There are Libraries - not the ordinary, fact-or-fiction type of library, you understand, but the real capital-L Libraries - where the books whisper in the night, sharing their secrets with any brave enough to listen. There are Libraries filled with the constant, dust-dry scratching of ink, as their tomes of life and death write themselves on the shelves. There are Libraries where a wrong turn in the stacks can lead to a sudden rustling, a brief scream, and a satisfied purr from the watching books.

Not in the Library of Fate. There, alone among the Libraries - and indeed libraries, for 'ordinary' books have power too - there is truly silence.

Silence... and each evening, as the sun sinks into a clear western twilight, the librarian (do not think her name) walks through the endless shelves of tombstone-white books. Her feet make no sound on the boards, and the numberless identical volumes do not stir at her passing. When she stops, they do not lean in to see which of them she will reach for.

She chooses only one. One book, one fate, to carry back to her desk, to open, to read from cover to cover in perfect silence. And then (it is said, among those few who have seen her) she will smile, and rise again, and return the book to its shelf. And she will never speak a word of what she has read.