The University's library was on the first floor of the divination building and consisted of six rooms, only the first of which was open to the corridor. The other five rooms were accessible only from adjacent rooms, and only to those who were judged ready to have access to their contents.

     The first room was the largest, being five or six times the size of any other room in the building, and as well as walls and shelves of books it also contained a dozen little alcoves in which students could sit in private to study without interruption. The room was quiet at the moment, with only half a dozen young people wandering up and down the aisles, scanning the book titles and occasionally taking a book down to leaf carefully through the pages. The place was generally at its busiest in the evening, between the end of the day's classes and the evening meal, when there could be as many as fifty apprentices and half a dozen qualified wizards crowding the room.

     The room was full of the acrid smell of paper preservative which brought fond memories back to Thomas as he stepped into the room. Many of the books in this room were centuries old, but even with the preserving chemicals and the liberal use of preservation spells the books would eventually crumble to dust. Thomas glanced at the door beside the entrance to the librarian’s office behind which was the copying room. How many long evenings had he spent in there? he wondered. All apprentices had to take their turn, copying the oldest books out onto new paper, writing a new book that would eventually replace the old one on the shelves. That was where they practised the art of calligraphy, so essential when copying new spells into their spellbooks, and apprentices who'd spent a long evening performing this arduous chore were easily recognised by the way they rubbed their aching wrists all the next day.

     He glanced around at the shelves of books, wondering how long it would take him to find one of the ones he’d written. That's something else Derrin's got to look forward to, he thought with a smile. Like every apprentice before him, he too would soon be bemoaning the unfortunate fact that the wizards couldn't just ca spell to copy the book by magic. A magically copied object carried a charge of residual magic, though, that interfered with any future copying spell, making it impossible for it to be copied in turn. You could only copy an original. You couldn't copy a copy, which meant that even a magically created copy eventually had to be copied by hand when it finally began to disintegrate.

     The librarian on duty, a wizened, shriveled old man who was sorting through the cards of the library's lending system, looked up at Thomas over the rims of his spindly, metal framed spectacles as the wizard stepped into the room, quietly closing the door behind him. This was the first chance he'd had to visit the library since his return to the University, three weeks ago. It was second downday, the second of three days of the week when Lara, the second moon, wasn't in the sky when the yellow sun rose. It was a bad day for the casting of high level spells, and research wizards were consequently given the day off to relax and pursue their own interests.

     Both Thomas and Lirenna's previous second downdays had been spent settling into the dwelling tree, though. The week before, Thomas and Edward Parsley had spent three hours carrying Thomas’s new armchair to the shaewoods and then wrestling it in through the front door, past the small kitchen and dining area and to the snug at the back, to replace the shae sized chair that had originally occupied the space. It had been a mighty chore, but now he had a chair he could really relax in at the end of a long day.

     Now, though, their lives were finally settling down into a steady routine and Thomas finally had a chance to revisit one of the favourite places of his childhood. Back in the days of his apprenticeship he'd spent every available minute in this room, soaking up the knowledge contained in these books like a dry sponge, but even in five years he'd only been able to read through a fraction of them. Now he had another seven years, at least, but even so it was unlikely he'd make much further progress. Now that he was a qualified wizard he was allowed unrestricted access to the second and fourth rooms, where much more interesting books were kept. With a grin of anticipation, therefore, he crossed the room, heading for the next door.

     The first room contained books on virtually every subject imaginable, from history and geography to botany, astronomy, engineering, carpentry, cookery and architecture, but one subject that was noticeably absent was magic. The first room of the library was open to all, including apprentices and even the valley's non-wizard population, but the teaching wizards were very concerned that the younger apprentices should not know anything about the actual casting of spells until they were ready for it, which usually wasn't until they were in their third of fourth year. The books on magic were kept in the second room, therefore, and a permanent sentry spell cast on the connecting doorway only let through those people who knew they had permission to go there.

     Thomas felt the slight prickling in his scalp as he passed through the doorway, the hair raising tingling that told him that the spell was responding to the level of guilt and anxiety in his head, and he felt a slight twinge of fear that it might fail to let him through. Thomas worried about everything. Every time he cast a spell he worried that it might backfire on him. He worried that the proctors might think he'd broken one of the University's rules and come to arrest him. He worried about something terrible happening to Derrin and Lirenna, and he worried whether their home back in Haven was being looked after properly in their absence. Right now, though, he was worrying that the spell on the doorframe might go wrong and bar him from entering the second room, even though he had every right to go there. The embarrassment, the humiliation, of being prevented from going somewhere where some fourth year apprentices were allowed would be hard to bear, and since the spell worked by reading the anxiety in his mind, the more worried he became, the more likely it became that what he feared would actually happen.

     Fortunately, though, the long dead wizards who had created the sentry spell had foreseen this possibility and had made sure that the spell could tell the difference between anxiety and guilt, and so the spell allowed him to pass with only the very slightest flickering of witchfire around the doorframe. He paused for a minute, his shoulders shaking with relief and amusement at his own silliness, but he sobered rapidly at the thought that he'd have to go through it all again at the next doorway, into the third room. He imagined the brass doorknob laughing mockingly at him, and in sudden anger he strode across the small room, threw the door open and strode through, closing the door behind him with satisfaction as if to say there! Take that!

     He smiled ruefully as he imagined what he must look like to anyone who happened to be in the third room when he came bursting in, but these sentry spells really did terrify him and he hated every time he had to pass through one. Fortunately, there were only those two sentry spells in the library. There was no barrier of any kind between the third and fourth rooms, and the spells guarding access to the fifth and sixth rooms were much more powerful, In order to protect people from the dangerous books and items contained therein.

     The third room contained the spellbooks of dead wizards, both alumni and externums. They were all stored in eternity boxes that protected their contents from the passage of time and were stacked up to a dozen high in dusty, untidy walls that divided the warehouse sized room into dozens of narrow aisles. The spellbooks of almost all the wizards who'd ever graduated from the University were stored here, over four million books. An average of ten books for each of the around two hundred wizards who'd graduated on each of the past two thousand years. Most of these books would contain the same spells, of course, since there were a handful of simple spells so useful that virtually all wizards learned them. Only a comparative handful of books would contain the rarer spells, those that would only be used very infrequently, in very special circumstances. There would probably be years in which no living wizard knew those spells, during which they would survive only in these huge, dusty, leatherbound tomes, waiting patiently for the day when another wizard would need to learn them.

     The books containing those spells had to be saved and preserved, of course, but most of the books in this room did not fall into that category. Most of the books in this room contained no spells that weren't to be found in a million other books. Why did the University hold onto them? Obviously they had to be found and returned to the University when their owner died. Spellbooks were far too dangerous to be left lying around where anyone could find them, but surely it would be a lot simpler to just destroy them. Why hold onto them for year after year, century after century, taking up so much valuable space for no good reason? Thomas couldn't understand it. On one level, though, he was glad they did, because it meant that, one day, all of his spellbooks would find their way into this room, and all of Lirenna's as well. Maybe they'd be stored in the same box, side by side for all eternity.

     He looked around at all the boxes as he strolled slowly across the room, each labeled with a unique series of numbers and letters, wondering what wonderful high level spells they contained. Theoretically he could open any box he wanted, take out any book and leaf through its pages, reading any spell he chose. Those spellbooks containing controlled spells were safely stored in the fifth room. He could learn one of the spells if he wanted to and copy it into his own spellbook, enabling him to cast it any time he wanted, but fully qualified wizards were expected to know better. If he wanted to learn a new spell, he only had to ask a senior wizard who would either put him in touch with someone who already knew the spell or, if no living wizard knew that particular spell, find him a spellbook that contained it and help him to learn it. That way, he would have the benefit of the wisdom and experience of a senior wizard who would help him to avoid the perils and pitfalls he would inevitably face if he tried to learn it on his own.

     Some wizards did just that, of course. Occasionally a wizard wanted to learn a particular spell and, for one reason or another, didn't want anyone else to know it. The University rules permitted this, but every wizard had heard dozens of horror stories of spells backfiring on their casters with tragic results because of some trivial error that a senior wizard could have helped him to avoid.

     One thing that the University was very careful to regulate closely, though, was the invention of new spells. All the spells used by University wizards were approved by the University, having been used, improved upon, used again and improved again until they were as safe to the caster as it was possible to make them. A newly invented spell could misfire in any number of ways, though, especially if the wizard who'd invented it was young and inexperienced, and so the University permitted no research into new spells unless it was carried out either by or under the supervision of a senior wizard in the carefully controlled environment of the University's research buildings. Breaking this rule was one of the most serious crimes a University wizard could commit and was punished harshly, so most wizards wanting a new spell would come to the third room of the library first and leaf through the index, stored in a series of filing cabinets next to the door, to see whether any other wizard had ever created such a spell. Making these spellbooks available to all made unauthorised spell creation much less likely.

     Thomas was sorry to leave the third room, as he enjoyed the warm and comforting atmosphere generated by the millions of boxed spellbooks, making it feel as though the souls of all those dead wizards were still present, slumbering away amongst the dusty eternity boxes. He felt that he was surrounded by thousands of friends, and that they welcomed him here and wanted him to stay. He smiled to himself at his flight of fancy as he opened the door and stepped through into the fourth room.

     The fourth room was much smaller than the first and contained far fewer books. Whereas the first room contained rows and rows of crowded bookshelves, the fourth room contained only a couple of hundred books, each standing on its own little pedestal like exhibits in an art gallery. These books contained knowledge that was considered dangerous for one reason or another, and so were kept where no apprentice or any member of the valley's non-wizard population could reach them. Some of them were politically dangerous, containing records of the deeds and actions of historically famous people whose reputations were important to the living. Other books were dangerous because the knowledge they contained might tempt people to commit dangerous acts, such as looting the underground prison of the demon Stoll-Kala whose guarding and warding spells were contained in rubies the size of tangerines. None of them were directly dangerous to the reader, though, so that the very act of opening the heavy, gilded covers and turning the pages put the reader in peril of his life or sanity. These supremely dangerous books were kept in the fifth room, which was built like a bank vault and was only accessible to senior wizards.

     Thomas had heard that there was a copy of the Pardatano in the fifth room, the so called book of forbidden knowledge that had been written centuries before by the explorer mage Valazia. The three original copies that had been written by Valazia himself were said to have contained knowledge so terrible that anyone reading them was cursed to never sleep without nightmares again. Every time the book had been copied or translated, though, the worst bits had been left out and what was left watered down, so that by the time the Agglemonian Empire was at the height of its power it had become little more than a collection of travellers tales which children could read with perfect safety. The copy said to be in the fifth room, though, was a third generation copy, still containing most of the terrible knowledge of the thankfully long lost originals. It was seven hundred years old and had become so fragile and crumbly before being placed in its eternity box that its pages could only be turned by the exceedingly gentle touch of featherlift spells.

     Thomas himself possessed a copy of the Pardatano, which he'd found in the underground stronghold of the renegade wizard Zebulon and which now resided in a locked strongbox in his home in Haven. It was a younger copy than the one said to reside in the fifth room, but it still contained much that frightened him and he'd gone to great lengths to keep it out of the innocent hands of his son. His particular copy was one of those that had been edited heavily by the Derronians, an obscure religious sect that had flourished briefly during the heyday of the Agglemonian Empire. The Derronians believed that the two suns were gods, eternal enemies of each other who had been fighting for dominance since the beginning of time. Only the worshippers of Derro, the red sun, they believed, would be saved when he eventually triumphed over the yellow sun, bringing about the end of the world.

     The story Thomas had heard was that a Derronian priest had been reading a copy of the Pardatano one day when he came across a passage that appeared to confirm his beliefs. Valazia had immediately been declared a prophet, and the Pardatano had been adopted as a Derronian holy book. Several whole chapters which appeared to contradict their beliefs, obviously written while Valazia had been under the evil influence of minions of the yellow sun god, had been cut out of the newly edited copy, and vast amounts of new material describing their beliefs, their prophesies and the lives and deeds of notable Derronians from previous generations had been added, swelling the book to three times its original size.

     Fortunately the Derronian additions were easy to spot and Thomas simply ignored them. It was the material that had been written by Valazia himself, what there was of it, that interested him, and he cursed the Derronians for so casually discarding so much of it, denying it to later editions. Maybe they had done the world a favour, though, if what they had taken out was anything like as horrible and terrifying as what they'd left behind, and it made him shudder to imagine what loathsome secrets were contained between the pages of the much older, much more complete volume that was said to reside in the fifth room. And that was just one book! What other books were hidden away in there, kept safely out of reach of an innocent and unsuspecting humanity?