Awaken His Eyes | The Awakened Book One

Chapter 17

In the grandest library in all the Empire, the smell of old parchment hung thick in the air, contained by the lack of ventilation. But that is exactly what one would want out of a suitable library. The old documents needed to be kept away from the elements, protected from sunlight and humid air. Saba sat alone at a stone table amid rows of shelving that reached to the thirty-foot arched ceilings. The journey to Orud had been exhausting, taking months, but Saba was no stranger to travel. It seemed that most of his life, what he could manage to remember, had been spent moving from one place to another. His arrival in Bastul began the longest stretch of stillness, but that had now passed. Though tiring, Saba had grown accustomed to the alluring tranquility of travel. So accustomed, in fact, that if he spent too much time indoors he began to grow restless.

Well, you'd better get used to being restless, old man! he told himself. You're going to be here for a while.

He pulled another thick book off the top of the stack next to him. It contained the crests of the most important families in the Orudan Empire. Having thoroughly searched the historical documentation on previous cultures and their weapons' construction, Saba had now changed his approach to researching the symbol. As he leafed through the pages, his mind began to wander. There was something about that symbol, carved into the shaft, which seemed familiar. But even during the months of travel, with plenty of silence, he had been unable to make any connection between it and his own past.

One painting made him pause in mid thought, but it was only a likeness of an eagle and he began to turn the pages again. He reached the end of the book and closed it, frustrated with the lack of progress. So far, this approach wasn't looking promising either. He had been here for two days already and hadn't even found a hint of a clue.

I need to try something different.

Saba rose to his feet and began to walk down the aisles of books, hoping that something would jump out at him. After a few minutes, he found himself lingering in a section whose documents chronicled the various religions of the cultures that the Empire had conquered.

It wouldn't be a religious symbol, would it?

He picked up one of the books and quickly turned a few pages, immediately seeing an improvement. Most of the content was text, but the few drawings were much more similar in style than what he had been looking at before. He set the book back on the shelf.

Something older, more elaborate perhaps.

He walked farther down the aisle, and eventually the documents transitioned from books to scrolls. They were not labeled like the books, so he grabbed an armful and headed back to his table.

It was tedious work going through the scrolls, untying and unraveling them only to find that they were also a dead end. After several hours of searching, Saba decided to go back to his room at a nearby inn and get some rest. Perhaps tomorrow would bring better results. After placing all of the scrolls and books back in the places where he found them, Saba climbed the stairs leading up to the first level of the library. There was no light coming in from the windows and the custodian waved to him from behind his candle-lit desk.

"Will I see you tomorrow?" he called out.

"First thing in the morning," Saba replied, waving as he headed for the entrance.

The vestibule of the library was a long and wide corridor with columns lining the sides. Between each fifth column was a statue of another of Orud's gods, their bodies partially clothed and posed in some dramatic gesture. At the end of the hall, Saba stepped through a small doorway and walked into the night air of Orud. Apparently he had been down in the basement longer than he thought, as he looked to the darkened sky. The view from this vantage point always took his breath away. The library was perched atop a small knoll within the academy district, surrounded by various temples and schools. From the terrace, Saba could see a great deal of the city, and the flickering light from torches spread out for miles. The beauty of this city was unrivaled, and one needn't look far to see it. The flat stone streets that curved throughout the city were lined with alternating iron torch posts and planted trees. The vegetation within the city was maintained by an enormous force of gardeners enlisted by the emperor himself.