Chapter 5 - Knowledge is Power, Guard It Well

  

  Once Taija was in Caemlyn her excitement quickly faded. She and Aleksi had rented rooms at a ramshackle inn just outside the city walls as it was all Aleksi could afford. Even then his money wouldn't last long. Still that hadn't been the problem. While her room was both tiny and filthy, she didn't need much space and a bit of channeling could deal with most cleanliness issues. Even where it couldn't, she'd slept in trenches and this wasn't that bad, not quite.

  The real problem was that it rapidly became clear that finding information wouldn't be as easy as she'd thought. After the kindness of the villagers in Ramshorn and the way Taija's own society worked, the realisation that people in Caemlyn were completely uninterested in helping her and that to them she was just a random peasant, a country-rube barely a step above a beggar, took a day or two to properly sink in.

  It also very soon became clear, after a couple of humiliating conversations, that public libraries were simply not a thing in Caemlyn. Taija still winced at the way the innkeeper had looked at her, like she was a particularly stupid insect.

  All of this meant that she was going to need a new plan. Easy access to knowledge, public libraries and cheap books all went into the growing list of things Taija missed from home. However, she wasn't going to think about that. That way led towards the encroaching darkness of depression. The question she needed to think about was, where could she get access to knowledge?

  The answer came pretty quickly. It was obvious that there were books in this world. Many of the people of Ramshorn were literate, which had actually been a bit of a surprise to Taija, given dimly remembered history lessons. She'd also seen at least one bookshop in Caemlyn, although she'd been chased out of it before she could even look at their stock. Another humiliation.

  Regardless, books meant libraries, one of her favourite places to be and, in this strange medieval world she found herself in, if there were no public libraries, then there must be private ones. Much as she was already starting to dislike Caemlyn, a society without libraries seemed unimaginable.

  The inequality that was rife in Caemlyn had been painful to see, but had been obvious almost as soon as she'd reached the city. Following that train of thought, Taija was fairly sure that it would be the rich that had private libraries and so the palaces in the Inner City seemed like an obvious starting place for her investigations. They were also just beautiful to look at with their sweeping architecture and marbled facades, even if she didn't really have time for gawking.

  Of course Taija also needed to consider which rich people would have libraries. Some wouldn't be very interested in knowledge, science, history, things like that. More fool them. However, the really important people would surely have big libraries even if they themselves weren't actually interested. Looking at the inequality on display, they'd probably have people to do their reading for them or something.

  Taija was quite pleased with her deduction. So little made sense here, but at least she seemed to be getting her head around some of how their society worked!

  This meant that the solution to Taija's woes was obvious. She would need to find the biggest palace, which she'd already done, and then break in and find the library.

  She sighed to herself, it would probably need to be at night. Getting caught would make things awkward. Still, while it wasn't like she was some kind of infiltration expert, the One Power was a flexible tool and Taija was confident she could avoid any guards, particularly given the perplexing fact that she hadn't met a single channeler here.

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  The next evening, after eating dinner with Aleksi and discussing how her search was going, Taija told him that she was feeling a bit tired and would retire early for the night.

  She returned to her cramped room and embraced saidar, briefly luxuriating in the feel of it before spinning a quick, but complex, inverted web of spirit, fire, air and water that washed over her like a chill breeze.

  Another web created a mirror in the air in front of her and she briefly studied her reflection. Instead of dark brown eyes, straight black hair and light brown skin, she saw pretty green eyes staring out from a pale, freckled, younger face that was framed by ginger curls. It was perfect, she looked absolutely nothing like herself.

  Job done, she tied off the web of illusion and cracked open her door, checked the corridor was empty and then hurried out of the back of the inn, unseen except by the completely uninterested stablehand.

  It was getting dark outside as Taija walked unhurriedly towards what was probably this Morgase's palace. By now she was fairly sure the woman was a queen by, although she'd have to ask her if they ever met.

  One of the guards at the gate to the Inner City moved as if he was going to stop her. Another sign of the inequality in this world, but a deft flow of air knocked a flower pot off a balcony, distracting him just as Taija strode past.

  It didn't take long for Taija to reach the main gate to the palace. Obviously it was guarded and she was under no illusion that she could just walk in there. She did, however, take a moment to admire the colourful uniforms of the guards before she walked on. They had a certain panache to them.

  Circling the palace's walls didn't reveal any obvious entry points, which was annoying, but unsurprising. There were one or two points where she thought she might be able to haul herself over the wall, but it would look very suspicious as well as being undignified. There would likely be guards patrolling on the other side too.

  It was annoying, but not a serious problem. Taija hadn't released saidar since she left the inn - she had no intention of getting hit over the head by a mugger before she could do anything about it - and that would be her route into the palace.

  She drew harder on the Power, spinning a complex, inverted web of spirit that made the space in front of her match that on the roof of a smaller palace overlooking the walls. The air split apart in front of her and Taija stepped through her gateway.

  There, perfect. Now she could see over the walls and into the palace grounds. Even better, there were some large windows on what she thought was a ballroom or chamber of some kind. She spun a quick web, distorting the air in front of her eyes, and it was like she was looking through a telescope, light bent to magnify the image. Yes, the room looked empty.

  With a thought Taija opened a second gateway beside her and stepped through, straight into the palace.

  As soon as the gateway vanished behind her, she had to stop as she looked around, open mouthed. The opulence was incredible. She'd seen some truly stunning buildings in her life, the Hall of the Servants sprang to mind, but the style here was gaudier than anything she'd seen outside a museum. Huge paintings of elaborately, but archaically dressed men and women adorned the walls, carved wood covered in gold leaf highlighted the corners and edges, marble columns framed the windows and the ceiling was covered in amazingly detailed frescoes depicting scenes of leisure.

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  It took Taija a few seconds to shake herself out of her astonished reverie. It was beautiful, simply incredible, but she had more important things to do. She wasn't a tourist here to gawk. She knew she was in the right place though, she could feel it. So, with a bounce to her step, she headed off to start searching the palace.

  Her feelings of excitement didn't last all that long. The problem with going to the biggest palace in Caemlyn was that… well it was the biggest palace. She was sure she'd been wandering around for over an hour without finding anything that even vaguely looked like a library and several times she'd almost been caught by roving guards or servants hurrying about their chores.

  As a result, Taija was starting to feel quite irritable by the time she nudged a large pair of doors open and finally found her goal. It was dimly lit by moonlight shining through large, ornate windows and it was hard to make much out. However, when she spun a ball of light above her head, the sight in front of her was enough to extinguish any grumpiness. It was simply beautiful! Wooden paneling, polished desks, cosy armchairs and best of all shelf after shelf of books. It felt like years since she'd seen a book and Light she'd missed them!

  That being said, she wasn't sure where to start. There was no obvious catalogue and the books didn't have helpfully clear spines like she was used to. So all she could do was pick one off the shelf at random.

  "Tairen nobility and bloodlines in the New Era." Taija mouthed the words out loud, struggling with the unfamiliar letters. Thank the Light these people used almost the same alphabet as her, so at least she could work out which word was what. She read a few pages, holding the book open in front of her, struggling with the turgid language. However, she quickly concluded that she really didn't need to know about the family trees of the High Lords of Tear, whatever they were.

  A bit more searching and browsing brought her to "Principles of Mathematics" by A. Piertrina. That was actually quite interesting. Not because there were any new concepts in it, but because she could see how much people here knew. The answer seemed to be not all that much. Although Taija had to admit that she had no idea whether the book was cutting edge thinking or a centuries old classic. Either way it was fascinating, why she'd never seen this particular proof expressed in this way…

  A couple of hours later Taija looked up from the book with a jolt. She shouldn't have let herself become distracted! Quickly putting the book back where she'd found it and resisting the urge to just take it with her she resumed her search.

  It wasn't too long before she found something far more useful sounding. "The History of the Hundred Years War: From Unity to Destruction." That sounded like a proper history book and hopefully she'd be able to get some more useful information about the world from it. Just its existence told her she must be a long way from home. The War was the the only war she'd ever heard of and that had only been going on for five years so far.

  Taking it off the shelf and returning to the wonderfully comfortable armchair she'd claimed, Taija settled down to read.

  It was almost light when she realised with a jolt of panic that she'd let herself become distracted again. Stifling a yawn she quickly replaced the book on the shelf, glanced around to make sure she'd left no sign of her presence and then spun an inverted gateway directly back to her room in the inn.

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  Unfortunately Taija didn't get much chance to sleep in. The thin walls of her cheap room did little to shield her from the sound of the inn's other occupants rousing themselves. As a result, despite her best efforts, she was quite irritable the next day.

  Aleksi had been looking for work and over an unappetising breakfast he told her about how he thought he'd found something, which would support her in her search for answers. However, while he was happily telling her about that, her mind was half back in the library and half wishing she was asleep and all she could manage was one word answers.

  The day felt like it crawled by and all Taija could do was wait for night to fall so that she could go back to the library and continue with her reading. As soon as she'd 'gone to bed' she Traveled directly to the library to get back to her research.

  Unlike the previous night, she refused to let herself get distracted, as difficult as that was, and she managed to finish the book on the Hundred Years War before getting to bed a little bit earlier than the night before.

  However, it was still far too little sleep and the next morning, Taija's tiredness was like a hammer pounding through her head. She simply couldn't keep functioning for more than a few days with so little sleep. The guilty voice in the back of her head was also whispering increasingly loudly that she was taking advantage of Aleksi's generosity in an unforgivable way.

  While Aleksi protested when she told him she was going to try to find some work, she could still the relief in his eyes. Fortunately it seemed that the Creator was smiling on her as in the end all it took to find some work was a brief conversation with the innkeeper.

  With that, Taija became the inn's chambermaid, cleaning out the guests' rooms. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had to do such… menial work, Ramshorn aside, and it paid terribly, but at least it let her feel she wasn't taking advantage of Aleksi.

  Of course she didn't actually spend hours cleaning the empty rooms. There was no one around in the upper floors during the day, so instead she simply used the Power. A whirlwind of webs removing dust and dirt, cleaning it in seconds. It wouldn't have been so easy in a hotel in her own world, but here in this rough inn standards were considerably lower, something she preferred not to think about. At least it meant she could catch up on sleep even while 'on the clock'.

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  Each night Taija continued to visit the palace library. It was slow going, trying to work her way through the unfamiliar script, not helped by the poor quality of the printing in most of them. One was even handwritten!

  "The Five Kingdoms of the North" gave her some understanding of the Borderlands, apparently making up the northern most kingdoms, Shienar, Arafel, Kndaor, Saldaea and Malkier. Much of the content was tedious royal histories, but the book also touched on the Blight. So she now knew that the Shadow still had a presence in this world, beyond villagers' fears of darkfriends. It seemed that those kingdoms formed the main the bulwark against the Shadow, or at least its conventional forces, which was interesting and might be worthy of more investigation later.

  The next book that Taija decided to read was more exciting. "Tar Valon and the White Tower - Life Among the Servants." She already knew that Tar Valon was where the Aes Sedai of this world were based and the White Tower seemed to be their version of the Hall of the Servants. She suspected that the reference to 'servants' was a pun on Aes Sedai. She'd noticed occasional words from her language interspersed in the books she'd read, so it would make sense.

  She settled down in what was now her favourite armchair, tied off the web providing her with light and got down to reading. In a matter of minutes she was engrossed in the book, trailing her finger along the lines of text on the pages as she laboriously worked her way through it.

  Taija wasn't sure how long it was before she was pulled out of reading about the position of the Amyrlin Seat by a noise. She looked up, blinking with surprise, to see a dark-haired woman standing over her, looking distinctly unimpressed. She was handsome rather than pretty, with a cold, severe look on her face. There was also something slightly off about her appearance, although Taija couldn't put her finger on what it was.

  As their eyes met, the glow of saidar sprang up around the woman. Immediately Taija instinctively grabbed for it herself. How could she have let herself become so distracted?!

  Instead of the warm flow of the Power she felt a smooth barrier between her and saidar.

  Fuck… Taija frantically tried to master the surge of panic boiling up inside her, gripping the rough wool of her dress in her fists as the woman allowed a predatory smile onto her face.

  She looked Taija up and down, glanced up at the hovering light and sniffed audibly. "I was right, I did feel someone channeling last night." Taija kicked herself internally. How could she have been so stupid?! Not inverting all of her webs, tying them off and to crown it all, letting go of saidar. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  She needed to pull herself together before she got herself killed, if she hadn't already managed that. She clamped down hard on the fear that threatened to overwhelm her.

  "Answer me girl!" With a start Taija realised the woman had been talking. Unless you wish it to go worse for you, you will tell me now, how exactly did you get in here girl and what do you think you are doing?" The woman's voice spoke of command, clearly someone used to being obeyed.