Izzi followed Beena to the Grimoiren. It was always in the same place of course, beneath the northeastern black tower, but the route changed daily, dictated by a combination of predetermined sequences and watchwords.

There were other ways to get there—the Magekadeh was riddled with twisting passages—but straying from the sanctioned path would wake the wards and summon creatures best left undisturbed. And that was to say nothing of Kalu’s wrath or the unwelcome scrutiny of the other magians.

The precautions were not just magian paranoia. Twice under the last moon intruders had been caught—Kythian mages attempting to infiltrate. Izzi pushed from her mind the memory of what had been done to them, of where their bodies had been displayed, mounted for the birds of cleansing.

They descended the single slender staircase into the belly of the huge circular chamber. It was lit only sparsely where access was needed, but there was enough flickering lamplight to cast a glow across the golden carvings of the giant dome. All around, the towering walls curved with the knowledge of the magians—a treasure hoarded across ages. The higher up the walls, the older the monstrous tomes, slender journals, decaying scrolls, and other mouldering artefacts were. They’d been told that when space ran out, the room was simply dug deeper into Zakra’s rocky core.

Izzi suspected the only way they could have ever amassed such an enormous collection was by never throwing anything away, not even the most useless scrap.

“Half of those scrolls are probably just shopping lists,” she whispered.

“Shush,” Beena cautioned, but the word was half laugh.

When they reached the bottom the guard was waiting, crouching near the base of the stairs—but not just any guard. The magians had lured it from the sundered realm, where failed and half-born things wandered, creatures neither fully of one world nor another. It was a nasnas.

The nasnas hunched in the shadows beneath the stairs, shackled to an iron ring on a spike driven deep into the stone. Even crouched, its single elongated arm could reach unnaturally, magically high, even to the highest ramps, but its three bony fingers were now coiled against the floor like the claws of a carrion bird. What passed for its face turned toward them—half a skull, half a man, its single clouded eye unblinking, its split tongue curling as if not enjoying what it tasted on the air.

It was a wonder it sensed anything. The air reeked of old parchment and something else—something rancid, like flesh left too long in the sun.

Izzi gritted her teeth. She had passed by it before, of course, but each time she had to force back the gagging revulsion. The nasnas didn’t move like a thing that should exist; it tilted, stretched, and twitched in ways that defied balance, like a puppet with half its strings missing.

Those few fingers scraped the stone, and the chains rattled as it raised its half-hand to point at them. It whispered—a voice wet and broken, a sound that licked the ears like a slobbery tongue.

“Who comes? Friend or food?”

Beena held out her palm and conjured her sigil token, identifying her rank and right to enter. Izzi followed suit, careful not to meet the creature’s eye.

A slow exhale of too much spent breath stirred Izzi’s scarf and protruding locks. She held her own breath and slitted her eyes in defence.

The nasnas slumped back against its chains, its half-mouth curling into something that might have been a grin, might have been hunger.

“Pass,” it rasped, “novices.” That last word was delivered with a hiss of palpable distaste.

They hurried past.

Desks and benches of varying antiquity and stability stood seemingly at random around the chamber floor, and clustered here and there on the platforms that circled the walls above. Izzi had her favourite spot on the third level, the highest novices could ascend without provoking the nasnas to spike its spindly fingers in warning. Books and journals shelved beyond that were strictly prohibited, ostensibly because magians from those ancient eras followed fewer scruples, their teachings prone to leading novices down dangerous roads. Precisely what dangers those paths held was never explained. Many of the oldest tomes were penned in the forbidden old tongue—a language now carefully suppressed, for its words supposedly held secrets too near those perilous paths.

They passed a group of three young mages who had amassed a towering collection of old journals on a rickety desk, and were desperately flipping through them, their faces lined with anguish. With a shared glance of agreement, Izzi and Beena kept silent and went the long way around the entire level, careful not to bump into any squeaky chairs or tables, knowing the mages could commandeer them to an important quest on a whim, and any chance of additional study for the next day’s assessment would be lost.

Other than those three, and a scattering of single mages or older magians quietly studying under portable lanterns, the Grimoiren seemed empty. Only the occasional cough, creak of furniture, or rattle of the twitchy nasnas’s chain disturbed the dusty silence.

Although the works of individual scholars were generally kept together, with the oldest long-dead authors of course higher, the collection in the Grimoiren was not in any particular order. Unless you had a specific clue or guide, to find what you needed took magic. 

Driven as ever, Beena wasted no time. She sat across from Izzi with elbows to the tabletop and fingertips to forehead. Her eyes were closed, the tips of her black hair brushed the dents and scribbles, and her tiny mouth mumbled some questing spell. 

Izzi looked into the darkness for inspiration. She pinched her chin. Today Mogh Kalu had taken them to the realm of the wiles, but the actual test had been determined by the wile itself, a creature seemingly beholden to the magian in some way. She analysed the pattern of his teachings over the last days and tried to predict what might be in the assessment. Many of them, like today’s, had touched on deception, on not being tricked into missing something.

Pay attention, came into her mind again. 

Here, deep in the Magekadeh, a host of wards, captive creatures of the sundered realm, and other magical barriers prevented questing thoughts from outside. That was doubly so inside the Grimoiren, protecting the wealth of magian magic. So either some presence had snuck through the defences of the strongest magians of the kingdom, or the words were from inside her head, the thoughts ultimately her own.

Pay attention, the idea kept repeating, but what was she missing? She twisted her fingers into sigils that represented eyes, and silently mouthed a simple magian questing spell.

Hidden fires melting sands,

Secret names of burning kings.

Behind the flaming feathers of Anqa. 

I see the glass emblazed with light.

The formless clouds of sign and sequence,

Become the clearest sky to me.

It didn’t seem to have any effect. Not at first. 

Pay attention, the words repeated. You did not need that clumsy spell.

How could they be her own thoughts? She looked around.

Over Beena’s head, two levels up where they were definitely not allowed, a book was on fire. It was quickly spreading along the shelf.

That should help, said the voice.

Instant panic ensued. The closest mages and magians raced toward it, to douse it by whatever magic was available to them.

Pay attention.  

She grabbed at Beena’s hand. Beena twisted to see the fire. Izzi tugged her friend’s hand to win her attention back.

Behind Beena she could see the magical arm of the nasnas, extending, unfolding like it had too many elbows, to bear a bucket up to the fire. This was her chance.

“Trust me,” she whispered. Beena pressed her lips together in doubt and concern, but nodded.

“I was never here,” Izzi said, and curled her fingers into the sigils needed for her mother’s spell of deception. She mouthed the words and watched her hands seem to fray and dissolve like before, until any trace of them was difficult for her to see, even knowing where they were.

Beena’s eyes widened in their deep sockets, and she blinked and shook her head as if to try to bring Izzi back into focus. Then she grinned and lowered herself in her seat, now turning her head more slowly in smiling disapproval. 

Izzi knew her spell could probably be defeated by the magians as Kalu had done, but thought they would need to expect her to be hidden to try, and with them and the nasnas busy with the fire, this was a chance she had to take. She stood and scanned the shelves.

As far as it could be from the burning book, around the circle of the same level, a book on the shelf was glowing. It was unclear whether others would be able to see it, or if it glowed for her eyes alone.

Come to me, called the book, in the same voice that had spoken in her head—calm and even, but so persistent. Izzi knew she should resist, that voices in the head were either deceptive shadow beings of some kind—or just plain ordinary insanity.

Not feeling particularly insane, she wondered if this was not actually some remnant her mother left for her, a spell somehow laid in her own head like an egg that would one day hatch. In any case it did not seem to have done her any harm yet. Avoiding the main way, which would take her past the fire and those trying to extinguish it, Izzi headed to the nearest of the ladders that provided shortcut alternatives to the main ramps, and climbed. She was now above the levels permitted to her, and it was soon clear why. Many of the books and journals here were also calling to her, some with pleading calls, some with louder demands, and still more were actively repelling her with revulsion, or seemed to become invisible as she walked past. One shelf—apparently full on her approach—was entirely empty when she got to it. You clearly needed a lot of magian training to tackle these old books. 

Pay attention, the voice chided. Come to me. Somehow the initial voice cut through the clamour of the others. I contain secrets you need to know, about Kythia, about your mother.

What secrets? What do you know of my mother? She felt crazy, having a conversation with talking voices in her head. But other than her legacy of journals, Myzina had shared so little, and Izzi had been tiny when she died. If there was something she needed to know, it was something she must know.

She raced along to the next ladder, climbed to the target level. 

She dared a look back. The fire was decidedly smaller, the mages were leaning on the railing to catch their breath, and the nasnas’s great arm was lifting its empty bucket away, presumably to magically refill it. She was running out of time.

As she turned back to continue, she ran full into a chair that scraped across the floor with a squawk like a peafowl, then caught in a floorboard and crashed like thunder onto the floor.

She closed her eyes and steeled herself for discovery. After a moment of silence she dared a look back. Amazingly, her deception spell seemed to have worked. Even Beena, two levels down, was not looking up, but concentrating on some book.

Eventually, taking much more care around the furniture, and thankful for the soft padding of her slippers, she made it to the glowing book, and as she looked at it the glowing stopped. After another scan to check for anyone noticing her, she pried it from the shelf, a heavy, mouldering, ancient thing, cloth-bound and shabby.

A Treatise on Kyth Histories, by A. Anakzar.

What secrets did it hold? She manoeuvred it so she could balance its weight in one palm, and was about to turn open the cover. 

Furniture scraped again loudly. Not her this time—the nasnas, peering up from four floors down with its single unblinking eye, was righting the chair she’d knocked over. From the way it fumbled and poked around with its three long fingers, its vision from so far away was clearly poor. With the deception spell it would surely not see her. She kept still, just in case.

But those fingers, driven by some librarian-urge for tidiness, kept coming, squaring up the chairs and tables into magian-worthy order, straightening books on the shelves. They tip-walked closer and closer.

This was clearly not a good opportunity to examine A Treatise on Kyth Histories.

Borrow me, said the book.

Izzi paused for a moment. There was no borrowing of a book such as this. She listed her transgressions: Using an unsanctioned spell in the Grimoiren—a stern lecture. Sneaking above the permitted levels—sent down to acolyte, probably. But stealing a book from the Grimoiren—immediate expulsion, definitely, or worse. She imagined again the cleaned bones of the infiltrating Kyth, and shuddered.

Yet, if they were keeping things from her about Mother, she had to know what they were. She held the book as best she could within the folds of her dress, and headed for the next ladder, quickly, quietly, carefully, and under her spell of deception.