The Care and Feeding of Griffins by R. Lee Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

halfway down the wall where the old kiddie section used to be (in the very same set of shelves, in fact, where she had once been able to find the adventures of Jenny Fletcher, Girl Genius) there were books.
    “ Go,” Romany said suddenly.  The gypsy’s voice was stark in the cavernous room, but it did not echo.  The library, starved for company, held on to every sound.  “I will hold the door.  Go, thee, and swiftly.”
    Taryn moved as one in a dream, her gaze wide and fixed upon her destination, her feet numb even as they carried her.  The books were very old, every one of them bound in leather or in wood, and although many spines were marked in some fashion (crests, circles, strange runic-looking embossing in gold or silver) none of them showed titles.
    She began at the top shelf, the far left, with the first book in a whole row of identical green-covered books.  She put her hand on one and felt leather worn smooth as rose petals beneath her fingers.  She pulled it out into the light and turned it to see the front cover.  Silver paint made letters that, finally, she could read.  Far-Telling Arcanos .  Volume One: Aeromancy.
    There were no such books.  Oh sure, in the movies, pretty little heroines in tight sweaters were always tripping down to their local libraries when zombies popped up and finding books like these, but Taryn had been to a great many real libraries in her life and there were no such books.  She jostled Aisling to her shoulder so that she could open this impossible book and saw thick pages with hand-written lettering and greatly-ornamented margins.  The first letter of every new page was always drawn in the shape of a contorted dragon.  The secrets of Aeromancy explained.  How to see the future in the air. 
    With trembling hands, Taryn shelved Volume One and brought out Volume Two.  Anthropomancy, it said.  She opened it and gazed in silence at many beautiful and painstakingly-illustrated pages diagramming exactly how humans should be laid out for sacrifice, which organs should be read and how.
    The voice of Romany drifted to her, no louder than a whisper.  “Hurry, thee.”
    Taryn made herself close the book and pull out the next.  Astragalomancy.  And the next, Capnomancy.  And down through all fifteen volumes of the Far-Telling Arcanos .  The first book she touched after that was called Magickal Circles , and after that, A Collection of the Maps of the Ancient Kingdoms of the Three Realms .  Her heart leapt when she found the words Magical Beasts carved on the cover of one book, until she opened it and found the addendum ‘and their uses’ penned beneath an illustration of an eviscerated unicorn.
    The books seemed to be in no particular order, although collections were kept together.   Some books had no titles on the front covers at all and had to be opened.  She found many books on sorcery, particularly on ways of divination: examining tea leaves, candle flames, incense smoke, bird flights, the movements of melted lead or pearls in water, burning the livers of donkeys or llamas or humans, reading palms, reading fingers, reading feet.  She found books on the magical properties of rocks, trees, herbs, and every other imaginable thing.  She found books on the making of amulets and talismans.  She found books on how to make and activate runes and wards.  Books on how to invoke spirits, elementals, djinn, the dead, homunculi, or demons.  And there were spell books by the dozens, providing a reading wizard with everything from magical flames to foods to slaves to sex to killing curses.  And here and there, tantalizing her, were books Taryn would have loved to sit and read:  The Draconid , Chimerae in the Age of Reason , A True Accounting of the Infliction of Lycanthropy .
    But it was on the last shelf, tucked unimportantly between Vedekum’s Necronthology and the first volume of The Alchemist’s Arts , that Taryn found what she knew she was looking for. 
    It was a