Editing Libraries of Faerie (section)

==Yesterday's Shelves==

===The Wizard's Library===

This is how the wizard built his library.

For fifty years, he searched the lands, trying to find the one place that was right. To the north, it was too cold. To the east, it was too west. To the west – well, it was just too expensive, and even if he could turn lead into gold he just was not going to pay those prices!

So he settled in a dry, warm land to the south.

For twenty years, he paid engineers and architects from far and wide, to come to him and show him their grandiose designs: Towers that troubled the skies! Catacombs that wended their way across entire kingdoms! Libraries in gardens, in boneyards, in lakes, and in shoeboxes. The wizard sent them all away; nothing good ever came of engineers and architects, after all.

So he chose a small, cozy house for his library.

For ten years, he conjured and bound djinni, ‘ifriti, marids, and shaitans. At his command, they flew, invisibly, across the world to bring back rare stone and timber. They carried off the most skilled craftsmen to build the house and chests and shelves for the library; when the craftsmen were returned after a month’s time, only the bag of gold left with them mollified their wives and convinced them it was no dream.

So he waited, for everything to be just right.

For one, last year, he pondered and cogitated on what books and scrolls to fill his library with. He had traveled the world entire, and knew the works of every land. He had hosts of spirits at his beck and call, who could steal any work from any land.

It was quite a puzzle.

In the end, I am told, the wizard chose only one book for his library: his very first spellbook, a primer on magic given him by his master.

He was old by now, the wizard, and chose to spend his days and nights in his dry, warm, and cozy library, reading his favorite book.

And who would say he was unwise to do so?

===The Library Beneath the Sands===

They say Genghis Khan dreamt of a world devoid of cities; where barbarian children would not perceive any boundaries, riding through the emptiness. Some say Temujin, Lord Absolute, dreamt of destroying the very mountains, of turning the world into a vast Steppe.

What they do not know is that Temujin's lover, Farrukhnaz, a Persian princess, extracted a vow from him. That if someday the children of the steppe ever wanted to return to civilization, and buld anew cities more glorious than those he razed, they would have a library ready.

This was a solemn oath. It was made by Genghis Khan at the Boundary of Heaven, and over the tomb of Khan Kaigalak. All his descendants were bound by it, world without end, even to after the Doors of Felt were forever closed and the vault of the stars fell. It forced them to build, under the sands of the Gobi desert, a great vault, vaster than any treasure-trove ever described in the thousand and one nights, and to it add everything ever written by men, and more. 

The books flowed in, quick and thick as the arrow-storm of a Mongol invasion. In the first years, the cavernous walls were filled with preious ornamentation. Books inlaid with ivory and diamonds, written in fine Byzantine porphyrovellinum, comissioned from the finest calligraphers of Baghdad and Hangzhou. As the Yuan dinasty, the Golden Horde, Chagatai, all met their fates, the descendants of the Throne Absolute got poor, but they kept their vow - all books that were written were added, and more. Now common print editions were added, now note paper scribbled copies. Organization was not forgotten - the order of librarians Farruknaz created laboured on, eating of subterranean carp, drinking the waters of a still lake, serene morlocks.

A tenth of the library's shelves, steel between diorite vaults, have been filled so far.