Arcane Congress spellbook

A book under the seal of the Arcane Congress is a book the Congress has decided somebody should not have. Ferreting away dangerous things and putting them where nobody need think about them is much of what that body is for, and the seal is the mark it leaves on what it has claimed, which is also a serviceable way of telling a thief which book on a shelf is worth the trouble. A Mól crown that lifts two faculties of the mind at once is the sort of thing the Congress prefers put beyond reach; a warded book is the smaller and quieter case of the same habit.

Two such books have come through the company’s hands, four seasons apart: one lifted out of an estate auction in Loshev, one carried out of a burning cellar under Haudh-Gwenn. Nothing joins them but the seal. Neither has been opened, and no title, no author and no list of what is inside either of them has ever come to hand.

The Auction Book

A Loshev estate auction, run out of a barn holding six stalls of unsold goods, put three volumes of the Mól Encyclopædia and a Congress spellbook on the same list of lots. Nathan Fox stood high bidder on the spellbook at a hundred gold; Torgun Kurvroc was bidding for the encyclopedias. The whole affair was crooked: lots resold before the hammer ever came down on them.

The Valiant Few doubled the standing bids on the three encyclopedias and left the spellbook alone, wanting no part of the Congress. Then Aldo went back that night, picked the lock, slipped the chains and took the encyclopedias and the spellbook both, dodged a guard on his round, and, slamming the door behind him, shouted in the voice of the cook who had just been dismissed, so that the theft would be the cook’s.

Four Cànain scrolls came out of the same haul, and they belong to the same tradition. Afterwards the company waited to be asked about the book. Nobody came asking. It was still counted among their books at the end of that winter. The stolen volumes went back to the warehouse to clear the cook of it; where the spellbook went was never discovered.

The Silver Web Book

Under the streets of Haudh-Gwenn, in the basement the Silver Web had kept for interrogations (the same room a prisoner had been got out of not long before), Koa went along the shelves with the order to burn the place already given. He came up with a few ancient Mól trinkets and a book with the Congress seal stamped into the cover. Then the tunnel was set alight behind them, and whatever else stood on those shelves went with it.

The enchantment on this one is genuine, and a hand laid flat on the cover is enough to know it. It is warded against opening, and there are those who think the wards do more than refuse: explosive runes, set to answer a wrong hand. That is a guess and it has stayed a guess, nobody having cared to test it. Mikhail put the book away, and away is where it has stayed.