Page 60 of Reluctant Wizard

“Even from more hunters?”

“Maybe there won’t be any more.”

That was hoping for a lot. “What will you do for food and water?”

He hesitated. “I can get by for a few days.”

Cillian was being totally unreasonable, but she’d also learned to recognize when he’d entrenched on a course of action. “All right,” she agreed, deliberately slumping her shoulders. “I’m sure I’ll be fine without you. Gordon Hanneil won’t dare come after me openly.”

That worked, the agony of indecision contorted Cillian’s face as he grimaced. “Dark arts,” he cursed. “No, you’re right. Your safety comes first. We’ll just have to leave the archives and hope we can come back. Besides, I don’t know how we can examine the contents without setting off the alarm again.”

“We need to find a way to put the equivalent of a silencing spell around them,” she mused, resuming their winding trek through the shadowy archives toward the exit. Cillian didn’t correct her trajectory, so it must be more or less the right direction. “Still, any time we return to the archives, we’d run the risk of being trapped. I wish we could somehow take the documents with us.”

Cillian snorted at that. “That won’t happen. There’s an enchantment that prohibits removal of archived materials. Every student should know that.”

She did, of course, know that. It was the topic of much griping among the student populace that only certain texts could be borrowed and taken out of the archives. For anything truly useful, they had to sit there and work on site. It could be super inconvenient. The wizard-students in particular were forever concocting work-arounds to try to sneak texts out of the archives, but even the smallest of books secreted in a pocket set off the enchantment…

An inspiration struck.

“Wait, I have an idea. Tell me—before you unlocked the Phel stacks, they didn’t take up any physical space, right?”

“Well, it’s an interesting conundrum. The concept of physical space is debatable,” he began.

“Cillian,” she said, stopping him firmly. “You can explain the conundrum to me later. Yes or no?”

His usually gentle black gaze glittered mutinously. “It’s not a simple yes or no answer.”

“Dark arts preserve me. Are they portable enough for you to simply bring the folded-up stacks with us to House Harahel for a side-by-side comparison there?”

~27~

Cillian stared at Alise, beyond shocked by her suggestion. “You can’t remove stacks from Convocation Archives!” To his chagrin, his whisper ended in a horrified squeak.

“Can’t as in shouldn’t or can’t as in impossible?” she persisted with relentless logic. “It seems like the enchantment triggers on the removal of physical texts.”

“Shouldn’t.” He was insistent on that point. He could not possibly do what she was suggesting. Not even for Alise could he contemplate such breach of ethics. None of us needs another Szarina incident.

Alise still gazed at him expectantly. He should lie to her, insist that it was impossible. Except that he likely could get around the enchantment. “And very nearly impossible,” he finally said when it was clear that she’d wait him out, and that he couldn’t find it in himself to speak the lie to her face.

“Very nearly impossible leaves room for possible,” she replied gently. “So, the enchantment might be bypassed if the texts are in a non-physical state?”

“Maybe,” he answered unhappily. “By someone who knows how the enchantment works.”

“And who knows how the enchantment operates?”

He couldn’t meet her knowing gaze, looking past the tip of her left ear. “The archivists.”

“Harahel wizard-archivists?” she asked, not really a question.

“Yes,” he answered on a hush, unwilling to speak the anathema too loudly. “But Alise—I couldn’t possibly! It goes against every ethic that underpins my avocation and my profession. No archivist would commit so grave a crime as to remove materials from Convocation Archives.”

“Not even to save them from evil conspirators?” she asked, wizard-black eyes wide. “People who now know the hidden archives have been discovered and will fight to recover them. Probably this time to destroy them forever,” she added darkly.

Cillian knew exactly what she was doing and still couldn’t fend off the horrified reaction at her suggestion. “They wouldn’t.”

“Are you willing to take a chance on that possibility? Especially when we have something we can do to prevent it.”

“You don’t understand, Alise,” he said slowly, willing her to listen, knowing she couldn’t possibly get the extent of his fears. He should have told her about the Szarina incident before this. Now it was the entirely wrong moment. Though, even in the best of moments, he couldn’t possibly explain his shame over what he’d done, nor why he’d done it. Looking back, he hardly recognized himself. He’d been so dazzled by Szarina, so eager to help her. I know all about your white knight tendencies, Raya’s mocking voice reminded him. Yes, he’d been a fool, thinking he could save Szarina, be the hero for once. Worse, he’d thought she’d love him for it. What a fool he’d been.

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