A Joust of Knights (Book #16 in the Sorcerer's Ring) (9 page)

Gwen’s mind spun in a flurry, trying to
process everything she was saying, and she could not help but feel as if she were
speaking to an eighty-year-old. This dynamo of a girl held the wisdom of Aberthol
and Argon combined, but with a speed and energy to her that left Gwen dizzy. Gwen
realized right away that she was outmatched by this young girl’s intelligence
and scholarship—and it was the first time she had ever felt that way before, with
anyone. It was both intimidating and exhilarating.

“You’re a reader, too,” Jasmine said, as
she turned a corner, leading them down yet another twisting corridor of books. “I
saw it in your face the moment I met you. You’re like me. Except you were
burdened with your Queenship. I understand. It must have been awful. No more
time to read, I presume. It is probably the worst part of being Queen. You
probably love it here.”

Gwen smiled.

“How do you do that?” Gwen said. “You
read my mind.”

The girl laughed back, giddy.

“It’s easy to spot another reader. There’s
a distant look to your eyes, as if you’re lost in another world. A telltale
sign. You live in a heightened world, more glorious than our own, as do I. It
is a world of fantasy. A world of beautiful drama, where everything is
possible, where the only limits are our imagination.”

Jasmine sighed.

“Our world, here and now, is so
pedestrian,” she added. “Blacksmiths and butchers and hunters and warriors and knights—how
dreadfully inane. All they want to do is kill one another, outmatch each other
at jousting contests and the like. Dreadful. Redundant, too.”

She sighed, turning down yet another
corridor.

“Books, on the other hand,” she continued,
“are infinite. Reading a book, if you ask me, is more chivalrous than killing a
man. And it offers a much more interesting world to explore. It’s a pity our
society values the killers over the scholars. After all, without us readers, how
would the armorer know how to forge the armor? The blacksmith to hammer the
sword? How would the cobbler know how to mend horseshoes, or the engineer to
build a catapult? And how would the King know whom he fought against if he was
unable to read, unable to, at the very least, identify the banner on the far
side of the battlefield? How would his men know who to kill?

“Knights do not fight in a void,” she
continued. “They are more indebted to us readers, to our books, than they’d ever
care to admit. I would posit that a warrior needs books to survive, much more
so than weapons.”

She hurried down a flight of steps, Gwen
right behind her trying to keep up.

“And yet, here we are, treated like third-rate
citizens, relegated to our libraries. Thank god I’m a girl. If I were a boy, I’d
be wasting my time right now on the battlefield, and missing out on all of this.”

She turned a corner, stopped, and
gestured dramatically, and Gwen looked out at a room that took her breath away.
Gwen found herself standing in a vast chamber, its ceilings soaring a hundred
feet high, shaped in a huge circle, with marble columns stretched out every thirty
feet, and steps leading down to a shining marble floor set with dozens of golden
tables. On each of these tables lay heaps and heaps of books, of every size and
shape, some as big as an entire table. The room was lit by an endless array of
candle chandeliers, decorated with crystal.

Gwen stood there, in awe at the sight,
while Jasmine bounded happily into it, clearly comfortable here, as if it were
her personal living room.

“This is the main reading room,” she
explained as she went, Gwen slowly following, taking it all in. “Sometimes I
like to hide away in small nooks and crannies when I read—but most of my time I
spend reading in here. This place is empty all the time anyway, so it doesn’t
really matter where I read. But sometimes, reading in different rooms makes you
feel differently about a book, don’t you think?”

Gwen looked out at all the tables, confused.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “If no
one uses this room but you, what are all those books on all those different
tables? It looks as if an army uses this room every day.”

Jasmine laughed in delight.

“Does it?” she replied. “Sorry. I know
I’m messy. I’m not good at putting away my books.”

Gwen stared at her, dumbfounded.

“Are you saying that you alone are reading
all these books?” she asked in disbelief, looking out at the hundreds of
volumes spread out over a dozen tables, all open, in some state of use.

Jasmine smiled.

“It’s not that many,” she replied,
demure. “These are just my favorites. I’ve actually resolved to read far more
this year.”

Jasmine bounded from table to table, forgetting
Gwendolyn, already preoccupied by the books before her. She practically dove
into the room, rushing to the closest table, grabbing a huge book and scanning
through the pages. Gwen watched in disbelief as Jasmine flipped through the
pages with lightning speed. Gwen had never seen anyone read that fast. Jasmine
was humming to herself as she read, lost in the book, as if she forgot Gwen was
in the room.

In just moments, she finished it.

She turned to Gwen, a smile on her face.

“One of the less dull histories,” Jasmine
said, sighing. “I really delve into histories, but I knew you were coming, and
knew you’d want to know, and I wanted to be prepared. I assume, of course, you
want to know everything about the history of the Ring, about our shared
ancestors. That is human nature after all, isn’t it? Don’t people always want
to know about themselves?”

Jasmine looked back with a twinkle in
her eye and Gwen smiled, her mind spinning with all of Jasmine’s words, still trying
to take it all in. She reached over and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“You are a startling, amazing human
being,” was all Gwen, speechless, could say. “If I were to ever have a
daughter, I wish she would be just like you.”

For the first time, Jasmine relaxed,
beaming with pride, and she hurried over and gave Gwen a quick hug. Then she turned
and went back to her books, opening a new one.

Gwen came over, leaned over her, and began
to read over her shoulder. This book, oversized and leather-bound, was penned
in the ancient language of the Ring, and luckily, it was a language Gwen could
understand well, having been drilled into her since birth by Aberthol and
others. Gwen felt thrilled to be here, in this still, sacred house of books.
She could sit in this library forever, shut out all the woes of the world.
There was nothing she would like more.

Yet as she tried to read, Jasmine turned
the pages so quickly, it was hard for Gwen to keep up with her.

Jasmine quickly finished it, shut it, reached
over, and took out another book.

“I’ll spare you the monotony of it,”
Jasmine said. “The essence of that book is that the ancestors of Ridge and the Ring
were shared. But you know that already. That book focuses more on the parting
of them. Relatively dull stuff.”

“Tell me,” Gwen said, eager to know.

Jasmine shrugged, as if it were all
common knowledge.

“At one point, perhaps seven centuries
ago, there was a parting of the ways. A mass exodus from the Ridge. Your side
of the family left here, crossed the Great Waste, and somehow made or found
ships and crossed the sea. Of course there was an Empire pursuit, and many of
your people died, either in the Waste, the jungles, or at sea. Many of those
who first arrived in the Ring, too, did not survive. Most were killed in what I
believe you call ‘The Wilds.’”

Gwen stared back, astounded at the
history.

“Yes,” Gwen said. “The land beyond the
Canyon, on the outer edge of the Ring.”

Jasmine nodded.

“The main challenge your people faced
was building a bridge to span the Canyon. The first bridge was the Western Crossing.
Three more were to follow. It took a thousand workers a thousand days to carve
the rock. The beasts tried to cross, too, but your people were able to guard
the bridge. Other beasts descended the Canyon to climb up the other side—but the
theories were they were killed by the creatures who lived down below.”

Gwen listened, riveted, her mind
swimming with questions but not wanting to interrupt.

Jasmine sighed.

“Of course, for those who made it,” she
continued, “the original Ring was no easy place. It was filled with savage
monsters in and of itself, its land was wild, and its Highlands insurmountable.
Almost at once, there was a divide between the Western and Eastern provinces,
which I believe evolved into the Western and Eastern kingdoms. The East was
less fertile, more arid, and its climate more harsh. Savage tribes lived there,
whom, I believe, formed the basis of the Eastern Kingdom.

“It was only once your people could
secure the Canyon that things changed. And that, in turn, leads back to what mattered
most in perhaps all of your history: the history of the Shield. And of the
Destiny Sword. Without the Shield, the Ring was just another indefensible place,
another island, a place as insecure and hostile as the rest of the world. But
it was the first great sorcerers whose magic forged the Shield, that laid the
groundwork for your people’s survival.”

Gwen had never been so immersed in a
story; she had read histories her entire life, yet never had heard any of this.
She wondered what precious volumes they had here in the Ridge that her people
lacked in the Ring.

“Tell me more,” Gwendolyn said.

Suddenly, church bells rang out, muted,
from somewhere outside the walls, and Jasmine looked up, distracted for the
first time. Gwendolyn saw her expression darken, and wondered why.

“I can’t stand their sound,” she said. “They
toll incessantly.”

Gwen was confused.

“Why? Who rings them? Are they not
church bells?”

Jasmine shook her head.

“I wish,” she replied. “They are the
bells of the tower. The bells of the false religion, the cult who hold my
brother and sister hostage. Not physically, of course, but intellectually, spiritually—and
those bonds are worse than shackles. I love them both dearly, and I would give anything
to have them back.”

Jasmine had suddenly switched topics, had
forgotten about the history of the Destiny Sword and the Shield, and Gwen
realized something about her: her attention span was limited. Her mind worked
so fast that she changed topics with an alarming dexterity. She was brilliant,
but she was scattered. Gwen still wanted desperately to know more about the Shield
and the Destiny Sword—but she would leave it for another time. After all, she
had come to her to begin with at the King’s request, to find out more about the
tower.

“Tell me about your siblings,” Gwendolyn
said, eager to know more.

“What did Mother and Father tell you?”
she asked.

“Not much,” she replied.

Jasmine shook her head.

“Of course not. They fear what they do
not know and are ashamed of what they do not understand. Like most people.
Provincial, wouldn’t you say?”

Gwen looked back, not really
understanding.

“My brother,” she continued, “has been
brainwashed. He was always zealous in all his passions, and unfortunately, they
found the wrong subject. My sister, well…that is more complex. She was born the
way she is. She has always been lost to us, in her own way. But now—she is amongst
them.”

Gwen struggled to understand.

“She’s catatonic,” Jasmine explained,
seeing Gwen’s confused expression. “She stares out the window, doesn’t speak a
word. Ever since birth. Our
noble
people of the Ridge, with their
culture of perfection, or warriors and knights and all that nonsense—are ashamed
of her. Sickening, really. It is my parents’ greatest shortcoming, if you ask
me. Anyone who is not perfect is considered a threat to our society. But I love
my sister dearly—I always have. I always found a way to communicate with her. She
has her way, too—you just have to be open to hearing her.”

Gwen began to understand, and felt
sadness for them all.

“Your father asked me to visit them,”
Gwen said. “To try to get them back.”

“A lost cause,” Jasmine sighed. “You
cannot travel the canals of the mind.”

“But he also thinks the Tower holds a
clue. That it is guarding something—some ancient knowledge, some secret
history.”

Jasmine sighed and looked away, and for
the first time she fell silent for a very long time, looking off into the
distance with glassy eyes, as if debating something monumental.

“That rumor has persisted for centuries,”
she said. “Many believe the Light Seekers hide the lost books. These are books
I’ve never seen—I have never even seen proof of their existence. I begged my
brother many times, and my sister: if they exist, I’d give anything to read
them. But they insist that they do not—or at least, they’ve never seen them. And
even if they do, even if they are hidden somewhere in the bowels of the tower, who
is to say whether they really contain the great remedy for our destiny that all
expect them to?”