Chapter 11

After the hunting party returned, House Valtas proclaimed its victory far and wide and held a celebration. Food and drink were distributed throughout the city, while a lavish feast was laid out in the castle for the knights to enjoy to their hearts’ content.

Turan thought it both excessively grand and premature. It was a remote possibility, certainly, but might there not be another monster besides that monkey blocking travel between the cities?

When he cautiously raised the subject at the feast, Izella burst out laughing and told him he worried too much.

“Surely not? Creatures like that wouldn’t appear two or three at a time. Honestly, though, it wouldn’t matter much even if they did.”

Her reasoning was that publicizing the reopening of the blocked trade route came first. If another monster attacked, they could simply say, “Oh, we were wrong. We didn’t know,” and send another hunting party. A ruler making mistakes or going back on their word would undermine their authority?

For a wizard lord, the support and trust of the populace were nice to have, but hardly necessary. What placed them above other humans was not some invisible nonsense like that, but overwhelming power—the power to burn every last one of their subjects to death should they ever dare rebel.

“What are the stars of our latest hunt doing tucked away in a corner like this?”

As they chatted, someone joined them with that suggestive remark. House Head Rug regarded Turan and Izella in turn through half-lidded eyes.

“Oh, Father, don’t get me started. Our guest worries far too much.”

After hearing Izella’s explanation, Rug also laughed heartily and dismissed Turan’s concerns as excessive. At most, he said, one or two monsters that powerful appeared in a year.

On reflection, he did have a point. Monsters generally appeared more often in prosperous regions. If creatures capable of killing even knights in an instant roamed freely even here, a relative backwater by the continent’s standards, how could Keorn have set out on his travels alone? And what of ordinary travelers?

During their conversation, Izella quietly slipped away on the pretext of getting something to eat. Left alone with Turan, Rug first offered him the drink in his hand.

“Never mind that. Have a drink. It would disgrace me as a host not to offer my guest so much as a cup.”

Orem’s liquor was incomparably stronger than the beer he had drunk at the inn in Murei. The heat seared his throat, and the sharp scent stung his nose, making him cough despite himself.

“Ha ha! You act as though you’ve never had a drink in your life.”

“I’ve never had anything this strong.”

Fortunately, a noble’s sturdy body was not affected by a cup or two of strong liquor, so Turan was able to keep him company without getting drunk. After he had accepted about four cups from passing servants, Rug narrowed his eyes.

“More importantly, what do you think of Izella?”

It was much the same sort of question Marvin had asked him earlier that day. Turan answered calmly, without the slightest change of expression.

“I think of her as the young lady of the house whose hospitality I’m enjoying.”

“You have no romantic interest in her?”

“To be honest, no.”

Rug frowned slightly at the almost rudely candid answer, but Turan did not apologize. He had never been particularly fond of Izella, and what little regard he had for her had fallen further after her conduct during the hunt. He judged it better to refuse outright than to give false hope merely to spare the other man’s pride.

As he had expected, instead of raging at him for daring to find his daughter wanting, Rug heaved a sigh.

“Nothing to be done about it, then. I’d hoped you might take a liking to my daughter.”

“She’ll find a better match.”

“How often does a match like you come along in a backwater like this? Izella tells me you showed no sign of struggling to absorb the mana this time.”

“Well, yes. I still have a long way to go.”

“I hear your mana isn’t much different from Izella’s. Then you’re saying my daughter has a long way to go.”

Unsure how to answer that, Turan simply looked at him in silence. Then Rug abruptly adopted a lamenting tone.

“Well, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Izella certainly wasn’t born with poor potential, but she reached her growth limit far sooner than I expected. It isn’t enough to hold the position of House Head of Valtas. At this rate, I’ll have to name Gillon—my other nephew, the one you haven’t met—as the next House Head. If Izella were to wed you, there would be no need for that—”

Now Turan understood why Marvin had been pleased to hear he had no interest in Izella. If Turan married her, he would very likely stand in the way of Marvin’s older brother becoming House Head.

What he could not understand was Rug’s willingness to spill such private matters so freely. Surely a House Head had not simply gotten drunk?

But a moment later, seeing the coolly appraising look in his eyes, Turan guessed why Rug was pouring out these complaints. He hoped learning of the circumstances would sway Turan.

Guilt or a sense of responsibility for rejecting the woman who had persistently proposed to him over the past few days and thus costing her the succession—or ambition at the prospect of gaining this city by marrying Izella. Presumably, he would be satisfied if either lure took hold.

“I trust you’ll make a wise decision, my lord.”

Perhaps realizing from that answer that Turan had seen through his intentions and refused him, Rug sighed even more deeply than before.

“So that’s how it is. Well, very well... Enjoy the feast, then. Do let me know before you leave the city.”

Turan gave a disbelieving laugh at how openly Rug began hurrying him toward departure the moment he said he had no interest in marriage. His self-interest was so blatant that it was more funny than infuriating.

As Rug showed signs of leaving, Turan decided to ask one last thing that had been on his mind. Not directly, of course, but in a slightly roundabout way.

“Ah, my lord. There’s something I’ve been wondering.”

“What is it?”

Rug looked openly annoyed, but Turan went on as though he had not noticed.

“It occurred to me while using the library: doesn’t anyone check whether people steal the books? Whether anyone wants them or not, every one of them is valuable.”

“Hmm? Don’t you know? I thought that was why you only read inside the library.”

When Turan shook his head in incomprehension at the cryptic reply, Rug looked smug. He seemed eager to gain some satisfaction by lording his knowledge over Turan, at least, after having his subtle offer rejected.

“The Sky Library was built in the days of the old empire. If someone takes a book out without permission, an earsplitting alarm sounds. To tell you the truth, one of my little pleasures was keeping that secret and letting people embarrass themselves.”

“How does one obtain permission?”

“How would I know? Detailed records about the library were already gone before our house took this city. Well, even if you take a book out, the alarm only rings for a while. Functions such as putting the books in order still work properly, anyway...”

Turan’s eyes lit up as he listened. Those final words had confirmed what, until a moment ago, he had only half believed.

* * *

The following day, as he had the day before yesterday, Turan went straight to the library after breakfast.

“Greetings, noble one.”

The knight, now familiar with Turan’s face, let him in without even checking his pass. When he entered the ground-floor lobby, the middle-aged librarian greeted him from his usual seat at the desk.

“Welcome, Master Turan.”

At that greeting, Turan realized anew just how oblivious he had been and let out a rueful laugh. Looking back, the clues had been there from the beginning.

First, there was the way he called him “Master Turan.” No knight or commoner in this city addressed him that way. They only called him “noble one.”

Then there was the way he stood behind Turan the entire time he read. Turan’s reading routine was to rise early, eat breakfast, and come here, only leaving when it was time for dinner.

Throughout all that time, the librarian had simply watched him, never once leaving to use the privy, eat, or even drink water. Not impossible for an ordinary person, but profoundly strange nonetheless. Yet Turan had been so absorbed in the books that he had failed to notice any of it.

“How did you know my name?”

At Turan’s question, the librarian’s humble expression turned impish.

“Took you long enough to notice, you dullard. Didn’t you even ask the people outside about me?”

“There aren’t many people in this city I’ve spent enough time with to have that sort of conversation.”

“Quite the loner, aren’t you? Though I suspected as much when you spent every day with your nose in a book.”

The hierarchy of their conversation had reversed in an instant, yet it did not feel awkward. Chuckling, the librarian tossed aside the book he had been reading, sending it straight into its proper place on the shelf.

“I learned your name from your entry permit. I can see as far as the area around this library.”

“How should I address you, sir?”

“I am the librarian. I never had a name to begin with, so you can simply call me that.”

“Very well, honored librarian.”

“It feels strange to see you being so polite. You’ve spent days ordering me about and calling me this and that.”

“I never called you anything of the sort. In fact, you’re the one doing that now.”

“Young brat, you won’t let a single word pass!”

The librarian seemed quite pleased with this sort of bickering. Despite his snort, the delight was plain on his face. Turan sat down across from him and asked again about his identity.

“Are you a wizard from the old empire, sir?”

“I’m not human at all. You could call me a kind of spirit. The spirit of the library.”

“A spirit...?”

None of the books Turan had read covered such beings in detail. An Account of a Journey Around the World had mentioned that forest fairies used an ability called spirit arts to command living spirits, spirits, and wraiths, but that was the extent of his knowledge. Knowing how little he knew, the librarian promptly explained.

“A soul dwelling in something alive is a living spirit; in something dead, a wraith; and in something neither alive nor dead, a spirit. You might say the library itself is my body. This form is merely a projection for the convenience of conversing with users. Like a reflection in water, if you will.”

At that, Turan unthinkingly poked the back of the librarian’s hand where it rested on the desk. Sure enough, his finger passed through it as though nothing were there and tapped the desk. The librarian frowned slightly.

“Stop that. It feels unpleasant.”

“I’m sorry.”

As Turan hastily withdrew his hand and apologized, the librarian’s expression softened again.

“You have no idea how frustrating it is to be unable to use force directly against intruders. If I could, I would have punished every last thief who tried to take books out of the library...”

Turan had wondered how so many books could have vanished with a being like this here, but apparently he could not exert force against people. Perhaps all he could do was move books and clean the library’s interior. Nodding, Turan asked what had been puzzling him.

“The House Head of Valtas didn’t seem to know you existed. Perhaps no one who has used this library does.”

“That’s because no one has qualified to perceive me in all that time. I believe it’s been about three thousand years since I last spoke to anyone. Even if you ‘wizards’ live quite a long time, I suppose that’s long enough for even the records to disappear... Wizards, hah.”

For some reason, the librarian let out a hollow laugh, as though he found the word “wizard” unbearably amusing. Turan stared blankly at him, stunned by his absurd statement.

He had finally met someone he could speak to after an unfathomable three thousand years, yet he had calmly pretended to be a Valtas servant for a prank? What would he have done if Turan had lost interest in books and never returned? When he asked, the librarian snorted.

“Then that would have been that. Unlike you, I don’t find three thousand years such an unfathomable stretch of time. If I wait another few thousand years, surely someone else will come along.”

Those words truly brought home how utterly different this spirit was from a human being. After all, stones and rivers did not grow bored over thousands of years, did they? Turan shook his head and asked another question.

“What do you mean by qualifying?”

“My creator made it so that only those whose type possesses a certain degree of completeness can perceive me. And yours was the most complete of any wizard I’ve seen in the past three thousand years.”

“My... type?”

“What you call a bloodline.”

A highly complete bloodline—what did that mean? Even as he pondered it, something Keorn had once told him came to mind. Wizards were descendants of the gods, and bloodline abilities were individual traits their Freyan ancestors had possessed...

In other words, the spirit was saying that, of all the wizards he had seen in the past three thousand years, Turan was the closest to a god.