In Which Libraries are Not Quiet

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel strides into the library with easy speed. He walks past the strange computer help desk and past the current front shelves-- something about animation, this time, and history, and those changing shelves are always interesting, but it's not what they're here for.

Harry, while clearly no admirer of libraries, may still notice that there a few more books here than in the libraries he was used to. Just a few.

Comments

[clayforthedevil]

"In this room?" Bahorel is less disappointed and more intrigued. "Hell, I'm reading that, then." He takes the book off Harry's hands and looks around again. "You know, I've never seen a ladder for the taller shelves. I wonder if all of the higher books in here fly?"

[harryhotspur]

Harry tilts his head back up to peer at them.

"It would do little good, if they are all so unruly. Though perhaps there is a means to subdue them to your will, but we know it not."

[clayforthedevil]

"Hah, good point." Bahorel looks up into the higher shelves and smiles. "Wild books-- I like that. It's how they should be." He looks down at the stray bird-book. " And you could have flown straight up when you fell out of your shelf, you know, so don't act as if we've stolen you from the nest."

To Harry he says "Let me know when you're wanting to go; there's a shortcut to get out."

[harryhotspur]

Harry has The Monster Book of Monsters (which someone seems to have tied up with a string, strange) and another book, one of the ones with some spelling of "Vampire" in the title tucked under his arm. He takes another glance around, then looks to Bahorel with a brisk nod.

"Let us see this shortcut."

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel grins. "All right, now this one makes no sense, but--" he kicks down hard on one of the stones in the hall; it tilts just enough to give him an edge to grab and lift it away. That leaves not a very big gap in the floor, but enough for a man to fit through.

Bahorel, holding his books close to his chest, gives Harry an expression that says yes, this is ridiculous, but isn't it fun and jumps into the gap.


--And lands neatly in the front room of the Library, and very quickly steps aside. Hotspur doesn't seem the sort to hesitate long before a mere unknown leap.

[harryhotspur]

How did Bahorel guess?? Harry does indeed emerge mere moments later, eyes wide.

"It does not make sense," he agrees, glancing around to try and reassure himself that yes, this is the room he thinks it is. Or at least a different, but identical one. That also seems possible. "--are all libraries made so?"

[clayforthedevil]

"Perhaps on some worlds!" It's a cheering thought, and probably even likely. "In mine they were mostly old buildings stuffed with whatever books the owner could afford. Ah, but there were the real libraries too, in Paris...the buildings more bound to gravity and physics as you'd know it, and no building in our world could have held so many books. But still enough books and enough floors to steal a man from the world for a full day if he wasn't careful, and the archivists didn't kick him out. "


He taps the cover of the bird book. "--And the books weren't so obviously spirited. But of course that's always the trick with books."

[harryhotspur]

"Oh." He seems faintly disappointed by this information. Then again, not that it matters, as this is the only library he'll have cause to encounter for the foreseeable future.

"I would not have taken you, sir, as one to be so enamored of study."

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel laughs. "Do I seem one to be enamored of ignorance, then? --Don't worry, you wouldn't be the first to assume I was; many of my teachers would take your side in that."


He looks at Harry thoughtfully. "You wouldn't choose ignorance--not in something you valued." This is based more on a knowledge of Feuilly than of anything Bahorel knows about Harry Percy; f Harry was insistently ignorant, Feuilly wouldn't be so fond of him. "You must have studied battle, at least, and the history of your country, and the rights and duties of your family."

[harryhotspur]

"Why, so I did-- of course I did," Harry says. "But such things are not learned in books."

[clayforthedevil]

" Maybe you didn't have the right books. Not many libraries can answer every request. But there are books you could have used-- stories from commanders and fighting men, and more-- the maps alone! But there are maps--were maps, will be-- in both our times. Books on planning and campaigns and tactics, too."

He looks at Harry thoughtfully. "And you didn't get to read them. Somehow, in your own castle or by the decisions of men possibly nations away, someone decided you wouldn't get to know. That you didn't have the right even to choose ignorance, that you couldn't be trusted to do your part if you had that bit of knowledge."

Sorry, Harry, you've got him on a tear now. "And you may ask how I know that, and I know that because I read it; the words of censors and the stories of men who chose what books went where, long before I was born. And what my teachers told me, too, some of them; read this, don't read that, you're not soul enough to stand against it!!Hah, and they'd prate on about the soul needing to learn strength, and then swear it couldn't handle a few stray bits of ink!"

But while he's on a tear, he hasn't lost sight of what prompted it. "--So you see I did learn to fight from study, and for study. How to see the fight being set up, and sometimes how to get out of a fight I hadn't chosen; that, first. And more." He smiles and flips a book out of the stack he's accumulated, and holds it out to Harry. It's a slim little thing, with the title Defense Against the Dark Dead: Combat Against The Superhuman. "And then there's the direct lessons, of course."

[harryhotspur]

Harry takes the book carefully, looks at the title: yes, he'll be hanging onto that one, thank you.

He does not know, of course, about the most recent and most significant instance of what Bahorel describes, but he has more than enough memories to draw on without it, all of which come floating vaguely to the front of his mind. His father's voice and his uncle's, assuring him thou needst not know and it concerns thee not and could it not be there were times they said nothing of the kind, but quietly decided between them there were things they would not mention?

"It may be so," is all he manages to say. But it's very likely the direction of his thoughts shows more clearly in his furrowed brow.

[clayforthedevil]

Hey, turns out rigidly hierarchical societies are horrible for everyone!

No, really. Even aside from the issue of Harry's complicated family relationships-- the ultimate outcome of which Bahorel knows better than Harry, due to reading, no less--Bahorel's watched enough of his bourgeois-born friends fighting with rules that make and bind them and their families to know that verily, the class structure stinks like overflowing sewers on pretty much every level. That Harry's clearly been kept ignorant by people who thought it made him useful is only a confirmation of that.

Bahorel amiably thumps Harry on the shoulder. " You'll see for yourself-- or you won't, I suppose. But here, it's your own choice. Though if you ever want company for hunting down the right book, my schedule is usually open."

Which is to say, horrifyingly bored on a level that has nothing to do with pastimes. But the Library helps!

[harryhotspur]

"I doubt not I will come to thee again," Harry says. Because boredom! ...and maybe also books, a little, too.