The Arkanist

Chapter Six: Fury

Chapter Six: Fury

I stared up at the man, confused and dazed, and scared, and he stared back at me with eyes I will never forget.

They held the fury of a quiet man, the worst fury of them all.

I was in a room without any knowledge of how I had gotten there, small and austere, with a window and a horned chandelier, dangling with flickering candles. Other than that, I didn't know where I was. Outside the window, I could see only pale grey sky and that didn't tell me much.

The man stood before me, the one who had found me, tall and cloaked, the hems of his raiment worn and weathered. I supposed he was some kind of jailor, and this my cell, for the time being. I had been trespassing. Trespassing in the restricted section of a place I wasn't supposed to be nonetheless. I was in deep trouble, I knew. I wouldn't be able to sweet talk my way out of this one. You need leverage to sweet talk, money, status, something to fall back on. I had nothing.

He was holding the book in his hand, I noticed: Caelum Vinture, the one I'd found in the library, the one that spoke of magic, the one that had been hidden. It looked small in his hands.

"Where did you find this?" he said as serious as anybody could, long pauses spaced periodically between his words, measured and utterly unnerving, hanging the silence about us. He was not messing around, and therefore, neither did I. I was scared, you see, as any sane person has a right to be, and fear does things to a man, certain things he cannot control. One of them is compliance, and so I complied. I was already in enough shit as it was.

"In the library," I said, my voice quivering oddly, like an arrow shaft in the trunk of a stout tree. I wasn't expecting it. "Behind some books, I don't know. I was looking for something else."

"Would you mind telling me which section of the library you just so happened to stumble onto this?" the man asked, stressing the question. I knew it to be sarcasm.

I gulped, hard, knowing what was coming. "The restri—" I didn't have time to finish. He cut me off with strident thunder in his words.

"The RESTRICTED section. RESTRICTED!" The man set the book down, spelling out the word as I sat there, sweating up a storm, my body gone cold and clammy. "May I ask, what does a boy search for in the library if he can't read? Can you read?"

I nodded, shaking. I had never been so scared in all my life.

"Well," he began, tauntingly, "on the evidence you have just so displayed for me, at this precise moment, might-I-add, I'd disagree. "

"I knew it was the restricted section," I said, thinking that would help my sinking cause. It didn't, of course, but what else could I say.

"And yet you went ahead anyway," barked the man.

"I needed to find things out," I said, trying to explain, fumbling my words as I went.

"Well, you certainly did that," he said, seething now, shaking his head. "You don't know, you really don't. You have absolutely no clue as to what's to happen, as to what you did... Pity." There was silence for a time after that, a sinking, heavy thing.

"Where am I?" I asked, nervous of the answer, my voice raw in my throat.

"Raenish," the man said. "That's all you need to know. Now, I'll make this simple: what did you find out?"

"What?" I asked.

"What?" he mimicked, mocking me horribly. "The book. What the hell did you read from it? I need to know if this is as bad as I'm making it out to be. Of course, it's bad either way. I just need to know how bad."