Two slave-Kings

Barrus let go of Tomaz, but kept him ahead of him, pushing him through the opened gate.  Ahead of him Shay was being supported still by Annejecta, and the second woman was following close behind them.  As Barrus walked past the gate he turned slightly and stared over his shoulder.  Tomaz, looking back to see why Barrus's steps had slowed, saw him.
"What?" he said, sounding barely civil.  "Are there more of you to come?"
"I'm waiting for the gate to close," said Barrus.  "That's usually what happens in these tricky places; all the doors let you in one-way only."
"Where do you spend your time?" said Tomaz.  "The gate's controlled by the lever, it can't close unless someone closes it."
"What lever?"  Barrus looked blankly at Tomaz and then around him.  "I can't see any lever."
"Ah," said Tomaz.  "You're not attuned to Paimon though.  Shay can still see the lever, he could close the gate if you want him to."
"Can you see the lever?
"No."
Barrus grunted, obviously not believing Tomaz, but Tomaz refused to be drawn, falling silent and following behind the quiet woman, not looking back at Barrus.  They walked in single file, though Shay still leant a little on Annejecta, along a stone corridor that seemed to turn gently; never quite enough to show a proper corner, but just enough that the gate soon disappeared and it was as though they were walking down an endless tunnel.  Their footsteps echoed, and Tomaz found himself unconsciously trying to keep in step with the others so that there was just one, resounding heavy footstep that they all contributed to.  When he realised what he was doing he stumbled a little, in order to break out of synchrony.
The corridor opened out without any warning, becoming a small atrium with a chimney in the ceiling that stretched up as far as the eye could see, and a grey light glowed at the top.  The walls of the atrium were recessed with shelves, on which were stood thin, leather-bound books with gilt lettering on the spine.  Annejecta checked that Shay could stand up by himself and then started browsing through the shelves, running her fingers down spines and tilting her head to one-side to better read their names.  The other woman looked around them, and then seized Shay's arm.  He looked up, and Tomaz noticed that he looked very pale, his eyes darkly shadowed and more deep-sunken than he remembered.
"What is it?"  Shay's voice rasped like a rough file on metal.  The second woman's hands blurred into motion, and Tomaz stepped backwards, retreating from her and walking into Barrus.
"Ow."  Barrus's tone was flat, letting Tomaz know that he'd stood on Barrus's foot without actually expressing pain.  "What was that for?"
Tomaz realised that the second woman wasn't performing a complicated prestidigitation and relaxed a little.
"I didn't know what she was doing," he said, pointing at her.  "I thought she might be invoking one of the Howling."
"What if she was?"  Barrus sounded bored.
"This would be a bad place to do it," said Tomaz.  "What is she doing?"
"Talking," said Barrus.  "Emma's a mute, she talks to Shay with her hands."
"These books are all indices," said Annejecta, walking back from the shelves.  "I think they're intended to help you find what you're looking for."
"What?" said Shay, talking to Emma.  She pointed behind them all, and Shay looked where she was pointing.
"So have you found what we're looking for?" said Barrus.  "Your hands are empty."
"There's no-one there," said Shay, looking at Emma.  Tomaz carefully avoided turning round and looking where they were talking about.  Emma's hands started dancing in the air again, fingers caressing each other, walking over her palms and wrists.
"I need to find the book here that will tell us where the books we want are," said Annejecta.  "It's like a puzzle box."
"Hah," said Barrus.  "I knew you'd come in useful."  He pushed Tomaz towards Annejecta.
"No," said Shay.  "There's no-one there.  Hey, Anna, Barrus!  Can you see anyone following us?"  Emma punched him on the arm.  "Two people following us?"
"No," said Barrus, looking back.  "Either of you two?"
Both Annejecta and Tomaz shook their heads, Tomaz now walking to the shelves with Annejecta.
"What are you looking for then?" he asked, hoping to forestall any more questions, in case they realised that he could quite easily see the slave Kings Labal and Abalim keeping a discrete distance behind them.

Opening the gate

"Come on, Shay!" shouted Barrus.  His voice echoed wildly around them, bouncing off the hard stone walls until it sounded like there was a crowd of deep-voiced people shouting at Shay.  Shay stayed leaning against the way, his face pale and his chest heaving.  "Shay!  Open the gate!"  Annejecta went to the gate and tried to fit her arm between the bars but found they were too close together.  She pushed her fingers through anyway, trying to reach Shay though he was stood a couple of metres behind the gate.
"What's wrong with him," said Barrus, turning to Tomaz and grabbing him.  The material of Tomaz's shirt bunched up in Barrus's hand, and Tomaz found himself dragged forward and off his feet again.  "Why's he not doing anything?"
"I said there were risks," Tomaz found it hard to talk with the shirt tight around his neck, and his voice came out whispery and raspy.  "Paimon has his price, just like any of the Howling."
"What price?"  Barrus's voice was soft suddenly, but the intensity of his stare seemed to have doubled as Tomaz spoke.
"I don't know," said Tomaz.  "It will be something that Paimon thinks he can pay," Tomaz lifted an arm and pointed at Shay, who was trying to push himself upright off the wall, "and it... it will be something... that... Paimon... wants."  His last few words were gasped out as he ran out of air.  He struggled to breath in, but Barrus was holding him so as to force him to breath very shallowly.
"Put him down, Barrus," said Annejecta, not looking away from Shay.  Her voice sounded hollow somehow as it bounced along the passage that Shay was stood in.  "Shay's recovering."  Barrus lowered Tomaz to the ground, where he gasped like a fish out of water, sucking air into burning lungs, but didn't let go of him.
"Shay?" he said.
"Yes," said Shay, blinking a lot.  He was swaying a little, but he was standing on his own again.  "Yes, I'm here."
"There's a lever, Shay," said Annejecta.  "You need to pull it, it'll open the gate."
"Where?"  Shay looked around him, and Annejecta thought she could make out a thin sheen of sweat covering his face.  "Oh, it's here."  He reached out to the wall, and to Annejecta's dismay she could see that there was nothing there but solid rock.  Then Shay seemed to grasp something she couldn't see, and leaned on it, pushing it down, and for a couple of seconds there was a silvery-grey lever in his hands sticking out of a long, metallic slot in the rock.  The gate slid quickly aside, forcing her to pull her fingers out of the bars fast.  She wasn't quite fast enough, and bruised her left ring finger as the bars pulled it sideways, but at the back of her mind she was aware that she could have had her fingers ripped off and she'd had a narrow escape.  Then she was running forward and grabbing Shay, tipping his head back so that she could look into his eyes.
"The gate is open," said Tomaz, looking at Barrus.  "You can find your books now."
"You're coming with me," said Barrus lifting Tomaz back off his feet again.  "This place is tricky.  I don't know when I might need a hostage."
"Against books?"  Tomaz realised that he probably shouldn't have sounded sarcastic even as he spoke, but Barrus didn't seem bothered by it.
"I've just seen a man walk though a gate without getting cut to shreds," he said.  "That's pretty tricky, and sets a bad precedent to my mind.  So you're going to come with me and tell me all about these little tricks."
"Doesn't that defeat the point of your visit?" said Tomaz.
"Huh?"
"If you wanted me to know what books you were after, you could just have paid me to go and get them for you."
"I don't care if you know what books we want," said Barrus.  "Though I don't know what they are either, so you'll be lucky if you can get me to tell you.  I'm just not paying for some little bloke to go and pick a couple of books off a shelf and bring them back to me."
"It's not quite that easy," said Tomaz.  "As you can see."
"Seems easier to me, if you can walk though walls."
Tomaz had to agree with that.

Invoking Paimon

"I still don't see why we couldn't do it upstairs," said Shay.  "Your office is warmer and more comfortable than this... cave!"
"We could have invoked Paimon there," said Tomaz.  "It would have taken a lot longer and been much more dangerous, and we'd have had to come down here in the end anyway.  The point of entry to the Library for books in Paimon's realm is this gate in front of you."
"Huh," said Shay.  "At least we'd have been down here for less time."
Tomaz didn't answer that, but opened his slim little box instead.  Inside it looked like a rectangular artist's palette, with little indentations set at regular intervals and filled with what looked like solid colour.  Annejecta craned her neck to see more clearly, and Barrus sniffed once and twitched his nose as though he were smelling something disagreeable.  They could hear Tomaz counting softly underneath his breath, moving his finger along the indentations.  When his finger stopped it was next to the only amber colour in the box, on which he rubbed his finger.  The amber was soft enough for him to rub a layer off, roughing up the surface of the disc and lightly coating his finger, and Annejecta thought immediately of fat-based cosmetics.
"Hold still," said Tomaz to Shay.  "I need to draw a sigil on your face.  It won't hurt."
"It's only wax," said Barrus.  "Why would it hurt?"
While Tomaz carefully copied the sigil on the gate onto Shay's face, the waves going on his forehead and the cross-lines going through his nose and mouth, Annejecta shuffled a little closer to Barrus and said quietly enough that only he could hear her,
"Not all of those coloured discs will be painless to put on.  Some of... of... of the things we might want to talk to won't talk until they can feel your pain."
Barrus looked startled, stepped backwards and nearly colliding with the fourth member of their little group, who glared at him but said nothing, adjusting her position so that Annejecta was between her and Barrus.  Annejecta closed the gap between them again, speaking quickly to stop him from saying anything.
"Paimon isn't like that, he embodies dignity and there's nothing dignified about needless suffering.  But there might be some of them we might want to talk to one day who will make that demand.  That's just the way they are.  It's like, I don't know, the terms of a contract.  You sign on with someone and they say you have to wear their stupid, heavy, scratchy uniform all the time, so you do it because they're paying you."
"Fine."  Barrus's voice was flat and his eyes showed that he didn't like what he'd just heard.
"Normally," said Tomaz, as he finished his drawing, "you would need to learn a set of phrases first that you'd repeat, but because of where we are right now, we can omit that step.  Stay right where you are while I fetch something; don't move around much now.  You're attracting attention just by being here, and we've marked you now.  Remember that you're going to be judged."
"What does he mean, judged?" asked Barrus, his helmet shifting slightly.  Annejecta surmised that he was frowning hard beneath it.
"We're asking for something," she said.  "Knowledge about the Hinterlands in this case.  Just like when you go to the Librarians and ask them for a book, they decide if you can have it, if you can take it away or if you have to read it where they can watch you.  It's just like that, only Paimon's a bit... bigger than a Librarian."
"Well, I think I know how to deal with Librarians," said Barrus, the volume of his voice rising a little now.  "Doesn't matter what they call themelves."
Tomaz reappeared from underneath the stairs carrying a tiny clay bottle with a cork stopper.  As he walked past Annejecta and Barrus they both smelled something strongly resinous and then an undercurrent that reminded them both of sick-rooms.  Tomaz stopped in front of Shay and pulled the cork from the bottle, thrusting it under Shay's nose as he did so.  Shay inhaled, ready to step back and away, and his eyes rolled up in his head as his nose smelled something incredibly strong and potent.
"Paimon rebharat, maccaresis ca ta fïeldur.  Laimat ta rebhara.  Paimon et urfeld maccara." said Tomaz, his voice sharp and high.  It felt like his voice cut through the air in the room like a knife through soft butter, and Annejecta took a step back, feeling off-balance.  The mark on Shay's face lit up redly, with the flesh behind it appearing purple and bruised, and the moss beneath his feet changed colour to red as well, a straight path rolling out both before and behind him.  His feet moved jerkily, carrying him forwards as though managed by an inexperienced puppeteer, and Annejecta saw that the sigil on the gate was also glowing.  They all remained silent while Shay stumbled forward, and when he reached the gate he put his hand out as though to stop himself from walking into it, but his hand passed through the bars like they were a mirage.  He walked through, stopping on the other side and turning around to face the rest of them.  Then the light faded out of his face and he staggered a little, catching himself against the wall.
"What the fuck good's that?" said Barrus, the first to speak.  "I thought we were getting books from this."
"You are," said Tomaz. "The lever for opening the gate is on Shay's side."

Below the library

"Shay will," said Annejecta, gesturing to the man who had earlier snorted.  He looked towards Tomaz, sneering.  "He has had some experience with this kind of thing before."  Her voice was a little hesitant, as though she was repeating something she'd been told to say, but she finished her sentence confidently.
"Very good," said Tomaz.  "If you'll allow me to collect a small box, I'll escort to where we need to go."
"Sure," said the bearded man who'd picked him up.  "Why would we care what you collect?"  As he spoke, Shay spoke over him, his voice not quite drowning him out.  "Why do we have to go somewhere?"
Tomaz paused, looking from one to the other, and then bent down and opened a drawer in his desk.  Reaching inside, he moved some leather document tubes to one side and slid back a sliver of wood in the side of the drawer.  He wiggled his finger into the crack that formed, and slid the drawer back and forth until he found a dimple, which he then pressed hard.  A hidden drawer popped open with a click at the base of the stack of drawers, and he reset the drawer he'd had open and removed a small, thin box from the hidden drawer.  His pushed the drawer closed, and it snicked shut.
"I thought you might not like it if I just started playing with hidden catches if I didn't tell you what I was doing first," he said to the bearded man, who just grunted.  Then Tomaz turned to Annejecta again, and said,
"Are you sure that Shay is your choice?"
"Yes," said Annejecta, laying a hand on Shay's chest as he took half a step forward.  Tomaz noticed now that the man was wrapped completely in a dark-green cloak from his shoulders to his ankles, with even his arms bound inside.  Even so, as he'd moved forwards the cloak had moved suggestively, giving the impression that there might be more than a just a human torso hidden beneath it.  "Shay knows what he's doing, but he doesn't know much about the Library."
"I see," said Tomaz.  "Do you want to explain it to him then?"
"Not really," said Annejecta.  "You could do it more quickly."
"Well one of you could explain what you're talking about," said Shay, his voice a little too loud for the room, and his shoulders flexing and squaring beneath the cloak.  "Before I lose my temper or anything, you know?"
"This way," said Tomaz, carrying the box from the hidden drawer in one hand.  It was about as wide as his palm and as long as his forearm.  He ignored the door that the group must have come in by and walked over to a wooden frame painted with woodland scenes that was intended as a screen for people to get changed behind.  It was a little out of place in his office, but he liked the images on it, and it concealed the other door.  He drew the screen aside, and the other four all stared at a blank white wall.
"Down," said Tomaz, gently, pointing at the floor, where the carpet appeared to be sagging.  "Could one of you give me a hand?"
Tomaz and Shay pulled the carpet back together revealing an open square and a flight of stairs going down.
"The books on the Hinterlands," said Tomaz, leading the way down in the shadows, "fall into the realm of Paimon; partly because some of his religions arose and spread out from there, but also because the largest city, historically speaking, of the Hinterlands was Halespar.  We need a point of entry for Paimon, and that is down here."
"That doesn't explain anything," said Shay.  He was third in the procession coming down the stairs.  Looking around him, as the shadows darkened, he could see a brick wall to his left, but an empty space to his right that seemed to suck all the light away.  The stairs underfoot were old stone, with well worn indentations in the middle from the passage of many feet, white at the edges and shades of grey everywhere else.  In front of him was Barrus, the bearded man and then Tomaz, and behind him was Annejecta and their fourth companion.
"It explains enough," said Tomaz.  "Have you invoked Paimon before?"  His voice was echoing oddly now, and the shadows were distorting oddly as a light from below started to become apparent.  The light from the gap at the top already seemed pale and drained of life.
"Not Paimon, no."  Shay thought about saying more and decided against it.
"Are you aware of Paimon?" Tomaz didn't seem to have noticed Shay's hesitation.
"I've heard a little about him," said Shay, trying to sound like he was holding back a lot of what he knew.  "I didn't know he was associated with Halespar though."
"Really?"  Tomaz sounded genuinely surprised, and Shay realised that he'd probably made a mistake.  "Oh well.  Paimon's manifestation is dignity."
"Huh?"  Shay was pretty certain that that was a mistake as well, but Annejecta spoke next before he could cover it up.
"And dignity can be found only underground, I take it?"
"No, not at all."  Tomaz reached the foot of the stairs and stepped off to one side, allowing the rest room to descend.  They were in a small, roughly circular with six holes in the wall.  The stairs curved down following the walls round, and Shay only realised there were six when he spotted the last one underneath the stairs themselves.  The floor of the room was covered in a slippery green moss that was glowing faintly; wherever they trod and crushed the moss the light increased and became yellowish.  More light seemed to filter through from some the holes, and when they looked at them, only one was unbarred.  The other five all had iron bars running from floor to ceiling blocking any passage.
"Stand here," said Tomaz, indicating a spot in front of one of the barred tunnels.  As Shay took his place he saw that in the middle of their height the bars twisted and writhed against one another, forming a sigil.  Four curves like waves folding over themselves formed the top, and three uprights descended to a cross bar, terminating in a single and then a second set carried on down almost to a second crossbar.  The second set also terminated in a circle.  Curved lines then formed the outside of the figure.  The whole thing seemed like a bizarre kind of filigree crown.
"This is where we will invoke Paimon," said Tomaz, opening the box.

The Library of Malkuth

Hands; hairy, sweaty hands, thumped down on his book.  He jumped, and his own hands reached out instinctively to push the intrusive hands away, take the pressure off the spine of the book and check that the pages weren't damaged.  The hands wouldn't push away, so belatedly he looked up.
The face wasn't much better than the hands; a thick beard covered everything below a nose that tried hard to be straight where it wasn't broken, and there were tiny threads of red from broken blood vessels there.  Leather flaps from a metal helmet covered up the rest of the face, with only brown eyes peering out from the holes cut for vision.  As he took that in, the smell hit him, and he pushed back away from the desk.  It smelled like horse, but perhaps one that was sick, or thinking of being sick.  One of the huge, hairy hands left the book and grabbed his shirt, pulling the coarse fabric tight around him and dragging him forwards again.  He tried to stop himself by planting his feet, but all that happened was that he was pulled to his feet.
"Tomaz?" said the man wearing a helmet, also straightening up and pulling Tomaz off the floor as he did so.  The man was just huge, Tomaz decided.  He nodded, trying to look down and check on his book.
"You know this library?"  Tomaz nodded again, wondering where this conversation was going.  When he'd come here this morning he'd been expecting to spend most of his day restoring books and copying out books that were getting to the end of their lives, and this was the only chance he'd had all day to sit and read a little.  Invading barbarians weren't anywhere on hist list of expectations.  He looked past the man holding him and found that there were three other people stood there now, all looking amused.
"Good," said the man holding him.  "We're looking for some information, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of organisation to the books."
"Oh but there is," said Tomaz immediately, forgetting in his haste that he was still hanging an inch or so above the ground.  "It's really quite easy when you get used to it, but researchers do say that at first they find it tricky.  Generally they come round to our way of thinking tho–"
"Yeah," said the man.  "Sounds great.  This here is Annejecta, she knows what we're looking for.  Talk to her.  Nicely."  On the word nicely he leaned back in closely to Tomaz's face, lowering him back to the floor with the implicit promise that he could be picked up again just as quickly if he wasn't talking nicely.  Tomaz stumbled slightly when he was released, only then realising that he'd been letting the man take all his weight still, and had to support himself on his desk.  There was a titter of laughter somewhere in the group, and he felt his face flush with embarrassment.
"Right," he said, his voice a little higher-pitched than he wanted.  He make a fuss of clearing his throat, and started again, in what he hoped were deep, magisterial tones.  "Right.  What are you looking for, exactly?"
"Something on the Hinterlands," said a woman, moving so that she was visible from behind the bearded man.  She was wearing a merchant's coat, though the collar was turned up slightly and there seemed to be several more pockets sewn on to it than even the merchants had.  The coat was a little slow to move with her, and pressed against her as she turned, looking like there might be heavy things in the pockets.  Her hair was a pale blonde cut to shoulder length, and her eyes were grey smudges in a face that seemed slightly out of focus.
"Surely the desk librarian could have helped you with that," said Tomaz.  "There is a shelf of travel guides in the main lib–"
"Not travel guides," said Annejecta, the woman.  "We're not looking for a holiday.  Something on their history, their sociogeography, their significance in the last century."
"Oh," said Tomaz.  "The librarian would have help–"
"They wanted paying," said the man with the beard, in a tone that suggested he didn't think that looking for books was something that should cost money.
"I'm not surprised," said Tomaz, a little surprised that he'd been able to finish his sentence.  "Finding those books won't be easy."
"Hah!"  One of the two who'd not yet spoken snorted indignantly.  "How can finding a book be hard at all?  These librarians are worse than the merchants.  Next, he'll be wanting payment for waking up and breathing in the morning!"
"Shut up, Shay," said Annejecta, not turning to look at him.  Her voice was calm, and slightly dismissive.  "We won't have to pay."
"Well," said Tomaz.  "If you're not paying, then you'll have to take the risks yourself."
"So it's true then?"
Tomaz didn't reply, wondering if she knew what she was asking.  He looked at her intently, trying to focus on her face and work out if she was just trying to be clever or if she actually knew where she was.  The silence dragged out, and then the bearded man turned and looked at Annejecta.
"I saw... the Magra birds carved into the lintel," she said, looking annoyed with the bearded man.  He shrugged and turned away from her to look back at Tomaz again, who decided that he preferred Annejecta being the centre of attention.  The bearded man's eyes seemed to lock onto whatever he was looking at, as though it were the only thing in the room.
"I think you'll find they were Tusu birds," said Tomaz.
"No, they were standing below a... tree." said Annejecta, and that confirmed that she knew where she was for Tomaz.  The Magra birds stood below the Rekath, the tree-like growth that linked the realms of the mind, while Tusu birds were common birds that sang unexcitingly in the twilight.
Tomaz nodded.  "Then yes, this is the Library of Malkuth," he said.  "Who will be taking the risk?"