He did not like having to make the choice. He would have preferred to let someone else make it, had there been someone else. Whatever he decided, whichever books he chose, he would make mistakes. It was inevitable. He could not see the future, and to some extent the future would determine what knowledge was necessary to navigate its uncharted waters. No one could know what would be needed until the time arrived. It was equally possible that what he chose would be misused in some way, causing damage and destruction of the sort he was trying so desperately to avoid.
He needed Ryer Ord Star’s gift of future sight, but only if he could wield it with a craftsman’s skill. It wouldn’t be enough to have glimpses of the future. It wouldn’t help to take events out of context or in a haphazard fashion. A comprehensive look was needed if future sight was to be of any use.
Even then, he admitted, the odds against recognizing what was both important and necessary were enormous. The future was painted on a canvas of infinite reach; it entailed too many connections and joinings. Change one and you changed others. No amount of insight would enable a single individual to decipher it all.
Only the Word could know, and even that was not given to Mankind as truth.
His search went on, the minutes slipping away, time shedding them like leaves at the change of seasons. Though he searched diligently, he could not find the library. He went everywhere in Castledown, through all its vast chambers and down all its long corridors, and still the books eluded him. He was growing tired, and he knew he could not maintain his shade form much longer. Yet he needed to know where the books were kept if he was to reach them once he returned to his body. If he had to search for them once he cut himself loose from Antrax, he was doomed to fail. Antrax would know what had happened, and there would not be enough time to do anything but escape. He must find the books quickly and determine how to reach them.
In the end, he used a simple artifice to solve the problem. He put himself in the minds of the men and women who had built Castledown and created Antrax and asked how they would have gone about warding their treasure. The answer wasn’t so difficult. The books would be housed where the defenses were strongest and most sophisticated, but would cause the least amount of damage should an intruder gain entry. On the surface of Castledown, the defenses were brutal and indiscriminate. Whatever breached them was cut apart. Beneath the surface, where the books were housed, the defenses would be of a different sort. Fire threads and creepers would not be used. Something subtler would be employed.
The Druid changed his way of thinking and began his search anew. As he did so, he was reminded of the strange keys that had lured him to Castledown. He had thought them keys of the sort he was familiar with, metal implements used for unlocking doors. But they had taken a different form than he had expected. Tools of a technological age, they still functioned as keys, but used different principles in doing so. Flat rectangles, they had caused the locks they opened to respond through impulses generated by tiny power cells.
Could it be, he wondered suddenly, that the books had been converted to another form, as well?
A suspicion as cold and deadening as winter night settled through him. He had gotten it all right save for one thing only. He sped through the chambers and corridors, intent on a specific destination, knowing deep inside that his worst fears were about to be realized and that he could do nothing to prevent it. He retraced his route toward the place of his imprisonment, aware of a quickening in Ryer Ord Star’s pulse at his approach, triggered by her mistaken belief that he had succeeded in what he had set out to do and was returning. He blanked out that part of his awareness, making no response to her unspoken inquiry, needing her strength for just a little longer.