Fantasy Economics 101 - Chapter 10

If Knowledge is Power, Then Does That Make a Library a Battery?

In the end, it took well over two days for Raol to gain access to the town library of New Reedcourt. The process was much more involved than his adventurous acquaintances first implied and required explicit permission from both the leader of the Adventurers' Guild, the major of the town, and even the captain of the guards. Fortunately, all of that seemed to be nothing more than the remnants of an old bureaucratic process, and so he didn't have to personally appeal to each one of them.

Even while waiting for his application to make the rounds and receive all the required stamps and signatures, Raol didn't rest on his laurels and continued his investigation into the nature and operations of the guild. Since the members of the well know 'Blood and Flour' party vouched for him, he received lodging on the second floor of the guild building in exchange for a nominal daily fee. While at first, that appeared to be a problem, considering he spent practically all of his gold to get into the good graces of the adventurous group, where there was a glib tongue, there was a way.

Precisely speaking, it was Aurea, Blood and Flour's self-described bard who showed him that way, and it allowed him to make about ten coins per day through a 'performance'. She made it sound grand, but it was little more than entertaining an audience by recounting rumors and tall tales. Normally adventurers, who would travel the land in search of good hunting grounds, would care little for a bard's tales, but when those same tales came from the mouth of a mysterious scholar from the exotic East, it was a different story altogether.

Just by sharing a few tall tales with some tipsy patrons, Raol managed to tease a few loose coins of their purses; not enough to make a living, but more than enough to pay for his lodgings for the next couple of days. Of course, this wasn't sustainable for long; his audience was slowly but surely drying up as more and more people heard of the enigmatic wise man wrapped in colorful clothes and his tall tales. Raol didn't mind it though, since he wasn't planning to stay in town for much longer if he could help it.

Like that, two days had passed in the blink of an eye, filling the skeleton's book with countless new observations and his mind with even more questions than when he started. He could only hope that the library in front of him would answer at least a few of them.

He stood in front of an old building within the heart of the Old Town, the central district of the settlement. It used to be the manor house of a lesser noble in ages past, yet in a twist of fate, its deeds were inherited by New Reedcourt's town hall during its golden age. At the moment, it served as the town's library, though it was jointly managed by the Adventurers' Guild. Its brickwork façade and shingled roof were both time-worn but well-maintained, and while the grounds around it might've lacked the colorful gardens of a noble estate, they were kept clear of weeds and the grass was cut to a uniform length.

It was Raol's first time here, but it didn't mean he had any reason to hesitate, and he confidently walked up to the heavy oaken double doors at the top of a short flight of stairs serving as the main entrance. He grabbed the heavy brass knocker and used it three times. He waited patiently, and after about a minute, the door opened ajar and a woman with thick-rimmed round glasses peeked through the gap.

"Can I help you?" she asked, her voice deep and sonorous.

"I very much hope you can, my friend," Raol responded in a jolly voice, the persona automatically coming to him without any effort. "I was told this fine building is your town's library, is it not?"

After saying so, he did a practiced flourish and presented the letter of introduction to the woman on the other side. She paused for a breath's time, but then let out a soft hum and opened the door wider.

"So you're the scholar I was told about it?" she spoke absently as she accepted the letter and checked the signatures at the bottom. "Everything seems to be in order. Please, come in sir…" She paused to glance at the top of the letter, and with a small stutter, read, "Raoleem… Solan nib Toa… keem Zeraff?"

"Just Raol will do, my friend," the disguised skeleton spoke with a good-natured chuckle and stepped through the threshold of the building.

The interior was even more impressive than the exterior, and even from the foyer, he could see the neat rows of bookcases in the main hall of the building. If he had his nose, he was sure the place would be full of the scent of old paper and ink, but between his dampened senses and the cloth covering his face, he could only imagine it.

Maybe even more impressive than the books themselves was the librarian, and now that he could take a good look at her, she gave Raol a moment of pause. She was a tall woman, with plentiful curves in all the right places. She seemed to be in her thirties, and her oval face and thin lips made her seem a little plain at a glance, yet she had a sense of mature, motherly grace to her. If Raol still had all the necessary bits and glands, he was sure his heart would've fluttered a bit at the sight, as she was exactly his type.

Unfortunately, due to his current condition, he couldn't muster much in terms of attraction, let alone a speck of lust, only a sort of aesthetic appreciation. It was very similar to how he felt whenever he was looking at the young hermitess, and while he tried to ignore the lack of physical reactions, he would've been lying if he said it didn't bother him at least a little bit.

Before long, Raol shook his head and tore his thoughts away from the librarian's hips turning his attention to the shelves. She followed his gaze, at least as much as it could be interpreted from the way his glasses were facing, and lightly cleared her throat.

"Sir Raol then. According to your letter of introduction, you are free to browse any books on the first floor."

"What's on the higher floors?" he asked by reflex, and the lady graciously answered while waving at the nearby stairs.

"The second-floor houses records of the Adventurers' Guild, including the locations and characteristics of known hunting grounds, technical manuals about the various monster species encountered in the Monarchy, as well as tomes and grimoires left behind by past adventurers."

"Oh? I understand the grimoires, but the rest does not sound like much."

"The locations of hunting grounds are considered a trade secret of the Adventurers' Guild," the librarian patiently explained. "The second floor contains the collected knowledge of hundreds of adventurers, and as they say, knowledge is power."

"Ah, you also know of this joke?" Raol exclaimed with excitement that sounded genuine even to his own ears, a testament to just how much of a second skin his scholarly disguise became over the past couple of days.

"Joke?"

"Oh, yes! Back in the Hall of Knowledge and Wisdom of glorious Barbar, my good Eruch fellows often came up with jests like this. How did it go?" Raol paused for a few breaths' time and even scratched his head, for added authenticity. "Ah, yes! They say, 'Knowledge is power. Power is work over a unit of time. Therefore, knowledge needs lots of work over a long time! Hah!"

"I… see," the librarian muttered, unsure about how to react.

"It seems I must have told the joke wrong," Raol responded solemnly. "In the Barbarian language, those words rhyme, and the sentence structure follows the golden ratio. Maybe that's the reason why you don't find it amusing?"

"P-Possibly?"

"Yes, that must be the case. I dread to imagine how hard your poets must have to work to compose a seminal work without access to the subtle brilliance of our Barbarian language! Such senseless hardship!"

"Are you interested in classical literature?" the woman cut in, desperate to move the conversation along, but Raol shook his head at once.

"No, not this time. Today, my query would speak to the mind rather than the soul."

"In that case what… exactly are you looking for?"

"History, geography, and economics," he answered without missing a beat, and the librarian readjusted her glasses with a relieved sigh.

"History books are found in the west wing. Books on geography are scarce, but we have a handful of travel journals in the storm corner. As for economics, I'm afraid you'll have to manually look for those, as we don't have a specific section for them. I would recommend searching the history section."

"Then please lead the way," Raol requested at once, and while the librarian looked reluctant for a moment, she soon obliged and showed him around.

On the way, there was suddenly another thought that surfaced in the skeleton's mind, and he carefully asked, "I just recalled another fascinating topic. Do you perchance have any literature concerning non-human races?"

The librarian's step faltered and she faced him with a troubled frown on her brows.

"Could you be more specific?"

"It's just an idle curiosity of mine. Back in my beautiful homeland, the great city of Barbar, I had only heard distant tales about the likes of elves and dwarves, and I would appreciate any recommendations that would shed some light on these fascinating beings."

"I don't know if we have anything regarding elves," she whispered with a finger on her chin. "We have two entire shelves on dwarves though, so feel free to peruse them."

"Ah, thank you very much," Raol spoke amicably, and after a long beat, he added, "I've heard that elves live in the far north, but I've also heard that some of them venture into the wider world from time to time. Have you ever heard of such a wandering elf?"

"I can't say I have," she answered right away, but then after rounding a corner, she tentatively added, "Unless…"

"Unless?" Raol pressed on, and she stopped to face him.

"You should ask the adventurers about this, but I have heard rumors of a strange woman living nearby. I think they call her the 'Lady of the Woods'."

"Lady of the Woods? How fascinating!" Raol exclaimed, pretending that this was the first time he'd ever heard the moniker. "Can you tell me more?"

"I… think I first heard about her when I was a child, so she's been around for a long time. They say she sometimes helps adventurers or common folk lost in the woods, but no one knows where she came from, or where she lives."

"Could she be an elf?"

"I don't know," the librarian admitted with a small shrug. "They say she's kind and beautiful, and that she hasn't aged a day since she was first seen, so… maybe?" In the end, she shook her head and gestured at the shelves on her right. "I'm sorry, but I can't say anything about things I don't know. In any case, these are the history books. You can find the dwarven study tomes over there. If you need anything else, you can find me at the counter."

"I understand. Thank you for your time, friend."

Raol punctuated his words with a deep bow, and after a breath of awkward silence, the librarian did her best to return the gesture with a clumsy curtsy. Once they parted, and she returned to the entrance, Raol exhaled a pent-up breath and began browsing the books in front of him. Even so, his mind was hard to keep on track and kept wandering elsewhere.

What the librarian lady told her was more or less the same as what he'd already heard from the adventurers in the Guild's tavern. Even the 'Lady of the Woods' moniker was the same, and he had to admit, it was both fitting Elkayla like a glow, and something he would've expected from the kind of wise elven maiden living in harmony in nature and showing up in old chivalry tales to help the brave knight overcome some kind of magical challenge.

Unfortunately, real life wasn't a chivalric ballad. What rumors he could gather about the young hermitess certainly solidified his impression of her non-human origins, something about her told Raol that she probably wasn't as simple and pure as those long-eared waifs common in rural fairy tales. Such beings existed only in people's imaginations, along with the heroic youngest prince who saves the land and ends up as the king, or the peasant's witty third son who tricks the dim-witted demon and saves the pretty princess from his magical castle. After all, demons didn't even have castles, especially not ones that ran across the land on goose feet.

Or so Raol hoped. After all, while the world might've gone crazy in the three hundred years he'd been away, it wasn't quite that crazy yet.

Even while idly thinking, the skeleton's hands didn't rest, and he picked a handful of books off the shelves. With titles, such as 'A Brief History of the Monarchy', 'The Day of the Wish', and 'The Dwarven Menace', he had a lot to browse through, and since the books here couldn't be taken out of the building, Raol was determined to stay inside read until he could no longer bear to look at paper anymore.