Three of Ms. Scaggs’ gold sovereigns weighing heavily in his pocket, Oliver handed the bag with the other four hundred and ninety-seven to the auction guard. It felt like he’d just stabbed her in the back, but there she was, smiling.

  “Thanks boy, remind me to give you a bonus.” Her eyes lit up, and as she looked around the room, her face softened to that of a schoolgirl. “It’s like my birthday, except of course, I have to pay for everything.”

  The late Tiamore’s ground floor was one large library with tomes and volumes piled high in front of overflowing bookshelves. The house was polished wood and brass, and instead of the usual portraits of dead relatives, the walls were adorned with maps and charts, blueprints and diagrams, as well as a smattering of butterflies and moths mounted in picture frames.

  People weaved through the aisles. Some wore robes, some wore suits, but most were a bit ‘odd’ in one way or another: one had half a mustache, the left half; and another had a tattoo of an eye on his forehead that appeared to be looking in a different direction every time Oliver saw it.

  When they approached the stairs, Scaggs’ nose curled in remarkably witch-like fashion. “Uh, there’s Thelemule. That old guy in blue.” She pointed.

  And when Oliver looked, he was surprised to see a man who had the dark skin and wide features of a native of Akebu. Despite a graying beard, he appeared only a little older than her.

  A straw-blonde woman in a red and gold robe stood next to him with her back turned, and though the two were engaged in conversation, Thelemule was scowling at whatever point she was trying to make.

  When the woman turned around, exposing comely yet severe facial features, Scaggs tensed up. “That’s the inquisitor from the Church,” she whispered. “They like to keep tabs on us. Look, I need to go through the books in the reserve room, but that’s for wizards only, which includes me for once. You’ll be okay browsing out here, won’t you?”

  Oliver nodded, trying not to feel the weight of her coins in his pocket, before watching her disappear through a guarded doorway, leaving him to wander the stacks alone.

  All those books piled on top of each other… he should have just swiped something out here. But, he reminded himself, the place was packed with wizards and mages, more than a hundred eyes that might be magically enhanced, so maybe he had made the right choice after all—

  His stomach twisted. Is that who he was now? Someone who thought about what he could steal the instant he entered a room?

  He shoved that to the back of his mind and began exploring. Although the books in the main library weren’t considered arcane knowledge, they were still extraordinary, and Oliver found a larger version of the bestiary Ms. Scaggs had, one with full-page color illustrations of the animals. He flipped to ‘giraffe’ to see if its larger picture would make any more sense.

  But the illustration showed a strange animal with horns that ended in spheres. That, and it was bright yellow of all colors. Then he flipped all the way to the front and was shocked to see what it thought an aardvark looked like, but the creature on that page made no sense at all, so he closed the book and slid it back on the shelf.

  This wizard, Tiamore, whoever he had been, had had a great affinity for illustrated books, and Oliver found tome after tome of maps, diagrams, and drawings. Though mixed in with the regular books, the illustrated ones were larger, most with a fancy or distinctive spine, and Oliver made a game of finding them.

  Off in a back corner on a low shelf far away from everyone, sat a worn tome with a faded green cover, the writing along its spine in silver runes. It was so large it would have been awkward to hold to read, so Oliver pulled it down to a runner carpet and flopped on his belly to take a look.

  Silver script flowed through its pages like a river. The language wasn’t any he’d ever seen, but the text seemed almost secondary to the way it was arranged, and as he pulled his head back to view the page as a whole rather than the individual words, the space between them blurred into pictures.

  He saw lovers, a man and a woman bowing before a tree, a family growing near a forest, a tribe, a people, emerging, and then a terrible fire. The man and woman were alone again, and the forest took them in.

  It taught them to become a pair of great cats, prowling and hunting and killing. The seasons changed, and they became bears to sleep through the Winter, and then birds to awaken in the Spring. Page after page, they became animal after animal, until they were the very forest itself. Until the final page where they turned back into people and with the seasons man became woman, and woman became man in an endless cycle…

  Huh… Oliver had never thought there was anyone else with the same ‘problem’ as him, and they didn’t even appear to think of it as a ‘problem.’ He laid there staring at that page, dumbfounded.

  A cough came from above, and Oliver glanced up to see a curious face.

  It belonged to a man a bit younger than Scaggs, though his sandy hair was prematurely touched with gray. His tailcoat, charcoal gray linen, was more wrinkled than was proper and bore dull purple accents. His posture frail, the man clutched a crutch under one arm.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Forgive me for reading over your shoulder,” the man said as he knelt down, staring at the book. “You really have something there.”

  “I’m just here with Ms. Scaggs.”

  The man blinked. “The witch?”

  “She prefers ‘wizardess.’”

  He sighed. “Yes, she would. Well, you can call me Marco if you wish to be in my good graces, or ‘the cripple’ if you do not.”

  “I’m Oliver, but Ms. Scaggs usually just calls me ‘Hey, boy.’”

  Marco snorted a chuckle. “So, what do you make of it?” He gestured to the book.

  “It’s presented as a history, but maybe they’re just legends or fairy tales. I can’t read the words.”

  “Ah,” said Marco. “That was my next question. Oh well.” The man propped himself back up on his crutch. “Don’t worry, I won’t buy it out from under you. As far as I’m concerned, that one is yours, but—” He raised a finger. “If I find any others, those are fair game.”

  Heavy footsteps reverberated through the floor as Oliver twisted up to see a massive figure looming over him.

  This giant of a man wore a long black cloak that bulged just enough to give the impression of armor, though none was visible. He had flowing blonde hair and fine, beautiful features, but the hard muscle behind them gave him a brutal demeanor. A heavy steel chain ran up from under his cloak to the pommel of an imposing sword he held at his side. He stared Oliver square in the eye, first like he was confused, then like he was intent on something—

  “Hey, hey!” Scaggs called from across the room. In the blink of an eye, she closed the distance while the armored man stepped over Oliver to stand between her and Marco.

  “Sorry, sorry.” Marco tried to wave everyone off, but the giant sneered at Scaggs, lifting his sword to threaten a blow.

  Marco stumbled forward, forcing his way between them. He turned to Scaggs. “Take a step back. Please.” Then he turned to the giant. “Oliver was just showing me a book. I think you startled him. Everyone, please take a step back.”

  The giant raised an eyebrow on an otherwise stoic face, but did as Marco asked.

  “Good, good,” Marco addressed the swordsman, “disaster averted. Ulbrecht, as part of my official duties I need to speak with the ‘wizardess’ here for a moment, alone. Would you be so kind?”

  ‘Ulbrecht’ silently yawned, then stepped away, departing to the other room.

  Once the giant had left, Marco shot Scaggs a dirty look. “I might not like it, but Ulbrecht does keep everyone on their best behavior.” He knelt, picking up his crutch, and pushed himself up with it.

  Glaring back at him, Ms. Scaggs gave Marco her coldest, scariest, most witch-like scowl.

  Which, other than a subtle roll of his eyes, he ignored. “Oliver, show her the book. See if she can make anything of it… besides suffering.” He nodded curtly and made his way to the other side of the library.

  “Who were they?” Oliver asked.

  “Ah, well, the stuffed shirt, the guy with the crutch, that’s Prince Marco. Apparently, he’s bought into all the rumors about me,” she grumbled. “He’s the king’s youngest, not in line for anything, but he’s the steward of Greatwen, here to represent the crown and provide enough security to make even a roomful of wizards behave themselves. And the other one, Ulbrecht, he’s the security. He never speaks, but I’d wager he can and just does the silent act to give people the willies. So, what’s this about a book?”

  Scaggs took a minute, skimming through it, before she flipped the cover decisively shut. “It’s a Sylvan spell book.”

  “What kind of spells?”

  “Looks like transformations… maybe.”

  Oliver’s heart skipped a beat. “So, can you cast them?”

  “Well, there’s a reason this isn’t being auctioned with the spell books. Sylvan books are— were collector’s items, and the Sylvan language is difficult to learn, so most people who bought them couldn’t actually read them, which made them incredibly easy to counterfeit. These days they’re considered a scam. There are only a handful of people in the city who can read Sylvan, but I am one of them.”

  “What does ‘Sylvan’ mean? Are those the people in the book?”

  She shrugged. “It’s annoyingly enigmatic. You must know the dictionary definition, ‘of the forest,’ but that’s not the whole story. Maybe they were a people, or maybe it’s just the author’s name. I’d need to study that book a long while to tell if it’s even real.”

  “Is there other magic that does transformations?”

  “Only one with any sort of success.” She chuckled uneasily. “Twenty years ago, a wizard named ‘Whatshiznam’, became obsessed with dragons. So, he spends a decade trying to figure out how to transform horses into them… and goes a little mad in the process. The problem is, dragons don’t really exist, not that I know of anyway, so he had to sort of make them up. And then they stayed the same size as horses, which still might be scary, except no fire breath. That and they didn’t know how to fly, so when he ran them off a cliff… they fell to their deaths.” She made a sour face. “And then he disappeared, along with all his notes. For a while, there was always some fool or other trying to replicate his research, but after a couple of—horrifying—failures, it’s become a bit of a… taboo.”

  “Wait, his name was Whatshiznam? Like ‘What’s his name’?” Oliver groaned.

  Scaggs shrugged. “He changed it from Smith or something, said it had the same effect.”

  “Okay, but what about this book? It’s all real animals, not dragons.”

  “True, I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. I’m just saying the book probably isn’t real.”

  But what he’d seen on those final pages, Oliver couldn’t just let that go. “Did Tiamore know Sylvan? If he did, it might be real, and if it’s real, it’s a spell book for the price of a regular book, almost free,” he said, pleading.

  “It’s not free, the books out here cost five sovereigns.”

  Doing the math in his head, he’d have to save all the money she was giving him for four months to afford it. “I bet people might pay to be an eagle for a day. You could make the money back, real quick.”

  “Sylvan spells are notoriously hard to cast—”

  “But, you could do it, I know you could. And no one would say anything, because if they did, you could turn them into toads.”

  “Hmm, eagles?” She booped his nose without actually touching it. “Well, I suppose some might. Look, there’s a book I need.” She pointed to the reserve room. “If I have any coin left after that, I’ll take another look. If it’s real, it’s an extraordinary find. Which makes me think, maybe it’s not.”

  With a dizzy feeling, like the Earth was falling out from under him, Oliver put the Sylvan book back on the shelf and followed Ms. Scaggs through the door to the auction.