Black Magic by Megan Derr

no such thing amongst us."
    "Well, the Goddess has yet to cast her disapproval upon the title, so it must fit."
    "She has not cast her approval, either, so I maintain you lot can keep your useless titles to yourselves and cease to foist them upon me," Koray retorted. He rubbed at his temples, briefly looking pained, then scowled at the books he had been carefully perusing.
    Sorin cocked his head, watching, wondering what was going on. He had thought Koray simply wandering aimlessly, perhaps undecided on what to read, but that was clearly not the case. "Is there something with which I can help you, necromancer?"
    Koray sighed then said stiffly, "I am being guided toward something that is definitely in this room, but I cannot figure out where exactly, or what it is—certainly not the ghosts I already banished since I could not work with their gloomy presence distracting me." He sighed again and went back to carefully perusing the books.
    "Not a ghost?" Sorin asked, surprised. So far as he understood it—and Koray loved to point out how little he understood before correcting him—necromancers were divinely guided to the ghosts that required their particular touch. "Have you ever been directed to something not a ghost before?"
    Though his scowl was answer enough, Koray said, "No, and I've never heard of it happening, outside of a necromancer being guided to a new necromancer. So I have no idea what I am looking for, though I have searched every bit of this library."
    "I'll do what I can to help," Sorin said. "It looks as though you've made pretty certain it is not a book."
    Koray shrugged. "I'm not sure. It's somewhere around this section of shelves, so what could it be except a book?" He gestured to the shelves he'd been examining, which were set against the wall and contained some of the oldest books in the library.
    "Then there must be something else there if it's not a book."
    "Like what?" Koray asked sourly. "The wall?" He had barely said the words when he gave a pained cry and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. "Blast that woman."
    Sorin sympathized. "So the wall, then?"
    Koray's only reply was one of his more hostile looks.
    Grinning, Sorin started removing books and carrying them to the large table in the middle of the room. When all the books had been removed, he examined the shelves. They were heavy and solid, and an ordinary man probably would have required help—but Sorin was high paladin and that came with a few bonuses. Setting the last of the shelves against a bare wall, he commented, "The master librarian is going to murder us when he sees the mess we've … Well now, what have we here? Somebody walled up a doorway."
    He stared in surprise at the stones that did not match those around them, the etchings across the top that marked where another section of the library had once been. Koray stepped up to the wall and rested his hands upon the lighter, less worn stones. "This is it. Whatever is behind this wall is what I am meant to address."
    "So it could be a ghost?" Sorin asked, overtaken by a wave of sadness. It seemed unbearable enough to be a ghost, but to be sealed up in a place forgotten by the world?
    "Maybe," Koray said. "But ghost still does not feel quite right. How do we get rid of this stupid wall? Why was it sealed up?"
    "We'll knock it down in the morning," Sorin replied. "As to why, I could not say. But I'm sure there must be records in the royal archives about it. Goddess knows every time I so much as want to repair the stones in the yard I must submit paperwork to the seneschal and all his ancestors." Koray made a choked noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Sorin hid a triumphant grin and said only, "Did you want to go down to the archives, necromancer?"
    Koray considered the question, then shook his head. "No. All I need is whatever is behind this wall. Why must we wait until morning?"
    Sorin laughed. "I'll not wake up the whole of the castle to tear down a wall. It has waited