Short Fiction: The Library of Eristat

Part of an extended cinematic universe swirling around in my head and my drafts folder

Some visual inspiration, but not to be taken as canon

Update: The novel length follow-up to this story is being serialized, starting here.

Reality was anchored due north, and slowly circled into fantasy. As you traced the stacks clockwise, history shifted into legend, legend became myth, and myth transitioned to outright fiction. The boundaries were fuzzy and open to dispute; this was as it should be. Celeste Verent thought of the library of Eristat as a continuum of truth. Attempts to honestly represent the world were classified closest to the entrance, due north; for the outer rings of the library this represented biographies, scrupulously researched histories, even such dry material as censuses or tax records. More colorful pieces of propaganda that purported to tell a story but censored and interpreted events to support a particular agenda found their spot farther east. To the south were speculative tales, reconstructions of events that built their heroes and villains up to be larger than life. As you reached the west you landed in pure constructed realities, some of which could have conceivably taken place in the real world and others with progressively more fanciful settings as the path circled back north; worlds that might be impossible, or which might occupy the northernmost spot of some other world’s library.

The location of any book in the library could be described by three attributes: its distance from the center of the library, its height on the shelves, and its orientation relative to true north. In a polar coordinate system, this would be the radius, height, and angle. Semantically, these represented topic, subtopic, and correspondence to reality. Truth was the central axis of the library, topics represented the rings of books peeling out from the center, with the shelves loosely organizing genre.

As mentioned, the outermost rings of the library were concerned with the world of events. Narratives both constructed and dutifully recorded, showing the histories of other countries, kings, and stories that existed only in imagination.

The middle rings of the library were concerned with the mechanisms behind events, attempts to deduce the underlying laws of reality from the behaviors observed in the outer layers. To the north were the fields best understood by the sciences, to the east were the works of alchemists with their concoctions both real and theorized, to the south were the visions of astrologers, and to the west books of spells and witchcraft promising insights into the occult and hidden layers of reality. The occasional obscurantist would take umbrage at the implications of their less than prominent placement within the wheel of truth; but when pressed for verifiability, tut that perhaps their work was better left shrouded in mystery.

The innermost rings of the library contained the world of ideas and philosophies. True north was, for better or for worse, a function of the fashions of the times and the systems of morality and governance that currently held sway in Eristat. At the east of the inner rings could be found the philosophies of other countries: treatises arguing for the divine right of kings, giving power to the people, and apologetics on every political system that currently held sway in the world. To the south were the perspectives of forgotten kingdoms and failed movements, stories that cast all of history and life as a grand narrative progressing to an ultimate goal, and some of the only enduring relics of defunct religious orders. To the west were the most obscure and incomprehensible works in the entire library. Claims of grand conspiracies and demons who manipulated men to vile ends, blasphemies advocating the end of life itself, and forbidden works of sedition.

Celeste had held her ground for years on one simple principle: no book, however vile, was to be destroyed. Even the worst argument deserved to exist as an example of error. A small number of shelves, mostly at the west end of the library, had metal grates chained onto them to keep their contents from escaping into the outside world, a concession to her wary patrons. To be fair, some of their contents truly were disturbing. There were books glorifying violence and suffering, and incomprehensible tomes illustrated with sinister drawings that seemed to be recipes for either evil or madness. As the librarian, there was no work that was off limits to Celeste, and some of her favorite hours were spent trying to understand a forgotten “dangerous” book and see if it could be better classified and restored to the broader circulation of the library.

The existence of the library itself and its organization scheme were a consequence of the mass production of the written word. Once books no longer had to be copied by scribes one letter at a time, but could be multiplied through ink and movable type, the world’s production and appetite for information had grown enormously. This had also diluted their credibility: a book was once a significant investment of time and energy to copy, and it was presumed no one would bother to bind or own a book they didn’t fully believe in: manuscripts that failed to persuade would simply disappear. With the arrival of more books than even the wealthy had time to read, her patrons began to require a way to organize and evaluate the credibility of the knowledge in their possession. And this was the reason Celeste was able to earn a living surrounded by the collected wisdom of the world.

Celeste had managed the library for an uninterrupted twenty years since its creation, organizing the generous endowment from their local lords, and managing the influx of books as it began to approach the status of one of the wonders of the world. It was on a trip that took her out of the country to secure additional works for the library that she left it under the stewardship of her son Semote for the first time. Semote was a young man close to exiting his teens, but one who knew the library almost as well as her. With some notable exceptions.

As you would expect of any responsible young man, Semote hugged his mother goodbye, promised to be good and look after her life’s work until she returned. And as you would expect of any young man, the moment he was confident she was out of earshot and would not be returning for anything she had forgotten, he snatched up the keys to the forbidden shelves to start digging through their contents.

At first glance, there was a lot of smut. Even more than Semote had expected, given the amount he tended to find in the slush pile of donations that never made it into the library proper. They had fewer misspellings than the average attempt, and more atypical pairings. Some alleged to chronicle the exploits of members of royalty, while others took a more scientific approach to the topic. But still, nothing that wouldn’t see the light of day in a less prudish era.

There was a full volume on rare poisons, some both slow-acting and undetectable. There was less dust on this volume than most, Semote hoped that it saw the light of day as part of investigations into homicide, rather than any more unsavory purpose. There were works of alternate history alleging crimes committed in the founding of their country, that he would not have considered notable except for the reason that someone had felt the need to suppress them.

But the volume that intrigued Semote the most was in the first ring of the library starting from the outside, at 359 degrees from true north, on the second shelf from the top. He had been curious about it for years; its black spine bore no title, and the binding was of a style he didn’t recognize. When Semote had been younger, some of his favorite stories had been tales of legendary grimoires, where some aspiring wizard would find a spellbook revealing the secrets of the mystic arts, allowing them to summon unseen forces. His years sampling every available title in the library had thus far found nothing worthy of the description, but the romantic in him supposed that if anything could, it would be an ancient unmarked book kept locked away. Carefully taking it off the shelf and examining its pages confirmed his suspicions that the book was old, older than the advent of movable type, the whole thing must have been written by hand. Which made its contents all the more incomprehensible.

The unmarked black book contained nothing more than endless rows of numbers, stretching in row after row across the entirety of the book for hundreds of pages. So far as he could tell, the book never repeated itself or had any easily detectable pattern. No text or symbols ever interrupted the flow of numbers, not even so much a space. Out of all the books that had been locked away, this one made the least sense; why guard a book no one was capable of reading?

Most people would have given up after a few failed attempts to find some comprehensible pattern, returned the book to the shelf, and continued living their life. Semote himself likely would have done the same, if he was not in the unique position of having access to the entire library of Eristat, and a stubborn sense of purpose that came from not wanting to admit he had wasted his time imagining what secrets the black book might hold.

In the fourth ring of the library, at 12 degrees, on the third shelf was a book that contained the longest sequences of numbers Semote had ever seen in print prior to today. Semote dug out the tome to recall why: according to the author, there were mathematical constants that stretched on forever without repeating. He had to skim a few pages to confirm the precise reason; as a specific example, the ratio of a line that cut through the center of a circle to that same circle’s perimeter was a constant could be calculated to arbitrary precision, and had some real-world use. Perhaps the black book was the record of such an extended mathematical calculation left unlabeled by mistake. Semote compared the volumes side by side, trying to find any overlap in the brief numerical sequences to the larger ones in the black book, with no success. The whole thing just looked like numerical gibberish.

Fortunately, the library held books that pertained to gibberish as well. In the third ring, 112 degrees, on the first shelf was a work of history that told of letters full of nonsense sent by a paranoid king. For years, the king had used a royal seal to sign his letters: the presence of the seal served as proof that it had been sent by the throne, and an unbroken seal proved to the recipient that they were the first to read the letter. Rightly or not, the king had become convinced that his seal had been duplicated by his enemies, and commands in his name could be forged or intercepted without him being the wiser. So the king devised a method of solving both problems at once, and disguised the text of his letters with a system known only to his generals. To anyone other than the intended recipient, his words would look like gibberish.

Semote traced the stacks of the fourth ring of the library for a volume he hoped would be there, taking a moment to blame himself for not maintaining a better index for his mother’s idiosyncratic classification scheme, and for having spent so much time reading fiction rather than going deeper into mathematics. At 200 degrees, third shelf, he found what he was looking for. A dark blue volume on cryptography, the encryption of messages. Leafing through its pages revealed a variety of techniques for hiding the true meaning of a text by creating a message that contained all the original information, but was rendered unreadable to those who did understand the method of encryption. Some methods relied on using a key to disguise the message; if that method had been used on the black book, he might never be able to read it. But others could be cracked by what the book described as frequency analysis: count the relative frequency of characters in the encrypted message, and attempt to map it to the distribution of letters in ordinary text. According to the book the five most frequent letters were ETAOI: four vowels and a consonant, and revealing a few letters in an encrypted message might suggest the value of the others, like filling in the pieces of a puzzle.

Semote grabbed a roll of paper and began making tally marks for each of the ten numerical digits in the black book as he began to count how frequently they occurred. How to go from 10 digits to 26 letters was far from obvious, but it was at least a starting point. As the tally marks grew, a clear pattern began to emerge: the digit 0 was greatly over-represented: roughly one in every five symbols was a 0. After that, 1 and 2 were over-represented, with a fairly even distribution past that point.

This seemed to rule out a few things. The book was very unlikely to be the extended form of a mathematical constant: so far as Semote could tell, those maintained an even distribution across the digits. The book was also unlikely to be encrypted by a key, or to be an encryption key to another message: the entire point of such a method would be to create as even of a distribution as possible so no clues about the message’s contents leaked through.

It was after he had already been tallying for a few pages that Semote realized he needed to start over. This wasn’t exactly bad news. As it turned out, the numbers were even more organized than he had thought. After beginning to focus on the zeros as he was tracking the digits, he noticed that each zero was separated from the next zero by an even number of digits. This suggested another way to think about the data: not as a sequence of individual numbers, but as pairs of numbers, separated by zeros.

Broken down this way, the patterns became even more obvious. The book, at least in the opening pages, contained only the numbers 11-19, 21-29, and 31-38, broken up by a zero or two before the next set of digits. Twenty-six types of numbers, the same as the number of letters in the alphabet. Semote smiled. At this point, the problem practically solved itself. Take the distribution of those numbers, compare it to the distribution of letters from the book on encryption, and he could begin plugging in possible values to help decrypt the message.

The pattern appeared to break around page 20. Turning the page, he no longer saw the same regular alignment of zeros across the page. That was fine, there was still enough data on the opening pages to get a measure of frequency. Interpreting the zeros as spaces, and each pair of numbers as a letter, Semote copied out the numbers on the first page and began plugging in the likely vowels, as the opening text began to emerge.

323502116280… “IF YOU ” 

Semote smiled, filling in the letters for each set of numbers, watching the text began to slide into place.

IF YOU ARE BEING ASKED TO TRANSLATE THIS  YOU MUST LIE   THEY WILL KILL YOU RATHER THAN SHARE THESE SECRETS  

Semote blinked. Although he knew it was irrational, he felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine. Had this been someone’s idea of a practical joke? At any rate, the warning was irrelevant, no one could possibly know he was in the process of decrypting this book today. Best to just focus on that. Another pattern suggested itself from the translated text: two spaces in a row likely represented a comma, a continuation of the same thought. Three spaces, a period, a new thought.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO MORAL LAWS, SEEK THE TRUTH AND OPTIMIZE FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL CONSCIOUS LIFE. THE FULL IMPLICATIONS OF THESE AXIOMS ARE LEFT AS AN EXERCISE FOR THE READER.

IF YOU ARE BEING MONITORED OR BELIEVE THAT YOU OR YOUR CIVILIZATION HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED BY HOSTILE CONTAGIOUS IDEAS, DESTROY THIS INFORMATION IN WHATEVER FORM YOU FIND IT.

THE NUMBER TWO MULTIPLIED BY ITSELF ONE HUNDRED FOURTY EIGHT TIMES ADD ONE IS DIVISIBLE ONLY BY SEVENTEEN, ONE AND THE PRODUCT ITSELF.

THE FORCES OF THE NATURAL WORLD DO NOT MOVE AT THE WHIMS OF GODS. ALL OF REALITY IS THE RESULT OF NUMERICAL OPERATIONS DRIVEN BY MATHEMATICAL LAWS RATHER THAN CONSCIOUS INTENTION. THE UNDERSTANDING AND APPLICATION OF THESE LAWS ARE DESCRIBED IN THIS BOOK. THEY HAVE THE POWER TO RESHAPE THE WORLD. THEY HAVE THE POWER TO DESTROY IT.

Semote set his pen on the table, feeling like he needed another level of translation for the strange ramblings he was uncovering. A chain of related thoughts hit him at the same time.

First, the black book was undeniably misclassified. Whatever the book was, it did not belong in the outermost ring, among the world of events. The ramblings appeared to contain philosophy, claims about the mechanisms of the universe, and more besides. This also resolved another question. It was barely conceivable to him that his mother could have translated this book herself and said nothing even to him about it if the book was genuinely dangerous, or kept it if it was a hoax of some kind. It was not conceivable to him that his mother would leave a title in her library this badly misclassified, even for one of the forbidden volumes.

Second, whatever else the book was, it seemed to be designed to be unsafe to share with anyone. The frequency analysis he performed would only be able to decrypt a tenth of the volume based upon when the pattern stopped. If the whole thing was interspersed with warnings to pit potential readers against each other, the book’s author may have intended for it to only be read by a single mind.

DISEASES ARE NOT CAUSED BY DEMONS BUT SMALL FORMS OF LIFE THAT ARE TRANSMITTED THROUGH FLUIDS AND AIR. THEIR SPREAD CAN BE MITIGATED BY DISSOLVING AGENTS, AVOIDING CONTAMINATION, AND BOILING LIQUIDS BEFORE CONSUMPTION.

ALL PHYSICAL ENTITIES ARE DRAWN TO EACH OTHER WITH A FORCE PROPORTIONAL TO THE PRODUCT OF THEIR MASSES AND INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL TO THE SQUARE OF THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM. THE EFFECTS OF THIS FORCE CAN BE CALCULATED BY

“Celeste Verent?” A bored-sounding voice rang out.

Semote nervously flipped over the papers he had been making notes on, and slammed the black book shut. The well-dressed lanky figure looking down at him did not seem particularly concerned with what Semote was doing, only that he was being made to wait.

“She’s out. I’m looking over the library in her absence.” Semote replied. He shuffled his papers together, trying not to look suspicious. It was late in the evening, Semote had expected to have the library to himself.

The well-dressed figure seemed not to care. “His lordship Terryn the Third will be visiting the library shortly to make use of its contents.” The well-dressed figure’s eyes fell on the pile of books in front of Semote, and shifted to the forbidden shelves, some of which were still locked, some of which had been left open. “The entire library. Have the keys ready.”

Semote scrambled to his feet as the well-dressed man drifted away. He began packing books back on the shelves by instinct, replacing books he had been familiar with for years, and returning the forbidden volumes based on his recent memory. This made quick work of the inner rings, and Semote finally made his way to the outermost ring, where the black book had previously resided. It was only after sliding the volume in half-way that Semote hesitated and froze in place.

There were two pieces of information Semote badly wished he knew in that moment. Whether or not the lord knew what the contents of the book were, and whether or not the book was actually as dangerous as it claimed.

If the book was a hoax of some kind, over-promising to sucker the reader into reading some deranged philosophy, it belonged back on the shelf, whether or not the lord knew about it. Left on the shelf, the worst the lord might do is confiscate it if he knew enough to read and translate parts of it, wasting his own time. The worst that could happen if Semote hid the book would be the lord catching him in a theft that served no purpose.

If the book truly was dangerous, his situation became much more difficult. If the lord was unaware of its contents, leaving the book risked sparking his curiosity and putting dangerous knowledge in the hands of their most powerful patron, a man who believed in censoring books. Semote pondered the irony of that sentiment for a moment, then moved on. Hiding the book would be the prudent course of action if the lord knew nothing, to keep the book’s contents safe and avoid unpleasant questions. But if the lord was already familiar with the book, it could already be too late to do anything about it.

Semote’s hand wavered over the book, as he listened for approaching footsteps in the still air. He should just put it back, the book had to be a hoax. He should keep it off the shelf, there was no way the lord could have any idea what the book was, he wouldn’t have left it under their care if he had read any of the warnings. If only his mother was here to tell him anything about the origins of the black book. If only he had asked before now.

Semote sighed, and pressed the book back onto the shelf. He was overthinking this, there was no real chance the book was worth risking their positions as stewards of the library. Semote held firm in that conviction for a solid one and a half minutes, until his eyes fell on a volume he had inadvertently knocked off a shelf searching for the book on encryption. A short volume on prime numbers, which had the property of having no factors other than one and themselves.

Not quite knowing why he did so, Semote flipped through the book on primes trying to check a simple question against his intuition, to see if one of the rambling quotes from the book could possibly be correct. According to the black book, 2 multiplied by itself 148 times, add one, divided by 17, should be a prime. An indivisible number that would have to be over 40 digits long. And according to the book on primes, the largest prime number currently known… was 7 digits.

Semote rubbed his eyes. The range of options for the black book had suddenly decreased. It might take an hour of long division to verify the simple calculation of whether the initial number the black book discussed was evenly divisible by 17, and even more time to test whether the resulting number was prime relative to the most likely candidates. But if both results were true, and it seemed unlikely the book would include them if they were refutable, it meant that whoever had written the book was likely years ahead of their current knowledge of mathematics. No, that wasn’t quite right. They would have to be centuries ahead. Maybe millennia.

There were books in the library of Eristat that claimed to have been written by gods or by visitors from other worlds, claiming supernatural insight into reality. Crucially, none of those titles had ever substantiated their claims to his mother’s satisfaction, confining their placement to the left of true north in the library. If the calculation in the black book was correct, it would represent evidence that whoever wrote the book had access to knowledge far exceeding their own, something no alleged deity had ever been able to deliver. A proof that was relatively simple to verify. And next to impossible to generate without special insight.

Semote swore under his breath and ran back to the outer ring, pulling the black book off the shelf in a quick motion. He began to hear the sound of horse hooves hitting the road outside the building. The empty gap on the shelf looked conspicuous. Semote himself had taken notice of the black volume for years, anyone else half as familiar with the library would have grown used to it as well. Thinking quickly, Semote ran to the back room to find the slush pile of rejected donations, digging through to find an inconspicuous black volume to take its place, hiding the original black book at the bottom of the slush pile. Semote slid the replacement volume back on the shelf and stepped to one side as a distant patter of feet grew closer.

As the tall figure approached, Semote bowed slowly, not so much out of a desire to appear respectful, as out of a need to hide the fact that he was out of breath. “My lord.”

Lord Terryn the Third nodded at him from behind a trimmed beard, fixing Semote’s eyes with an intensity that would have made him feel uncomfortable under any circumstances. “I understand your mother is away. But I also understand you are familiar with the library yourself. And someday you might even take your mother’s place.”

This wasn’t exactly news to Semote, but this was the first time he heard of this possibility from someone other than his biological relation. “That is correct.” Semote swallowed, trying to remember what his mother had told him about interacting with lords. Only answer the exact question asked, even if it takes longer to respond. If you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t bluff, tell them when you’ll have an answer. Talk as little as possible, let them dominate the conversation. If you are planning to answer a question with something other than yes or no, you are probably digging yourself into a hole. A lord is always right, even when they’re not. Think servile thoughts, don’t let the resentment show on your face or you’re dead. When in doubt, apologize and shut up.

Lord Terryn gave a tight-lipped smile, perhaps sensing Semote’s discomfort. “I may ask for your help in a moment. But for now I would like to inspect the current state of the library. Including the forbidden shelves, if you could unlock those.”

“Of course.” Semote replied, wincing inside. He had forgotten to lock the outermost shelf that had held the black book. He made a brief show of inserting the key and twisting it, then swung the grate open. He repeated the process for each grate, then retreated to the outer ring of the library as Lord Terryn began to make his rounds.

Semote lingered at the perimeter, attempting to watch the lord out of the corner of his eye, but allowed himself to stare more openly after the lord appeared to be paying him no thought whatsoever. From memory, Semote did his best to guess at what books the lord was inspecting, as his path took him around the upper half of the library, winding the path of truth and nonsense. The cultivation of wheat. Democracies and dictatorships. A book on ancient prophesies. Semote felt his pulse quicken as the lord’s hand appeared to reach out to the book on encryption, but grabbed a title to its left. Three-dimensional geometry. As the lord moved to the innermost rings, Semote felt himself relax. He had worked himself up over nothing. The black book was a single title out of thousands, the odds of it having ever caught the lord’s eye were miniscule.

Semote did his best to track the lord’s progress through the inner rings, until the lord finally finished his rounds and returned to the outermost ring. And with a casual motion that suggested indifference, the noble ran his finger across the titles formerly behind the sealed grate until it rested on the black book. Semote held his breath as he watched the lord pick up the replaced volume and begin to flip through it. Semote’s mind started running through excuses as he half expected the lord to turn to him in anger. He could claim he had been organizing the library and lost track of which title went where. They had re-classified the book (terrible idea, the lord would ask why). He knew nothing about it, he would have to ask his mother when she returned (and ensure Lord Terryn didn’t find her first). As Semote watched, the lord’s face broadened into a small smile as he looked at the book’s contents and put it back on the shelf. It must have been one of the bawdier titles from the slush pile Semote had grabbed without thinking. The lord was walking over to him now, and Semote did his best to compose himself and not look guilty.

“The library is a marvel.” Lord Terryn spoke deliberately, and with a hint of pride suggesting he was complimenting himself as much as their stewardship. “The quality of its collection continues to improve. But I have some suggestions on your classifications.” The lord was carrying five books under his arm, and reached out to show one to Semote. “A treatise on democracies, at 53 degrees.”

Semote swallowed. The lord was staring at him expectantly. He was evidently supposed to know what the lord was getting at, and agree immediately. Only he wasn’t sure how to do that yet. “Factually speaking, it is a system of government that has been tried. There are systems of human organization that are more speculative.”

The lord’s response was crisp, like he was already tired of having his time wasted. “Yes. I don’t dispute the book’s connection to reality.” Lord Terryn flipped open the the book, brushing the dust to one side. “My thought is on whether the title is appropriate for public consumption.” The lord flipped through a few pages. “An incurious reader might miss that the governments discussed inevitably descended into tyrannies, and gave rise to indulging the worst oppressive impulses of their subjects. It appears to be a manual for social decay.”

Semote felt a bitter feeling well up in his stomach, as he prepared himself for what he knew he had to say. It felt like he was taking on poison to his soul to express agreement with something he so fundamentally believed to be false. “As you say, my lord.”

His attitude must have carried through, as the lord seemed less than pleased with this response. Lord Terryn closed the book and looked Semote directly in the eye. “It is not what I say that matters, it is what is true. I did not have to travel all this way to find someone willing to agree with whatever I say. This library is meant to enrich the mental and social health of our community. You may be a steward of this library someday. And I want to know if you think this book would benefit or harm that community.”

Semote hesitated as he did his best to meet the lord’s gaze. This must be a test. But what kind of a test? That he had thought deeply on these questions? That he was aligned with the lord’s opinions? That he could be trusted to follow orders? He had already waited too long to deny he had no other opinion on the matter. Realizing he might regret it, Semote simply blurted out what he thought. “I think we should keep the book unrestricted.”

“There it is.” Lord Terryn’s voice was dry, betraying little emotion. “And why do you think that?”

Semote swallowed again, doing his best to keep the argument straight in his mind, and trying not to think about the hypocrisy he himself might be committing in regard to the black book. “The book is more instructive than most. Ideas are rediscovered and reinvented all the time. If we can not learn from the history of how they were studied and put into practice, we may see the same failures play out again.”

“A task perhaps best left to those who have the maturity to learn.” Lord Terryn uttered the phrase swiftly. This must have been a debate the lord was used to having with Semote’s mother. Judging by the status of the library, the lord must have won a considerable number of those arguments. But also probably lost a few.

Semote weighed his words carefully before responding. “I don’t think it’s in much danger of falling into the hands of children, if that’s what you mean. Perhaps I have a higher opinion of your literate subjects.”

Lord Terryn gave a quick chuckle. Semote felt some of his tension ease, the lord seemed less distant in that moment. Lord Terryn handed him the book. “You may keep it unrestricted. I would ask that you find a way to reclassify it to the right. It should not be the first treatise on government a reader finds.”

Semote nodded, making a mental note to inform his mother of the compromise. “It will be done.”

The lord stared at him for a moment. “Good. That will be all for now.” The lord pointed to the books under his arm. “I wish to borrow these, you may expect them returned in a month or two.”

Semote nodded and watched as the lord turn to leave, checking the spines of his books one last time. The forbidden volume on poisons. Geometry. Prophetic ramblings. An older title on crop rotation. Something about their conversation gave Semote the courage to speak up. “If I might make a suggestion—”

The lord looked back at him. He seemed amused. “Yes?”

“If you’re interested in crop rotation to improve yield, you should be careful not to lean too heavily on Nash. Two-crop rotation techniques are better than nothing, but there are four-crop rotations that outperform it. Wheat, to turnips, to barley, to clover. You can keep livestock fed year-round without draining the field of nutrients.”

The lord looked at him with a mild frown. “If what you say is true, this was your problem to correct. We organize this library to make the most pertinent information available to our readers, particularly myself. If Nash is no longer the best book on the subject, you should have arranged it so the better title was more prominent.”

Semote met the lord’s gaze. “Nash is the best book we have on that subject. He still gets some things wrong. Some of our histories suggest past kingdoms had techniques superior to his, where they had uninterrupted yields for decades. That could only be true if their techniques were more effective than his. You’ll find an example on the second ring, first shelf, 103 degrees.”

Needing no further direction, the lord walked over to the spot on the shelf and picked out the title, adding it to his stack. The lord looked at Semote even more intently than before, like he was taking real notice of him for the first time. “Have you read every book in this library?”

“I’ve read some of all of the books. And all of some of the books. Maybe a third of the library in full.” As he spoke, Semote realized what that implied about his exposure to the titles in the forbidden sections, but his paranoia about the black book had diminished for the moment.

Lord Terryn’s interest did not waver. “There are probably few lords who can say the same. And many who might be grateful for your insights. Has it occurred to you that your talents might be better spent on something other than shelving books?”

That took Semote by surprise. “I thought you expected me to serve as the library’s steward.”

Lord Terryn gave a thin smile. “Yes. I do not wish to diminish the importance of that work. But your mother should be able to fulfill that role for decades to come. Outside these walls, the world is changing quickly. And an educated young man such as yourself might make a name for himself in service of that advancement.”

Semote smiled politely, in an attempt to be gracious about an offer that did not tempt him in the slightest. “And I look forward to reading about those changes when they make their way here.”

Lord Terryn laughed again, a sincere-sounding laugh that helped Semote relax a bit. “If you don’t mind waiting decades. As someone with a keen interest in both domains, reading the dull filtered echoes of history cannot compare to seeing the world for yourself. Or having a hand in its future.”

“The history we preserve has the final word, and shapes how we build the future.” Semote looked around the library, taking in all the stacks of books around him. “And I already have the entire world with me in here.”

---

After Lord Terryn’s departure, Semote stayed up late into the night translating the remainder of the black book, as far as he was able. There were more warnings and prophetic ramblings, claims about the fundamental nature of elemental substances, invisible forces that could be harnessed to power unimaginable weapons of destruction or reshape the world according to the will of humanity, and tortured descriptions of mathematical operations the book claimed were the key to mastering the innate systems of the world. And as Semote had expected, the pattern he was able to translate broke around the 20th page, when the distribution of numbers began to change. But the book itself contained instructions for how to interpret the rest.

The book described a mathematical formula for interpreting the remaining characters. Proceed as before, interpreting each pair of digits as a letter, but first rotate the value of each digit by pairing it with an adjacent prime number, with the last remainder carried over. The first few digits were 1738, the initial primes written out were 2357, combining the two gave him 3235, “IF…”

Semote rubbed his eyes as he paused for a moment. Translating the remainder of the book might take days under the best of circumstances. But the limiting factor was no longer his ability to translate, but his ability to calculate. The prime numbers were effectively the encryption key to the remainder of the book. To proceed he would need to calculate ever increasing indivisible numbers to align with the numbers in the book, where one mistake could render all subsequent letters incomprehensible. He could make educated guesses from the possibilities of the remaining letters and the properties of the numbers, but he might be looking at years of painstaking mathematical calculation to generate the key to the message. Perhaps a lifetime or more. But this might be work that had already been done.

Semote pulled out the book on primes a second time. If primes up to 7 digits long were known, someone had to have calculated the lot of them, and that knowledge had to be recorded somewhere. But flipping through the book revealed no organized tables of data, and no clues as where to find the sequence of numbers that would let him unlock the rest of the black book, beyond exhaustive calculation. Semote sighed as he put the book away. If such a list had ever been published, there was one person he was confident would know. It was time to consult the expert.

---

Semote was waiting for his mother at the door to the library when she returned, a sack of books in her hands and a smile on her face. He reached out to take the sack out of her hands, but his mother shook her head and set the sack down before reaching out for a hug, which Semote dutifully accepted. She smiled down at him and ruffled his hair affectionately, which Semote accepted a little less dutifully.

“I hear that Lord Terryn was impressed with you, and he is not a man who impresses easily.” Celeste Verent had a twinkle in her eye. “I hope you didn’t let him lock up too many books to earn that.”

“None, in fact.” Semote closed the door behind her, and looked around the library one last time to make sure they were alone. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

Celeste nodded, sensing her son was serious. “I’m listening.”

Semote dug the unmarked black book out of its hiding spot and brought it over to his mother, making a show of displaying a few of the cryptic pages of numbers. “Do you know what this book is?”

“Yes, it is fine that you went through the forbidden volumes while I was gone, I expected no less.” Celeste tried to get a smile out of her son, but Semote’s face remained flat and expressionless. She sighed and did her best to recall. “We received it years ago, from a private collection left to us in a will. There was nothing to suggest the previous owner understood its contents, and I’d never put in the time to figure out what the point of the book was. I just assumed it had to be valuable to have been worth the effort to create, so I kept it out of sight. Are you telling me you figured it out?”

“Yes.” Semote shuffled his feet. “Parts of it.”

Celeste’s eyes widened. “That’s wonderful. What is it?”

Semote stared back at his mother for a moment before speaking, reassuring himself that he didn’t need to worry about the book’s multiple warnings, that this was a safe place to discuss what he had found. “A handbook to the systems of the world. It claims to reveal the mechanisms behind matter, energy, life. Forces that could be used to re-shape the world, or create weapons to destroy it.”

“Those are bold claims, and it sounds like you’re taking them seriously.” Celeste looked at her son carefully. “Why?”

Semote ruffled through the book, recalling the laborious process of translating each page. “It has mathematical descriptions of nature’s laws, claims about the base nature of substances…”

“As do quite a few of our books, mostly in the west half.”

“An elegant calculation for a 44 digit number which the book claims is prime. And so far as I can tell based upon hours of testing, it appears to be accurate.”

Celeste paused. “That is impressive. I see what you’re saying, we should try to determine if the book’s other claims can be verified as well. You said you had figured out what most of it represents?”

Semote nodded. “Yes. The first twenty pages. Past that point, you need to combine the numbers in the book with a list of prime numbers starting at 2 to interpret the remainder. I was wondering if anything had been published which would help.”

“I think there has been.” Celeste searched her memory. “You aren’t the first to ask, a few mathematicians have taken an interest in the subject. Or maybe they were numerologists. Several years ago, I had heard of a university putting out books collecting the results of mathematical research. One on tables of logarithms, another on detailed extensions of mathematical constants. And there was also one collecting prime numbers, they said it ran on for maybe a hundred pages.”

Semote’s eyes widened. “That would be exactly what I need. Do you know how to get a copy?”

Celeste shook her head. “No. They stopped publishing after a war broke out and they fell under new leadership. I suspect the few copies that were made found themselves in the private collections of wealthy lords who viewed it as a curiosity.”

Semote thought for a moment before speaking. “Say you were determined to get your hands on one of those copies. How would you do it? Is there a chance Lord Terryn might have one?”

Celeste shook her head a second time. “Everything he owns, we already have here. I have more than my share of disagreements with the lords of Eristat, but on this particular point they are far better than most. Our library is exceptional precisely because they do not hoard their knowledge for themselves. Most lords hold onto rare books to flaunt their wealth and prefer to let the knowledge wither, rather than give up the status their sole ownership confers.”

“They can’t be that impossible to acquire. You seem to keep finding new books, don’t you? Were any of those from the former collection of a lord?” Semote looked down at the sack of books his mother had brought home.

“Yes, I have called in some favors before.” Celeste turned to look at the books as she chose her words carefully. “Favors earned when I was younger, not yet wise enough to know the risks of involving myself in another kingdom’s politics, and back when there was no one who might miss me if I never came back. But even among the connections I’ve had, no, I don’t know anyone who has the book you want.”

Semote considered that for a moment, but didn’t push back. “That’s a shame. I was hoping to learn what the rest of it said first. Just to be sure.”

“To be sure of what?” Celeste asked, detecting something unfamiliar in her son’s tone.

Semote looked at the unmarked black book in his hands. “If we can’t prove that the book is a hoax, I think we need to burn it.”

“Semote!” Celeste gaped at her son like he had just told her he was planning to murder someone.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought already. I think the risks outweigh the benefits. The book itself asks to be destroyed if we don’t consider the knowledge safe.”

“Semote. Verent.” Celeste’s voice had dropped to an icy register Semote hadn’t heard her use in years. “No. That is not what we do.”

“If this were any other book, I would agree with you.” Semote stared back. He had expected this reaction. “But if the book is telling the truth, it is too dangerous to keep. It claims the remaining portions hold the secrets to unimaginable weapons of destruction, with the ability to create explosions that could level entire cities in seconds. The art of breeding plagues to become more deadly and infectious than anything we’ve ever seen. Ideologies that infect humans like a parasite, compelling them to oppose everyone who does not share their vision, turning children against parents and tearing the world apart. Poisons which could fill the air…”

“Semote.” Celeste tried to ease the tension out of her voice. “I can tell you’re upset by this, and it does sound disturbing. But you don’t know if any of these claims are true.”

Semote looked around the library. “I think the parts I’ve read so far are. Explanations of invisible forces, and elegant equations to predict their effects. And I don’t think we should take a chance on the rest.”

“If it’s a matter of keeping the knowledge safe…”

“That’s just it.” Semote stared at her. “I don’t think this knowledge would be safe with anyone. I don’t want to know how to destroy a city. There is no one I would trust with that power who I would expect to avoid abusing it forever. And the moment this knowledge spreads far enough, it will set off an arms race that would leave us all dead.”

Celeste looked back at him, taking her time to decide what to say next. “Either these claims are possible or they’re not. If they’re impossible, we have nothing to worry about it. And if they are, we should know what’s coming and have a way to prepare.”

“I can already tell you what’s coming, knowing exactly how we get there could only hurt us.”

Celeste shook her head. “I’m sorry, Semote, but you are not the librarian here. We can keep the book hidden…”

“But I will be someday, isn’t that the whole point?” Semote felt his eyes begin to well up like he was a little kid again. He forced the feeling down, and tried to focus. “I can tell you now, the moment it’s my decision to make, I plan on getting rid of it. If you really plan to just make me wait, you should just tell me now I’m not qualified for the role. And I should go find something else to do with my life.”

“Semote…”

“I’m the one who translated it. I figured out what it said. And I think we should get rid of it. And if any book in the world isn’t safe to have, it’s this one. How many lords would kill for this knowledge if they knew we had it? How many would be able to resist fighting for it?”

Celeste sighed and rubbed her eyes, a frown forming on her face. “You aren’t going to change your mind, are you?”

Semote shook his head. “I don’t think I am.”

Celeste looked back at him sadly. “Someday I do want this library to be yours to manage. And one day you will need to make these difficult decisions for yourself. In my years here I have never destroyed a book and I never intend to. Some of these works are the only memories that survive of their authors, a loss like that is as irreversible as death. But you will need to decide for yourself where you draw the line, in order to defend it anywhere.”

“I…”

“Please, just take your time to think about it, at least another week. The book has sat undisturbed in our library for long enough that a few more days can’t hurt. And maybe it’s best if you don’t tell me what you end up doing with it. As far as I’m concerned, the book is gone, or it never existed. Just please, think about all the good that could be done with it, if it is telling the truth. If not in your generation, than some day when we’re better equipped to handle it.” Celeste rubbed her forehead. “I always feared that someday I might be having this argument one last time only to lose it, but I never thought it would be with you. And never about the Tenebrous Codex of all things.”

Tenebrous… obscure, impossible to understand. Codex… an older style of book-preparation. Wait, did that mean…

“How does the book have a name? I thought you said it hadn’t been translated?”

Celeste stopped rubbing her forehead for a moment and looked up. “From the will. That’s what it was called. Perhaps it sat in their collection for long enough they gave a name to it.”

“I thought the style of preparation on the book looked old, but not that old. Codices weren’t written on ordinary paper, and this book is on paper. Why would they call it a codex?”

Celeste paused. “It could be any number of reasons. But most likely…”

The relief Semote had begun to feel at the thought of never having to think about the black book again began to fade, as the deep sense of unease he’d felt since he’d begun reading it started to return. “Originally, the book we have here was a codex. Which means…” Semote swallowed as he forced the thought through to its conclusion. “This may not be the only copy.”

---

Semote spent most of the following weeks chipping away at translation. The next section of the book was also interspersed with warnings, variations on what he’d read before, all of which seemed designed to make it impossible to bring in outside help without them realizing the importance of what they were working on. Progress was slow, and he expected it to continue to get slower, as the calculations he needed to proceed grew more complex and at risk of error. The larger a prime number was, the more difficult it was to verify, as the number of possible factors increased. But if he could somehow obtain a complete list of them¹, or at least a list that went far enough…

It was Lord Terryn’s return to the library that sparked an idea as to how that might actually be possible. This time, Semote’s mother fielded all of the lord’s questions, and directed his research deep into the core of the library after collecting his last set of books. Semote lingered close to where the lord was beginning his rounds, closer than he would have dared without their past familiarity. But this time he had another thought on his mind.

Lord Terryn seemed not to mind the intrusion. The middle-aged man set a book back on the shelf and addressed Semote without looking in his direction. “Have you given any more thought to my suggestion?”

“I have.” Semote said. He felt no need to pretend he didn’t know exactly what the lord was talking about. The question of whether he should be using his talents elsewhere. “I have some questions.”

“Then I believe I can assist in your research.” Lord Terryn moved to another shelf, clearly intending not to let the conversation interrupt his own work. “Proceed.”

“Would it be dangerous?”

“Not if you are smart.” The lord examined two adjacent books on the same shelf, briefly checking the contents of each. “Any meaningful impact on the world carries risk, if there are powerful interests who have something to lose from your actions. Ask yourself how often lords in my position meet a suspiciously untimely end. Your role would be safer.”

Semote knew enough to say that the lords died off at higher rates than chance would suggest, but at a rate low enough to not rank high on his list of concerns if he were to face comparable risks. Others (mothers?) might disagree. “But why would it be safer? No one would start a war if I died.”

“Yes. But if you are wise and hide behind your patron, they would be the first target before anyone thinks about you.” Lord Terryn paused his work on the shelves to look directly at Semote. “What else? Or is it simply hesitation to leave a life of privilege that holds you back?”

Semote bristled. This must be another test, to see how he’d respond to insults. “I’m not a noble, I don’t have servants waiting on me. I don’t hold power over other people’s lives.”

The lord chuckled and turned away. “The distinction is subtler than you might suppose. Due to the circumstances of your birth, you stand to inherit a position that can offer you material security. You do not live in fear of starvation or the threat of violence, and you are able to live with access to the collected knowledge of the world. There are not many commoners who can say the same, and there are any number of nobles who excuse their own privilege by pointing to someone better situated, and slide happily to the grave without ever accomplishing anything of note.”

Some might have been flattered, but the comparison still made Semote's skin crawl. He forced himself to put that aside for now. “What would I be asked to do?”

The lord smiled tersely, like he was beginning to think he had overestimated Semote after all. “Servants are told exactly what to do, if that's the life you want. Advisors to the nobility are expected to be proactive, and solve problems on behalf of their patrons. Advising them on matters of science, as you yourself did recently. Reviewing logistics and rooting out corruption and theft. Trying to figure out who is currently trying to kill them.”

Semote stared, trying to assess if the lord was serious. “Is that a common problem?”

Lord Terryn did not look up from his current book. “As I said, if the decisions you make affect other people’s lives, it will generally be in someone’s interests to want you dead, or seize the power you hold. There is always a plot, even if only as wistful speculation in someone’s mind, and there are always ulterior motives. To hold power is be inside the eye of the storm, your world can remain perfectly still even as chaos begins to converge around you.”

“I presume you have contacts with other lords as well, if I wished to see more of the world.”

“What, hoping to gain enough favor to acquire another pile of rare books for the library?” Lord Terryn seemed like he was holding back a laugh.

“If the opportunity arises, that would serve my long term interests as well, wouldn’t it?” I don’t care about bringing back a pile, I just need two books in particular, Semote thought to himself. Somewhere, someone must have the original of the Tenebrous Codex. And I just need one of the copies of the book listing primes to have the key to the rest of the Codex, so I can unlock this thing without spending decades.

“I suppose it would.” Lord Terryn gave a slim smile. “‘If the opportunity arises’, you said. I would expect that means you think it might. Does that mean that the boy from the library is finally ready to leave the cradle of the world’s knowledge, and see that world for himself?”

Semote looked around the library, trying not to stare for too long at the distant silhouette of his mother and the worries she would have, worries Semote was convinced were still less than his own about where the Codex risked leading them. “I am.”

---

Another related story: The Confession of King Enoch, The Benevolent Tyrant

Update: The novel length follow-up to this story is being serialized, starting here.

1. Before you write in to correct this (“ha ha, the primes are infinite, everyone knows you can’t collect a complete list of them”), the Library of Eristat’s book on primes was one of the many books Semote had only skimmed, and he had therefore missed the mathematical proof that the set of prime numbers are infinite, and impossible to list in full. In our world, pre-modern books collecting tables of prime numbers were particularly misleading about this, promising to cover the prime numbers and then stopping at around only 400,031 or so.