Cursed (Schooled In Magic Book 17) by Christopher G. Nuttall

Author:Christopher G. Nuttall [Nuttall, Christopher G.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: magicians, magic, alternate world, fantasy, New Adult, sorcerers
ISBN: 9781606193365
Publisher: Twilight Times Books
Published: 2019-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

THE MOMENT EMILY SAW THE LIBRARY, she fell in love.

It was a massive collection of chambers, easily the largest library she’d seen outside Whitehall or Mountaintop. The walls were lined with shelves, there were stacks upon stacks... it looked more like an academic library than something that belonged in a manor house. Towards the rear, there were even shelves of scrolls and parchments ... she’d thought the previous room was big, but the real library was even bigger. She thought she saw some clay tablets and weird-looking artefacts as Cabiria gave her a brief tour of the five rooms. It was wealth beyond measure, even in the days of the printing press. She dreaded to think of how much it had cost, over the years.

“It’s a remarkable collection.” Emily found it hard to talk. She would have sold her soul to grow up somewhere with such a library, magic or no magic. “How ... how did you get all these books?”

“The family collected them, over the years,” Cabiria said. She sounded more pensive than amused. “Some of them ... the ones in the purple room, in particular ... are impossible to read. No one speaks or writes that language any more. There may even be more than one language within the tomes. We don’t know. Others ... there aren’t that many people who can read them. Outside the family, you can count the number of people who can read them on your fingers.”

Emily glanced at her, surprised. “Can you read them?”

“Some of them,” Cabiria said. “I speak five languages, Emily, and I can read three more ... and some of these books are still beyond my comprehension. There are a handful of books I can read, in theory, but they simply don’t make any sense. It’s possible that my grasp of the language isn’t perfect or ... or that they’re actually written in a different language, one close enough to the original to fool us. We simply don’t know.”

She sighed. “Uncle Alanson used to spend hours — days, even — in the stacks, searching for a cure for my ... condition. We assume he found something, because whatever he did worked, but ...”

“I understand,” Emily murmured.

“You would,” Cabiria said, gently.

Emily stepped over to the stacks and ran her eyes over the books. Half of them seemed to be written in Old Script, the Empire’s common language, but the remainder were either in a language she didn’t recognize or simply unmarked. She reached out gingerly and rested her finger on one of the books. There was a faint sense of ... something, as if her finger wasn’t quite touching the book, but ... she carefully pulled it off the shelf and opened it. The title suggested it was a compendium of useful spells from hundreds of years ago.

She returned the book to the shelf and looked at Cabiria. “Professor Locke thought he’d find the secrets of the ancients under Whitehall.”

“He did find something,” Cabiria pointed out. “And in any case .

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