Scorn of Angels by John Patrick Kennedy Page A

Salim Tarek Junaid Karin, and he had been at the library for twenty years when he met the tall, blond, beardless stranger called Arcana. It was a strange name, Salim had always thought. He kept meaning to ask after it, but always forgot to do so when in the stranger’s presence.
    The stranger visited the library several times a year and had for the last four. She (Salim always thought of the stranger that way when she wasn’t there, though he couldn’t say why) asked for the same things every time: information on an obscure Roman goddess called Nyx and the legends of her consort Tribunal.
    Salim had always loved stories, even as a child. The ancient stories were the best ones, filled with gods that interfered in human affairs and monsters that sought to destroy mankind. They were wild flights of fancy, and they made Salim’s imagination soar.
    So once Arcana told him what she knew of this Goddess Nyx, who had a consort named Tribunal, it was natural for him to go looking for more. And where better to look than in the greatest library in the world?
    He had other duties, and he carried them out in exemplary fashion. But when they were done, he would wander the stacks, like so many others, looking for more stories.
    One day, Salim wandered down into the crypts below the library. And from there he found a door to the under-crypts. Curiosity, not the expectation of finding anything, made him venture down below. He expected to find some empty, moldy rooms, not knowledge or stories. To his surprise, he found several shelves of scrolls, many of them quite old. Being very daring, he tried opening one. To his surprise, it unrolled easily. The cool and the small amount of moisture in the air had helped keep the papyrus intact and supple. He looked it over, realized it was Latin, and put it back. There were a hundred or more scrolls in the room, and they looked as though they hadn’t been touched in a hundred years.
    It took him three days to receive an appointment to speak to the head of the library, another week before the actual appointment, and then two more weeks before they would lend him the assistants to bring the scrolls up.
    When Arcana visited him that autumn, Salim was beaming.
    “Arcana, my dear friend!”
    They embraced, Arcana towering over him. “Salim,” Arcana said, smiling in a way that lit up the room. “Have you had a good summer?”
    Salim shrugged. “It is Bagdad. It is so hot in the summer we hide in the day and pray the desert winds cool us at night, when they are not throwing sandstorms at us. And you? Have you still been travelling?”
    “I have,” said Arcana. She held up a box. “And I bring a gift for you. Fables of a man called Aesop, translated from Greek to Latin by Phaedrus, copied by Rufus. This is a copy of Rufus’s manuscript and is at least three hundred years old.”
    Salim’s eyes went wide as Arcana handed him the box. “My friend, I cannot thank you enough.”
    “You have helped me for four years,” said Arcana. “You have taught me more stories than I could ever have learned on my own. It is the least I could do.”
    “It is a wondrous gift,” said Salim, beaming. “And I know that we should go drink tea and celebrate it, but there is something I know you will want to see first.”
    Arcana’s perfectly shaped brows rose high on her forehead. “My friend, you do not mean…”
    “I do!” Salim practically danced. “It is amazing, I tell you. I found them deep in the crypts, in the basement below the basement. I got permission to bring them up, and they are now in the library, in the rooms where documents wait to be translated to Arabic.” His grin went wide. “I have found stories of Nyx!”
    Arcana embraced him again, the strength of it nearly crushing Salim. “You are an amazing man!” Arcana declared. “Please, yes, if you would. Let us see them now!”
    Salim proudly led Arcana into the library, through the great stacks of books, and into the back rooms where