The Librarian's Spell by Patricia Rice (ebook offline reader TXT) 📗

he needed Lydia’s knowledge. Before he’d gone silent, George’s screams had indicated he was trapped and suffocating. That didn’t sound as if he’d fallen into a mine.

Like any bloodthirsty adolescent, Max had listened to the teacher’s description of medieval torture devices. He didn’t think even mad Englishmen would dig storage holes beneath sewers. This had the design of a trap—an ancient one.

“You don’t want to fall in on top of him,” Simon agreed. “I have someone tying a rope ladder in case we can’t stabilize the walls, but he has to be conscious to climb up it.”

One way or another, Max would have to lower the ladder into that black hole before the ceiling caved. His only hope was that Lydia could find another way out. Rebuilding a medieval shaft would take too long.

Lydia raced through the yard, back to the garden door, forgetting there were dozens of aristocrats waiting inside for reassurances she didn’t have to offer. Poised and confident in their perfume, pearls, and silk, the women crowded around her the moment she entered. Their elegance reminded her of all she was not and never would be.

Not only was she not a beautiful lady, she wasn’t even the one thing they thought her—a librarian.

Her ineptitude might be the death of Max. With heart breaking, Lydia brushed past, shaking her head at the questions she heard but couldn’t answer. She slammed into her office, locked the door, and escaped into the silence of the waiting library.

It waited for her. She could tell. To her, the library was a sentient being, disapproving, calculating, more judgmental than her family had ever been. It would spit her out or swallow her whole if she failed.

She’d asked it how to be a librarian and it hadn’t replied. She’d asked for information on the tower for Max, and it had given her everything he expected.

“Max needs this,” she shouted at the waiting emptiness of towering books. “Max needs to know if there is an oubliette!”

Thundering silence.

Failure was not an option. Weeping would not help. She had to force the books to give up their information.

“I need to know about the dungeon!” she cried. “Max’s life depends on it. My life depends on it. The future of this library might depend on it!”

As she shouted, her fear blew a hole in the wall of composure she’d projected her entire life. She didn’t radiate just helpless frustration but fury. Rage at all the times in her life when she’d been lost and helpless and had no means of dealing with the world except with fake calm and wishful thinking. Those wouldn’t help Max now. She needed the library.

The tower trembled. Or perhaps she did.

Her sisters were the foolish creatures who railed and swooned and panicked if things didn’t go their way. Lydia had never been like that, especially after her father had fallen off the roof. She’d known someone had to be the strong one, the cautious one. As the eldest, she had always been the epitome of moderation, the solid foundation others counted on. She might weep in private at her inability to control anything, but she never displayed how she felt.

Until now. With her placidity in shreds, Lydia shook her fist and railed at the silent books. She wept and poured out her heart and soul in tears and terror. In a rage, she yanked out volume after volume, starting with the bottom shelf, demanding that the books respond. The journal yesterday had made no mention of an oubliette, but the books surrounding that journal must be from the same time period. . .

“I need you!” she cried as the books remained silent. “I need your help! Please, please don’t let him die because of my incompetence. I know you have the answers. Please!”

Feeling as if she’d taken a knife and ripped herself open, she dropped to her knees and hugged the strewn books to her breast. “Speak to me,” she commanded. “I’ll do whatever it takes, be whatever I must be, but speak.”

Oubliette, a breeze whispered.

Lydia glanced frantically at the mess she’d made. How would she see a book pushing out at her now that they were on the floor?

Oubliette, the breeze repeated.

What had she said to gain this response? That she would be whatever the library wanted her to be? Did it want her to be the librarian? Max had said she didn’t analyze, and she didn’t. She’d always accepted whatever life threw at her. . .

She wasn’t accepting the library’s silence. She was demanding its help. She believed wholeheartedly that she was worthy of the library and its vast store of knowledge and had commanded her troops to obey. Or begged, perhaps, but she’d opened herself to the terrifying realization that she could do what Mr. C had done, if only she knew how.

Gathering this tiny bit of confidence, she demanded, “I need the journal on the oubliette, and I need it now.” She was the Librarian. She must act like it. She must believe it, as she pretended to do in the solicitors’ office. She held out her palm.

And there the book was, opening to crabbed Latin script it might take days to parse and translate.

And she knew what it said. Opening her mind, Lydia heard the voice in her head. It spoke more clearly than it ever had before.

Clinging to the precious volume, trembling with fear at this invasion of her mind, she obeyed what the voice told her. She determined north from south and made her way past the stacks to the wall opposite her office.

I prayed future generations would never need to know this door. The woman’s voice was low, almost an angry Latin chant, but Lydia heard and understood. The fulcrums are concealed beneath the lions.

Lydia faltered when she found the brass ornaments on the back wall. She’d known they were there. She’d polished them a time or two. Was her desperation simply feeding her mind? Had she gone insane?

The voice quieted.

Lydia started to panic again, pushing and pulling