On the occasions that he did look up from the page, he would seem as though he were awakening from a dream.

What's a horizon?' Lazlo asked, straight-faced. 'Is it like the end of an aisle of books?

...but one can't be irredeemable who shows reverence for books.

What was he? Storyteller and secretary and doer of odd jobs, neither Tizerkane nor delegate, just someone along for the dream.

He wasn't an alchemist, or a hero. He was a librarian, and a dreamer. He was a reader, and the unsung expert on a long-lost city no one cared a thing about.

As for fairy tales, he understood that they were reflections of the people who had spun them, and were flecked with little truths - intrusions of reality into fantasy, like toast crumbs on a wizard's beard.