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all can easily undo them. It’s as if they are guarded in this way as a mere formality, it being simply assumed that no one in his right mind would even want to be near the forbidden texts, let alone read them.”
    The young man was silent then. His voice dropping, he spoke almost to himself. “Perhaps I’m not in my right mind.It seems lately that everything I look at is distorted and foggy, as though I’m seeing it through a gauze curtain.” Glancing up at Vanya, he shook his head and continued, his voice tinged with bitterness.
    “I realized something else in that instant, Holiness. I had not discovered those books by accident.” His fist clenched. “No, I had been searching for them, deliberately hunting for them without admitting it to myself. Entire passages of other books I had read came clearly to my mind as I sat there, passages that made reference to books that I was never able to find and assumed must have been destroyed after the Iron Wars. But, when I found that room, I knew differently. They were in there. They had to be. I’d known it all along.
    “What did I do?” He laughed hysterically, a laugh that cracked into a sob. “I fled the Library as though pursued by phantoms! Running back to my cell, I cast myself upon the bed and shivered in fear.”
    “My son, you should have talked to someone,” Vanya remonstrated gently. “Do you have so little faith in us?”
    Saryon shook his head, impatiently wiping away his tears. “I almost did. The
Theldara
sent for me. But I was afraid.” He sighed. “I thought I could manage by myself. I tried to drown this thirst for forbidden knowledge in my work. I sought to cleanse my soul in prayer and obedience to my duties. I never once missed Evening Ritual, after that. I took to exercising with the others in the courtyard, letting myself get so exhausted that I couldn’t think.
    “Above all, I avoided the Library. Yet not a moment passed—waking or sleeping—but that I did not think of that room and the treasure which lay within.
    “I should have known then that I was fast losing my soul.” Saryon’s words swept him on. “But the ache of my desires was too much. I gave in. Last night, when everyone else had retired to their cells for Resting Time, I slipped out and crept through the corridors until I came to the Library. I didn’t know the old Deacon had been posted there to scare off rodents. I don’t suppose it would have stopped me had I known, so completely consumed was I by my torment.
    “As I had foreseen, undoing the spells of sealing was simple. I could have cast such magic as a child. For a breathless moment I paused on the threshold, savoring the sweet acheof anticipation. Then I entered that forbidden room, my heart beating so that it came near bursting, my body drenched in sweat.
    “Have you ever been in there?” Saryon looked at the Bishop, who raised his eyebrows so alarmingly that the young man shrank back. “No, no, I—I suppose not. The books are not assembled neatly or in any sort of order. They’re just piled up in stacks as though they had been hurriedly tossed inside by hands eager to cleanse themselves of the contamination. I picked one up, the first one I came to.” Saryon’s hands twitched. “The elation and fulfillment I felt when I touched the small book made me lose all sense of sight or sound or where I was or what I was doing. I remember only holding it and thinking what wonderful mysteries were about to be revealed, and that my burning pain would burst forth at last and free me from its torment.”
    “And what was it like?” Bishop Vanya asked very softly.
    Saryon smiled wanly. “Dull. Boring. Turning the pages, I grew more and more confused. I understood nothing of it, absolutely nothing! It was filled with crude drawings of strange and senseless devices, containing oblique references to such things as ‘wheels’ and ‘gears’ and ‘pulleys.’” Sighing, Saryon’s head drooped and he whispered in the