Broadswords - 24. The Library

Broadswords

Chapter Twenty-Four
The Library

Since his discovery of the book regarding the mancies within the Dark Collective, Harmon had torn apart the library in search of other material regarding the subject. Lessa, being the bookworm that she was, had caught him a few times in the midst of a whirlwind of books. She seemed to decide against replaying their scuffle the other day, as she simply backed out of the room on each subsequent encounter.

Regardless of the could-be interruptions, he'd had no luck finding many helpful details about the mancies. There were mentions of a certain mancy here, or a brief reference to the Dark Collective there. But nothing that contained as much information as the book he'd already discovered. And even that was slim – each entry only had a few scrawled sentences, or a few paragraphs if lucky.

The words were not scribed in a neat, concise way as most books Harmon had come across. The fonts within the book were of different sizes and sometimes appearing to have been written with different inks. From what Harmon could tell, it hadn't been professionally done. It seemed to be more like a journal that someone had personally added entries to as they encountered them.

He had checked the cover, the spine, and each page of the book. Sure enough, no author's name appeared anywhere. It was likely one-of-a-kind, and thus could have been written by someone that had actually been involved with the mancies. Or infiltrated the Dark Collective. No matter who wrote it, however, it was clear that they knew far more about the subject than the general public. The Dark Collective, it seemed, was a very secretive society.

Though he didn't know why a personal journal had been entered into such an official-looking book, nor why it was given such an official-sounding title, he was glad he had at least the one text to utilize. Whoever the mystery author was, they'd at least given him something to go off.

Harmon wondered if there might be more material on the subject at one of the city libraries. Even though the castle's library had a large selection of rare books that couldn't be found elsewhere, he knew there were still plenty of others to go through. There were bound to be a great deal of books that they didn't have in the castle.

Getting to one of the libraries would be his issue. It was never an easy task to get outside of the castle walls, which is why it so infrequently happened. When he'd visited Daegon at his home, he'd had to stretch the truth and tell his father that he wanted to personally congratulate the slayer. While he did congratulate Daegon and Birten in a roundabout way, his true purpose of the visit had been to provide them with their quest.

"Did you not find time to express your gratitude during the feast?" his father had gruffed after Harmon had posed the question.

He had expected something like that to be his response. Considering that he had been under his father's thumb for his entire life, he had learned how his mind worked. He countered, "Of course father, but I'd like to make it a more personal congratulations. Less formal, more one-on-one."

His father had stopped eating at that point, crumbs of his afternoon snack smattered across his chin. He wiped his face roughly with a rag and stared at his son. "Then have the slayer summoned here."

Harmon had expected that, too. But he wouldn't be able to discuss his quest with the prying ears of the castle around. He needed to get to Daegon's house. "That would still be too formal. I really want to keep it personal," he repeated, putting a slight emphasis on the last word. His father was an intelligent man and would surely pick up on his inflection.

Sure enough, the king's eyes twinkled. "Aha, I see. In that case, I'll have Felix and Demetrius escort you. You know the rules, son." His father returned to his food, and Harmon knew the conversation was over. At least he'd succeeded.

Ever since Elsior had been banished years ago, the king had tried setting Harmon up with knights and other members of the kingsguard. However, Harmon had never been interested in them. The king recognized such and stopped pressing the matter. However, Harmon assumed that if he made it seem like he wanted to visit a dragonslayer for reasons of a potentially romantic nature, his father might make an exception. From the look his father had given him, his assumption was correct.

He'd stuck to the rules the king had mentioned, which were to go straight to the destination and back, with no pit stops or detours. The rules also stated to stick with the kingsmen and to attempt to keep a low profile as much as possible. There was no reason for him not to. Though his motives for his house call were ulterior, he had no reason to otherwise disobey anything.

Now, he would need to come up with another ploy to get out of the castle. He couldn't very well just ask to visit the library. There was no way that trip would be approved. And he had to be honest about where he would be going; after all, he would be accompanied by kingsmen who would without a doubt inform the king if any of the rules weren't adhered to.

He wasn't able to come up with anything that he knew would work. This one was more of a stretch. He knew the simple truth would never work, nor would he want to try it. But he had to do something. So, he spoke up at breakfast the next morning.

Breakfast and dinner were the only two times that the entire royal family were usually together. While Harmon could have approached his father individually like the last time, he figured that he would pose the question during the family gathering to make it seem more casual. If he'd brought it up in private, it might absolutely come across as a scheme.

"Father," he began slowly, buttering his toast as he spoke, "I was wondering if I might be granted escort to the city library." He finished preparing the slice of bread, hoping he seemed nonchalant. His siblings all stared at him as if he'd grown a second head. Clearly the attempt to make it seem like an offhand request wasn't successful.

"For what purpose? We've got a perfectly good library in the castle," his father said. He didn't seem quite as flummoxed by the question as did the children, but the king was always fielding requests from members of the family. Harmon's siblings were all much more likely to ask things of their father and he was probably used to the random questions.

"I've been doing a lot of research lately and I've run out of sources in our library," he said, which was the truth. "If I could get some additional information elsewhere, it would allow me to continue my studies."

It was at that point that the king joined the rest of the family in staring at Harmon. "Research? Studies? Since when have you taken to reading, anyhow? And what's the subject?"

Harmon couldn't very well come out and say he was researching the mancies or the Dark Collective. Though he still didn't have enough information about either to know all the ins and outs, he was smart enough to know that they didn't have good connotations. Especially to a king, he surmised. He had to come up with something, though, quickly. He thought back to Lessa's pile of books and considered using one of those topics, but the girl would probably catch on. He remembered where he had begun initially looking for the symbol. "Languages," he said smoothly, glad there was no tremble to his voice.

"It's true, father," Lessa piped in. "He's been in the library constantly. He's been taking up the whole space." Although she was really complaining about him, she had no idea how much she'd just helped his cause. He suddenly felt a great deal of appreciation for his sister, though he would never admit it to her.

The king glanced at the queen briefly, and the two shared a look. Though their father ruled the kingdom, he generally got the queen's approval for familial situations. She gave him a subtle nod. It seemed his mother was on board, but that didn't mean the king would stop digging. "Languages, hmm? Any certain one in particular?"

"No, father. I've been looking into them in general," Harmon replied.

"We can bring in a translator to teach you any language you'd like," the king offered.

"That would be great. I definitely want to do that. But I'd like to continue my individual studies so that I can make an educated decision on which one I would like to focus on."

The king sighed, but Harmon knew it was a sigh of giving in. "Very well. I'll have my men find out the lunch hour of the library and you can visit then. If you're going, you're going when there are no civilians there."

Harmon was glad that there wasn't a question of why he suddenly wanted to learn a language, as he didn't have an excuse for that one. He could easily attribute it to wanting to have stronger international ties for the sake of the kingdom, he supposed. But regardless what the fake reason could be, his father had approved the library trip, which is all he needed.

Upon their arrival at the city's primary library, the librarian seemed almost hesitant to allow Harmon and the guards to remain inside unsupervised. However, it was a royal decree and thus there wasn't much that could be said about the matter.

One of the guards remained near the door; although it was locked, it was standard operating procedure to station himself there. The other guard kept an eye on Harmon, but thankfully didn't stick too close to him. If he had, there would be no way to research the actual things he wanted to.

Another lucky break was that the library's section on languages was right near the section on magic, so he was able to shift his stance whenever the guard did come close to him. He felt so dishonest lately, between the letters to and from Elsior, the undisclosed quest he'd issued, the lies he'd told his father, and now the secretive research he was conducting. He was beginning to feel like he was turning into a different person. Then again, he wasn't sure that he really had a clear-cut personality prior to any of these things happening.

He pushed the unsettling thought aside as he ran his fingers across the spines of the books on the shelves before him. While there were a handful of titles that he recognized from the castle's library, most of them were ones he hadn't seen. Despite that fact, most of them were still of no help.

Eventually, he found a large book entitled Mysteries of the Dark Collective. There were far too many pages for him to read it all in one sitting, and he would have no way of bringing it back to the castle unnoticed. He skimmed through the pages, hoping something significant would jump out at him. Most of the information, however, seemed to be based on assumptions and hearsay. He wasn't finding any actual facts. It was becoming clearer and clearer to him that the Dark Collective was not going to be easy to obtain real information about.

Defeated, he let his shoulders fall. The trip was a bust. He still needed to cover his tracks, however, so he picked a book at random within the languages section. The Tarragonian Language. Tarragonian was the old official language of the entire continent of Tarragonia, before the universal common language spread across all of the continents. Still, it was a common second language on that continent, and thus should be one of the easier languages to learn. After all of this, he'd still have to stick to actually studying the language to protect his lie. He hadn't done any kind of real learning since his schooling, aside from his most recent attempts to find out more about the Dark Collective and the mancies. He wasn't thrilled with it.

As he shoved the book back onto the shelf, he noticed a very small book that had fallen over when he'd pulled it out. The spine was too narrow for a title to fit, but now he could see the cover. It had no words, but was stamped with the symbol for Terramancy. Someone had returned it to the wrong shelf, it seemed.

Maybe his decision to stick with taking on a second language was paying off, after all. While he hadn't been able to do much with the book on the Dark Collective, this one was small enough to slip into his pocket. He removed it from the shelf and did just that, glancing down to ensure that it didn't create an obvious bulge. Satisfied that the guards wouldn't notice it, he made his way toward the door.

"I'm ready," he said, and the guards led him back outside. The librarian was there waiting, and Harmon wondered if he'd even gone to lunch or if he'd been standing nervously outside the entire time.

As they made their way back to the castle, Harmon couldn't wait to get back and see what information the book contained. He also mentally added thief to his list of new personality traits. He didn't like the new addition, and decided he would try to find a way to get the book back to the library once he was done with it.

More than anything, though, he was glad that he might get some more insight on what Elsior was doing. He was thankful that of all the mancies, Terramancy was the subject of the one book he'd found. Daegon and Birten should have returned by now, and he was terrified that his issuance of the quest could have put them in significant danger. Based on what he knew now, he was convinced that Elsior had tricked him. If that was true, Harmon had hand-delivered the slayer and squire to him. And if that was the case, Harmon would not stand for it. Regardless of their history, if Elsior had plans to hurt anybody, Harmon would ensure he was brought down.