The third room was smaller than the first two.
Not cramped — the ceiling was high and the walls were full stone rather than shelving, the documents stored in the specific sealed alcoves that the pre-consolidation tradition used for preservation, each one closed with a mana-treated cedar panel that Soru had been maintaining for eleven years. The climate was different in here. Drier. The air had a quality that the Usurper registered as a sustained low-output mana field, old and deliberate, built into the stone itself rather than projected from an external source.
Someone had built this room to last.
Vane stood in the center of it and looked at the alcoves.
Ashe came in behind him. She stood beside him and looked at the walls.
"There are forty-three alcoves," she said.
He counted. She was right.
"Soru said the index refers to this room as restricted," he said.
"He also said it wasn't locked."
"Because whoever built it trusted the reader to understand what restricted meant."
