Arcanum by Simon Morden

the reverse process, and when a cart was full, it was pushed off its chocks so that it wheeled itself across the wide quay, mostly in the direction of the waiting warehouses.
    Across the river, beside the new town, were another two barges. One was casting off, orders shouted in the river-workers’ cant ringing clear across the fast-flowing water. Its pointed bow aimed upstream, and for a moment the barge drifted backwards, its front threatening to turn across the current.
    Then the heavily tattooed bargemaster put his hand to the tiller, his inked arms flashing darkly. The boat steadied and held its position. With seemingly no effort, and with the barge-hands busy with securing the ropes on deck, the vessel started to make headway. Little waves broke against its wooden sides as it pushed forward against the mountain meltwater.
    Thaler walked upstream too, but the barge crept ahead of his pace. It threaded through the central arch of the bridge and he lost sight of it. His eyes were drawn instead to the forested flanks of the ridge that ran east to west across the valley, neatly bisected by the river.
    On top of the western ridge was the White Fortress, bright and shining against the green of the wood and the blue of the sky. On the eastern side, the White Tower, as dark as the other was bright. Everyone passing through – south to the mountain passes or north to the cities on the plains – was aware of those two authorities.
    He looked from one monumental edifice to the other. It wasn’t by chance or accident of geography that the town had grown up under the walls of the fortress, rather than huddling close to the flanks of Goat Mountain. As much as the prince’s subjects feared their lord’s temporal power, the laws that they were made to live by were at least comprehensible by mortals.
    Magical things – like unicorns – were wild, quixotic, barely understood. That was the hexmasters’ world, and poor Büber, who had always lived on the line between, had finally crossed over into it.
    There were books about magic in the library, but no books of magic. Those were all carefully sequestered away and kept under lock, key, and far more arcane guards somewhere inside the ill-named White Tower.
    An uninitiated man, even of Thaler’s standing, would never get to see what was written in those books: it gave him an odd feeling in his stomach, to know that they were denied to him, even though the thought of opening even the most elementary primer in magic made him sweat.
    There might be a way around that prohibition, though. It was risky, and he wouldn’t take it yet. There were other avenues to be exhausted first.
    This was better. He had started to plan, tentatively yes, but a solid course of action nevertheless. He breathed deeply, and caught the scent of pine on the wind. So: when he got back to the library, he would still have his duties to perform. His main work was overseeing the cataloguing and indexing of every book in the library, a task that had been barely started when he first entered the cool marble dome as a thin, pale youth, and that would still be incomplete when they carried him out feet first, however many years in the future that might be.
    No one would be checking on him, though. He could, if he wanted, spend each and every day trawling the shelves for books of lore, the bestiaries and the philosophies, until he found his answer. He’d have to dig through the layers of manuscripts, and start with the very oldest. He would have to keep notes of his search – in code, perhaps. Yes, a code: a complex cipher, not one that could be solved with a moment’s glance.
    Thaler took one last deep breath of the morning riverside air, and turned to go back the way he’d come: the alleys of the Old Town were such that the shortest way to the library was to take the long way around.
    Walking back along the quay, he paused to let a carter nudge the wheels of his barrow towards the waiting warehouse. As his gaze