Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(31)

She knew how dangerous it was. Few Obscurists could reach the power that she did, drawn directly from the universal fluid, the quintessence, of the world; the few who could died young and often took others with them. Power always corrupted. It was a law of nature.

She sat back with a sigh and rubbed the sore spot on her lower back, then stood. This was a spare workroom inside the vast Iron Tower; it was little used and had a fine-ground grit on every surface. The cleaners hadn’t visited in weeks, if not months. I just made Thomas a vow that I could bind him to an automaton, she thought. And I’m not sure what will happen if I do it. She remembered what she’d done on the arena floor, and shivered. Her talents ran dark, no question of that. No. I will just have to be careful. So very careful.

She blinked and saw a shimmering afterimage. There was power in this room. Odd, hidden power. She closed her eyes and opened them slowly, searching for the source of the glimmer. It came from a flagstone in the corner. Morgan walked to it, touched the stone, and felt it move. Loose. She pried it up. Beneath lay a ring.

Not just any ring. This one was emblazoned with the seal of the Great Library, gold set into an amber stone. Just by holding her hand above it she felt the shimmer from it—not heat, but energy.

A voice from behind her said, “I hoped you’d find that when I told you to use this room.”

She looked around, startled out of her uncertainty. The Obscurist Magnus Eskander stood in the doorway. He’d avoided the formal robes of the office, unlike his unpleasant predecessor; he was dressed in a plain workman’s shirt and trousers, with boots that had seen years of use. A lean, strong elder with long, curling gray hair. Scholar Wolfe’s father. Her honorary grandfather, in a sense.

“What is it?” she asked. He closed the workroom door and approached to stare down at the ring with her.

“What do you think it is?”

He was as bad as his son; everything, even the simplest question, had to be made into a lesson. Morgan resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “A ring?”

“Come, girl, you’re not head-blind.”

“Someone stored power in it,” she said. “An accumulation from the quintessence.”

“Not quintessence. Apeiron,” he corrected. “Apeiron is a greater unification even than quintessence. It underlies the reality that we observe, and all other realities. But you are correct, the ring is rich in it.”

“I didn’t know it was possible to store it in a matrix like this.”

“It’s rare,” he said. “But not unknown. This particular ring was created by the Obscurist Magnus Gargi Vachaknavi over five thousand years ago. Quite old. And quite dangerous.”

“What’s it doing here?”

“I put it here,” he said. “I wanted to see if you’d find it. Which you did.”

Another test. Morgan glared at him. “I thought you didn’t want to be the Obscurist. You’re acting like one.”

“I don’t want it,” he said. “I want to be left alone. So training you to take my place seems the very best option I have to achieve that goal, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I don’t want to be the Obscurist!”

He waved that aside. “We don’t always get what we want, and for as long as Obscurists are necessary to the proper operation of the Great Library we’ll need a steady hand to guide them. We need to ensure that the automata and the Great Archives remain functional. You’re the logical choice to take the job on. I’ve reviewed every Obscurist in this tower. You are, in fact, the only choice I can see that won’t ultimately compromise the work.”

“Annis told me you didn’t give a damn for the Great Library. That you were brought here against your will and forced into service. Like me.”

“Like many of us, and the ancestors of many more,” he agreed. “But I don’t do this for the Great Library. I do it for the memory of the woman I loved, who did believe in that cause. Whether I wanted the responsibility or not, it’s landed on me. And it will land on you. Get used to the idea, Morgan. I know you’re young for it, and rash, and frustrated. But the world looks to us for this. We can only look to each other.”

“I never wanted it.”

“I know,” Eskander said. “Take the ring.”

She hesitated. “The amount of power I used before—”

“I’m aware that you’ve overreached,” he said. “Not the first time, nor I imagine will it be the last with you, though each time you burn so hot you shorten your own life. I trust you know that? The young feel immortal. But you’re not.”

Morgan took in a deep breath. “It’s more than that,” she said. “I can feel it. The power I can reach now . . . it’s not pure. If I take this ring . . .”

“We don’t know what will happen until you do,” Eskander said. “Go on.”

“What if I—”

“Take it.”

She didn’t like it. She was tired, and afraid, and sickened inside, but she stooped down and took the ring from its hidden spot. It gleamed soft gold and amber. There was a brilliant spot of red hidden in the stone, and as she turned it in her palm, it seemed to move. But that couldn’t be true; amber was a stone made from ancient fossilized resin. Nothing could flow freely inside it.