Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(115)

“Not at all.” His father’s eyebrows rose. “I confess, I didn’t expect this. You never had talent.”

“Thanks.”

“Obscurist talent, Christopher. It was always latent in you, but it never manifested before. How is it you can sense her?”

“Maybe I’m imagining it. Wishing it to be true.”

“Or maybe what you sense is this.” Eskander reached into his pocket and took out a large amber ring. “Put it on.”

“I—”

“Put it on.”

Wolfe slipped the ring on his finger, and for a moment, nothing seemed any different. A vague sense of unease, of sensing someone standing just out of view.

Of being watched.

And then Morgan’s voice said, “I was wondering if you’d find out.”

He turned, looking for her, but saw no one. He had not, he realized, actually heard her. The words were not in his ears, but in his head. “Morgan?”

“I’m inside the ring,” she said, and laughed. It felt bright as sunshine on skin. “It sounds like I’m trapped, doesn’t it? But I’m not. I’m free. There’s so much here! Endless expanses that become whatever I want them to be. I’m part of the Imperishable.”

“Apeiron,” Wolfe said. “The ring is made to contain and channel apeiron. Is that—where you are?”

“I’m everywhere,” she said. “I’m with all of you. And you’re with me. It’s what I always was, Scholar. Just . . . free.” Her voice grew a little sad. “But not in the form you knew me. I’d like to tell Jess that I’m sorry.”

“I’m not telling him a voice in a ring talked to me,” he said. “And he’s better off not knowing this.”

“Yes. That’s true. He’s got a path now. Knowing I was here—it might pull him away from that. It’s a good, strong path. A long one.”

“You see futures.”

“I see everything,” she said.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what she saw for him, but he resisted. He’d never wanted to know the future. If he didn’t know storms were coming, it was easier to enjoy the sunshine.

“You sent for me, didn’t you? Why?” he asked.

“Because of this.”

His world opened. His body burned, tingled, and woke with sensations he’d never known, never imagined in his life. He saw the flow of life, the bones of the universe, the building blocks of everything, and it was the most beautiful thing he could imagine.

“You were meant to be an Obscurist,” she said. “Something went wrong in your body, but only just slightly. The talent was always there; you just couldn’t reach it. And now you can be what you were supposed to be. If you wish. You could be very, very powerful.”

He let out a raw sound and put his back to a wall to hold himself steady. He’d been a disappointment to his parents, a failure rejected and sent to find his own way beyond these iron walls. And she offered to give him that.

For an awful moment, he wanted it more than anything.

Then he caught his breath and said, “Give it to someone who needs it. I don’t.”

Another silky, cool voice in his head said, “You see? I told you. He has his own path. Let him walk it, Morgan. I am interested to see what he makes of it.”

“Who is that?” he blurted.

“Archivist Gargi Vachaknavi,” Morgan said. “Dead thousands of years, but alive in the Imperishable. Don’t mind her. She thinks you’re better off as you were.”

“I am!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! I don’t want to be—this!”

“Then I’ll take it all back,” she said, and the power faded out of him. All the brilliance and beauty and breathtaking wonder, gone.

He was back in his own skin, his own world, and he was achingly, shatteringly grateful.

“Morgan?”

“Yes?”

“How much power do you really have?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He caught his father’s eye. His father, he thought, wasn’t surprised by any of this. It was as if he could hear the conversation. That was irritating, and a bit comforting.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’d rather not know, to be honest. I’d rather just watch over the Great Library,” she said. “It’s what I’m supposed to do. And it will keep me out of trouble, I think.”

“Morgan—”

“We won’t speak again, Scholar Wolfe. Be kinder to yourself. And to Commander Santi, too. I loved you both, and in here, I always will.”

And then he felt her go. Her presence that he’d sensed, however dimly . . . vanished, like mist under the sun.

He ripped the ring from his finger and handed it back to Eskander. Glared at him. “Why did you do that?”

“Interesting, isn’t she?” Eskander said, and put the ring back in his pocket. “She terrifies me. But I think we may need her in times to come. The problem of ending one era of oppression is that we all have to decide what comes next. And we should discuss that, at length.” He started up the long, winding steps. “Come on, then. I’ve made tea.”

“Why me? We hardly know each other.”