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What she had not forgotten was the love that had first taken root in the timeless soil of the Exchange, or her first meeting with the young, handsome Evar Eventari.

The Book That Held Her Heart , by Mark Lawrence

Excerpts from The Traveller’s Guide to Tru

They say that the whole forest of Tarjal was once a lake. Many find it hard to believe, but time plays its own games, pushing the scenery this way and that, so who knows, maybe it was.

Speaking of time, it’s something that’s easy to lose track of when you wander among the trees. People like to speak of enchanted woods, of fairies, talking animals, and darker denizens coiled amid the briars. The woodlands that surround the town of Tru have a different type of magic though, some distillation of peace. As you weave a path around the many pools and listen to the pulse of the place, you might feel that you’ve somehow stepped out of time’s flow, and that if you were to take a nap, years could slide past unnoticed.

Thankfully, it’s just a feeling. Nobody has been lost for more than a day, and all you’ll find on your return to the world is that you’ve misplaced your troubles.

The town itself is known for several things, but prime among them is the broad spread of its people, the number of humans nearly matched by those of both canith and ganar, with others who have journeyed even greater distances. Some joke that one day a skeer will move in and open a bookshop. And that does lead us to another local industry. Tru is a hive of learning. Its library, run by the famed academic Arpix Eventari, is a place of pilgrimage for many scholars. A host of bookshops support this economy of education and cater to the tastes of many visitors who stop by on their way to the cities of the east coast.

Perhaps the most charming of any of Tru’s bookshops is to be found off the lesser market square. You can navigate to it quickly by looking for the well. The locals say that the well predates the town by several centuries and harkens to a time when the alleged lake was an even harder story to believe. The well has its own wall to prevent the loss of careless children, and a small roof to shelter it. The drop to the water is scarcely more than a yard, but legend has it that the shaft reaches down deeper than anyone could sink and still find their way safely back to the surface. Much deeper.

The store that lies behind the well was perhaps named ironically. The Blank Page does not in fact deal in stationery, and all its pages are well covered. Be warned, as well as an addictively varied stock of rare tomes and popular literature, the place is also home to something of a menagerie. Or at least it was when this author had the pleasure of visiting. All its residents are somewhat elderly though, so I can’t guarantee they will still be there to greet you on your arrival.

The first I encountered was a particularly big, ancient, and dare I say it…raucous…raven, perched on the post supporting the shop’s nameboard. He’s a talkative fellow, though neither he nor the proprietor seemed willing to give me his name.

Inside, expect to be greeted by a surprisingly large black hound who, despite age touching his curls with grey, will be extremely interested in the contents of your pockets. He struck this author as a very good boy, though sadly his eyesight appears to be failing…that or he thinks he can walk through walls, as he does quite frequently bump into things.

And the final member of the collection is what must be the largest of all domestic cats, and very definitely the sleepiest of the trio. This colossus among felines can be seen lying upon the shelving units and cannot be less than two yards from nose to tail tip.

As to the owner—

Livira saw the young man to the door. He left clutching his new books and promising a glowing write-up in the pamphlet he was working on, a guide to the town for passing trade.

She stroked Volente’s head as she watched the man cross the square.

“Hack! Hack!” Edgarallen cawed after him.

“Now, now, bird.” Livira shook her head. “Be kind. He was nice.”

She turned back into the shop and looked at it, trying to see the place with fresh eyes. She hoped it had made a good impression on her visitor, just as she hoped it did on all her customers. There was a magic in the place after all. More than just the tendency for people to lose themselves among the aisles and exclaim on leaving that they never realised quite how far back the shop extended.

“How far does it go?” the young man had asked, a look of mild confusion on his face.

Livira had given him the same answer she gave everyone. “All the way.”

She had an urge to explore her shelves herself this afternoon. You never really knew what you might find back there. When they had siphoned down the library’s magic, all three of them, the inheritors of Irad, of Jaspeth, and of Yute, they had agreed on a plan. They had sent the magic out into the world with no direction other than it should gather in any place where books gathered. The blood of the library wrote itself into every volume on every shelf, permeating, perhaps replacing, the ink that marked their pages. The magic wove itself into the walls of libraries both public and private, pooling in the quiet places, flowing along the shelves. It gathered in bookshops and bathed both the proprietors and customers, so that someone with the eyes to see would note it in the footprints leading away from the shop door.

Diluted by distance and space and numbers and time, the library’s magic played more subtle roles than it had in the monolithic vastness of the athenaeum. It was a gentler enchantment, more given to whimsy and unpredictable results. Sometimes it made itself known by drawing the right eye to the right spine, making an auspicious marriage between reader and book. Sometimes it was a tingle in trailing fingertips, causing the browser to stop and examine the novel her touch had found.

Occasionally, rarely, it built to something of more grandeur that might draw notice and even find its way into a book of its own, a new story spilling unchecked across blank pages…until finally…it met the back cover and washed against it.

“I’m old,” Livira muttered as she walked the aisles, her touch lingering on old friends all the way. Gone were the days when she had sprinted at tree-top height across the shelves of the great library, leaping aisles, hunting…what had she been hunting? There was a time when she never forgot anything. She had forgotten what that felt like.

What she had not forgotten was the love that had first taken root in the timeless soil of the Exchange, or her first meeting with the young, handsome Evar Eventari. How tall he’d been, how athletic. How sweet, innocent, and how brave. She blinked away a tear for days gone by so long ago and muttered at herself for her foolishness.

The brothers still stopped by to see her, Kerrol most often, an elderly statesman now, always so kind when he called in, bringing with him a box of the little cakes he adored. Starval would appear unexpectedly from time to time, his mane still black, though she thought he must dye it. He spent most of his time fussing Volente and saying little, but never left without giving her the fiercest of hugs, taking her by surprise every time.

Mayland came once a year on the winter solstice, so bent beneath his years that she felt each visit must be his last. He spoke to her gravely about matters of politics and policy, his voice nearly as creaky as the rest of him, and when he’d departed, she would find a small book left for her on the table at which they’d taken their tea. Always poetry, often ancient. Clovis had once surprised her by saying that she believed her brother spent far longer choosing the book to bring her than he did on the lengthy journey from Crathe.

They spoke about Evar of course. All of them. Sometimes indirectly. Mayland had, in all of his conversations with Livira, spoken his brother’s name only once. On his most recent visit. A fact that had left Livira with the conviction that he thought it would be his last.

All of them had loved Evar best. Even Mayland. All of them missed him. And all of them had a secret, one they wouldn’t speak for fear that doing so might undo the magic of it. Livira had seen it in their eyes and kept her own secret close for the same reason.

“Ah, there you are.”

Livira turned the corner to discover the reading table and her comfortable chair. They existed in a clearing among the aisles, but no customer had ever remarked upon them, and even Livira could wander for a while before she found the spot. The coil of a long tail gave away the presence of a large cat snoozing beneath the table.

She settled in her chair, sighing as the worn leather accepted her ageing bones. “I needed this.” She kicked off her sandals and set her bare feet on Wentworth’s furry belly.

Her book lay on the table, and she picked it up, running her fingers over the faint design on its worn covers, a ball of wind-weed, a thousand swirling lines that somehow wove the shape of a canith from nothing, a figure approaching from a dust storm.

She opened it to her favourite page and began to read.

And amid the warmth and comfort of the bed they shared Livira awoke once more from the dream of her life, turning with a yawn to find Evar beside her.

The blood of the library ran in his veins and while he walked the pages of many stories, visiting friends both old and new, it was here in the tower she had built for him that Evar Eventari laid his head.

He reached for her, smiling, and slid his hand from her shoulder to her hip, before pulling her close. A moment of perfect union when every star aligned. Gently, he kissed her forehead.

“Hey, sleepyhead. What shall we do today?”