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| The view from outside... The library stands a little apart from the tall, thick shaft of the White Tower proper, its pale stone heavily streaked with blue, the pattern crashing and arching like waves frozen at their climax. It looms as large as a palace, and certainly contain as many rooms as one; rooms filled with shelves, and the shelves filled with books, manuscripts, papers, scrolls, maps, and charts, collected from every nation over the course of three thousand years. Not even great libraries in Tear and Cairhien hold so many. Around the foundations of the library, lying flat to the ground in shade of tall pecan trees, are doors for servants, both large and small. Laborers sometimes need access to the storerooms beneath, and the librarians do not approve of sweating men tracking through their preserve. The dusty side corridors beneath, lined with wooden doors set in gray stone walls, takes nearly a hundred paces to reach the much wider main hall that runs the length of the library. The ceilings are higher here, and some of the doors nearly large enough for a barn. The main stairs at the end, half the width of the hall, are where large things are brought down. Another flight beside them leads deeper. The main hall of the second basement is much like the first level, wide and dusty but with a lower ceiling. The doors give the impression of thickness and the rooms beyond are square and small. There are two entrances. The main entrance to the east is used by Aes Sedai, Accepted, and novices only when an Aes Sedai sends her there. For all other times, there is a much less ornate set of doors in the southwest corner, named the Novice Entrance. |
| What you will find inside... The floor of the Library is tiled in a repeating pattern of the seven colors of the seven Ajahs. The entrance to each despository is a tall, wide arch as a short tunnel. For light throughout the library there are mirrored brass standlamps with bases so heavy it takes four men to move; fire is such a worry that no flame goes without protection in the Library. From the ceiling hang intricately carved lamps 10 paces overhead. Between depositories there are huge figures carved into the corridor walls of fancy garbed people and strange animals 10 feet tall. The Tower Library is divided into 12 depositories - as known to the public. The ninth despository is the smallest, holding books on arithmetic. It is still a large chamber, a long oval with a flattened dome for a ceiling. Row on row of tall wooden shelves are each surrounded by a narrow walkway of 4 paces. Tall ladders attached to wheels track the sides of the shelves on both the floor and walkways above. There are also desks set aside for study. |
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