Chronicles of Yax

The ancient library is quiet, as a library should be. The ceiling is high, like a cathedral, nearly thirty fathoms. Stone bookshelves soar nearly to the ceiling. The shelves are grey stone. There are spiral stairways built beside them, and stone walkways that lead along the shelves. Here and there a lone, hooded monk pads quietly along a shelf or down a stair.

You are a visitor to this place. A bored, bookish noble, you have little to do with your time but read exotic tales of ages past. You have traveled many miles in a horse-drawn carriage to see this place, the library of the monks of Sol. You've heard that there are many books to read here, fantastic stories bound up in great leathery tomes, unopened for centuries. You walk up a set of spiral stairs. Your footfalls are loud, echoing cavernously in the high stone reaches of the ageless library. Turning a corner, you find yourself on a long walkway.

You pause and look around. There are stained glass windows ten times as tall as you are lining the walls. It's mid-morning and the sun blazes through the multicolored glass, throwing many-hued gleaming pools of light on the opposite wall. You feel as if you're in a canyon built with human hands. You're perhaps ten fathoms in the air. Looking down at the ground, you see three hooded monks walking between the shelves, headed for the exit. In their habits, they look almost like toy people, sunlight through the stained glass casting long shadows from all three.

Turning away from them, you look at the shelf next to you. There are ten rows of books of varying sizes: huge tomes, small slim volumes, scrolls stuffed into crannies, here and there a rolled-up papyrus or vellum. If the clerk was right, this is the fiction section. You grab a heavy book off the shelf and turn back toward the stairs. You walk down many more flights of stairs, pausing here and there to admire the elaborate carvings on the stonework. Intricate knotwork and patterns, some of Yrkai origin, decorate the stone.

You reach the bottom of the stairs and walk between the shelves. On either side of you, the shelves rise up high like towers. It seems to take forever to get out. Walking toward the huge stone doorway in the opposite wall feels like approaching a mountain from a distance.

Finally, you're out. It's a sunny day and there are a few dozen monks in the yard. Some stand in groups and speak quietly among themselves. Some are sweeping or cleaning. A few sit and scratch at manuscripts, taking advantage of the sunlight while it lasts. You walk across the yard and toward a dormitory.

It's a modest place. Monks are not known for their opulence. You walk in the door, turn a corner, and go up the stairs. Down a hallway lit by a row of windows and into a door, and you're in your room. There's a south-facing window for sunlight, an oil lamp, some curtains, and a modest bed. The bed is a slab of stone with straw for bedding. You've had two of your servants remove the straw for the time being and replace it with a sack of down feathers more to your liking. You insisted on paying the monks for the time you spend here, although they offer their hospitality free of charge.

There's a wooden desk and chair on one side of the room. You sit down, stretch, crack your back, and smile. Today will be a good day of reading. Taking the book from the library, you crack it open and begin to read...