Page 12 of Dark Shaman: Eternal Hope
"Well, Jeremy's remote viewing could be invaluable for intelligence gathering. James's telepathy is limited, so I'm not sure about him. Abigail's energy healing works on humans, so she might be more useful out in the human world." She shifted her gaze to Kian. "Maybe you can incorporate all of them into Project Titan. After all, you intend to hire human soldiers, and they will need medics and healers. That way, they can continue to get paid and stay in a controlled environment where we can reinforce the compulsion when needed. It's a win-win for both sides."
On the face of things, Carol was right, and this was a great idea. But on the flip side, it meant moving the paranormals once again. They needed a permanent place that they could call home.
Kian rubbed his temples, feeling the beginnings of a headache. "Let's take this one step at a time. As soon as the men are ready, Anandur and Brundar will attempt to induce them again. If that fails, we'll have another discussion about offering them a place in Project Titan."
"Fair enough." Carol glanced at her watch. "I should head back."
"What about the Echelon program?" Anandur said. "Any new leads there?"
Kian had had high hopes for the government's massive spying program. After all, it had helped identify the candidates for the paranormal program. They were still receiving lists of names that the computer was flagging from billions of conversations it was listening to, but so far, it had proven to be a huge waste of resources because none of the people they had investigated had shown real promise. The best had been the fortune teller and the gambler, who had initially looked promising, but upon furtherinvestigation they had been found to be fraudsters rather than genuine psychics.
Kian shook his head. "I'm pulling the plug on that. All the leads we followed turned out to be duds. It's a waste of time and resources."
Anandur nodded with a sage expression on his face. "It is up to the Fates who we find and when. We should stop searching for ways to identify Dormants."
"I don't agree." Kian pushed to his feet. "We need to keep trying new things. Eventually, something will work."
6
AREANA
Areana held her breath as she gently separated two pages of a leather-bound volume, the paper making a soft whisper of protest before yielding.
No tearing, thank the merciful Fates. A small victory, many more to go. Books and moisture didn't coexist in peace, and even though the library hadn't been flooded, the moisture that had traveled through the walls of their underground palace and permeated the air had done plenty of damage, especially to the older books, which naturally were more valuable and often irreplaceable.
Every recovered book felt like a triumph.
"This one's salvageable," she announced quietly, setting it in the growing pile of books that could be restored.
Sarah looked up from her own work, using a soft brush to clean mold from a gilt-edged tome. "We're making good progress."
"Better than I expected." Beulah lifted her head from her work. "It's just that there are so many. We will never be done."
Liliat snorted. "Don't say never when you have forever to do it. We have nothing but time on our hands."
Areana surveyed their restoration area with pride. They'd started the project in the tent on the harem grounds, drying what they could, and then moved it inside, but Beulah was right about there being so many. She hadn't realized that until they had returned to the library and saw that only a fraction of the books had been carted out by the staff. Most were still on the shelves, still needing careful restoration.
Since returning to the harem, they had fallen into a rhythm. Sarah handled the most damaged texts, deciding what could be saved and what was beyond salvage, and Beulah sorted them into piles according to what needed to be done to them. The others did the actual cleaning and drying.
The work was meditative, almost healing after the chaos of recent weeks.
"Pass me that cloth, would you?" Liliat asked Raviki, who was working beside her. "This binding is so beautiful, but it's falling apart." She turned to Areana. "We need better equipment for restoration and materials. I could get into handmade book binding, embossing, and whatever else goes into making a beautiful new book. It would be fun."
Areana nodded. "I wish we had access to computers. I don't even know the names of the tools and materials needed for that. But perhaps we can order a book on the craft."
Raviki handed the soft fabric over to Liliat, then returned to her own task. "Remember when we first started collecting these books? Lord Navuh would bring them as gifts, and we'd argue about who got to read them first and then where to shelve them."
"You wanted them organized by color," Sarah reminded her with a small smile. "You said it would be more aesthetically pleasing."
"It would have been!" Raviki defended. "But you insisted on being practical and organizing them by subject and author."
Sarah chuckled and waved at the enormous library. "Imagine what a nightmare it would have been finding anything if the books were organized by size and color like you wanted. It's difficult enough to find anything in here as it is. We need to create a catalogue and mark the shelves so we can notate the location. I think this is a perfect opportunity to do that since we are taking all the books down anyway."
The gentle teasing felt like slipping into a comfortable old garment. Here in their library, surrounded by the accumulated knowledge of centuries, they could pretend that nothing had changed and almost forget the explosions that had rocked the mansion, the terror of their stay in the basement during the battle, the brief taste of different freedoms.
"Some of these will definitely need professional rebinding," Sarah said, examining a volume whose spine had partially separated. "The water damage weakened the glue."
"Put it over there.“ Areana waved her hand at the table where other books in similar condition were starting to form a pile. "If we can't get the proper equipment to rebind the books ourselves, we can ask Lord Navuh to send them off the island to be professionally restored."
