Lord of the Libraries (14 page)

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Authors: Mel Odom

Tags: #Fantasy, #S&S

BOOK: Lord of the Libraries
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“Ye ain’t no warrior neither,” Hallekk said. “Ye can’t stand up in no fight.”
“I have fought,” Juhg said in a voice that carried more pleading than conviction.
“I knowed that ye has,” Hallekk said. “I seen ye with me own eyes. But that ain’t yer callin’.” He paused. “I think we both knows that.”
Juhg wanted to argue more, but he couldn’t. Not without calling Hallekk a liar, and that would have been a lie itself.
“What I needs to know, as I were about to ask ye, is if ye needs
One-Eyed Peggie
to stay here with ye,” Hallekk said.
Suddenly, Juhg understood. “You would stay here? And let the Grandmagister be taken away by Aldhran Khempus and his goblinkin ships?”
“If’n it meant keepin’ ye safe,” Hallekk returned, “aye. Wick, why he’d chew me ears off was I to leave ye here not a-knowin’ if ye’d be all right.”
Thinking quickly, realizing that he was fearful of leaving the Grandmagister stranded among enemies without help, Juhg said, “We need to go after the Grandmagister.”
Hallekk shook his head. “We needs to finish Wick’s mission. That’s what he’d want us to do. Me, I been with him through good times an’ bad times enough that I know what he’d want us to tend to. If’n that book is as dangerous as everybody’s a-puttin’ on, why I’d be foolish to go a-harin’ off after Wick when they’s more important business here to take care of.”
“So if I choose to go after the Grandmagister—”
“We’ll stay here an’ tend to what you should be a-doin’,” Hallekk said. “An’ probably not with very much success.”
“I need a ship to go after the Grandmagister.”
“Aye,” the big dwarf agreed. “That ye do. But I don’t have an extry one in me pocket what I can give to ye. If’n we stay here, we gots to have a means o’ escapin’.”
“But if I choose to stay, and I tell you that you can go on—”
Hallekk smiled. “Why, we’ll have no choice but to put to sail as soon as we can to go after Wick. We can find him right away with the monster’s eye, but I prefers to stay close to him.”
Exhaling loudly, irritated beyond belief, Juhg said, “That’s blackmail.”
Thinking for a moment, Hallekk grimly nodded. “Aye. I suppose ye might reckon that it is. But that’s the wind that’s a-blowin’, an’ ye can go with her or agin her. Ye set yer own tiller in the matter.”
Finally, Craugh put in, “We all have our responsibilities, apprentice. You appear to be the one with all the control.”
Angrily, Juhg tried to express how he truly felt about the situation. His hands clawed the air before him, but his voice was strangled. At length, shaking, he asked, “How soon before we sail?”
As he’d approached the captain’s quarters he’d noticed that most of the rigging was back in place. The mainmast had been reset, bridged mightily with new timbers.
“Before midday,” Hallekk said. “I’ll give ye me word on that.”
“Then put me ashore in Imarish,” Juhg said shortly. “And you will go after the Grandmagister.”
Grinning broadly, Hallekk reached out and clapped Juhg on the shoulder. “Fairly called, Juhg. Break your fast an’ make ready. Won’t be long now.”
Juhg turned and trudged from the room.
 
 
Hours later, Juhg stood at the starboard railing as
One-Eyed Peggie
came sharply about in Imarish’s Garment District docks. Canvas cracked overhead and the repaired rigging held up to the strain. As always, he enjoyed watching the rapid movement of the dwarven pirates as Critter set them about their paces. The pirate ship was a sharp vessel.
The stench of lye and ash and dye pots tickled Juhg’s nose. Several buildings spewed noxious black and colored smoke streamers into the clear blue sky. Lines filled with brightly dyed cloth swelled and fell in the gentle breezeways between buildings as they dried.
Other ships lined the large docks. Cargo handlers ferried raw goods from some vessels to warehouses and transported finished goods from warehouses, sometimes to the same vessels. The workers sang as they labored, all of them passing the time they spent in physical drudge.
Children ran through the cobbled streets pestering sailors and merchants, begging for small coins. Here and there, a few horses waited at hitching posts or pulled small wagons. Hawkers stood in front of small pushcarts calling out their goods, or in front of inns and taverns bawling out the bills of fare and what there was to drink.
“Ye been here afore?”
The dwarven pirate captain’s voice rumbling near his ear scared Juhg. His hand almost darted down to the small knife at his waist. Glancing over his shoulder, he looked at Hallekk. Juhg still hadn’t decided whether to be mad at the ship’s captain or not. Hallekk had made a good case, but Juhg didn’t care for the way he’d been made responsible for all the decisions no matter what he decided.
“I’ve been here twice before. With the Grandmagister,” Juhg replied.
Hallekk shaded his eyes with a hand. “They’s got free halfers here. Ye shouldn’t be bothered overmuch with folks wantin’ to tell ye what to do. An’ slavers fight clear of this place for the most part.”
“I know.” Irritation grew inside Juhg.
Don’t sound like you’re worried about me when it was your idea that I abandon the chase for the Grandmagister.
“We’ll work our cover here for a few hours,” Hallekk said. “We’ve got gold enough to make some wise purchases that we can sell farther down the mainland.”
The statement made Juhg remember the last voyage aboard
Windchaser
when he and Raisho had left Greydawn Moors together. He’d copied information he’d written about during earlier travels from Greydawn Moors and built a list of potential investments for them to pursue. Until they’d discovered the book in goblinkin hands in Kelloch’s Harbor, they’d done quite well for themselves.
Posing as a merchant ship was
One-Eyed Peggie’s
first line of defense.
“We’ll be in port for a few hours at most,” Hallekk said. “Staying any longer is problematic. We’re not from around here. An’ we don’t wanna give Aldhran Khempus too big of a lead.”
Juhg leaned down and picked up his bedroll. He had a change of clothes, his writing utensils, the latest journal he was working on and a
blank one, a compass, and a few journeycakes. He carried coins and a few small gems in a pouch around his neck to pay his way.
Turning, he extended his hand to Hallekk. “May the winds treat you fairly, captain.”
Hallekk’s hand swallowed Juhg’s. “An’ ye, me friend. Do yer mentor proud, an’ us of ol’ Peggie as well. We brung ye this far. See that we made good use of our time.”
“Take care of the Grandmagister when you find him.”
“I will. An’ soon’s we can, we’ll come for ye.” Hallekk winked. “Remember, we got our eye on ye now.”
Only that morning, Hallekk had sworn Juhg in as a pirate. Now the same curse that linked the eve to the crew watched over him as well.
Juhg said his good-byes to the crew. Critter even flew down to rest on his shoulder for a moment, then tossed off a few choice insults about dwellers in general and Juhg in particular, and flew away to remonstrate the crew.
As Juhg marched down the gangplank the crew had run out to the docks, studying the unfamiliar faces before him, he felt a new and awkward vibration settle into the thick boards beneath his feet. He stopped and turned around, seeing Craugh walking after him.
Suddenly seething and scared at the same time, Juhg walked back to the wizard. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Craugh crossed his arms over his bony chest. He wore a bedroll over his shoulders as well. His staff was in his right hand. “What does it look like I’m doing, apprentice?”
“No,” Juhg said. “You’re not coming with me.”
“And why not?”
Juhg was grimly aware that his confrontation with the wizard was bringing on a few interested stares. “You need to stay with the ship.”
“Whatever for?”
“So you can help save the Grandmagister.”
Craugh frowned. “And who will save you?”
“I’ll save myself.”
Craugh shook his head. “I’m going with you, apprentice. Wick is safe enough for the time. Aldhran Khempus won’t dare do anything to threaten Wick’s life until he has
The Book of Time
in his hands. You and I both know that ship is headed away from here and away from the book.” He paused. “You can trust me to—”
“No,” Juhg snapped. “I can’t. For all I know, you’re still wanting power just as much as you did all those years ago.
The Book of Time is
much too tempting.”
Slowly, Craugh leaned down. He was close enough that his large brimmed hat shadowed Juhg’s upturned face as well as his own. “Apprentice,” the wizard said in a low, cold voice.
Juhg stood his ground but his knees felt weak.
“Would you rather trust me as a dweller,” Craugh asked, “or as a toad?”
Juhg swallowed hard. “If I am a toad—”
“I’ll make sure you retain your wits,” Craugh promised. “I can do that, you know.”
Actually, Juhg didn’t know that for sure. He’d never met any of the people Craugh had turned into toads over the years. For all he knew, they could talk and hawk an alesman’s goods in three-part harmony.
“So,” Craugh said, straightening the line of Juhg’s jacket the way he might that of a child, “your choice is in whether you dine on real food or flies as we travel.”
“I don’t trust you,” Juhg announced in a hoarse whisper, “and I don’t like you very much either.”
Craugh’s left eye twitched. Juhg fully expected to plop to the gangplank on a brand-new, warty behind.
“Well,” Craugh said, straightening, “we don’t have to like each other if we’re going to save the world.” He adjusted his hat and stamped his staff on the gangplank. “Lead on, apprentice.”
Grumbling to himself, Juhg resettled his bedroll and continued down the gangplank. He was grateful that he could walk instead of hop. In Hralbomm’s Wing while perusing some of the romances the Grandmagister had put on his required reading list, Juhg had read tales of heroes who had been turned into snakes and fish and birds who had still managed to rescue those they had been sent after or had retrieved magical objects they were supposed to get. Those tales had suggested such an endeavor was possible, but he didn’t want a book written about his part of the adventure—if it even turned out to be significant—to be of him hopping along like a toad.
Besides that, toads didn’t seem to fare well when confronted by cats or dogs, let alone goblinkin.
Imarish
T
he Garment District island was a large, rambling affair a maze of warehouses and textile mills. Cotton came in from the agriculture islands by ship and by boat, then was processed by huge looms powered by waterwheels turned by the incoming and outgoing tides. All of the mills possessed two waterwheels, one set on either side of the building, and the drive axle was shifted between the two as the tide changed from incoming to outgoing. That way crews could work all day and all night if necessary to meet demand. As a result, the Garment District creaked night and day.
“I don’t know how anyone could put up with such racket,” Craugh griped. “It’s enough to make your ears burst.”
Juhg had to walk fiercely to keep slightly ahead of the wizard. Craugh didn’t know where they were going, but it didn’t stop him from trying to lead all the same. Several times, the wizard had gone on ahead in the wrong direction in the twisting maze of streets that bore no name. When he’d found he was going in the wrong direction, after Juhg had had to call him back, Craugh’s mood had darkened. Juhg had felt compelled to remind
the wizard that a toad would be even slower, and that even if he could talk as a toad, a talking toad would surely call attention from everyone that passed by.
As if we don’t call attention to ourselves enough already,
Juhg reminded himself grimly. There were few dwellers on the island and very few humans as old or as shabby in appearance as Craugh. And none of them were in the company of each another.
“Are we almost there yet?” Craugh groused.
“Almost.” Juhg sighed.
“As far as we’ve come, we might as well have rented one of the canal boats.”
“I’m not sure I would have found the way. The Grandmagister and I seldom used the boats to get around here.”
“Wick never mentioned coming to this place.”
“Maybe he had a reason.”
“Hrrummph.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Juhg studied the wizard’s reflection in the plate-glass window of the seamstress’s shop they were passing. Seamstresses weren’t needed by anyone who lived on the island because everyone there sewed or knew someone who did. But the sailors who put into port did hire their services, and merchants who wanted their personal finery handmade came into the shops.
Craugh’s head turned constantly, surveying the sprawling town around him. Stone buildings rose three and four stories tall on either side of them, festooned with clothing because even the mill workers and loom handlers often created clothes and bedding and curtains they hoped to sell as unique items. The wizard wasn’t as at ease as he tried to project.
The
cloppity-clop-clop
of even a dray mare drawing a wagon always caught the wizard’s ear and gave him pause. Screams from children dashing through the neighborhood ululated between the confines of the narrow, twisting alleys, often sparking more such screaming as if the sounds fed off each other. They dashed and ran like dervishes, most of them human, but there were a few dwarves and elves among them. A group of them played tag, one of them using the wizard as a means of defense for a moment by circling Craugh’s legs. Then, with a shrill yell of triumph, he was off again, leading the pack of screaming opponents.
“And there should be a place for all of these idle children to go,”
Craugh growled as he brushed at his robe to straighten the folds out. “That way they wouldn’t be underfoot so.”
Personally, Juhg enjoyed watching the children at play. Human children were especially inventive, never at rest, never satisfied. And they could make games of the simplest things. The Grandmagister had often said if a group of human children were given a stick or a crate, their imaginations would allow them to think of the sticks as magic wands or swords, to believe—at least for a while—that the crate was a boat or a cave.
Elven children weren’t so free with their ways because they were tied into nature, constantly distracted by scents and animal trails, even in cities. An elven child paid attention to the wild things that inhabited forests or plains or deserts, and the meeker subset that dwelled in urban areas. Given time and attention, an elven child could mimic and understand the creatures found there.
Dwarven children, on the other hand, tended to be taught the craft of smithing or gem hunting from the time they could walk and lift the full weight of a hammer or a pick. They were slow to play, preferring to learn the warrior’s skills at axes and anvils as soon as they could.
“I suppose they could get work at the mills or the looms,” Juhg said with thinly veiled sarcasm. “Of course, children seem to bear the brunt of accidents in industry when they start so young.”
Craugh scowled. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Or perhaps they could be sent out on ships and travel to dangerous places where goblinkin could conceivably capture them and sell them in awful places like Hanged Elf’s Point.”
“You annoy me, apprentice.”
They traveled in silence for a while, steadily climbing the cobblestone road that led up to the hill near the center of the island. A dray pulling a milk wagon with the latest shipment of milk from one of the other islands rolled past them on ironbound wheels.
“I have never seen so many children in one place,” Craugh commented.
“Nor have I,” Juhg said. “The people here are blessed, truly. They are unafraid to have children, and they seldom lose them to disease or violence. Here they are loved and given freedom, then trained in the ways of their parents.”
“I’ve never been here,” Craugh said. “I’d always heard it was crowded. It is.”
Unable to stop his thought, Juhg said, “Do you know what these islands need?”
“Need?” Craugh shook his head. “They don’t need anything, apprentice. I’ve never seen a more successful place. Not everyone appears to have wealth and privilege, but they are well-to-do.”
Taking a quick step, Juhg stepped in front of Craugh, bringing the wizard to a stop. “What they need,” Juhg said in a low voice, “is a library and a school to teach the young. And the old that are willing.”
Craugh looked at him.
Juhg hurried on before the wizard cut him off or complained. “As I thought about how best to start releasing the books from the Vault of All Known Knowledge back into the world, I realized that Imarish would be one of the best places to begin.”
“We’re wasting time here.”
“No,” Juhg said firmly, “we’re not. You’re here now, Craugh. You bullied your way into being with me, so while you are here at my sufferance, I’ll share my secret with you.”
“You’re exhausting my patience, apprentice,” Craugh warned.
“I don’t care,” Juhg declared, and felt a twinge of fear. “Don’t you see what Imarish offers?”
“What?” Craugh snapped.
“Safety and room and wealth.”
“And none of those things they would be willing to share.”
“That’s the environment it takes to educate a population,” Juhg said. “Take children and give them those three things, and you can show them the world. But it is hard to enjoin a child to be grateful about receiving an education when he’s threatened or has no room to be himself or lacks enough to make himself comfortable with himself and his friends. You could not teach children in slave camps. Their minds would be locked in on merely surviving the day. Nor could you teach the children of a starving people. Even if they could shut out the rumblings of their empty bellies, they would still be haunted by the arguments of their scared and frustrated parents.”
Craugh only listened.
“You knew that,” Juhg said. “When you and the other Builders raised the ocean floor from the bottom of the Blood-Soaked Sea to become
Greydawn Moors, you designed the island so it held game and fruits and could grow grains and vegetables. Monsters were set free in the Blood-Soaked Sea to patrol the waters and keep our coasts clear. There are no creature enemies on the island that the elven warders can’t tame or eliminate, and we have a dwarven army standing guard there. The humans keep the trade flowing by crewing ships and protecting the waters against any who might be curious or foolhardy enough to brave the monsters.”
Craugh shook his head. “We need to be moving.”
“We will.” Juhg waved to the Garment District. “Don’t you see that the same things are offered here? Peace and prosperity. All that is missing is a school or a Library to provide education. Can you imagine what these people, and people like them, would do with an education?”
“No, I can’t.” But Craugh was peering around that the Garment District with a little more interest.
“Imagine it, Craugh. A Library. Schools. Here.” Juhg gestured with his hand. “This place entertains a huge amount of trade. People would come and go. Once teachers were trained, they could accompany ships, educate the crew to read. Some of them would go other places and teach still others. Once a proper Library is set up here, it won’t be long before a new industry could be established among these islands as well. Books could be copied and made according to a buyer’s wishes.”
“By Librarians?”
“At first. Then by others skilled solely in copying books. They used to do that, you know, before the Cataclysm. I’ve read about those times.”
Craugh closed his eyes. “I remember.”
“It could happen again,” Juhg said, feeling the old excitement as he gave in to his vision. “It could happen here.”
“Perhaps.”
“Why did you and the Builders elect to populate Greydawn Moors with dwellers and make them the custodians of the Vault of All Known Knowledge?” Juhg watched the wizard closely, thinking perhaps for just a moment he saw uneasiness in him.
“Dwellers have quick minds,” Craugh said. “And their first inclination is to save their own necks. Both of those traits serve a Library in good stead.”
“Dwellers also take pride in their laziness as a general rule,” Juhg
stated baldly. “They lack ambition. They do only what they have to do to get by. I have seen it over the years. And when the Grandmagister faced the Council before the attack on Greydawn Moors, I saw all of those things again. During this trip, after the Grandmagister’s kidnapping when so many dwarves and elves gave their lives to protect Greydawn Moors in the battle that raged across Yondering Docks while most of the dwellers ran and hid, I remembered all of that. It makes me sick that such a responsibility as the Vault of All Known Knowledge would ever have been entrusted to dwellers.”
A lump swelled up inside Juhg’s chest. He hated talking so badly of his own people.
Craugh looked at him, for the first time entertaining the idea of the conversation. “Who else do you think we should have given such a responsibility to?”
“Anyone would have been better.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me then, apprentice, you talk highly of the humans here in Imarish becoming teachers and Librarians. Do you think they could do that?”
“Yes.”
“Of what, do you suppose?”
“Of anything.”
“That caught their fancy, I suppose. But humans have a short attention span for things that don’t interest or concern them. Have you ever realized that, even as long-lived as I am, you know more about histories and literature than I do? Hasn’t that ever struck you before?”
Juhg thought about that, remembering that time after time—unless it was an event or a place that the wizard had passed through—Craugh seldom had knowledge of those things.
“I am a powerful wizard,” Craugh said, “and sometimes people attribute all-knowing in the same breath as all-powerful. Most wizards would never dissuade someone from that point of view. But I am not all-knowing. Wick—and you, apprentice—know far more than I do about the whole of the world. I just have no patience for the parts of it that don’t interest me. Dwellers have long lives and prodigious amounts of patience, and more than average intelligence for the most part.”
A small fingerling of pride moved within Juhg. He had so harshly discounted his people that Craugh’s views were uplifting. Especially since they were also valid.
“Remember,” Craugh said, “all the libraries of the mainland were shipped to Greydawn Moors and dumped there. No rhyme, no reason. Just dumped. Can you imagine what humans would have done if faced with the generations-long chore of assembling those books into some cohesive whole that made sense?”
“It would not have been done,” Juhg admitted. “Humans lack the patience to have done something like that.”
“Yes. I seldom visited the Library in the early days. It was just too hard to find something. Wallowing through all of those books, building shelves, organizing and copying—” Craugh shook his head. “I could not have done it. Even going there to search for books at later dates frustrated me.” He pulled at his chin whiskers. “For a time, though the Librarians of the day were loath to admit it, the Vault of All Known Knowledge was filled with toads and positively vibrated with plaintive croaking. Until I relented and turned them back into dwellers.”

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