Free Shadow and claw by Gene Wolfe Page A

was as matter-of-fact as it had been in telling me Cyby read well. "I can hardly recall my own admission to our guild. You are familiar, I suppose, with the method by which we recruit our numbers?"
    I admitted I was not.
    "In every library, by ancient precept, is a room reserved for children. In it are kept bright picture books such as children delight in, and a few simple tales of wonder and adventure. Many children come to these rooms, and so long as they remain within their confines, no interest is taken in them." He hesitated, and though I could discern no expression on his face, I received the impression that he feared what he was about to say might cause Cyby pain.
    "From time to time, however, a librarian remarks a solitary child, still of tender years, who wanders from the children's room and at last deserts it entirely. Such a child eventually discovers, on some low but obscure shelf, The Book of Gold. You have never seen this book, and you will never see it, being past the age at which it is met."
    "It must be very beautiful," I said.
    "It is indeed. Unless my memory betrays me, the cover is of black buckram, considerably faded at the spine. Several of the signatures are coming out, and certain of the plates have been taken. But it is a remarkably lovely book. I wish that I might find it again, though all books are shut to me now.
    "The child, as I said, in time discovers The Book of Gold. Then the librarians come -like vampires, some say, but others say like the fairy godparents at a christening. They speak to the child, and the child joins them. Henceforth he is in the library wherever he may be, and soon his parents know him no more. I suppose it is much the same among the torturers."
    "We take such children as fall into our hands," I said, "and are very young."
    "We do the same," old Ultan muttered. "So we have little right to condemn you. Read on, Cyby."
    " 'From Master Gurloes of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence, to the Archivist of the Citadel: Greetings, Brother.
    " 'By the will of a court we have in our keeping the exulted person of the Chatelaine Thecla; and by its further will we would furnish to the Chatelaine Thecla in her confinement such comforts as lie not beyond reason and prudence. That she may while away the moments until her time with us is come - or rather, as she has instructed me to say, until the heart of the Autarch, whose forebearance knows not walls nor seas, is softened toward her, as she prays she asks that you, consonant with your office, provide her with certain books, which books are-' "
    "You may omit the titles, Cyby," Ultan said. "How many are there?"
    "Four, sieur."
    "No trouble then. Proceed."
    " 'For this, Archivist, we are much obligated to you.' Signed, 'Gurloes, Master of the Honorable Order commonly called the Guild of Torturers.' "
    "Are you familiar with any of the titles on Master Gurloes's list, Cyby?"
    "With three, sieur."
    "Wery good. Fetch them, please. What is the fourth?"
    "The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky, sieur."
    "Better and better - there is a copy not two chains from here. When you have your volumes, you may meet us at the door through which this young man, whom I fear we have already detained too long, entered the stacks." I attempted to return the candelabrum to Cyby, but he indicated by a sign that I was to keep it and trotted off down a narrow aisle. Ultan was stalking away in the opposite direction, moving as surely as if he possessed vision. "I recollect it well," he said. "The binding is of brown cordwain, all edges are gilt, and there are etchings by Gwinoc, hand-tinted. It is on the third shelf from the floor, and leans against a folio in green cloth - I believe it is Blaithmaic's Lives of the Seventeen Megatherians."
    Largely to let him know I had not left him (though no doubt his sharp ears caught my footfalls behind him), I asked, "What is it, sieur? The Urth and sky book, I mean."
    "Why," he said, "don't you know better than