The Festival of Bones: Mythworld Book One by James A. Owen

steps behind the others, “you’re retired, so what’s to stop you from spilling the beans?”
    Jude tipped his head back and a rich, throaty laugh burst from his lips. “All right, all right—you have me there. As it happens, the answer to that question is part and parcel of the answer to your first.”
    * * *
    “The immense arcs of history, mythology, and religion are inexorably intertwined,” Jude said, setting aside their digressions to continue his story, “and at any given point at least two of the three can be seen sending great cracks throughout the foundations of the world. Those foundations can shift, changing the landscape. In instants, continents change; cultures vanish; and it is in those instants when mankind attempts to use one of those grand arcs to explain the new landscape and his place in it. However, even those spheres combined cannot truly capture the fabric of existence; there is more of the world that has been lost than we can ever know.
    “But, consider this—what if there were a place, a secret repository of this lost knowledge, where centuries of scholars have gathered together and preserved the unredeemed histories of the world?”
    “History,” Galen corrected.
    Jude turned a sharp eye to him. “I beg your pardon—did I use the plural?”
    “Where is this place?” asked Michael, eyeing the Prime Edda . “The Vatican has an extraordinary sealed Library, and there are several private ducal collections in Europe. For America, there’s the Huntington, but the kind of collection you’re speaking of … Is it the Library of Alexandria?”
    “Somehow preserved and expanded?” Jude said, shaking his head. “No, I’m afraid that facility would have been too small for the needs—and regardless, is more myth than history. I’m talking about something less conspicuous and far less notorious. To achieve the stability necessary to shelter their work from the tectonic stresses of the world, such a library would have to be located in a place where the lines of myth, history, and religion converged into a vanishing point.”
    “Shangri-La,” said Michael.
    “Oh, of course,” said Galen, rolling his eyes and thrusting his jaw forward.
    “Actually, he’s right ,” said Jude, much to the others’ astonishment, and not a little surprised himself. “Not Shangri-La precisely, as in the Hilton novel, but a hidden … Monastery , much like Shangri-La was written to be.”
    Unconvinced, Galen threw a look at Michael that was at once both questioning and exasperated—not an expression which Michael was unaccustomed to seeing. “Were you shooting into the fog, or was Shangri-La a measured response?”
    “A little of both,” said Michael, setting down his coffee and leaning over the smallish table where the book lay. “To begin with, the language and letterforms are the Old Icelandic, but the manuscript has been printed, not written—as far as I can tell, it was printed in Tibet.” He said this with such open and clear authority, that the others didn’t respond, but merely sat back in their seats—Jude with a small smile, Galen with a look of interested respect. Michael Langbein may seem to be a bit scattered at times, but anyone making such definitive judgements after such a cursory examination was either a genius or an imbecile, and Galen was disinclined to think he was the latter.
    Taking their silence as a concession to his expertise, Michael continued. “Take the letters themselves—they’re very close, but not quite standard Icelandic forms. These bear traces of a form of Tibetan lettering used in block-printing known as U-chen , or ‘headed letters’, which the Tibetans based on Indian alphabets and letterforms. The paper is another indicator—Tibetan papermaking was an art they lifted from the Chinese. Tibetan paper is manufactured directly from plant fibers, primarily those found in willow bark. The fibers are soaked, beaten for several days, pulverized, and then