Promise scans titles, stepping slowly shelf to shelf. "This is a lot of books."

"Leareth is quite proud of his collection! Many of these ones are very rare, too, I think in some cases Leareth is the only one with copies." (Because he's Leareth, of course, everything here also has backup copies in various hidden records caches, which in general only he knows about.) 

"I've seen this many books in one place before but only once." She picks a book about magic.

Magic! 

In Velgarth, 'true magic' is often used as a term to refer to work done with mage-gift, and then there are the various more specific and single-purpose Gifts. Many places lump all of said Gifts together under 'mind-magic', even though some of them, like Fetching which moves or teleports objects, are really not very mind-related at all. 

The book gives a list of the specific Gifts, most of which are pretty self-explanatory from the name and also match the list discussed with her before, and then it dives into the many, many applications of mage-gift. Gates! The much rarer permanent Gates! Weather-magic! Heating and lighting and protective barrier-walls. Illusions. Detection wards. Shielding against all of the other Gifts. And, of course, a very long list of combat applications, starting simple with fireballs and levinbolts (this seems to just describe lightning as cast by mages) and moving on to various clever trap-spells, like ones that paralyze an enemy who steps on the trap. 

There's a sub-chapter on the summoning of extraplanar entities, which can be done by any mage above Master-level potential, but requires extensive specialized training to do skillfully. Elemental spirits from the four planes of Fire, Earth, Air or Water, and also Abyssal demons, can be given material-plane bodies constructed of mage-energies, which they control, and they bring some of their native magical abilities with them. Many air-spirits have an affinity for sensing minds and intent, for example, and fire elementals are very efficient at, well, starting fires. There's a kingdom in the far northwest of the continent that supposedly fuels its cookfires via mages making a contract with salamanders; they need to be paid in mage-energies, but on the ice and tundra, mage-energy is a lot cheaper than firewood. 

Combat use of demon-summoning is frowned upon in most of Velgarth, because the demons are indiscriminate about who they attack, and tend to cause high civilian casualties. The priesthood of Karse are known to have used this strategy anyway in their many wars of conquest over the centuries, and also to have passed off salamander-summonings as miraculous signs from their god, Vkandis Sunlord. 

Huh. She supposes they weren't expecting that to be Vkandis's real name.

She finishes the book anyway. When she's finished with this one she looks for one with more detail on the extraplanar entities.

Nayoki hangs out nearby in the library in case she has questions, but eventually starts reading her own book. 

There is a book that has more information about extraplanar entities. It's mostly very technical magical discussion of summoning and binding spells, but it also has pictures of the construct-bodies traditionally given to these visitors. The earth-elementals tend to look like lizards; the Abyssal demons have random, bizarre body plans that are mostly way too many eyes and claws and teeth attached together in disconcerting ways. The planes aren't really made of the material-plane substances or phenomena they're named for; it's more a vague thematic resemblance, and gestures at what material-plane features the planar entities have a particular affinity for. Water elementals, for example, can sense weather and climate patterns with surprising accuracy, despite mostly not perceiving the material plane directly at all. 

That's interesting but not really what she wanted to know. The elementals are smart enough to bargain with, what are they like as individuals?

There's not a lot of information in this particular book about that, but there is some, sprinkled in amongst all the technical magic explanations. 

They vary in intelligence; some, like the vrondi air-elementals or sandaar fire-elementals, can keep their end of simple magically-binding voluntary agreements, but are probably no smarter than, say, mice. Others, like the khamsin earth-elementals or fire-elemental salamanders, can learn simple words to communicate with humans or other sentient creatures in the material plane, and a forgotten mage a long time ago taught them some of his language; it's now a universal dialect that the elementals apparently share with one another, that all the schools of magic which lean on elemental summoning now teach to their students.

The smarter elementals seem capable of recognizing individual humans, and will develop something-like-loyalty to those who treat them well and fairly, answering their summonings reliably. They don't have names but can usually be recognized by features of the construct-body that they build for themselves out of the offered mage-energies of the summoning. Some mages claim that different individuals have recognizably distinct personalities, but others say they haven't noticed that. The elementals do seem to vary in personality between the planes; earth-elementals are very reliable, albeit literal at following instructions, whereas fire-elementals are capricious and need very precise instructions or bindings in order to prevent them from getting up to various pranks along with the request they were summoned for. 

Huh. She wonders how much of this opacity is just language barrier.

The book is silent on this matter. 

"Learning anything of interest?" Nayoki asks her eventually. 

"I am wondering if there are any more peopley elementals or if the normal ones would seem more peopley if there were no language barrier."

"Huh! I have no idea. Maybe." 

"I'm not speaking a language, so it might be I could talk to them better."

"I am so curious how that works! You sound as though you are speaking out loud to me in words, not in Mindspeech or something. Is that not the case?" 

"I'm speaking out loud in words but they aren't... code words, or whatever it is you're doing, I'm just saying the words."

"- What? Language is not– That is very confusing to me. Here, language is not - objective, the way a diamond is the same diamond no matter who finds it, it is all particular words that only mean something because enough people have decided to use them that way." 

"I know that's how mortals do it but I think that's weird!"

"...I suppose it is, when you think about it. Mindspeech is partially language-independent, most people think and thus communicate mentally in words but the concepts are there, just less precise or clear when the speakers do not share a language." 

"Do I sound imprecise and unclear?"

"No! Not at all. You sound exactly as though you are speaking Valdemaran, which is the language I have been speaking with you, I know several. You also had no difficulty reading books written in particular human languages, I noticed." 

"Are they in different ones?"

"The two you read happen to both be in Rethwellani, Rethwellan is a major centre of magical scholarship and has been for many centuries. It is a different language from what I am speaking right now." 

"Huh. It's not really obvious to me, maybe I could learn to distinguish them."