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and anything arising there will have to cross the Sea to go elsewhere.” Katya nodded. “Lord King my father, I will visit the library to acquaint myself with all that we have, and then I will be on my way.”
    His look of pride filled her with confidence, even though this was the first time he had set her a task in a place where neither of them had any real previous experience. If he believed in her, and believed she was ready—then she was ready! “I depend upon your eyes and ears and cleverness, my daughter. I know you will not fail me, nor your Kingdom.”
    He returned to his counting-house, and she swam down to the repository of knowledge they all referred to as a “library” although it hadn’t a single book in it. It couldn’t have real books, of course; paper would rapidly disintegrate here. All the magical books that Tasha read were especially created just for her, the letters incised into paper-thin metal pages, the bindings all of metal-covered wood. But to preserve a library full of real books would mean the casting of many spells to protect them, more to allow them to be handled and read. Again, the question of the delicate balance of magics inside the protective shield around the Palace arose, and the answer was the same as always. It was not worth the risk.
    But the “library” had been here forever. It had been here since there had been a Sea King in this Kingdom. The magic around the Palace had been put there when it had already been in place for centuries. It was very likely, in fact, that the Palace had been erected here in the first place primarily because the library was already here.
    She swam through a coral garden, the most popular garden surrounding the Palace, full of secluded, blue-lit grottos, great staghorn branches of black and red corals surrounding soft pockets of sand, sea fans providing endless places for children or adults to play hide-and-seek. But in the center of the coral garden was her goal, hidden within a sea cave, and illuminated by the glow of a set of strange, luminescent corals she had never seen anywhere else.
    She swam inside, waited for her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light, then approached the library.
    In the center of the cave was a slab of stone; something translucent and white. She thought it might be quartz, but no one knew for sure, because no one wanted to upset the magic here, and it would probably take magic to find out. It was precisely cut into the shape of a triangle. By whom? No one knew.
    On the top of the stone lay a shell.
    Not an ordinary shell, mind. In the shape of a conch shell, this one was made of the same translucent white stuff as the table. It must have been carved, although every detail was precisely identical to a real conch, including a few little irregularities and places where it looked as if barnacles had tried to attach.
    This, in fact, was the library.
    And unlike a real library, it was not portable. You could not move the stone slab; it was somehow rooted to the rock beneath it. You could not take the shell, either. The moment you left the grotto, it would vanish from your hand and reappear back on top of the slab. Whatever magic had created it also appeared to protect it. You could smash both shell and slab with hammers, and both would heal themselves within moments.
    She picked the shell up. “I need to know as much as possible about the Kingdom of Nippon,” she said carefully. Then she drifted up onto the white stone triangle and settled down on it. When she was comfortable, she put the shell to her ear and closed her eyes.
    At first, she heard only what you would hear up on the Drylands if you put a shell to your ear; something like the sound of the sea. It was like the sound of the sea, although it was not the actual sound of the sea of course; you could not fool someone from the Sea Kingdoms into thinking it was. But under that sound came a soft murmuring, and she listened deeply to that murmur, allowing it to lull her, as