Guarded Thresholds

Whomever had observed that knowledge was power, Belmilia Carrington-Howell mused, was only half right.  It was the application of the knowledge that brought power.  She permitted herself a smile as she leaned back and surveyed the library - her library now.  A love of books had been the one and only thing she had shared with her late husband.  It had, in fact, been the lever she had used to convince him to marry her.

As much as she was repelled by the concept, Lord Howell had been necessary to get an heir.  Afterward, he could have been disposed of, had he lived.  Despite the rumors and suspicions, her husband's death had been entirely natural, and entirely inconvenient.  A child would have given her an undisputed claim on the Howell estates and title.  As it was, she held them purely on sufferance.  In these times it was better to have someone capable holding the estates than to let them go unused due to a lack of heirs.  In time, the situation might be made permanent - there were certainly any number of other nobles in equally precarious positions - but for now she was left dependent on the good will of others; a fact that annoyed her greatly.

She shook her head in irritation and returned the book before her.  While its elegant binding it would not have looked out of place in Lord Howell's collection; its contents would have disturbed him mightily.  The library afforded her a certain degree of safety, any potentially incriminating works could be explained as one of her husband's acquisitions.

Lord Howell had been a notably indiscriminate collector, buying entire libraries from those in distress.  It had been one of those books which had started her down her current path.  It had been the scrawlings of a madman, referenced in an account of the man's trial and execution.  What was stated there, what had merely been hinted at, had led her to find the remaining records.  The man's ravings had been carefully set down as part of the evidence and then packed away in an archive.  Two murders and several bribes had enabled her to extract what she needed.  What she had read had led her farther.

Hints.  Rumors.  A few charred pages retrieved from the ruins of Lady Cheraville's estate.  Things whispered in hushed conversations deep below the Slaughtered Lamb.  An unsettling suggestion in a document.  All of them pieces of a larger puzzle.  To the few relevant works in the library she had added others, carefully and discretely obtained through agents.  They were scattered throughout the shelves in a seemingly random pattern, their haphazard arrangement lending credence to the idea that they were valued for their appearance rather than their content.

But of late, she had grown frustrated.  There were books she needed, sources, inscriptions in forgotten and desolate places.  Places where even she dared not venture alone.  Discrete bribes and promises had seen her assigned to the so-called Order of the Nightsabre to see to Stormwind's interests.  Her alliance with the Warden Aktarin and her minions was purely one of convenience, a fact that neither she nor the Warden had any illusions about.  It was a risk to be sure, given the Elves' hatred of magic, but their hatred blinded them to her true nature.  They supposed her to be a warlock; but the Fel was merely a tool, demons simple conveniences. 

A warlock.  It was safer to be thought such than for suspicions to arise as to her true interests.