Chapter 18.

This time Khalid-amga not only recognized Tim, but also realized why he had come to the library.

"Yes, I remember. I managed to find something. Not much, alas. I had to serve your fellows, too. But even without them, it would take an entire year to go through so much literature!"

"But that's what catalogs are for!"

"Don't think we librarians are stupider than we are!" the old man got a little offended. "Of course, the first thing I looked into them. But there's no mention of humans in any of the sections! Reference books and encyclopedias were useless, too. I had to look through the books by hand. You know, it was hard work!"

"It's as if someone deliberately destroyed any mention of us," Tim said thoughtfully, remembering a couple of detective stories.

"Is it possible to destroy books?" Khalid-amga was horrified. "No librarian would agree to that!"

"Well, it's not necessary to burn them or dissolve them in acid. One could simply remove them from the library and bury them somewhere."

"But why? Books are written for the purpose of being read, not hidden! Yes, there are manuscripts which contain dangerous knowledge, and they can be given to apprentices only with the permission of one of the Masters. They are kept apart from the others. Maybe that is where the truth is hidden? I'll certainly look into them, but you'll have to enlist the support of one of the teachers."

That's easy to say. Asking to be teacher's favorite, you risk ruining your relationship with your classmates. In addition, it's not so easy to meet one of the Masters on "neutral ground". But even if such a miracle happened, would they want to help? Another controversial question, depending largely on the circumstances.

"It is probably better to limit ourselves to those books that do not require anyone's permission. After all, if we find an answer in them, then there will be no need to look through forbidden literature at all."

"Good words!" the librarian was delighted. "Indeed, why call upon mighty powers when you can do with little? I'll leave the manuscripts from the special list to a later date, but I'll continue through the general literature. Drop by the library more often, and I'll try to find something else for the next time!"

"Thank you very much, Khalid-amga. And I also would like to ask this: have any of the authors taken on the task of compiling an Annals of the Jelshakh School of Sorcery?"

The question made the librarian think a little.

"Do you mean a chronology or something else? I'm afraid to disappoint you: officially, no one has done a history of the school. There's only a list of the Principals who have run the school since Naergin's time, and a brief biography of each of them. Some former pupils of the school sometimes have memories of their school years, but they are of little historical value. So I would risk to ask: are you interested in it just for the sake of curiosity, or do you want to know something particular?"

"Oh, I just happened to be talking to some dwarves the day before and they mentioned something about the geerkhs digging all the tunnels here and actually rebuilding the school as it is. And who were they, these geerkhs?"

Again the librarian didn't answer right away.

"Yes, indeed, a couple of years ago, Rugud approached me with a similar question. Alas, I couldn't find anything to interest him. Other than a description of their appearance and lifestyle made by one of the teachers back in the early days of the school, there was no other mention. Why they are not with us is a mystery to me as well. It is very sad, perhaps communication with them would teach us a lot!"

"What if they simply moved elsewhere?"

"It is unlikely: the world where we are is a giant ocean, and besides our island, there is no other land there. Except for the reefs and shoals, which are unfit for life. Of course, if the geerkhs are amphibians, that wouldn't be much of a problem for them," added the old man diplomatically.

What amphibians were, Tim didn't know, but he didn't specify. Instead, he took the books he had set aside for him (as well as the books on Twilight and Mind magic that Khalid-amga had recommended), and hurried to his room.

There were three books. The first was essentially a rolled up roll of heavy paper, about five meters long, with writing on one side. The paper was yellowed with time, but it was still strong enough not to crumble to dust when Tim touched it (it must have been impregnated with something or strengthened magically). It was the work of Mapetzi, entitled 'The Dark Side of Druidism', which described his visit to a laboratory on the island of Crete. The wizards there were eager to demonstrate the monsters they had created, and there were illustrations in the style of medieval engravings. Not without surprise Tim recognized in them creatures that were familiar to him from literature. Minotaurs, centaurs, harpies, sirens - exactly as the ancient Greeks had imagined them to be! So that was where they came from in the myths! There were monsters, too, whose names Tim did not know, and outright freaks, in which there was almost nothing human left.The sorcerers who created them, in addition to their purely 'scientific' interest, had a very practical purpose - anyone who had enough money to buy monsters could do so. Their high cost was due to their high efficiency on the battlefield: just one minotaur could playfully fight a dozen 'ordinary' fighters, even knowing which end to take up a sword or a spear from, while a dozen sirens could easily demoralize and put an entire army on the run. Considering that wars at that time were almost nonstop, the sorcerers did not suffer from the lack of orders. However, neither methods of breeding chimeras nor appropriate formulas were given. On the other hand, if they had been, this work would have fallen into the category of forbidden. And not all of the Masters would have allowed him to read it.

The second book consisted of several sheets of parchment stapled together. It told of a delegation of elves visiting the court of King Alfred the Great of Saxony and presenting His Majesty with a herd of unicorns. Apparently, they were planned to use in war with the Danes, because unicorns' fighting qualities are much better than those of horses. Alas, they were not destined to prove themselves on the battlefield: absent-mindedly or with malice, the corral with them was not locked at night, and the unicorns scattered all around. Only few of them could be caught and brought back; the rest could not survive in too severe conditions for them or became the prey of hunters who at any cost wanted to decorate their trophy collection with the horn. The most beautiful unicorn was a gift for the king's daughter, the young princess Aethelflaed; it had a skittish disposition and would not let anyone but its mistress come near it.

The questions that were of interest to Tim were not answered here, too, but some food for thought nevertheless appeared. It turns out that in ancient times not only mighty wizards lived on Earth, but there were portals that connected the planet with other worlds. Where did it all go, left only in myths and legends? It is not by chance that in the tales of many peoples of the world the dragons are present - but how they can appear there, if pterodactyls died out long before appearance of people, and modern us snakes and lizards simply cannot fly? Birds bigger than eagles are hard to find (ostriches don't count, they can't fly either), and dragons don't look like birds. Certainly, the human imagination can create anything, but aren't the fantasies of people who lived thousands of kilometers away from each other too homogenous? The only explanation was that they had actually seen dragons! There may well have been portals that connected the Earth not only to Gallara (as Tim called the planet shared by elves, orcs, and dwarves for the sake of simplicity), but also to the homeland of the gaarshes.

The third book was more informative - the travel notes of Maelg, who had traveled between worlds for thousands of years and wrote down everything that seemed interesting to him. At first Tim thought that Khalid-amga had given them to him by mistake - what could phrases like 'Naeteki's experience was not successful, too much tianma and too little kohi, the decision to take civisp instead of entuari was a mistake' or 'Drabagr, a sinister artifact created by Giat-Dae, has been stolen from the tomb of Omturmorn, and the shadow of the Barbed Death looms over Escarfa once more' have to do with his interest? Only after he was almost halfway through what had been written, he realized that Terra, sporadically referred to here and there, was the Earth! It was no longer difficult to fish out the necessary information from the text; Tim was not too lazy to transfer the most interesting notes to his grimoire, placing them in chronological order.

Record #1. 'The pyramids, which became the tombs for the pharaohs Khufu, Khafra and Menkaur, are simply magnificent; they will stand for thousands of years, and time will prove powerless before them. The idea to use stone golems for the erection of monumental buildings in general is not new, but I have never seen such grandiose monuments of architecture. I have only one regret, that nobody will know who really erected them, because all the glory of the builders the pharaohs attributed to themselves'.

Record #2. 'Having learned the secrets of dark magic, Pharaoh Jehutimesu the Third created a truly invincible armada of the undead and with its help brought all neighboring states into submission. Enemies fled as soon as they saw undead who do not know fatigue and fear; those who dared to fight eventually joined the ranks of the victorious army - even if they had not wished to do so in life. But, as it happens in cases like this, the creation did not outlive its creator for long: with the death of Pharaoh the spells gradually dissipated and the dead returned to their graves'.

Record #3. 'My old friend Didiohoors, with whom I once traveled all over Irmigia in search of an ankhark, persuaded me to visit Terra again, to see the Hanging Gardens of Babilim, whose splendor even elves would have envied. Sadly, we were a century too late: without proper supervision the water elementals stopped supplying moisture to the plant roots, and the plants gradually withered away. The wizard, who was appointed to look after the elements, should be deprived of his witchcraft power for negligence. And why were the others silent when they saw the beauty perish before their eyes'.

Record #4. 'I wasn't planning on going anywhere in the near future, but I was too excited by a rumor that a certain sage on Terra had managed to construct the Eye of the Coming, an artifact that gives you the ability to look through time and see events that have yet to happen. Alas, I was too late again - when I finally reached Terra, the artifact no longer existed, and the sage himself had been crucified. A truly horrible death! As it turned out, Emperor Augustus himself wished to know what the future held for Great Rome. The eye showed him the smoking ruins of formerly flourishing cities and countless hordes of flat-faced, narrow-eyed horsemen, rushing at full gallop from the rising sun. The vision displeased the emperor so much that he ordered the artifact to be destroyed and its creator subjected to a painful execution. Both his house and laboratory were brutally razed to the ground - nothing survived inside, and now hardly anyone can say how the Eye was created'.

Record #5. 'Together with a caravan of wandering dwarf merchants I visited Constantinople. The Byzantine basileus purchased from them several sets of mithril armor for his personal guard, paying generously for them in gold. I was honored to have a very informative conversation with Ignatius, the court chronicler - it's always nice to talk with an intelligent man. In the end, Ignatius handed me a stack of manuscripts with descriptions of the magical rituals of the peoples of Terra, and asked me to pass them on "to where science and knowledge are valued". It was the little that could be salvaged from the Library of Alexandria, which had been destroyed by religious fanatics. Fanaticism in general is a terrible thing, and religious fanaticism doubly so, for it does not listen to the voice of reason, being guided only by blind faith in the rightness of the dogmas enunciated by the founders and ministers of the cult. And it would not be a great misfortune if they were good and righteous, but even among them, alas, there are many money-grabbers, power-hungry men, and those whose mental health is highly questionable. Ignatius feared that in Constantinople, where the basileus is unpredictable in his aspirations and the influence of the Church is very strong, he would not be able to preserve the manuscripts and the ancient knowledge would be lost forever. I handed over the manuscripts to the ngwares, who promised not only to preserve them, but also to make copies for all who would be interested in the wisdom of Terra'.

Record #6. 'I was invited to see a knight's tournament, for what occasion, I don't remember exactly - most likely, the coronation of one of the local kings. It was an impressive sight, though the entertainment in the courts of the elvish monarchs is much more refined and less primitive. I met Higar, the head of the German Wizards Guild. According to him, the sorcerers are very uneasy: their spells are getting weaker and weaker, and it's getting harder and harder to cast them. No one knows what causes this, and no one has yet been able to find and eliminate the cause. The Church takes advantage of this and more and more often grabs those who can no longer defend themselves and sends them straight to the stake. If this keeps up, Higar sighed, they'll all have to go into hiding. Or find a place where they could live in peace and continue with their craft. Since I'd never heard of such a plague before, I could only wish them luck. But perhaps on Gallaeri or Penmayor they can understand what had happened here, and help the wizards of Terra'.

Record #7. 'After reporting what had happened to the council of the sages of Enyroid, I considered my mission accomplished. Only a few centuries later, I remembered Terra, determined to visit it. What I saw confirmed the worst of my fears: the horrible buildings, the black smoke, the hideous iron wagons that terrified passersby, and those who didn't make way for them would die under their wheels. And worst of all, there was no trace of magic anywhere! The wizards whose names were known to local residents turned out to be simple fraudsters who fooled an undemanding public with tricks. The portal I came through was still active, though the magic that supported it had weakened considerably. This must be my last visit to Terra - when the portal closes, no one else will be able to visit the planet. Could it be that Betsagoni's curse has come true? I once heard from Fehrigit of a world whose inhabitants were fond of constructing machines, putting the heaviest and dirtiest work upon them, while they themselves plunged into the self-contemplation and the pursuit of exquisite pleasures. And gradually they became slaves of metal monsters, who eventually relocated their creators to reservations where they had everything to satisfy their bodies' needs but were deprived of books and teachers. And as a result, they became like cattle, used to living in pens and stables, unaware of their fate. Could this be the fate of Terra? It's a pity...'

There was no further mention of Terra. But it was clear enough that when the portals finally failed, the Earth was cut off from the community of magical worlds. So the wizards had never been able to sort out what had happened! Probably because of that, earthlings had been ceased to invite to the school - what was the point if they could not even conjure properly afterwards? But then why they suddenly chose him? He wasn't even innately gifted. In general, the further into the wood, the thicker the trees - as soon as you find an answer to a question, two new ones appear. And what is the essence of the Betsagoni's curse? The author of the notes did not bother to explain, as if everyone around knows who Betsagoni is, whom and why he cursed! Ah yes, the traveler was writing for himself, compiling a kind of travel notes. Whoever took them to the library should make appropriate clarifications - it wasn't just the Wizards who wanted to know about the sights of other worlds!

But how many of them there are! And to move from one to another it is enough just to step into the portal. You don't need any spaceships that might take hundreds of years to reach your aim. What's the point of flying if only your distant descendants will arrive (if at all) at their destination? Magic has its advantages, after all!

So Tim was determined that when he would graduate the school, he would definitely become a traveler! And at the same time he will figure out what happened on Earth. The first thing to do is to find out what the essence of that curse and how to get rid of it. He must find the answer in the library! In principle, why drag the cat by the tail, why not go there right now? But first it would be a good idea to visit the toilet.