days passed, the insurance clerk began to assemble enough evidence regarding the peculiarities of the library, its chief librarian and his daughter to no longer be able to ignore the fact that it was not simply the special collections wing of the Tower Library on Maple Avenue. Despite the various oddities, his research had proceeded phenomenally well, beyond any reasonable expectation. In fact, later that day, he had a lunch appointment with the leader of the investigative team that the Sigil Insurance Company was sending to provide a firsthand account of the situation on the ground. He would have much to share with his contact, though he hoped to have some additional information on his source, the library. Knowing that Hong Samud, while generous with the contents of the library, was exceptionally parsimonious regarding its secrets, the insurance clerk imagined he might have better luck inquiring with the crow girl.

Fortune seemed to turn his way for she asked that morning to accompany him on his lunch in Sigil, but circumstances did not permit him to accept.

“My apologies, Uwe,” said the insurance clerk, “but I have a lunch appointment today.”

The crow girl clearly expressed her disappointment. “It’s my treat,” she persisted, producing from a pocket a fair-sized copper coin, with the head of a bird on its face.

The clerk did not convey his doubts that such foreign currency would have any value in Sigil. Instead, he simply conceded to the demands of etiquette and gave his permission to allow her to tag along. What harm could it do?

After perusing a number of books of questionable utility regarding coming-of-age traditions and funereal rites of this distant land, they left the library early as the clerk said he had an errand to run first. It turned out that this errand was simply to circumnavigate the edifice of the Tower Library a couple times. “Where is your father’s wing?” he asked the girl, hoping she could identify the structure from the outside.

“I have no idea,” she admitted, shrugging.

The clerk felt that the girl had not made an honest effort but, instead of chiding her on this point, he asked another question. “Is there a second exit from the special collection wing?”

“At least one,” the crow girl said.

The insurance clerk could find no sign of another means of leaving the building, aside from the main entrance on Maple Avenue. “Where is it?”

“Isn’t it time for lunch?” said the crow girl, perhaps evasively. “We don’t want to be late to meet your friend.”

“She’s a business associate,” corrected the clerk.

“She’s not your friend?”

The clerk hesitated before grudgingly replying, “No.”

“Then she is your enemy,” concluded the crow girl.

“Of course not!” said the clerk. “She is neither friend nor enemy, but a business associate.”

“On the spectrum from friend to enemy, which is she closer to?”

Simply to put the matter to rest, the insurance clerk said somewhat testily, “Friend, of course.”

The crow girl smiled knowingly. It was exactly as she had thought from the start.

By the time the pair arrived at the restaurant, the prospector, Execrabilia, had already arrived and was waiting for them in a corner booth in the bar area. The crow girl noted that a person could scarcely be less like the insurance clerk than the woman before her. Where the clerk wore a finely tailored suit, the prospector was garbed in hiking boots, worn denim jeans, a cotton work shirt tan in color, and a beaten brown leather jacket. Where the clerk was meticulously groomed, this woman seemed to have made no attempts at making herself presentable; she wore no makeup of any kind. There was a residue of grease on her fingers, which had resisted scrubbing, as if she had been engaged in some mechanical task before hustling off to lunch. Only her long, black hair, at least in comparison to the tangled, feathered mass of the crow girl, seemed to have been put in order, and then only with a casual tucking behind each ear.

The woman was in excellent physical conditioning, owing to the active nature of her work. In age, she was perhaps half a decade older than the clerk. As the crow girl examined her sharp features, she wondered whether this woman could be described as beautiful. She imagined the possibility until her eyes settled on the woman’s hairline. There seemed to be a subtle disfigurement in the skeletal structure along her upper forehead, which disrupted the symmetry of her face and struck the onlooker as unhealthy. No, the crow girl silently concluded, this woman would best be described as capable, perhaps daunting.

As the prospector conducted a similar survey of the girl, the insurance clerk said, “Execrabilia, allow me to present to you the very able assistant and daughter of the librarian who has been assisting me so excellently in preparing for your trip, Uwe.”

The prospector rose and shook the crow girl’s hand roughly.

“You see me,” said the crow girl with delight.

In answer to the prospector’s quizzical expression, the clerk said, “Uwe labors under the apprehension that she is perpetually overlooked.”

Once the trio was seated, the crow girl slipped into the background and became an observer, listening to the words exchanged between the man and the woman, watching the nuances of their gestures. On the surface, the insurance clerk simply conveyed his findings, describing a parcel of notes he had assembled and would soon deliver. The prospector asked for several pieces of additional information not yet collected. The clerk jotted these down in his notebook and promised to turn his attention to those matters promptly.

As the crow girl witnessed the responsive attentiveness of the clerk to each of the prospector’s requests, she became convinced that a man should so willingly concede to the every request of a woman, only if he bore her a deep and abiding love. ‘Friend, indeed!’ thought the crow girl to herself. She next more closely examined the prospector’s mannerisms, seeking specifically for signs of reciprocity of the clerk’s feelings. She found nothing. The rough edges of the woman provided a barrier to any insight into the workings of her heart. Spending much of her life in much less forgiving environs than a clerical office, the prospector was not so easily read as the insurance clerk. Consequently, the crow girl could not arrive at a definitive answer regarding whether the affection of clerk was as unrequited as it appeared.

After some time, the clerk and the prospector became uncomfortably aware of the girl’s scrutiny.

“Tell me about yourself,” said the prospector, blatantly shifting the focus of conversation.

“There’s not much to say,” said the crow girl. “I help Agidoda at the library.”

“Where do you live?” asked the prospector.

“In the library, of course,” replied the girl.

“But where do you sleep?”

“On one of the wooden reading tables,” said the girl as if nothing could be more ordinary.

“And where does your father sleep?”

“He never sleeps!” said the girl.

“And your mother?”

“When she saw that I had managed to crack open my egg, my mother blessed me with a wink of one of her great black eyes and flew into the sky. I haven’t seen her since.”

The prospector interpreted the girl’s words as the fantasies of a child. The girl likely napped on the tables during the long, tedious days stuck in the library of her father, a scholarly type who tended to stay up late with his nose in a book, after she was put to bed, and rose early in the morning, prior to her awakening. Probably, her mother had abandoned her as a child.

The insurance clerk, on the other hand, did not so quickly abandon a more literal interpretation of the girl’s words, for, as has been mentioned, his suspicion had been growing for some time that things were not as they seemed in Hong Samud’s library.

Over the vehement protests of the other two, the crow girl insisted on paying for lunch, producing the same bird-faced coin, which now appeared to be silver. It was quickly accepted as adequate payment by the proprietor of the establishment.

One cannot unequivocally state that it was due to compassion rather than simple gratitude that on the following day, when the insurance clerk arrived, he bore a second gift, which he claimed to have come from the prospector, whom he explained nonchalantly, “is always of a practical mind.”

The crow girl opened the large paper bag and found inside, a down pillow atop a sleeping bag of a kind that might be used for camping beneath the stars. On top of these two items was a folded piece of paper, which the crow girl did not read aloud, lest she hurt her father’s feelings.

Uwe,
To make the reading table a little more comfortable.
Execrabilia

By this we are prompted to believe that the prospector led a life in which she often had occasion to sleep in uncomfortable quarters.

 Part Two. The Captain & His Apprentice

October 5, 2015
On a Lord of War
A child does not begin his or her life with the ambition to become a lord of war. On the whole, children prefer the comfort of their mother’s breast and her tender caress to a stark violence for which they have no response but to observe silently, to cry in fear when they are alone and to develop intuitively a calloused filter behind which they can find a comfort of their own. That warlords not only exist but come to rule vast swaths of land and the populations within is a testament only to the perfidy of the laws that govern this physics-based reality. The ruthless triumph over the weak and timid, not because there is a moral advantage to ruthlessness. Rather the rule of might arises because the conscience of the warlord has been so blunted by a series of traumas and an inculcation of violence that he is unable to process either sympathy for those beneath him nor the rational arguments for an alternative, mutually agreeable, better way of living.

It does a warlord no good, once he has claimed a seat of power, to retain memories of virtue, for, given the chaos of this world and the wiles of his neighbors, an unconscionable brutality will be repeatedly demanded of him. To have his generals enter the state room and report on the slaughter of the foe cannot evoke in the warlord anything but a clinical satisfaction that he has protected his domain until the next threat arises.

Such a warlord no longer retains many essential features of a human being. Consequently, warlords often rise to the status of demi-gods. They come to be worshipped because they are no longer human.

The warlord with whom we have a particular interest did not aspire to deification. The gods of his lands would tolerate no rivals. However, having lost his humanity, he had also lost his faith in any power directing the maelstrom wrought by his decree. Therefore, he had an image of himself crafted from bronze. At his explicit command, he was depicted on one knee with his head bowed, honoring the dark gods of his people. This statue was intended not only as a symbol but the active exercise of his faith. Of course, we understand that a robot, programmed to believe, cannot be described as having faith. It is a necessary characteristic of faith that it be subject to corrosion by doubt. We accept then that such a statue as the one created in the image of the warlord was utterly faithless. In this respect, the people understood that only together did the two men, the warlord and his statue, comprise a true message of piety.

October 6, 2015
On the Warlord’s Library
In many ancient societies, when a transition in power occurred, there existed a tradition of destroying books generated during the previous regime. This practice allowed the new ruler to exclusively dictate a history that presented him in a favorable light to present and future generations. All but one of the warlords in this region of the world adhered to this practice. When one family succeeded in unseating another, an almost ritualistic burning of books accompanied the coronation.

The warlord who proved the sole exception to this rule certainly cannot be said to have done so out of any sense of enlightenment. On the contrary, he was not yet born when his great grandfather staged the coup that brought his family to power. This ancestor had entertained himself, during his patient wait for the opportunity to strike, with visions of a literary conflagration. That he was deprived of this particular reward was due to the unexpected intercession of an oracle.

This old woman, whom he had never counted among his conspirators or advisors, ascended, it is said from a cave, and walked unmolested through his soldiers outside, appearing in the doorway as he stood among the fallen in his newly acquired throne room.

The woman crossed the threshold into the hall, heedless of the carnage, leaving behind bare footprints in blood. Without an introduction or so much as a nod to her new sovereign, she issued the following words, “It is ordered that you destroy no books.” She did not identify the source of the command, because such clarification was unnecessary. She bore all the genetic markers of the line of diabolists. Her hair was prematurely white; her skin held an unnatural hue of gray; her ears were misshapen in a manner found only among her people. Even her words were spoken in the dialect of those who dwelt underground.

This new warlord found it extraordinarily unpleasant that before he should issue his first command as king, he was already being ordered about. What was one more body in a hall of corpses?

Observing the intention on his lord’s face, an accomplice rushed to his side and stayed the blow. “You are a warlord now,” he said, “you must treaty with these devils, or your rule and your line will wither under the pronouncement of their doom.”

If he could not destroy these books, the warlord vowed to let no one read them. Thus this ancestor built a secure, stone warehouse and placed it in an ignominious location at the rear of his personal compound. All books, regardless of their nature, recipe books, business ledgers and scholarly tomes alike, were collected without scrutiny and stacked unceremoniously in this edifice, the doors to which were kept locked at all times.

As the power of this warlord spread, many attributed it to a deal he had struck with the diabolist on the first day of his rule. As his neighbors succumbed to his rule, the unusual prohibition against the destruction of books remained. Each new territory was scoured for books. Carts, which ought to have been laden with the spoils of war, were seen delivering books to the library, until a second, much larger building, three stories in height, was constructed in an adjacent spot to accommodate their number. His subjects perceived the library as a temple and the books as a tribute to the whims of the dark gods who ruled this land. The withholding of the ritual destruction of their books, which should have been a component of the celebration of their victory, was deemed a sacrifice demanded by the gods of their ruler.

As if under the protection of devils, rule passed cleanly along the hereditary line, from father to son to grandson and to the current great grandson, fourth ruler of this consolidated territory. Upon ascending the throne, each ruler was visited by the current priestess, who reminded the new lord that they, no less than their predecessors, were bound to the oath to maintain the library.

It was not, however, until the fourth ruler, that the diabolist, a much younger woman, though still white of hair and gray of flesh, made an additional command, namely that the sovereign create a new, previously unheard of, post within his ruling council—a librarian. Furious at this additional request but unwilling to deny the orders of a godly servant, the warlord appointed a crippled captain, who had fallen far from favor with the defeat that had cost him his leg, as the royal librarian.

October 7, 2015
On the Warlord’s Librarian
It was not permitted for a soldier to marry young, for the likelihood that he would perish in the service of his country was greatest in the first few years. Having survived that period and granted a captaincy, the librarian became an eligible bachelor. However, though potential brides were presented to him, he refrained from wedding. By nature circumspect, he did not elaborate on the origins of his reticence. Perhaps, in his martial calling, he had observed too much death to open himself to another. Perhaps, his choice not to marry was something altogether more mundane; not all are destined to marry. Regardless, his younger brother, who grew impatient with his sibling’s indefinite postponement of these affairs, abrogated tradition and married before him. Thus the elder son became an uncle before a father.

One would never hear the captain admit that the error which cost him his leg was anyone’s but his own, although the anecdotal evidence of the time indicated that he had warned his superior officer of his suspicion of an ambush, a warning that had gone unheeded. With his leg, he lost his vocation. All warriors, including the warlord of the time (the father of the present-day warlord), believed it better had he perished honorably on the field. To return maimed, a hobbling symbol of the brutal fate to which the enlisted men were called was a potential blow to morale. Nevertheless, he did return. There seemed no alternative but to allow him to keep his rank and find some position, to which a man with his limitations could attend. To do otherwise would seem a betrayal by the lord of the service rendered to him. However, the poor treatment of the captain presented an unequivocal message regarding the low esteem in which such a man was held.

Thus years passed in which the captain worked in arranging supply lines and requisitioning for the army. The warlord never grew accustomed to his crutches though and gave a quiet order that he be kept out of sight. When the third warlord died and his son ascended to the seat of power and the diabolist came to the coronation and demanded not only that the library be maintained but that a librarian be appointed, the captain was deemed appropriately suited for such a useless, unenviable job.

It was some months before he was even given a key to either of the library buildings and then only because several books arrived and the court official who had previously kept the key for such occasions did not ask him to return it, seemingly glad to be finished of the unpleasant charge.

The librarian entered the old, one-story building first. Built like a tomb without windows, the library required the man to carry a lantern as he wove his way through haphazard stacks and boxes and burlap sacks stuffed with books.

All his life the contents of this library had been forbidden to every resident of the city, without exception. Now, as the solitary librarian, he deemed it within his rights to pick up a book at random and open it. By chance it was a medical tome, describing appropriate tending of wounds to the limbs, with the goal of avoiding necrosis that led to amputation. We shall not deny the possibility that the librarian momentarily entertained the thought, “Perhaps this book might have saved my leg.”

In order to stave off boredom as well as to fulfill his duties, the librarian began to catalog and organize not only the disheveled contents of the old library, but of the newer three-story building as well, the contents of which he found in much the same disorganized state.

Because no one in the city or the court had any interest in either the library or the librarian, considering them both a sort of albatross tied around their collective necks by the order of a devil’s oracle, the hours he spent alone in the library brought him no attention whatsoever.

Actually, that was not entirely true. He had one visitor come to him in the library, shortly after he resolved to organize it. The young, white-haired diabolist with her pointed ears and long, burnet robes chose one morning to step from the darkness of the library into the glow of his lantern, startling the librarian who had been intent on his work.

He rose to his feet and opened his mouth as if to speak but did not, for he did not know if communication with this priestess was allowed him.

“Librarian,” said the diabolist in a quiet but steely voice, “I requested your appointment.”

He chose not to thank her for intervening on his behalf.

“I am pleased to observe that you have recognized the task at hand and have begun the work without prompting.”

This time the librarian nodded, ever so slightly. He still feared that any wrong action on his part might be construed as cause to have him summarily sacrificed to the devils below.

“You will occupy this post,” continued the diabolist, “for the remainder of your mortal life.”

A less welcome prophecy could not have been uttered, for the librarian had not yet embraced his new vocation.

“During this time, you will receive three and only three orders from me. One you will receive today, the other two some years in the future. You must obey each of these orders without question.”

The librarian frowned, already fearing that if the commands of the diabolist contravened the wishes of his lord, he would be put in a very tight spot indeed.

“You need not worry,” said the diabolist, correctly reading his expression, despite the poor light of the lantern. “The first order is thus: In your organization of this library, you must place all books, scrolls and any other material related to the three gods that rule this land in the small room located at the back of this building.”

The librarian suppressed the impulse to explain that, as he had searched this building in all its shadows, he had found no such room. He suspected that, when he looked again, he would undoubtedly find it, having apparently missed it in the darkness.

The diabolist added, “You are not explicitly forbidden from reading these texts for you must make at least a cursory inspection to identify the nature of the book. I do however provide a warning, likely unnecessary but stated all the same, that you are not to share any information you find in such books with another living soul. Of course, you being wifeless and childless, there is no one in whom you might confide.”

Although he did not find any relief in the diabolist knowing even such common information about himself, the librarian more carefully kept his emotions hidden.

“Besides,” she continued, “I think you already know that your lord will deal most harshly with the dissemination of knowledge of any sort from this library. You would do well not to tempt him.”

On this point, the librarian certainly needed no message of caution.

As it was described by the diabolist, so it was done. The librarian officially began the arduous task of organizing the library. Those books written in the single language that he understood, he catalogued appropriately. Those books in other languages, he gathered in what he deemed the ‘foreign languages’ aisles, unless they possessed symbols recognizable to him as being overtly associated with the three dark gods. In that case, he placed the books, content unknown, in the small room with the other unholy texts.

October 8, 2015
On the Librarian’s Nephew
As the years passed, the warlord’s librarian forgot his life as a soldier. Perhaps there had lain latent within him the germ of a scholar that was able to grow only in the combined presence of solitude and books. His mornings were spent largely in manual labor, moving books from one floor to another. Owing to his crutches, the stairs were difficult enough to navigate with his hands empty. After several falls, he accepted the fact that he needed to devise a better method for moving the books. His brother purchased the leather and his sister-in-law cut and sewed a satchel that could be slung over his shoulder and was capable of carrying three or four books at a time. The librarian found that if he shifted the books so that they hung behind him, they did not interfere with the crutches as he ascended and descended the flights of stairs. In this way, the hidden shame of this family, that the uncle had been assigned the undignified task of librarian came to the attention of his nephew.

To the horror of his mother and father, the boy of eight expressed a great interest in the occupation of his uncle, something that was only discussed in muffled voices when they thought he was out of earshot. His father, who worked as an accountant in the merchant business of his wife’s family, took the boy aside, saying, “Hassan, one day you will grow up to take my place in this business. Your mother’s father dotes on you. Perhaps, if you prove capable, you may come to run this business with your cousins. We have not taught you to read and to manipulate numbers so that your talents are wasted on that wretched library. Though we hold your uncle dear, we accept that he has been given a job by our lord suitable only for a one-legged man.” As if to redeem his uncle in his son’s eyes, the father added, “You should have seen my brother in his military uniform. Your grandparents wept to see him standing so erect, in a formation of like-minded young men, each garbed in the colors of our country, a picture of courage and loyalty.” He looked at his son. “As the younger brother, I admired him to envy.”

The boy, even at this tender age, knew when to keep his mouth shut. Therefore, he said nothing of his preference for the image of his uncle as a hobbling, one-legged librarian.

It was the custom of the city that the local boys gathered in the afternoons to engage in informal games at the fields which served as parks within the city. Without conscious choice, the librarian’s nephew participated in these games, but he was neither particularly fast, nor agile nor tall, nor strong. When he chose not to appear, his absence went unnoticed.

The first time he visited the library, he simply approached the old building. Finding the door locked, he moved to the entrance to the adjacent three-story building. There the door was closed but unlocked; the uncle did not think to lock it while he worked inside for the prohibition against entering was known to all. Nevertheless, the boy entered. He had intended to call out his presence, saying, “Uncle,” but the word emerged as only a whisper.

Instead the boy stood transfixed by the seemingly countless, orderly rows of tomes that met his gaze. This building had been constructed with windows, but they were shut tight not only by sealed glass but by vertical iron bars as well, allowing some light to enter but also giving the building the unfortunate air of a prison. He closed the door softly behind him and slowly tiptoed through the first aisle, until he stood in the middle and was literally surrounded by thousands of books. The air carried not only the dust of the room and the aroma of the printed page but was pregnant with a forbidden knowledge. Transfixed, the nephew could not summon the courage to extend his hand and pull a book from the shelves. Some part of him knew that to do so was to invite a death sentence. He wondered whether by merely entering the library he had already earned such a judgment.

In an attempt to exonerate himself in his own eyes, he touched nothing but resumed his search for his uncle, ostensibly the purpose of this visit. He took his time, though. He did not call out but wove through the aisles until he arrived at the staircase to the second floor. The wooden steps creaked beneath his modest weight and he imagined that surely they sounded as loud as any klaxon, announcing the presence of an intruder, but his uncle did not rush to the top of the steps.

The nephew continued to climb until he arrived at the second floor landing. A room of shelves again greeted his eyes. Through a narrow corridor, he saw the form of his uncle, seated in a stiff, wooden chair beneath the light of a window, with a book open on his lap. His uncle was motionless, except for the brief gesture required to periodically turn the page. The nephew watched him for some minutes as if making out the details of a still-life painting, noting the care the artist had taken with each brush stroke that captured the light on the page of the book and the stubbled face of his uncle. Never had the boy observed his uncle’s expression so untroubled, so free of the grief of the world. Here, he had forgotten his hard luck and the ignominy of his position. What was revealed to the boy in all its truth was that this library had become an unlikely paradise for his crippled uncle. Eventually, he had no other alternative but to shatter the perfection of this moment. “Uncle,” he said.

The librarian’s eyes widened first in anger then in fear. Slamming the book shut, he scanned the room, searching for any witnesses that might have observed the transgression of his nephew. Grabbing his crutches, he moved rapidly down the aisle and came to an awkward kneeling position before the boy, now paralyzed with fear.

“Hassan, what are you doing here?” he hissed in a whisper. “Does anyone know you are here? Did anyone see you enter?” The mixture of reproach and anxiety in the voice and expression of the uncle proved too much for the nephew, who began to cry, albeit in muted sobs.

“Uncle, I just wanted to see where you worked,” he said.

“Now you have seen what you should not have seen,” said the uncle. “Now you must go before you are found out.”

The uncle hustled the boy down the stairs. He opened the door and scanned the alley making sure it was empty. Finding it so, he grabbed the boy by the arm with one hand and said fiercely, “You must tell no one of this. Not even my brother or your mother. You were never here. Go!” He shoved the boy gruffly into the alley.

The nephew ran off; it appeared to the librarian that the boy safely disappeared without being observed.

The uncle could only hope that the error would end on that day. He could not know, although he might have suspected, that the spell the library cast on the boy would not so easily be dismissed.

October 9, 2015
On the Librarian’s Mark
The boy returned numerous times to the library, but from then on, he found the doors to both libraries locked. On several occasions, the librarian, seated at a window on the second or third floor of the newer building, observed the approach and disappointed departure of his nephew, without rising from his chair.

Having no experience with children, the librarian was forced to rely on his training as an officer to dissuade the boy from further attempted visits. During one visit to his brother’s house, he nonchalantly took the boy aside, ostensibly to walk to the market and retrieve some fresh fruit for his sister-in-law. Along that walk, he simply ordered the boy to cease his visits.

Like many children, the boy did not respond well to being ordered about. “It’s not fair,” he said in reply, “for you to keep it all to yourself.”

“You don’t know what you are talking about,” snapped the uncle.

“Not yet,” said the boy, as a kind of unintended threat. Despite his uncle’s warning, he continued to attempt to gain access to the library in the coming weeks.

Motivated by fear for the safety of his nephew as well as concern for his brother and his wife, should harm come to their son at the uncle’s hands, the librarian sought to put as much distance between himself and his nephew as possible. He stopped his weekly visits to his brother’s house.

Almost two months passed before his brother came to his own humble domicile and said, “You seem to be avoiding us. Come to the house, tonight, for dinner. Hassan has been asking about you.”

His brother refused to take no for an answer. He accompanied the librarian back to his home. There, they found the boy emerging from a bath, being toweled off by his mother, kneeling beside him. While the father found a comfort in this familiar, domestic scene of a mother and her naked son, the uncle notice only an unusual birthmark high on the left thigh of the boy. It was larger than normal and bore the vague shape of an ellipse with a line passing through the minor axis.

The librarian and his brother moved into the other room, where they uncorked a bottle of a locally brewed beverage. In a casual voice, the librarian remarked, “I don’t remember your son having that mark on his leg.”

“Funny you mention it,” said the brother. “It appeared only recently. My wife insisted that we take him to a physician. The doctor found it curious but assured us that it was not malignant. We’re keeping an eye on it...” The conversation quickly turned to other matters. The brother’s business continued to grow as the stability of this country encouraged trade with foreign nations.

The uncle passed a pleasant evening with this family, who risked, out of love, so much in being associated with him. Such kindness was not lost on the librarian.

Well after dark, when the boy had been put to bed, his brother saw him to the door and insisted he resume his weekly meals with them.

The librarian surrendered only a compulsory nod, sufficient to allow him to be released. He did not return home. Instead, he hobbled along dark alleys until he made his way to the library. He entered the old, windowless building and lit the oil lantern waiting within. He locked the door behind him and leaned his crutches against the wall. Undoing his belt, he pulled down his trousers and held the lantern up to his exposed thighs. There on his upper left thigh, the thigh of his whole leg, he found, as he knew he would, a mark, similar in color and shape to that he had seen at the same location on his nephew’s leg. It too had appeared in recent weeks. Having no attentive parents, he had not been made to have it examined by a physician. He had thought little of it, other than as a peculiar spot of aging.

Only now did it occur to him to think of it in another way. Once he did so, he immediately recognized the shape. Dressing himself, he carried the lantern to the little room in back. He hung the lantern from a hook and balanced against one crutch, then searched for a tome he knew to be a syllabary. He flipped through it until he found the symbol that he had been looking for. This symbol, represented in a highly stylized calligraphy was composed of an ellipse and a line piercing at its midpoint, parallel to the smaller axis. However, this image provided more detail. The ellipse was in fact an eye, with pupil, iris and sclera. The line too had additional details; one end of it drew to a sharp point, while the other thickened into an identifiable hilt. It was a clearly a knife.

In this city no one but the librarian could have possibly known the meaning of such a symbol, because the books that kept such secrets were locked securely in this little room. This land was governed by three dark gods, one of whom drew power from an evil in which the terror of the living at the hands of a cruelty to come proved an essential component. In ancient days when barbarism more clearly ruled the land, mortals designated to be sacrificed by diabolists to the devil whom they worshipped were branded with mark of an eye pierced by a dagger weeks, sometimes months, ahead of time then allowed to return to their community. In this way, the terror of their annihilation would not be confined to the few minutes of the ceremony during which the actual act of destruction transpired but was expanded and distended to occupy a non-negligible portion of their lives, amplified by the anxieties of the loved-ones who surrounded them and were powerless to prevent their inevitable doom.

October 12, 2015
On the Failure of a Librarian
Not three days passed before the boy showed up at the library again. This time the librarian was on the lookout for his nephew and rushed as fast as he could on one leg from the second story window to the door. He allowed the boy, clearly startled by the favorable turn of events and somewhat suspicious, to enter.

The librarian did not permit his nephew any level of comfort in the library, forcing him to stand as he was addressed in a severe but quiet tone. “Why do you persist in this folly?” he demanded. “You will only bring a doom upon yourself and great grief to your parents.”

The boy looked up at his uncle and, with an obstinate shake of his head, declared, “I want to know all the secrets in this library.”

“Why?” scoffed his uncle. “So you can end up like me, scorned and avoided by everyone in the city, save my own brother and his family, who show me affection only at risk to themselves?”

The eight-year-old screwed up his face as if such a contorted expression could stop the logical words of his uncle from penetrating his ears.

His uncle then chose a well-rehearsed, harsher approach. “You think nothing of your good fortune, swaddled by a mother whose love for you knows no bounds, cherished by a father who labors on your behalf, doted on by a grandfather who thinks to hand the business to you when you turn of age. Would you throw it all away to satisfy some childish, morbid curiosity?”

These words had an unintended effect on the boy, seeming to steel his resolve. “I would,” he declared defiantly, staring his uncle in the eye. “I have no wish to be a bookkeeper, like my father.” He said this as if he believed the keeping of financial accounts was the lowest calling in the world.

The uncle had, apparently, not practiced the placid arts of the librarian long enough, for such insolence by the boy roused in him an almost forgotten memory of his earlier life as a captain of the guard, who tolerated no such insubordination. Without thinking he struck the boy with an open hand on the side of the face, knocking him to the ground. Although he immediately regretted his action, he could find no words to express this sentiment. Instead, he continued in his previous tone, “Never insult your father in my presence again. You are an ungrateful wretch. When you bring doom upon yourself and your family, you will come to repent your words.”

Fighting back the tears in his eyes or the urge to massage the weal on his cheek, the nephew rose, opened the door, slammed it shut behind him and raced from the library. When he arrived home, he was forced to lie to his mother, claiming that one of the older boys had accidently kicked him during a game at the park.

When the father came home from work and the mother worriedly showed him the boy’s face, the mark had nearly faded. The father said in a tone of paternal pride, “Laying it all on the line for the sake of your team, huh? That’s my boy!” This reaction had been anticipated by neither his son nor wife, who dropped the matter.

Alone in the library, the uncle rubbed the memory of the boy’s cheek from his hand. He knew very well that his actions had done nothing to delay the approaching storm. In fact, he supposed it likely that, as was often the case in military affairs, violence would precipitate more violence. Admitting his error brought him no consolation. The workings of the world progressed largely on the basis of a series of errors. There was no value in recognizing this alone; the virtue came in rising above the fray and willfully refusing to contribute one’s own errors to the unfolding fiasco. In this respect the librarian had failed. He regretted deeply that his own punishment for this failure would pale in comparison to that doled out to a child, to a mother and to a bookkeeper who loved him.

October 13, 2015
On an Unwelcome Patron
The boy’s visits to the alley outside the library ceased. In the following week, the uncle hoped that his ill temper had at least led to a positive outcome. He comforted himself with these thoughts on the morning that he arrived at the old library and heard someone flipping through pages at the back of the building.

He hurried between aisles and followed the sound to the small room where all books relating to the gods of this land had been collected. The librarian knew the outer door had been locked; he couldn’t imagine how his nephew had gotten past it. He was prepared to explode in anger, but, holding out the lantern, he discovered not his nephew but the diabolist, seated in the dark, upon a wooden chair, holding a book before her as if the absence of light offered no obstacle at all to her reading. All emotion drained from him.

He had seen her only once before and that years ago, but there was no mistaking her. She appeared perfectly unchanged, the sharp features of her face those of a specimen preserved in perfect stasis. She looked up, casually from her book. Her eyes reflected the light of the lantern, much like those of a cat. “Lower your light,” she ordered.

The librarian wordlessly obeyed and the room dimmed.

“You have done well,” said the diabolist in a complimentary tone, “with the first task I set before you.” She paused long enough for the librarian to reply if he was so inclined. Seeing that he responded only in silence, she continued, “You are ready for your second task.”

Again, he waited submissively.

“You must train your successor,” said the diabolist. A cruel smile curled across her face. “Although you may not have recognized it, this period of training began recently.”

It was impossible for the librarian to think of anyone but his nephew, though he desperately sought another alternative explanation. He could but assume that she or someone among her kind was responsible for drawing out the mark that now stained both he and his nephew. He had a sickening feeling that she somehow knew that he had struck the boy at his last visit to the library and considered that blow the first step in the boy’s training.”

“No,” said the librarian, though he knew such a word might cost him his life or worse yet his soul.

The diabolist smiled again, this time with an inscrutable meaning. She rose to her feet. She was taller by a few inches than the librarian, who leaned against a crutch. She set the book she held on the table beside her and turned to the librarian. “No?” she said, savoring the syllable. “It has been some time since someone gathered the courage to defy me. Not even your lord dares do so.” She approached the librarian until their faces were separated by inches.

The librarian felt the warm, moisture of her breath on his face.

“Shall we test the limits of your courage?” she asked, almost playfully.

“Spare the boy,” said the librarian. “Take me instead.”

The diabolist appeared for a moment to consider the suggestion, but it seemed only an insincere ploy meant to torment the librarian further, for she replied, “You are already mine.”

As if the negotiations were complete, the diabolist concluded, “You will train him to maintain this library, the three story library beside it and the grand temple library that is yet to be built in the center of the city. He shall succeed you in your position. So it is written.”

“I will not,” insisted the librarian, who had only a brief moment to wonder at the absurd mention of a grand library in the city center.

“Shall I take him then, directly underground with me? Is that the choice you willingly make for him?” This time the diabolist allowed an extended silence to grow, as she waited for the librarian to reply.

The librarian contemplated his choices—condemning the boy now to a death or perhaps worse a life in the caves of the diabolists or taking him under his wing as an apprentice librarian. There seemed no choice but to take the lesser of two evils. “I will train him,” said the librarian in a forced voice.

“Of course you will train him,” agreed the diabolist. “In every version of this story, the role of the librarian boy varies but he must always be taught by someone who cares for him.”

The librarian could not fully understand the words of his unpleasant visitor. He thought instead of a practical obstacle to the boy’s apprenticeship. “The lord of this city does not allow anyone but me in the library.”

The diabolist stepped back and picked up the book she had been reading from the table. She held it with two arms against her chest. “I will leave it in your competent hands to help your lord see the wisdom in changing his policy.”

Her robes brushed the librarian as she stepped past him out of the room. He followed her at a distance to the door. Glancing at the book in her arms, she said, “I will borrow this book. Have your new apprentice create a ledger by which the library can keep track of the books loaned out to patrons.”

The librarian found this request absurd since no one had ever checked out a book before. It was hardly likely that the warlord knowingly would allow such a practice to commence. He did not raise these objections. Instead he pointed at the book in her arms and asked, “Whose name shall I place beside the title of that book in the ledger?” He made a lackluster attempt to keep the irritation from his voice.

The librarian’s practical but nevertheless unexpected question seemed to amuse the diabolist. “Do you ask this priestess her name?”

The librarian did not ask again; he knew immediately his error and would not repeat it.

“Do you know what must follow if I share my name with you?”

The librarian nodded. He had read the unholy texts. He knew of the rites of which the priestess spoke. Only in retrospect, did he clearly perceive the gravity of his error in this question.

Although the diabolist accurately read his expression, she spoke the words aloud. “We must be wed. Our marriage must be consummated and your seed accepted. Then you must offer yourself to me to be devoured.” For a moment it seemed that the diabolist entertained the thought of speaking her name on a whim, though it might wreck all the carefully laid plans of her people.

The librarian did not allow her to succumb to this caprice. He interrupted her thoughts saying, “I shall attribute the withdrawal to ‘the diabolist’.”

Disappointed that her appetite was not be sated on this day, the diabolist scanned the librarian from head to foot and back, then frowned and said in sarcasm, “A good choice from a clever man. It is too bad that you were not clever enough to keep your other leg.” On this note, she left.

The librarian hurried the door to lock it behind her but discovered to his surprise that it had locked of its own accord by means unknown to him.

It took only a few moments of solitude for the immensity and impossibility of the deal he had struck to take hold of him. How could he tell his brother that he must train his son? Mired in despair, he accomplished no work whatsoever on that day or several days to follow.

October 14, 2015
On the Librarian’s Apprentice
A week passed before the nephew arrived in the library. The librarian had been sitting listlessly at the window. He paid no attention to the book before him nor did he maintain the vigilance that would have alerted him to the entry of the boy in the alley. Thus he was alerted to his presence only by his footsteps on the stairs.

He reached for his crutches and rose to his feet, moving half way down the aisle toward the landing of the stair. His nephew emerged but held back, clearly afraid of being struck again. “Uncle,” he said by way of an ambivalent greeting.

“Hassan.” He did not like the echo of his nephew’s name in the halls of this library where dread secrets were kept. He resolved never to use the name within the library again.

“I am here,” answered the boy.

“The door was locked.”

“She gave me a key.”

A shadow fell across the librarian’s face. He needed not to ask from whom the key had come. He had feverishly hoped that the paths of the diabolist and the boy might never cross. In the end, he had known that it fell beyond his means to thwart such a destiny. Still, he had imagined that their meeting would occur far in the future, when the boy had become a man and assumed the mantle of librarian. He was surprised and disconcerted to find that their initial meeting had occurred so soon.

“I am sorry that this task has fallen to you. I did not wish it to be so.”

The boy read the sincerity on his uncle’s face and was moved by it, but not to the extent that he was willing to come within arm’s reach of the librarian that he might console him. Instead he replied, “Do not be sad, Uncle. She promised that great knowledge would be open to me if I but applied myself.”

His words brought no comfort to the librarian. He debated for a minute on how much of the boy’s innocence should be spoiled in order to better prepare him for the horror to come. Little did he realize that such a choice comes many times to all parents as they weigh the benefits of preserving a childlike optimism versus the pragmatic value of opening their children’s eyes to harsh realities, which they have yet to bring into focus on their own. The librarian opted, as many do, to err on the side of light.

In this way, he allowed the natural ebullience of the boy to fill the library. The nephew was simply thrilled to be at the table where he could feast all afternoon with an appetite for knowledge and yet go home confident that he had come no closer to emptying the larder from which these delicacies were drawn.

In accordance with the wishes of the diabolist, the librarian sent the boy to discreetly purchase paper and boards from which they bound on their own and wrapped in the tanned hide of a young goat a ledger to record withdrawals from the library. Lessons in book repair were important to an isolated librarian, who often received books that had not entirely escaped the violence by which they were procured. The nephew, standing close behind the chair, observed his uncle make the first entry, noting the name of the patron.

“The diabolist?” he asked, looking over at his uncle.

“That is what she is called.”

“Because she serves a devil?”

“Yes,” his uncle replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Are all gods evil?”

Surely, no mortal may know the answer to that question.”

“What do you think?” asked the boy.

The librarian was not wholly unprepared to answer this question for, in truth, this was a question that had preoccupied him from time to time during his solitary years in the library. Following his own well-trod train of thought, he asked his nephew, “Are all men evil?”

“Of course not,” said the boy, thinking of his parents.

The librarian smiled. “So, at the very least, there is a precedent for the gods to follow.”

October 15, 2015
On the Training of the Apprentice Librarian
The only equal to the nephew’s unconcealed delight was the uncle’s hidden dread. While the boy spent his afternoons completely enraptured with the books placed before him, the uncle waited for the inevitable discovery of his apprentice to be brought to the attention of the warlord. To be honest, he devoted greater anxiety to the confrontation with his brother and sister-in-law, whose remonstrations would wound him far greater than any punishment of the warlord, or so he imagined.

It was never revealed to the librarian which individual observed the boy entering the library. But no more than two months into the boy’s apprenticeship, a quartet of soldiers followed an officer, who pounded on the door of the new library. The librarian did not need to look out the window to identify the arrivals. He could tell in the thunder of their greeting, the nature of their visit.

Gathering his crutches, he called the alarmed boy to him. They descended the stairs together as the pounding grew more intense and was joined by shouted threats to break down the door. At the base of the stairs, the uncle said to his nephew in a compassionate voice, “Now your love of learning shall be put to the test.”

The boy’s expression remained stoic as he tried to master his fear.

The librarian opened the door.

During the arrest, the soldiers felt it necessary to snatch his crutches from him, causing the librarian to drop to his hands and knee. When one soldier kicked an arm out from under the librarian, he collapsed to the ground. The nephew rushed to help him up, but was shoved aside by another, landing painfully against the wall.

The librarian and his apprentice were not publicly paraded through the city as was often the case for recently arrested criminals. Without widespread knowledge of their crime, there was no need for a public display, which demonstrated that the culprits had been apprehended and that the gears of justice turned. Instead, the pair was escorted to the city gaol, where they were placed in a cell on the lowest basement level, typically reserved for political or other high-value prisoners, who were not permitted contact with common criminals.

The boy had managed to cut the back of his arm during his rough handling. It continued to bleed. The librarian tore a strip of cotton from the hem of his shirt and bound the laceration. The boy winced but did not cry.

The boy was taken first from the cell for interrogation. The uncle did not protest, knowing it would only make things worse. They parted without words, but exchanged a meaningful glance, by which the librarian hoped to assure his nephew that he would suffer with him in spirit if not in body.

Before removing the librarian from his cell, the interrogator reported to the warlord what information the boy had willingly divulged—that he was the nephew of the librarian and had been taken on as his apprentice two months earlier. His key to the library had been given him by the gray-skinned and white-haired woman known as the diabolist, who had promised prosperity should he acquit himself well in his apprenticeship.

None of this information seemed to surprise the warlord, who had, over the years, developed an instinctual if grudging respect for the imperturbable manner in which the librarian had accepted his punitive assignment. He had the boy moved to a guest room in his palace, certainly a more comfortable cell, but the door was no less securely locked.

The uncle was not treated so tenderly. He was beaten per standard routine before interrogation. Bruised and bloodied, he cast his eyes on the floor when the interrogator entered.

“Do not put up a fight, Captain,” said the interrogator, a man of the same age as the librarian, who had known of him during his years in the military. “It will not go well for you.”

“There is no fight in me,” replied the library, not knowing if there was truth in his words.

“You were expressly forbidden by our lord to allow others in the library. Why did you break his stricture?”

The librarian took a deep breath. Keeping his eyes on the ground, he said, “It is not from a resistance to speak that I tell you now my words are meant only for our lord. All ears who hear these words will share a common doom.”

The two escorting soldiers glanced nervously at each other, then at the interrogator. “You dare proclaim a doom on our lord?” asked the interrogator.

“I have issued what warning seems best to me.”

This honest answer gave pause to the interrogator. He left the librarian in the company of the guards and reported to the warlord their captive’s warning. Uneasy in matters that, even peripherally, were related to the gods, the warlord conceded to the librarian’s request. Essentially carried between two guards, the librarian was cast on the polished floor of the warlord’s reception room. Without his crutches he could not stand. The blood on his hands, wiped from his brow, left prints upon the stone. It provided a visual reminder to the warlord of the story passed from his father and his father before him that the floor of this hall had once been stained with footprints of the diabolist marked in the blood of the vanquished.

After dismissing the guards, the warlord examined the beaten man pitilessly. “By whose order did you take an apprentice?”

The librarian craned his neck up to look briefly at the man seated in an elaborate chair above him. “My lord,” he said, “the same one who bid you appoint me librarian bid me take an apprentice.”

“You chose one of your own blood.”

“The choice was not mine,” said the librarian firmly.

The warlord understood to his satisfaction what had transpired. No more words were exchanged at this time between these two men. The librarian was returned to his cell for a span of a week and a half until the next bundle of books arrived and there was need for the librarian again. The warlord dared not cross the god of the diabolist. He had the librarian released and acted as if nothing had ever happened.

As for the boy, it appeared to all in the city, including the librarian and the boy’s parents, that he had simply disappeared. However, again the warlord’s hand was stayed by fear of a devil’s retribution. If the diabolist had ordered the appointment of an apprentice, the warlord would not thwart her wish. However, he had a particular need that the current librarian could not satisfy. As the boundaries of his realm extended, the number of books written in foreign languages increased. If it became important to know the contents of these books, the librarian could not help, knowledgeable as he was in only the writing of his native language. Therefore, the warlord ordered the boy to be taken surreptitiously from the city and placed in the service of the diplomatic corps, situated at the frontiers of his realm. There he further ordered, without disclosing that this training was in preparation for his role as the successor to the current librarian, that the boy be educated in every (he specifically used the word ‘every’) written language they had yet encountered.

So began the second phase of the boy’s apprenticeship, a phase which lasted far longer than the first brief halcyon period with his uncle.

October 16, 2015
On the Fate of the Librarian
The simultaneous nature of the disappearances of his son and his brother inextricably linked them in the minds of the boy’s father, though the boy’s apprenticeship had been kept from him. His pleas to the municipal authorities drew only silence. When the inaction of the local constable became apparent, the father dared petition the court. His request for a meeting with the warlord or even the lowest ranking member of his administrative staff was denied without explanation. The maternal grandfather made it widely known that a substantial reward was offered for the safe return of his grandson. This offer remained standing only a few days before the authorities quietly contacted the old man and convinced him to retract the offer, arguing that it would lead to a sort of vigilante activity that contravened the authority of the official order.

Wild with despair the father took to hunting the streets each night after work, stopping along his route to knock at his brother’s home, looking for any sign of his return.

When the librarian was released from detention after a period of some ten days, he was that night accosted by his brother as he made his rounds. The appearance, though haggard, of one of his missing kin prompted in him a renewal of the hope that the other might soon be found. That the uncle had no message to sustain this hope engendered in the father a wrath, all the more terrible for being misdirected.

“Where is my son?” begged the father, standing outside his brother’s door.

Released from his brother’s embrace, the librarian cast his eyes to the ground. “I do not know.”

“What happened to you both? All of us have been worried to the point of illness.”

“I am forbidden to speak of it,” the librarian said in a leaden tone.

No matter how vehemently his brother argued, the librarian would not yield. On the contrary, the librarian opened himself to the anger and helplessness of his brother, as if doing so might not only provide his brother some relief but also act in some contorted way toward reducing the guilt he himself felt for his role in the boy’s disappearance.

A torrent of questions continued from the father, growing increasing desperate with each refusal to answer by the uncle.

Finally, the uncle whispered, “He is lost.”

The father stood silently as the pronouncement sank in.

“It is best,” continued the librarian, who had never experienced firsthand the insensible and biological love of a parent for a child, “if you have another son.”

Stunned at the suggestion, the father felt an urge to strike his brother, though he did not, for he had never been prone to violence. Instead, he stumbled off and returned home in a daze. Of this encounter, he told his wife only, “My brother has returned. Our son is lost.” At this news, she fell to weeping on her son’s bed and refused to leave his room. The husband accounted this day, as opposed to the day of their son’s disappearance, as the unambiguous start of a precipitous decline in her health.

The couple broke off all relations with the uncle. As this was the only social outlet that had existed for the uncle since his appointment as a librarian, his life soon became that of an utter recluse, a man who could go for days without speaking, and then breaking his silence only with a single word of thanks to the merchant at the market, who offered, out of kindness or pity, a plum to go with the loaf of bread and other meager groceries he had purchased.

October 19, 2015
On the Talent of the Apprentice
Cast from the security of his parent’s home as well as the familiarity of the capital, the librarian’s apprentice found himself ill-equipped to deal with the vagaries of life among the busy staff of an itinerant diplomat, who had not requested the boy. The diplomat’s indifference stemmed not from the boy’s connection with the taboo topic of libraries, for by the warlord’s personal command, none knew of it save the boy himself, who had been forbidden to speak of it. Instead, the diplomat, accustomed to finding the fulcrum by which the maximum leverage could be applied in negotiations, found the inutility of the boy rendered him of no interest. The diplomat ordered a low-ranking staff member to provide the boy with a room and a desk and captured books in foreign tongues. To these he added those accumulated notes that served as rudimentary bilingual, sometimes trilingual, dictionaries.

This treatment suited the eight-year-old boy well for he fully reciprocated the indifference to those whom he deemed the wardens of this distant prison. In a childlike fantasy, he routinely envisioned the triumphant return of a scholar to the city, heralded by many as a paragon of knowledge and wisdom, followed quickly by a joyful reunion with his parents.

The combination of the boy’s natural talents for academic studies, the same inclination that had led him to the library in the first place, and the continuous schedule of study, due in no small part to the lack of alternative, age-appropriate activities in the camps of the diplomat, resulted in the boy’s extraordinarily rapid fluency in half a dozen languages. To be honest the local tongues were all connected to the same root language; many could scarcely be called more than dialects of each other so many characteristics did they share. Consequently, with each additional language, the entirety of the puzzle, in which a complete picture of the relationship between all of the tongues of the region, came into focus. From this point forward, the learning of each subsequent language became increasingly facile, almost trivial. The boy was surprised to discover that he appeared to be the only one aware of these linguistic relationships.

By the time he was ten, the boy was fluent in over a dozen, closely related languages and had begun work on a practically oriented master text to allow the less able members of the diplomat’s staff to move from language to another.

Such talent could not be hidden in a small camp. Though the diplomat saw no particular need to congratulate the boy, he soon recognized the boy’s usefulness. Thus his gratitude, as such, took the form of relying on the boy as his personal interpreter, when such occasions arose.

In this service, many secrets of diplomacy passed through the interpreter’s lips. For a boy of such tender years, the most shocking lesson of diplomacy was its reliance on naked brutality. The omnipresent threat of military conquest provided the key strength in the diplomat’s arsenal of tools.

The boy observed the poor attempts to hide the great disappointment that passed across the faces of those ambassadors sent to treaty with the warlord’s diplomat, for they found in his words not the enlightenment they had hoped for, by which the great empire had expanded. Instead, they found the rule of might, a law with which they were all too familiar.

If the interpreter imagined that a more mutually satisfactory deal might have been struck had the diplomat opted for terms based on synergistic trade and cultural exchange, he certainly did not share his thoughts with anyone. He had stood in the presence of their warlord. He knew very well the manner of their king, his strengths and his limitations. In his case, the term ‘warlord’ was aptly deserved.

October 20, 2015
On the Lending of the Apprentice Librarian
The attention of the diplomat was drawn to a new kind of foreigner, one who had not been raised as a native on neighboring lands but had, it was claimed, arrived from the other side of the world in flying machines. These parties usually numbered no more than a dozen persons, often including women in some roles. The foreigners were marked not only by their pale complexion and their unusual clothing and customs, but by the strange staccato patterns of their speech, which irritated the ear if one was forced to listen to it overly long.

Naturally, the diplomat was interested in the goals of these foreigners. Their numbers were, currently, too small for conquest, but they brought no goods with them and could not be identified as merchants. It fell to the diplomat to classify them in terms to which his lord could relate. Prior to any meeting, while they were still quite distant, the diplomat chose to deprive himself of the boy’s undeniable skills at translation and sent him to learn their tongue.

The apprentice librarian arrived at the camp of the foreigners, accompanied only by a guard stationed in the service of the diplomat. The foreign party occupied half of an inn and was using a portion of the main hall as a meeting place. It was rumored that they paid their rent in gold.

When the boy was brought before them, the foreign guards mistook him for a beggar and attempted to shoo him off. Several locals, who had fallen into the role of guides and who had picked up a smidgeon of the foreigners’ tongue, hastily explained that this boy was an emissary of a powerful warlord. They should do well to hear him out for these lands might soon fall under the sway of his lord.

Thus the boy was brought before the leader of the foreigners, a man with a bizarrely shaped white moustache and flat-topped hat, who ordered their own linguist to be summoned. There the apprentice librarian was able, through these makeshift interpreters, to present his application as a pupil under the foreigners’ tutelage. The boy withdrew from his back one of his notebooks and showed that he was in the midst of creating a common dictionary for more than a dozen local languages. Although much of the content was beyond the linguist’s understanding, the nature of the tome was not. He immediately demanded accommodations for the boy, at which point the diplomat’s guard abandoned him to his fate.

Although the language of these foreigners and that of the warlord shared no discernible common roots, the boy had developed an internal logic for identifying word patterns and structures. In a week, he had astounded the foreigners with his aptitude, who called him ‘the savant’ in their own language. In one month, he communicated with them without difficulty, peppering his speech with questions seeking new, more nuanced vocabulary by which he could express himself. At the end of six months, when the diplomat arrived, he was virtually fluent in their tongue and had begun to probe them for information regarding other languages from the far side of the world, of which, they told him, there were many.

In addition to their language, the apprentice librarian also studied their culture. He learned that their principle of equality extended not only to women but ostensibly to non-citizens as well. Their society was free of slavery and to some extent poverty. They possessed medicine of a different sort than the natural remedies of the librarian’s people. The foreigners claimed that these medicines were vastly superior and had eradicated many of the common diseases that plagued his lands. When the apprentice librarian inquired as to whether they had also eliminated unhappiness, he drew from them bouts of laughter, before they regretfully assured him that such was not the case. When the apprentice librarian questioned them regarding the nature of their gods, he was informed that they had abandoned their gods, or at least parted ways on mutually agreeable terms. They had little else to say on theological matters and certainly they did not provide a satisfactory answer to librarian’s long standing question as to whether their gods were good or evil, receiving only the ambiguous reply, “It depends upon who you ask.” However, the most important information, at least from the point of view of the librarian, was that in their homeland these foreign people valued knowledge; libraries with free, public access were commonplace, found in every town and hamlet, no matter how modest in size.

The diplomat was pleased with the boy’s mastery of the language so antagonizing to the ear. The diplomat however showed no interest when the librarian sought to explain in some depth the culture of these visitors. Instead, the ambassador put him back in service as an interpreter. He wanted to know the purpose for the foreigners’ incursion (the librarian translated it as visit) into these lands.

The foreigners sensed the diplomat’s belligerence, understanding that his role was that of a veneer over a machine of war that followed him. They assured him that their intentions were peaceful. They came only as ambassadors themselves to explore opportunities for mutual gain.

At mention of mutual gain, the ambassador pointed to the side arms holstered at the hips of the guards standing near the door of the inn’s lobby. “We should like some of those,” said the ambassador, “as a gesture of good will.” The librarian dutifully translated this request, though the foreigners, who had come to know the boy during his time with them, could read the dismay in his expression. Quickly, they too understood the nature of this one who called himself a diplomat. Although they attempted ardently to proclaim the merits of their medicine over those of their firearms, they failed to shift the interest of the diplomat from his original fixation.

In the evening following this initial encounter, the foreign linguist and the apprentice librarian had a moment alone.

The linguist, as with all of the foreigners, had been struck by the stark difference between the diplomat and the interpreter who served him. “Which of the two, you or the ambassador,” asked the linguist, “is more representative of your people?”

The apprentice librarian opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it, not because he did not know the appropriate words in the foreign tongue to communicate his thoughts. Rather, he hesitated because he keenly felt his ostracism from his community, despite the fact that his appointment as a librarian had never been publicly announced. His reticence to speak stemmed from his unwillingness to proclaim the truth and disappoint these strange, pale folk who seemed to his naïve eyes champions of virtue.

October 21, 2015
On the Retrieval of the Apprentice Librarian
The diplomat gave no thought to taking the apprentice librarian with his entourage after he left the inn that served for all intents and purposes as the foreign embassy. The apprentice librarian, for his part, had quite a different reaction, for he had found comfort in the progressive company of these foreigners. To have this companionship sundered so thoughtlessly was cause for grievous resentment, for which he had, of course, no outlet.

It appeared that the foreign linguist shared this thought, for on the day of the diplomat’s departure, the linguist again took the interpreter aside and made a present of a book to him. “I requested this book specifically for you,” he said, resting one hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You can be sure it raised some eyebrows at home.”

The librarian took the book and examined it. It was a holy book, bound in leather, lettered in gilt, with a maroon ribbon extending from the spine that could be used as a page marker. The apprentice tucked the book away, safely hidden. He felt confident that possession of such a book would be construed as a capital crime. Of course he did not spoil the good will of the linguist by sharing this information with him. Instead, he thanked his mentor formally and left. Though like in spirit, these two were not destined to meet again.

Three years passed during which the librarian accompanied the diplomat through the borders of the expanding frontiers, dictating terms of surrender and setting levels of annual tribute. So adept did he become at learning dialects, that he developed a reputation for having an almost magical mastery of all languages. Where the foreigner’s had called him ‘the savant’, the neighboring local tribes named him ‘the tongue’.

It proved a great annoyance to the diplomat to arrive at a camp for treaty and find that the opposing warlord wanted first to observe the abilities of his interpreter before engaging in business with the diplomat himself. The diplomat soon grew exasperated with being upstaged in this way. Although he knew it would cause him no small inconvenience, he waited for the opportunity to get rid of the interpreter.

The apprentice librarian certainly was aware of the ire of his superior. He did nothing on his own accord to spread his reputation, but when he was asked in the court of other warlords to speak a word in twenty tongues, he readily obliged and, over time, developed a rather theatrical delivery.

As a side note, during this time the librarian surreptitiously read the holy book he had been given. If anything, it contributed greater confusion to his search for a god of good. The god in the foreign holy book was depicted at times as wrathful, a mighty god set on vengeance against those who wronged his chosen people. In other parts of the book, the god was described as a merciful god, whose capacity for unconditional forgiveness knew no bounds. This inconsistency was utterly unsatisfying to the librarian. “No wonder they abandoned this god,” he said to himself. “He is more fickle is his judgment than a woman.”

The opportunity to dismiss the librarian arose when a group of foreigners, distinct from the party with whom the apprentice had studied, arrived at the capital. Although they had a copy of the book of translations that had originated with the librarian, their pronunciation of the local language was so atrocious that the warlord could not bear to hear them speak it in his presence.

‘The tongue’ was sent for. Although the warlord harbored no desire to see the librarian’s apprentice again, he was a practical man and allowed the pragmatic need to overweigh his misgivings. Besides, the warlord had heard of the librarian’s wondrous gift for languages and wanted to see if the rumors were well-founded. Thus, nearing his fourteenth birthday, after an exodus from the capital nearly six years in length, the librarian’s apprentice returned, though his entrance into the city was not heralded by trumpets as he had once imagined in dreams of infantile omnipotence. On the contrary, his homecoming proved an occasion for sorrow, for he soon learned that, in his absence, his mother, fearing him lost, had died of grief.

October 22, 2015
On a Translation of the Apprentice Librarian
Because the warlord did not desire to hear the beauty of his native tongue ravaged by the grotesque mispronunciations of the foreigners, it fell to the apprentice librarian, during such exchanges, to translate the warlord’s words into the language of the foreigners, who replied to the interpreter in kind.

This party of foreigners seemed less interested in cultural exchange than those with whom the apprentice librarian was familiar and much more determined to establish favorable mercantile arrangements. They were not, however, interested in saffron or opium. They possessed the insolence to bring highly detailed maps of the warlord’s country into his own stateroom.

“Where did you get these maps?” the warlord demanded, when he observed that they were far superior to any that his own cartographers had generated. He particularly did not appreciate the feeling that these highly realistic maps, created by others who had no love for the land, engendered in him, transforming the amorphous and transient nature of his country into a static and highly resolved certainty. “This is a kind of abomination,” he said to the interpreter.

“My lord requests a copy of this map,” translated the apprentice librarian.

The foreigners wisely offered that same map on the spot, which placated the warlord.

“Why are you interested in these wastelands?” demanded the warlord, when the foreigners kept pointing at blank expanses of barren steppe.

“Preliminary satellite elemental analysis indicates that these wastelands possess unprecedented concentrations of rare minerals, precious to us,” said the leader of the expedition, a man, who carried himself in a manner more akin to a mercenary than a merchant. Garbed in fatigues, he was heavily bearded and wore dark sunglasses, even in the presence of the warlord.

“Gold?” asked the warlord, not wanting to be taken advantage of.

“Neither gold, nor silver, nor platinum, nor aluminum,” assured the mercenary, who knew that the people had not learned the secret of extracting aluminum from bauxite ores and still considered it a precious metal.

“Rubies?” asked the warlord.

“No precious gems of any kind,” the mercenary assured him.

“Then what?”

“Neodymium and dysprosium,” said the mercenary with a certain flair, as if these were words of magic.

When the warlord did not want to reveal his ignorance, he simply glared at the interpreter, as he did now, prompting the intermediary to step forward. “Although my lord is no less versed in the arts of neodymium and dysprosium than in any other subject, this ignorant translator knows little of such matters. In order for me to better fulfill my meager role in this exchange, I request that you explain to me what these things are and to what end they will be put.”

Another member, the scientist, a woman garbed in the pants and boots more suited to a man, stepped forward and described the uses of these lanthanides in technical applications such as high performance magnetic devices, mechanical resonators and dosimeters. Most of these words had no analogue in the warlord’s language.

The apprentice librarian attempted to translate these terms for the warlord, who quickly lost interest. “What can you offer in exchange for these ores?” he asked.

It turned out that the mercenary had anticipated this question and had brought a salesman’s sample of the goods that could be had if his terms were accepted. He led the warlord out to the courtyard before the palace where a relatively ancient howitzer had been hauled by a team of four mules. Behind that, a second wagon drawn by a brace of mules bore the ordnance beneath a canvas tarp.

The warlord immediately demanded a demonstration. When told that such a device could not be safely operated in the city, the warlord there and then ordered that a huge procession of officials and public citizens alike be assembled. The ragtag but festive parade followed the howitzer and the royal carriage to the limits of the city where the weapon was fired with great fanfare into the surrounding wasteland.

If the thunderous report and the belch of sour smoke from the howitzer did not sufficiently impress the warlord and his subjects, the corresponding explosion of dirt and the lingering cloud of dust in the distance certainly did the trick. Cheers arose from the assembled throng. This demonstration of their lord’s might proved a source of no small exhilaration.

“How many?” the warlord asked, pointing to the wagon with the rounds of ammunition.

“Nine in this wagon,” said the mercenary, “but there are plenty more where these came from.”

“How much neodymium is in this?” he asked, again pointing to the armament.

“None,” assured the mercenary.

“It’s too bad,” said the warlord, “that the ores you seek are located in a no-man’s land.” By this statement, he meant to suggest that he accepted the offer and was already thinking of ways to accommodate his new partners in trade.

“On the contrary,” said the mercenary, “it’s just as well that we work far from your cities. The extraction of these minerals can stir up quite a mess.”

The apprentice librarian translated these last words, wondering as he did so what effect they would have on his lord. He was not altogether surprised that his words seemed not to register at all with the warlord, whose gaze remained fixed on the cloud of dust slowly dissipating on the horizon.

October 23, 2015
On the Reunion of the Librarian and his Apprentice
The librarian’s apprentice was permitted to return home. He had already been alerted by ministers at the court of the death of his mother as well as the date of the funeral some years earlier. He first approached the familiar structure in the evening hours, when the sun had already begun to set and the interior of the house was lit by the flicker of an oil lamp.

Standing at the door, he became increasingly indecisive as to whether he ought to knock or simply enter. In the end, he searched within himself and found the childhood memories of this building engendered no nostalgic fondness for it. He was indeed a stranger now. He knocked as a stranger would knock, with a tentative rap, for fear of alarming the occupant of the home.

The reunion between father and son, between widower and orphan, proceeded in an awkward manner. It took the father some time to recognize the son, although he too had been warned that the prodigal son, long thought dead, had returned to the court of the warlord. It goes beyond the meager skills of this narrator to describe the multitudinous and conflicting thoughts—expired hope, dull anguish and buried resentment—that filled both father and son. To be sure, they did not embrace. However, one offhand remark made a deep impression on the apprentice librarian and must be recorded here to better understand the events that followed.

They were seated across the dining table from each other, where they had last sat six years earlier in the company of the mother. Her absence was conspicuous, her silence almost deafening. The father said, perhaps not entirely without accusation, “I had heard that ‘the tongue’ had returned to the capital.”

Whenever he had heard this appellation used to describe him, the apprentice librarian had always taken some secret pleasure in it. There was an honest truth to it; he genuinely excelled at this particular skill. However, when he heard the moniker voiced by his father in his childhood home, ruined by tragedy, he heard a very different intonation in the phrase, as if ‘the tongue’ were the name of an elaborate, sacrificial dagger that had been used to cut the heart from his mother. Never again did the apprentice librarian derive any pleasure from hearing this moniker used. On the contrary, it invariably returned him, if only for a moment, to the company of his father’s desolation.

Staying in his father’s house under such circumstances was out of the question. It was dark by the time he knocked on the door of his uncle’s much more humble home.

“Who is it?” barked a familiar voice without opening the door.

“It is your apprentice,” said the nephew. This moniker, damned though it was, brought a smile to his lips for it was a nickname that could be shared with only his uncle.

The one-legged librarian opened the door and, despite his crutches, leaned forward and gave the boy the embrace he had so longed to receive from his father. He held the lanky youth, much taller now than the eight-year-old who had left but still not grown to his full height, for a full minute. This middle-aged man who had feared that he might die without ever seeing family again would not allow this moment to disappear too quickly.

“I’ve come to stay with you,” said the nephew.

The uncle was about to ask, “Have you seen your father?”, but detected some hint of the answer in the shadows of his nephew’s face, which prompted him to swallow the question. “Of course,” he said, backing off and stepping to the side, allowing his nephew to enter.

On the following morning, the librarian and his apprentice walked to work together, enjoying a solidarity that neither had known for years nor had any reason to expect to continue indefinitely.

“Did you bring me any books?” asked the uncle.

“Oh, I have a good one,” promised the nephew, thinking of the foreigner’s holy book, which he dared not share until they were safe within the confines of the library.

October 25, 2015
On the Studies of the Apprentice Librarian
The apprentice librarian was again assigned to the two libraries situated at the rear of the warlord’s compound. However, it was understood that he was at the beck and call of the warlord. As much as the warlord did not want to see either librarian (for they represented to him the indisputable power that devils held over him), he could not entirely dispel the swell of pride that it was he who could show off in his court a man, nay not yet a man, possessing such magnificent linguistic skills. It never occurred to the warlord, occupied as he was with matters of state, that the devils may have endowed their tool with this indispensable talent precisely to insinuate into a court one of their own agents. Of course, the apprentice librarian certainly did not think of himself as an agent of the diabolist or of the higher power whom she served. On the contrary, he believed that his skills at language had been achieved through a rather mundane combination of hard work, natural proclivity and lack of alternative.

Restrained by ambivalence, the warlord summoned the apprentice librarian only infrequently. As a result, the apprentice librarian spent most of his days undisturbed in the one or the other library with his uncle. Of particular interest to the apprentice were the unholy texts stored in the small room in the back. Those written in his native tongue, he had already had the opportunity to study after his initial appointment as apprentice librarian. However, those tomes written in other languages had lain beyond his reach. Moreover, his uncle, who knew only two languages—the one he spoke and the language of war—had never examined these books. As such there remained an air of novelty in them. Although his uncle attempted to discourage him, saying, “You are not going to start with those books, are you?”, he could restrain his own curiosity. “What does it say?” he asked his nephew, after scarcely an hour had passed over the first book.

“It’s curious” said the nephew, “we all know of the three gods—a demon of insentient, voracious appetite, a sadistic devil that revels in the misfortune of others, and the other, ambiguous god that cannot distinguish good from evil.”

The uncle nodded, waiting for darker secrets than this common knowledge.

“It is also written here,” said the nephew, pointing to a paragraph and drawing his uncle’s attention to the unfamiliar words, “that darkness was distributed among these three gods. To the demon was given shadows from daylight, to the devil subterranean darkness and to the other the dark of moonless nights.”

This too proved information with which the uncle was already familiar for he had found such descriptions in the unholy books written in the language he understood. He waited for his nephew to continue.

“It is noted hear that each cult has a leader and it gives a description of each.” The nephew looked up at his uncle. “Have you read of their descriptions?”

“Our local books tell only of the diabolist,” answered the uncle, who knew the description to be true since he had more than once encountered the present-day occupant of that role. He pictured briefly her gray skin, long white hair of spider webs, eyes sensitive to light and deformed ears.

“The other two are here as well,” said the apprentice. “It says the cult of the demon is led by a demoniac, a woman possessed by her god. Her skin is pallid; her eyes show red when the demon is inside her.”

The uncle briefly considered that it was unwise for a boy not yet fourteen to expose himself to such secrets, but it was also true that the librarian considered them both already damned. He said nothing and allowed his nephew to continue.

“The high priestess of the last cult has a two-word title but the second word I am not familiar with,” said the nephew. “They call her the ‘soul-something’.” With his extensive knowledge of the common roots between the many dialects of these lands, the nephew considered the unknown word for a while, then said to his uncle,

“It’s probably something like ‘eater’ or ‘drinker’, I’m not sure.”

“Soul-drinker,” thought the uncle to himself. It sounded sufficiently unpleasant.

“No, I don’t think so,” said the nephew, after a few moment’s additional thought. “There’s no sense of internalization. This word means something different-maybe ‘chewer’ or ‘masticator’.” The boy was hunched over the book. He added, “Her skin cannot be exposed to the sun and her eyes are the yellow of a cat. She bears an evil without explanation.”

“Soul-masticator,” said the uncle aloud. Frowning, he turned and allowed his nephew to resume his studies. He left the old library and entered the other building, where he surrounded himself by books that he had grown, in his solitude, to consider his old friends. Here, he felt almost safely removed from the threatening words of books that lurked in the darkness of that room, that had through the reading and now speaking of unholy secrets become an unwelcome shrine.

October 26, 2015
On the Foreigners’ Excursion
The party of foreigners intended to assemble a force of local contractors to aid them in their survey of that particular region of the wastelands that so preoccupied them. These men would carry equipment, wield shovels and mattocks, and tend to the mules. The mercenary who led the expedition was disappointed to discover that laborers were not inclined, for even double the standard day-wages, to venture into the wastelands. The source of the general refusal was not made apparent to the foreigners, though the fact that it was linked to the wastelands was inarguable, for as soon as the location of the work was mentioned, the potential workers immediately lost interest.

As a consequence, a much smaller than anticipated group, composed exclusively of the eleven foreigners who had made the trip to the capital, set out with a mule-train into the wasteland. Because there were no locals in their number, the translation services of the apprentice librarian were not required; he was left in his libraries. This party proceeded warily for only a fool would heedlessly venture into places the locals dared not go. But they were also determined to carry out the task to which they had been assigned, based in equal parts on their resilient if not stubborn characters and the lucrative contract that promised to reward them handsomely at the task’s completion. These were men, and one woman among them, accustomed to self-imposed hardship. In fact, many of them thrived in such an environment for they had already demonstrated in a variety of ways, both to themselves and legal authorities, that they were poorly suited to the civilized life of cities.

Although the mercenary commanded the men, it was the woman, earlier misidentified as a scientist, who possessed the only knowledge of mineralogy and geology in the group. Therefore, it fell to her eyes to scour the earth and seek the pattern of clays left in dry riverbeds, in which the elusive elements would be found.

Of this woman, more must be said. We have encountered her previously, having lunch with the insurance clerk and the crow maiden, daughter of Hong Samud. She was named then Execrabilia and by that same name, this company too knew her. She was not a proper employee of the Sigil Insurance Company. Rather, like her ten companions, she was an independent contractor, hired for specific jobs. Her particular expertise lay in the role of prospector—one who has learned the ways of stone, practical and academic, and its habits for the distribution of ores and minerals alike. Unlike her companions, whom the company did not want formally on their payroll for fear of their unpredictability, the prospector had been offered a permanent position. The company routinely was asked to insure operations aimed at the extraction of raw materials, though never in so remote and poorly understood location as her present surroundings. That the prospector declined the security of a stable position revealed that she had more in common with her unsettled companions than she chose to express.

It is worthwhile to describe the prospector again for she appears differently, at least in some respects, crouched on the steppes, the wind whipping her black hair across her face, than she did in the corner booth of the restaurant in Sigil. Spade in hand, studying stone, the woman yet did not commit the totality of her focus on the rocks before her; she retained some portion of her mental faculties in constant vigilance. She had lived too long among unsavory pirates and bandits to abandon her guard. The mercenary held these men in line, not out of a respect for the dignity of the lone female in their number, but rather out of the stark recognition that she alone possessed the knowledge that would allow them to be paid in full. The fact that there was no second geologist on the team had been an explicit requirement of the prospector, before she accepted the job, based exclusively on the inflammatory nature of the personal dynamics, which she had the misfortune to witness in previous ventures, among men of this kind.

She was dressed in much the same manner as the rest of the company—work clothes already covered in the dust picked up by the unceasing wind. Her lips were chapped; her skin dry. Lean, like all these men, she shared the same parsimonious rations that would maximize their time in the wild before they returned to the capital to replenish supplies. As for the minor, skeletal oddity along the hairline of her forehead as noted earlier, such a blemish was not worth mentioning among her present company, who bore, without exception, signs of their profession—scars, missing teeth, a blind eye and tattoos from head to toe. Of that sentimental portion of the prospector’s character that had prompted her to make the gift of a sleeping bag and pillow to the crow girl who slept in the library, not a hint was to be found on these steppes.

Guided by the coarse-grained information from the satellite imagery, the prospector led the men into the wasteland as she worked to zero in on the most promising veins in the earth. When they discovered the first entrance into the network of caves, identified as gray clouds in the density imaging, they were grateful to be out of the biting wind-borne grains of sand. Here, below ground, by the light of electric lanterns, it proved far easier to discern where the clay had been deposited. For both reasons, they thought these caves a boon. They did not understand, at that time, that these same caves were the reason that the local laborers had refused to accompany them for any price.

October 27, 2015
On the Filial Duties of the Apprentice Librarian
The studies, both of occult and historical subjects, of the apprentice librarian continued. As he spent long, uneventful days in the library, he continued to be visited by the image of his father sitting alone in the evening by light of the oil lamp. Thus, when his uncle said to him a propos of nothing in particular, “You should visit your father again,” the nephew did not find the suggestion entirely onerous.

Nevertheless, he replied, “We had nothing to say to each other.”

“You must visit your mother’s grave. He should be the one to take you.”

Thus the son arrived at his father’s house in the evening only to discover his father was not at home. Inquiring at the neighbor’s home, he was told by a familiar face that chose to act as if she did not recognize him, that the father often came home from work at a later hour. The son chose to wait outside the door, finding a seat on the lid of a tall, beaten, metal can, long used for storing beans and other dry goods.

As he waited for his father, the sun began to set. The street of his childhood came to life as fathers returned home and were welcomed by their wives, before they were sent to retrieve their children from the local playground. Soon, the street was filled with the high-pitched, boisterous conversation of the young. In the combination of shadows and children’s voices, the thoughts of the apprentice librarian turned to his reading from earlier in the day. He had discovered it seemed to him something of importance regarding the diabolist, but he had kept this information from his uncle. He could sense the uneasiness of the elder librarian regarding the younger’s morbid interest in the unholy texts of the library. It seemed wise to avoid needlessly alarming him, though the wisdom of this choice was undercut by his general belief that he should be transparent in all things with his uncle. Between the two of them, they had a difficult road to travel, without the complications of deceiving each other.

The apprentice knew from the general literature of the subject that the naming of a devil granted one power over it. While he had certainly not discovered the name of the devil that ruled subterranean darkness, he had found an obscure mention of the hereditary name assigned to its chief priestess, the diabolist. The apprentice librarian wondered if knowing her name might similarly grant him the potential to extricate himself from the grasp of this woman who had so completely determined his fate.

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of his father, who had spotted his son as he entered the street and had thus had the opportunity to compose himself before speaking. “I did not expect to find you waiting for me. Have you come to join me for dinner?”

The son nodded deferentially to his father. “If you wish for my company, I will join you.”

There was no civil possibility for refusal. Father and son entered the home. The father had purchased a fish and a bag of pears on the way home. He cleaned and filleted the fish while the son set the fire burning. Over dinner, there was scant conversation; the son explained the purpose of his visit.

Because nocturnal visits to a cemetery were deemed unseemly, they agreed to go early in the morning in two days’ time. “Tomorrow,” said the father, “I will let them know that I will be late on the following day. Can you make this time?”

“I will be here, if I am able,” said the son. “I do not entirely control my availability. If I am not here at the appointed time, leave for work.” He said no more and the father did not inquire further.

As it turned out, the warlord did not summon the apprentice librarian on that morning. As such, the father and son went to visit the cemetery outside town where their wife and mother was buried. The cemetery itself spread radially across a flat expanse of dirt centered around a rough, vaguely rectangular stone, covered in a coat of the same dust that layered all of the headstones. The grave markers were composed of rough rocks themselves, shaped only by natural forces; ostentatious displays were forbidden. Neither names nor dates were chiseled in the stones. The widower had had to memorize the contours of the stone he carried to the cemetery and laid at his wife’s head in order to later find her resting place. The collection of graves was arranged lacking any order but the geometric principle of random close-packing. Thus the two visitors wound a circuitous path through the stones.

Arriving at a stone that the father seemed to confirm belonged to his wife only by stopping before it, the son came to a rest beside him. They stood in silence. No prayers were uttered for this was a land ruled by dark gods and the only prayer one might make for a departed loved one was that she had escaped such service in the afterlife.

“She died,” said the father, “during the first spring after we lost you.”

The unsteady tone of the words prompted the son to turn in order to observe if silent tears had emerged upon his father’s face. He found it dry and dusty like everything else in this estate of the dead.

“She waited until spring for you to return,” said the father. “Like the bloom of a rose, she said.”

“I am sorry,” said the son, “that I could not return. Had I the means, I would never have left.”

If the father took any comfort in these words, he did not show it. “I often wondered, if you were still alive, what you were doing on the day she died and on the day I brought her body to be buried in this place.”

The son thought back to his first spring in the company of the diplomat.

“Were you happy?” asked the father. “Were you laughing?”

The son could not guess his father’s intention. He did not understand even the most basic sense of whether his words were intended to serve as a rebuke or rather to voice a hope that his son had, somehow, managed to escape the tragedy. Without this understanding, the son did not know how to reply. He therefore relied on the truth, though he feared it was not what his father desired. “No,” he assured his father, “I did not laugh that spring, nor any other since.”

October 28, 2015
On the Unlucky Assignment of the Apprentice Librarian
As the prospector studied the geology of the caves, referring often to a bundle of technical monographs carried in the pack of one of the accompanying guards, the rest of the party loitered about, sharing stories of past misadventures, at first involving some element of spelunking then diverging into any tale that could pass the time in the surrounding darkness.

When one of the men wandered off down a side passage to relieve himself, he soon returned in a hurry, shouting to the others, “Hey, I think there’s people living in these caves.”

Thus the prospector’s mineralogical analyses were put on hold as everyone examined the caves for signs of occupation. Once they had focused their attention on this task, they discovered that there was obvious and abundant evidence of human activity, which had only escaped their attention due to the subterranean gloom. In particular, there were worn paths, where the scattered rocks had clearly been pushed to the side, leading from the entrance farther into the caves than the foreigners dared venture. There was also clear evidence of crude stone work where narrow passages had been widened to more easily accommodate travel. However, what put the expedition most on edge was the discovery of a pair of glyphs painted on the walls of the cave, flanking an opening that descended deeper into the earth. Although none could read the characters beneath the central symbol, there was no mistaking the purpose of the glyph, a wide eye, pierced from above by a spear with its point emerging at the bottom. It was clearly a warning, a territorial marker.

A debate took place among the foreigners at that point. One among them claimed to have seen such a symbol among pygmy cannibals from a job on another continent. This assertion was largely greeted with skepticism, based on geographical arguments, although there followed an unnecessarily grisly debate as to whether the paint, in which the glyphs had been rendered, was in fact blood. The conversation turned then in a direction from which a general consensus arose that the party was certainly equipped to defend themselves in the event of an ambush by primitive, spear-wielding cavemen. This led to a lively story from one of the men, who had witnessed a former comrade in arms as he was impaled upon a spear. The story concluded with the admonition, “You got to watch out for spears. Pointed the wrong way, they’ll skewer you sure enough.”

It fell to the prospector to point out that a massacre of the residents of these caves, even without losses on their own part, would hardly facilitate the necessary relations between company and local government required to allow the intended extraction of minerals to proceed. At the very least, it would significantly increase the compensation demanded by the warlord. The home office would not be pleased; the men would not receive their promised bonuses. Violence was therefore to be avoided. This train of logic, while unpopular, was eventually agreed to accurately predict the company’s reaction. A bout of colorful cursing ensued among the men.

“We need to go back and get a translator,” the prospector said to the lead mercenary, who after some additional cursing reluctantly agreed.

“Why didn’t they tell us there were people living here?” the mercenary demanded repeatedly, irritated that this unexpected development would complicate their mission. In truth, the mercenary was only moderately aggravated; in his experience, almost nothing ever went entirely according to plan. Thus, they curtailed their investigation of the caves and returned prematurely to the capital.

A curious silence greeted the party when they informed a staff member of the warlord’s court of their findings. They were made to wait two days before the warlord summoned them to an audience. At that meeting, the foreigners again were the subject of the interpretive services of the apprentice librarian. To the young man’s surprise, the warlord generously made an offer for his prized translator to accompany the foreigners back to the caves to render what service he could.

The foreigners were of course pleased. The warlord too was pleased, knowing full well that such caves could be occupied only by the cult of the diabolist. Although the noise of the howitzer pleased him, the foreigners struck him as unbearably odious; they possessed no sense of decorum. Each time he had occasion to view them, his dislike for them grew. He had come, over the past days of consultation with his advisors, to the resolution that he would be willing to forego additional armaments if the people of the diabolist would do him the favor of eliminating from his realm the presence of the foreign party entirely. This much would prevent rival warlords from acquiring howitzers of their own, a primary concern of the court. That he might also get rid of one of his unwanted librarians, no matter that it be the talented one, he deemed an unexpected benefit.

Of course, the apprentice librarian, who knew substantially more of the denizens of these caves than did the warlord, was of an entirely different opinion regarding his assignment as a liaison to this ill-fated party.

October 29, 2015
On the Apprentice Librarian’s Departure
Seeking a departure that mimicked his unexplained disappearance as a child, the apprentice librarian returned quickly to his uncle’s house, while the librarian was still at work, to pack. In a matter of minutes he was back on the street, headed to the compound where the foreigners were lodged. Arriving, he was told in a curt voice by the mercenary in charge that it would take several more hours to load the mules with new supplies before they left the city.

It is not clear how word of his assignment reached his uncle, but while the apprentice waited idly at the compound, his uncle arrived. He hobbled forward on crutches and came to a stop out of breath, for he had hurried lest he arrived too late. One of the men in the foreign party mistook him for a beggar. “There’s nothing for you here, cripple,” the man shouted with a backward swing of his arm that would have knocked the librarian over had he stood but a few steps closer.

Although the uncle could not understand the man’s words, the intent was unmistakable. His nephew rushed over to pull him away from the supplies. They stood alone, out of earshot of both the foreigners and the locals, aiding in the preparations.

“You thought to leave without seeing me,” said the uncle in an accusatory tone.

Admonished, the nephew bowed his head. He whispered, “Do you know to where I go?”

“I have guessed,” said the uncle.

The nephew said nothing else. In fact he had initially chosen to leave without parting words for his uncle precisely because there was little that could be said between them.

“When they come, hide in the shadows,” whispered the uncle in an urgent tone. “Run for the surface when you get the chance.” This paltry advice seemed woefully inadequate to the librarian, even as he spoke the words.

“Uncle, do not fear for me,” said the nephew. “If I am to die, no blame falls on your shoulders. When I was a child, I strayed into your library of my own accord. Do not let my admiration for you, then and now, give seed to guilt.”

It fell to the uncle now to remain silent.

“Besides, all hope is not lost,” said the nephew, surprising the older man. “I have learnt her name.”

The librarian’s eyes widened, first with surprise then with hurt. “You sought to keep it from me.”

“I have waited for the right time.” He leaned over and whispered the hereditary name of the diabolist in his uncle’s ear.

Clasping his nephew by one shoulder, the librarian warned, “Even with a name, you cannot bring down a god.”

“Never,” promised the nephew, “have I entertained such a lofty ambition.”

October 30, 2015
On the Prospector and the Apprentice Librarian
It was obvious to the apprentice librarian that the prospector was possessed of a different sort of disposition than the other members of her expedition. She did not participate in the near constant chatter among the men, as they walked beside the mules through the formidable landscape of the wasteland. She was the only one among them who even vaguely reminded the librarian of the foreigners in the makeshift embassy where he had spent an enjoyable and productive period of months. Well into the first day of their journey, the apprentice librarian quickened his pace until he walked beside her. He asked her then to explain her role in this undertaking.

“I am a prospector,” she said, seemingly not disturbed to be approached for conversation by the librarian. She went on to explain that she was a contractor for an insurance company, which intended to provide a policy for a corporation that would conduct the mineral excavation efforts to follow.

The librarian still did not understand to his satisfaction. “Why have they sent you?”

The prospector further explained that the insurance company would be paid through a percentage of profits of the excavation project. She had been sent to investigate the situation on the ground so as to provide a realistic estimate of the profit, in order that the insurance company might set a percentage accordingly.

“Why did the insurance company send you? Why not the company that actually collects these minerals?”

The prospector smiled at the librarian’s naïveté. “No two corporations trust each other when it comes to money. Certainly, from the satellite imagery, the extraction company has already performed a profitability analysis. The insurance company wants an independent assessment to make sure that it receives an optimal share.”

“So this is all about money?” asked the librarian, who tried to put his fear that they marched to their death in perspective.

The prospector looked briefly around her, at the other men. None of them were paying any attention to her conversation with the librarian. Besides, their words were largely drowned out by the clatter of mules’ hooves and what fragments emerged were carried away by the rustle of the ceaseless wind.

“Of course it is all about money.” She read the disappointment in the librarian’s face. “Do you somehow exist in a world outside the influence of money?” she asked in a sarcastic tone.

Her sarcasm was lost on the librarian. He answered honestly, “As a librarian, I receive a monthly stipend from the court. It is enough for my food and occasional clothes. I pay no rent as I live with my uncle. I have no need to accumulate a reserve to be offered as a dowry for there is no father, either in the city or even in the rural farms, who would allow a reputable daughter to marry a librarian.”

The prospector observed the matter-of-fact manner in which these statements were delivered. She momentarily envied what she thought to be the simplicity of the librarian’s life. “Being a librarian can’t be that bad...” she said, laughing gently at the fourteen-year-old. “You will find a wife someday.”

The apprentice librarian looked doubtful. “What of you?” he asked. In his eyes, the prospector was clearly past the age when she would have been married. “How does your husband allow you to travel in the company of such men?” In these words, the apprentice librarian made his opinion of her companions known.

Again the prospector glanced nervously at her comrades, in order to make sure that the words of the librarian had gone unheard. Her caution was not lost on the librarian. She answered only, “Of course, I am not married.” She picked up her pace and left the librarian walking by himself beside a mule, who seemed to bestow a withering look of condescension on him.