A breath of
chill, stone-scented air drifted across his face, and Edrian opened one eye to
see a thin, flickering beam of light come out of the wall, right where his
floor-to-ceiling bookshelves should have been. Oddly, in the soft moonlight
spilling through the sheer screens, the bookshelves were almost a meter to the
right of where they belonged, and the light came from an opening between
bookshelves and stone wall.
“Grandfather?”
he whispered, understanding, and sat up quickly. Edrian grimaced as his mattress
creaked. He preferred the old-fashioned bedstead, with ropes and natural cloth
and fluff-bush filling in the mattress. That would have to change if he wanted
to get up without alerting half the building.
“First lesson,
my lad.” His grandfather held up the cylinder that produced the soft,
flickering glow. It wasn’t a candle or a lantern or lamp, and the source of the
light shimmered from gold to green to soft amber-orange and back again,
pulsating just enough to be visible.
“The passage or
the light?” Edrian asked, once he had followed Elbarto through the opening and
the bookshelf slid softly back into place.
“Many things to
make up one lesson. And here’s something it takes people their whole lives to
realize -- the older you get, the more you realize you spend your whole life
learning.” Elbarto handed him the cylinder. “Light without heat. How can that
be?”
In the soft
glow, a passageway extended in both directions behind the wall of Edrian’s
room. His grandfather gestured to the right, where another opening revealed a
narrow passageway filled with steps going up and down. They started downward.
Edrian studied the light, which was soft enough that he could look directly at
it and still see well enough to make his way down the steps without having to
wait for his eyes to adjust. That pulsation … was it breathing? He hefted the
cylinder. That was liquid surrounding the thing … a living thing?
No comments:
Post a Comment