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The heavy door of the Library edged open with a quiet creaking in the ancient hinges. Light from outside drifted into the dark room, dancing with motes of dust, and illuminated the two-thousand year-old mosaic that wove its way along the floor. Janus stepped onto the mosaic, bare feet sending dust airborne from the old stones. He closed the door, and pulled the purple hood off of his head, revealing a full head of blue hair with faint streaks of paler blue and white around his ears. He reached out to grasp some invisible globe in front of him, and took a breath. Relax. Free your mind. Leave your body and reach beyond. Draw the wisp to you, and feel it move to your hands.The litany of magical focus rolled in Janus's mind, familiar and comforting. A faint blue glow began to form between Janus's small hands. At first, only a pinpoint of light shone in the middle of a ghostly haze, but it slowly grew brighter as Janus concentrated. Around and around. Feel the glow spinning, growing. The glow deepened and sharpened into a clearly-defined ball. Tendrils of energy leapt out of the globe, arcing over the surface. The light it was shedding became brighter, fully lighting the boy's face, and bathing the Library's foyer in blue. When the glow lives, snap it into form. In a burst of light, the ball solidified into a luminescent sphere two handspans wide. Janus pulled his hands away, and looked up as the glowlight hovered at eye level. Now, simply focus on changing the color. The light grew paler, becoming a milky white. In the circle of light cast around him, Janus could see for several lengths, including the first of the shelves of tomes. Beyond, however, faded into darkness. The ball rose and perched itself a hand's span above the boy's head. I need to work on getting the color right, but it'll do for now, the boy thought. Above him, the Library's ceiling was dark. No windows cast light into the Library, so the shadows were long around the boy's light. He walked across the floor, feeling the individual tiles of the Library's great mosaic press against his feet in odd, but familiar shapes. The mosaic was a large fresco, detailing the century that it took to create the thirteen sky islands: People in white robes stood in front of odd devices with big windows on them. The devices had many coloured lights and buttons. There were people working in large rooms with large purple crystals. Finally, in the very back of the Library, the mosaic depicted the cities rising into a painfully blue sky. Many of the stones of the mosaic had been rubbed down and worn from hundreds of years of feet walking on them. Janus made his way among the rows of tomes, thick old books of all colours and bindings. Many of the books looked as if they hadn't been read in decades. Janus stopped at a familiar row and reached for a book on the third shelf. He sat cross-legged on the floor, against the bookshelf, book in his lap. The books in the Library were magically warded against dust and deterioration, so the pages were always crisp and clean. The globe of light was hovering above his head, illuminating everything from above. He turned to the page where he had last left off, midway through the book. The chapter heading read "The Fall of Kitir." "During routine maintenance of the main crystal matrices, the technicians found major structural damage in seven of the ten primary crystals. The council of Kitir immediately restricted all energy draws from the primary crystals to maintaining Kitir's altitude and stability. Within a few days, sages determined that the damage was in fact due to the break-down of the lattice formation within the estralite itself. "Over the next mooncycle, Kitir's council consulted with the councils of Tasia, Kewas, and Vanada, on both repairing and reversing the damage, and evacuation. The secrets of making pure estralite crystals of the required scale to power a city were lost centuries ago, before paper preservation techniques were discovered. "Half a mooncycle later, Kitir was jolted when two primary crystals and six secondary crystals failed simultaneously. One of the remaining secondary crystals shattered from the energy whip of the extra load being placed on it. "Kitir's sage, Koharan, determined that all of the crystals would fail in less than three mooncycles. Kitir immediately petitioned Kewas and Vanada for assistance. Kewas' council leaders brought Kitir's plight to the attention of all of the cities, and began arranging evacuation plans. In less than a mooncycle, Kitir was almost entirely abandoned. The people of Kitir had dispersed to the remaining twelve sky cities, and had begun to settle in temporary accommodation built for them. The libraries had been rescued. "Only a group of technicians remained, keeping Kitir in a stable position above the Eastern ocean. As Koharan had determined, the last three primary crystals failed simultaneously at the end of the season, and Kitir fell from the sky." Janus looked up, apprehensively. Without the King's permission, the Library was off-limits. Janus had been sneaking into the Library every few days or so for the past year, ever since his tenth birthday, when he had snuck into the Library with a candle and found an old teaching tome. When Janus was very young, he had not displayed the normal signs of magic: While other children found themselves able to clumsily levitate toys by whim, Janus simply could not. He seemed to have no awareness beyond his own consciousness. Cade, Tasia's sage, thought that repeated exposure to magic may help the boy unlock the way to magic, but it was to no avail. The old sage tried everything: He took Janus to the Library, the throne room, the levitation generators, even the labs. While the little boy had found all of it terribly interesting, he showed no signs of improvement. On Janus' fifth birthday, the sage had declared, with much regret, that Janus would probably never be able to learn or control magic. On Janus's tenth birthday, however, the old book he had found had other ways of reaching magic. On his third visit, Janus found his way, and levitated his candle off of the ground a little. Janus closed the book, and stood up. He replaced the book on the shelf, and stepped out into the main aisle, towards the door. Something made him stop. He stood in his circle of light. Something was wrong. An impulse in Janus' head warned him that he wasn't safe. Someone's coming! Janus turned and ran, bare feet padding on the mosaic. He hid behind a shelf far to the back, hoping to avoid detection. As almost an afterthought, he freed the energies that were powering the magical light above him, and in a glowing haze, the globe dissolved and disappeared. A beam of light arched up the aisle past the bookshelf Janus hid behind, and the door to the Library opened with the usual creaking. Janus could hear voices, ringing through the dark. "I'm sure someone is in here. Look, footprints!" Janus caught his breath in a gasp. He had forgotten to remove his footprints from the dust; a simple task now that he had learned how to reshape loose materials such as sand. "They look pretty small. Well, I'll have a look." Crouching lower, Janus could hear footsteps approaching down the aisle. One step after another, becoming slightly louder every step. Each step was precisely measured, pace upon pace in perfect time. A faint glow threw shadows off the bookshelves. Janus heard his heartbeat in his ears. The steps were getting closer, approaching Janus' hiding spot. The shadows grew longer as the light drew nearer. Floating into view, a white globe drifted down the aisle, and turned green when it reached Janus' shelf. Close behind the light, in purple and black robes, an old man stepped around the corner. Janus looked up into the face of Tasia's sage, Cade. "Janus, what are you doing here? The Library is off limits." "Torin was looking for me to beat me up again," Janus lied. Torin, a bully slightly older than Janus but much stronger and more heavy-set, taunted the smaller boy every chance he got, simply because Janus could not use magic. Recently, Janus had begun standing up for himself, so Torin took the next step and began assaulting him. "Is that so? I'll have to have a talk with that child. Now, come. You're not allowed in here." Janus stood up and followed Cade out. Waiting at the door was a lone figure, silhouetted by the sunlight outside. As the pair came closer, Janus could make out the figure's features. A heavy brow, gruff but warm eyes, a rounded but strong face. "Geran!" Janus ran to the man and threw his arms around the man's torso. Geran returned the boy's embrace, and then stood tall. The big man was the closest thing to a father Janus had. His own father had left under mysterious circumstances shortly after Janus' birth, abandoning him and his older sister. His mother fell ill of a rare disease and passed away when Janus was still an infant. Geran had took the two orphans into his own family and treated them as his own children. "Janus, you know you're forbidden to enter the Library without permission. I don't want to see you in here again. If the king hears about this, you could be in serious trouble." Janus bowed his head at being scolded, and walked outside, shielding his eyes from the sun. Spread out before him was Tasia's stone courtyard. All around behind him rose the tall stone spires of the palace, set with bricks of sapphire and emerald. The palace stood above a rambling landscape of stone buildings, growing smaller the farther they were from the palace, eventually stopping altogether. Somewhere beyond the buildings, the stones on the ground gave way to natural grass. Cutting a line through the grassy field, a path wended its way to a small woods that stood in the middle of the island. Beyond the trees, agricultural fields nurtured the plants that became food for Tasia's people. At the very end of the island, was the edge, warded with barriers to prevent fatal falls to the earth far below. Janus skipped down the steps of the Library, down into the courtyard. Like most days, it was bright and sunny. As soon as he had gotten into the lower plaza, towards home, he turned and looked back at the Library. Where he stood, the spires of the palace cast a shadow upon the Library, and him. Clouds lazily drifted through the sky. Janus headed towards his favorite place in the woods, near the bridge that crossed over the river, where he could think in peace. |
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Spirits of Blue and all characters contained within are © 2002, Simon Knowles. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Email me if you want to reproduce this somewhere for any reason. It's mine, mine, all mine! |