The Gaming Outpost

Talgrim was a Second Class Trainee Librarian at the Library of Camrid. Despite the protestations of his masters, he felt strangely slighted as he seemed to draw more than his fair share of troublesome patrons than others of the Seconds, and even most of the Firsts. It should have made for interesting stories to tell at dinnertable in the Great Hall heated by the cunningly made giant fireplaces, but few cared to speak to him. This only doubled the unfairness, and made him sigh the deeper as he stepped into the Interview Room.

Already two Firsts had given up on this visitor. The stranger was an odd-looking man, both tall and broad more so than most, fit to be a knight perhaps. But his broad-brimmed hat, and his loose curls of blonde hair would never have passed for style at any court in the land.

Talgrim sat down at his wooden chair across from the table of the man lazing in his, and secretly below the table made the sign against evil as the visitor removed his hat to reveal more blonde hair. He placed the hat on the table to his right, and sat up.

“I am…” He began.
“Lawrence O’Reilly.” Talgrim interrupted being aware of how supernatural such a simple exchange of knowledge behind doors could seem to the unitiated. The stranger nodded agreeably, not looking at all impressed.

“What is it that you want, sir?” Anyone who came to the Library willing to part with a gold coin to enter was automatically counted noble by the staff.

“I’ve walked a good way…”
“How far?” Talgrim said to express courteous interest, and also because his own cursed curiousity, of which his masters had commented unfavorably several times this last year alone, drove him to question.
“Oh, twenty miles a day, fourteen days with a few days off for rest. Two hundred eighty miles.”
The casual use of Arithmetic and Multiplication without the use of paper, or slate, or even the movement of the lips, led Talgrim to believe that his sturdy visitor was a most accomplished merchant.
“As you were saying, good sir…”
“Right. I wanted to get information from your copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s hereditary records. Also, I wished to study your book, Tales of the Dream That Was. Reputedly it covers the time period before the Great Collapse.”
“Ah, yes, well, I shall immediately go and get the Interpreters to bring forth their scrolls and give you the information you seek.” Talgrim made to rise, and the stranger put forth an open hand, not to strike as Talgrim feared, but to slow him.
“I have already spoken to two different sets of interpreters. Both gave me the same information.”
“Well, of course. They would not give differing information based on different readings. ”
“About two different books, they gave me the same information. Monmouth and Tales both said essentially the same thing. Now I know, for a fact, that is impossible. Unless something is really screwy in this verse.”
The last sentence meant nothing to Talgrim so he ignored it.
“So, you want to…ah….read the book?”
“Books. Yes.”
“Ah, I don’t think that would be possible. See without the proper framework of theory, of understanding how Power and Gender manipulate one to false consciousness…”
“Right, right, I got the speech last time.”
The stranger made to get up, and Talgrim felt a sudden relaxing of unease.

Until, the stranger began to take out small silver denarii, and place them one at a time on the table.

“Now, you can read, of course?”
“I…can.” Talgrim admitted his shame miserably. His childish curiousity when eight had led him astray.

“And so if you were to take a couple books to read at say the Stewpot and the Deer Tavern in town, why that would not be so remarkable, would it?”

The stranger slipped another coin on the desk. And then he added one more. And then without pausing one more joined the pile.

And then Talgrim’s arm leaped out. He was looking at over a week’s wages for…doing something not exactly forbidden anyways. The coins dissappeared in his purse.

The man turned.

“Its good to see scholarship and the search for knowledge flourishing still in Cambridge.” The man said as he opened the door to leave.
“That’s Camrid, in the modern speech, good sir.” Talgrim replied as the door opened and the man stepped out and Talgrim speculated on how many very painful lashes of the whip he would have to endure if he were caught.