“Accidentally?”
“Oh, yes, of course!” Alfred babbled. “Quite … by accident.” His mouth was drying up. He was drying up. He coughed. “And . . . and then, you see, I couldn’t find the way out. So I came in here, searching for it—”
“There is no way out,” Samah said.
“There isn’t?” Alfred blinked like a startled owl.
“No. Not unless one has the key-sigil. And I am the only one with the key. You obtain it from me.”
“I—I’m sorry,” Alfred stammered. “I was just curious. I didn’t mean any harm.”
“Curiosity—a mensch failing. I might have known you would be afflicted by it. Ramu, check to see that nothing has been disturbed.”
Ramu hastened off. Alfred kept his head lowered, his eyes looking anywhere, at anything, to avoid meeting Samah’s. He glanced at the dog, still growling. He glanced at Ramu, noted absently that he went straight for one certain compartment under History of the Sartan and examined it carefully, even going to the trouble of magically checking to find out if any of Alfred’s presence lingered in the vicinity.
Acutely wretched and unhappy, Alfred thought nothing of this at the time, though he did note that Ramu spent far less time checking the other compartments, barely giving most of them a glance, until he came to the ones marked Patryns. These, too, he inspected thoroughly.
“He hasn’t been near them,” he reported to Samah. “He probably didn’t have time to do much.”
“I wasn’t going to do anything!” Alfred protested. He was beginning to lose his fear. The more he thought about it, he decided he had a right to be angry at this treatment. He drew himself up, faced Samah with dignity. “What do you think I was going to do? I entered a library! And since when is the collected knowledge and wisdom of my people forbidden to me? And why is it forbidden to others?”
A thought occurred to him. “And what are you doing here? Why did you come, unless you knew I was here . . . You did know I was here! You have some sort of alarm—”
“Please, calm yourself, Brother,” Samah said soothingly, his anger seeming to suddenly evaporate, like rain when the sun comes out. He went so far as to start to lay a conciliatory hand on Alfred’s arm—a move the dog didn’t like, apparently, for it thrust its body protectively between Alfred and the head of the Council.
Samah cast the dog a cold glance, withdrew his hand. “You have a bodyguard, it seems.”
Alfred, flushing, attempted to shove the animal to one side. “I’m sorry. He—”
“No, no, Brother. It is I who should be making the apology.” Samah shook his head, sighed ruefully. “Orla tells me I am working too hard. My nerves are frayed. I overreacted. I forgot that, being a stranger, you had no way of knowing our rules concerning the library. It is, of course, open to all Sartan.
“But, as you can judge”—he waved his hand toward the ancient-history section—”some of these scrolls are old and very fragile. It would never do, for example, to permit small children to get hold of them. Or those who might be browsing through out of idle curiosity. Such people, inadvertently, of course, and meaning no harm, might yet do irreparable damage. I don’t think you can blame us, if we like to know who enters our library?”
No, Alfred had to admit, that sounded reasonable enough. But Samah wasn’t the type of man to rush here because he feared children were smearing grape jelly on his precious manuscripts. And he had been afraid. Angry and afraid, his anger covering his fear. Alfred’s eyes, of their own accord, strayed to that compartment, the first compartment Ramu had checked.
“Serious scholars are welcome, certainly,” Samah was continuing. “They have only to come before the Council and request the key.”
Samah was watching him closely. Alfred tried to stop his eyes from looking at the compartment, tried to keep them focused on Samah, but it was a struggle. They kept wanting to dart in that direction. Alfred wrenched them back. The strain was too much. His eyelids began to twitch, he started to blink uncontrollably.