m_findlow

Title: Access denied
Fandom: Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire)
Author: m_findlow
Rating: M (language). Spoilers for Season Five.
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 48 - Too much information at fandomweekly
Summary: Sam is growing increasingly frustrated by his time at the Citadel.

Sam's chair creaked as he pushed it back, trying to ease his tired body. Every muscle from his neck to the bottom of his spine ached from the long hours sat there. He set his quill back in the pot of ink and massaged his equally sore hand. He'd been writing for hours and yet the pile of parchment pages to his right didn't seem to be getting any taller, nor the pile of blank pages to his left any shorter. The only thing that was growing shorter by the hour were the tallow candles lighting the area around the desk.

His gaze fell dejectedly onto the tome he'd been copying out in painstakingly neat hand for the entire day. Maester Olden's copius observations on the study of cyclical maize farming made for dull reading and even duller reproduction. The book didn't even look to be in bad shape, yet his instructions were to copy it out regardless. Perhaps by the time it will take him to reproduce the entire work, the original will have faded and crumbled.

'We must preserve the invaluable work of the maesters that have come before us, Samwell,' Maester Gillan had told him when he'd brought in the pile of books and fresh parchment. 'We can do little to preserve parchment, but we can preserve their words for a hundred generations.'

Sam couldn't think why anyone should care two whits about whether maize should be planted the day before or the day after midsummer moon. That he had penned an entire book on the matter was almost incomprehensible.

When he'd come to Oldtown to train to be a maester, he'd expected to be overwhelmed with information. Any maester's chain was made up of dozens of links representing healing, astrology, warcraft, history and of course, the higher mysteries. It was said that even a single link could take years of study. Now Sam was beginning to understand why. Instead of being dragged from one lot of teaching to another, he was nothing more than an indentured servant to the learned men who occupied the citadel. He used to believe that they'd lived there most of their lives in order to acquire their mastery of knowledge, which is why most were old men before they journeyed back to their respective townships, to provide guidance and wisdom to their lords. However, the more he watched the men that lived in slow motions around the vast library and dormitories, the more he came to realise that most of them had no intention of rejoining the world outside. They were content to amuse themselves with their lengthy and often trivial academic pursuits. The hard work of cooking, cleaning and ordering the place was left to the young inductees whose desire for knowledge was slowly being sapped by the monotony of daily chores.

All his life Sam had glorified the Citadel of Oldtown as the greatest font of knowledge and learning in the world. Now he was seeing it for what it really was: a way to escape the outside world and live not in knowledge but in ignorance.

The sudden cessation of scratching from his quill on parchment seemed to wake Maester Gillan, who had shared the room with Sam all day, and finally fallen asleep at his own desk, presumably from studying an equally tiresome treatise.

'If you're done with that, you can take those pages down to Maester Arbold for binding.'

Sam looked at the pile of pages again. He wasn't anywhere near close. Sam turned in his chair to face the balding man. 'Maester Gillan, when I came here to become a maester,' he paused rewording the statement in a more forceful manner, 'when the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch sent me here to become the Watch's new Maester, wasn't how I imagined my time at the Citadel. I thought I'd have access to the Great Library.'

Maester Gillan gestured at the books which filled the room, all thick with the scent of dust and decay, awaiting to be transcribed into new volumes. 'From whence do you think all of these came?'

'What I meant, Maester, is that I thought I'd be able to have time to read some of them.' His only permitted access to the library had been to return to the shelves books that the other maesters no longer required, and of which a browse of their titles assured him they were mainly of a kind that was equally unenthralling as those he was assigned to copy. He hadn't expected to be denied access, and to discover there was a restricted section within the most restricted library in the Seven Kingdoms, which no doubt contained precisely the sorts of books he was interested in.

Maester Gillan scoffed. 'Well, you never asked. If a maester's journey were easy, everyone should want to become one.'

'But Jon- The Lord Commander, instructed me to find out everything that has ever been written on the subject of the Children of the Forest and the White Walkers.'

'And in time, that is exactly what you shall be able to do,' Maester Gillan assured him, 'when you have attained the rank of maester.'

Sam slapped Maester Olden's book shut, creating a cloud of dust from the fragile pages. 'We don't have time! They are coming for us even as we speak!'

'Master Tarly,' he tutted, 'the Maesters of the Citadel all agree that despite some of the fanciful things that our predecessors have written on the subject, there are no such things as White Walkers.'

Sam grew unnaturally angry at the dismissal. 'I've seen them, Maester. I've killed one. They're coming for us and all the dragonglass daggers in the world won't stop them unless we find something else.'

'If your Lord Commander is concerned, rest assured we can allay any fears he has on the matter.'

Sam bit the inside of his lip. If the Maesters wouldn't give him access, he'd just have to find another way inside.