Lord of the Libraries (16 page)

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Authors: Mel Odom

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BOOK: Lord of the Libraries
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Her name was Jassamyn. She was the daughter of Tseralyn, the elven woman mercenary the Grandmagister had freed from a giant spider’s web near the Broken Forge Mountains. Although her mother had settled down to a overland trade kingdom she’d carved out of the wilderness herself, Jassamyn maintained some of the same wanderlust that had fired her beautiful mother.
The Grandmagister,
Juhg couldn’t help thinking.
He called them here.
He
must have.
Hope sprang in his heart. Whatever he faced, whatever they faced, there could surely be no more stouthearted companions for whatever dangers lay ahead.
A glittering jewel swooped down from the sky, almost straight as one of Jassamyn’s arrows. At the last second, the tiny draca unfurled its batwings and swung its claws forward, slashing the face of another of the armed men. The draca whipped its wings immediately, seeking yet another target.
Turning to make certain of Craugh’s well-being, Juhg watched as the wizard unleashed a fiery blast from the staff that hurled three opponents into the street at the other end of the alley. The others came at Craugh with swords, axes, and knives, driving him backward.
Juhg dashed forward, trusting his faster speed in tight areas to keep him safe. He ducked below a man’s sword, then stomped on the side of his knee. Bone cracked and he went down.
Ellgot’s Tips and Tricks to Dirty Fighting,
Juhg thought.
Lesson number eighteen.
Then he fought alongside Craugh, turning the sword blades away with his long knife and keeping the men bunched into one group so they couldn’t work as effectively. They had picked a poor battleground considering how many of them there were. If Craugh and he had simply given up, there would have been no problem, but now their numbers worked against them.
Craugh slammed his staff forward again, striking a man squarely in his armor-plated chest. The next instant the man sailed backward as though hit by a gigantic fist.
Struggling to stay alive and help Craugh at the same time, Juhg didn’t see the corpse beneath his feet until he had tripped over it and was falling. The man before him brought his sword down in a glittering arc, his face a mask of bloodthirsty rage. Juhg had no doubt that his head was about to be split into pieces.
“No!” Craugh yelled, turning to aid him, but too late as well.
The Grandmagister’s Puzzling Journal
T
hen a cutlass intercepted the attacker’s blade and turned it aside.
Startled, not daring to believe he was still alive, Juhg stared up at the man who had saved him. He recognized him at once.
Raisho.
Juhg had met the young sailor little more than a year previously. They had formed a fast friendship and spent time together when Juhg was free from his duties at the Library. Juhg had told Raisho tales and histories, and Raisho had told him of the things he had seen on the mainland while serving as a pirate protecting Greydawn Moors from anyone interested in crossing the Blood-Soaked Sea. Later, when Juhg had decided the Vault of All Known Knowledge no longer held a future for him, he had forged a friendship with the young sailor and they had gone into business together as traders.
Before the attacker had the chance to pull his blade back to defend himself, Raisho disemboweled him and kicked him backward. Raisho was tall and fierce looking. Sunlight glinted from the silver hoops in his ears. His black skin marked him as a human from the south. A red leather band with osprey feathers held his long, unruly
hair back from his face. He was twenty and an orphan. Eight years of his life had been spent at sea, all of them at hard labor either tending cargo or pulling oars. Indigo blue good luck tattoos on his arms, legs, and chest stood out against his skin. Like Juhg, the young sailor had been raised as an orphan until
Windchaser’s
captain had taken him in.
“Are ye all right then, scribbler?” Raisho asked with much concern. Worry darkened his warm brown eyes.
“Yes,” Juhg croaked, but he believed his heart was going to explode.
“I thought I’d done gone an’ arrived too late, I did,” Raisho admitted. A wide white smile split his lips. He reached out a hand, catching Juhg’s hand, and helped him to his feet.
For a short time, the attackers tried to continue their assault, bunching in small knots and attempting to overpower one of Juhg’s defenders. Instead, the men were killed or repeatedly driven back. Bodies littered the alley floor, but Craugh, Cobner, Jessamyn, Raisho, and Juhg stayed alive.
“Cobner,” Craugh said, breathing hard. He whipped his tall hat against his leg to knock the dust off. “It’s good to see you.”
“And you,” the dwarf replied as he shook the blood from his battle-axe. “I don’t suppose you know who these would-be ruffians are?”
“No.” The wizard clapped his hat back on his head. “But they knew Juhg. They didn’t know me.”
Cobner grinned mirthlessly. “I guess they know you now.”
Craugh smiled back, the expression equally devoid of warmth. Over the years, Juhg had noted that the dwarven warrior and the wizard shared the same bloodthirstiness when it came to battle.
“Mayhap we should ask one of ’em a question or two,” Cobner suggested. He sorted through the fallen men with the haft of his battle-axe, striking each one in turn till he found one that groaned. He kicked the man over onto his back, then grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirt and lifted him as if he weren’t full grown at all but a small child. He spun and smacked the man up against the alley wall. Then he pressed the head of the battle-axe against the man’s throat so that the man had to hang onto the axe or drop a handful of inches to the ground.
The man gripped the axe head tightly and held on. His eyes rolled white with fear.
“I’ll be after having your name,” Cobner threatened. “Elsewise I’ll do
for you and leave your body for the alley strays to care for in their ungentle manner.”
“Mullock,” the man cried. He held his wounded shoulder with his good hand. He made no move for the knife belted at his waist.
“What were you doing here, Mullock?” Cobner asked.
“Came for the halfer.”
“How’d you know he would be here?”
The man hesitated. Showing more than a little irritation, Cobner shook the man and slammed him against the stone wall. “I can check to see of one of your mates is alive, but if’n I do and I find one, I got no more use for you.”
“Aldhran Khempus,” Mullock said.
Cobner squinted at the man doubtfully. “Aldhran shipped this morning. If’n he knew my friend was gonna be here, why didn’t Aldhran stay here himself?”
“I don’t know.”
Cobner drew the man away from the wall and prepared to slam him back again.
“No, I swear. I swear I don’t know.”
Cobner hesitated, his doubting look clearly showing he was torn in his beliefs.
“No, Cobner,” Craugh said. “I believe he speaks the truth.”
Juhg believed him, too. Cobner in his full wrath was a frightful thing to behold.
“What were you supposed to do?” Cobner demanded.
“Capture the halfer. We weren’t going to hurt him.”
“But anyone else you were gonna massacre.”
“We were told to.”
Cobner shook the man, making his prisoner’s teeth clack together. “And if you’d captured my friend, what were you supposed to do with him?”
“Take him to Aldhran Khempus.” The man gritted his teeth together in pain.
“Where were you supposed to meet Aldhran Khempus?”
“At the Buzzard’s Neck.”
“In the Haze Mountains?”
Mullock nodded.
“What is Aldhran Khempus doing there?”
“I don’t know. By the Old Ones, I swear to you that I don’t. We were only told to find a halfer fitting this one’s description if he showed up, then take him to the Haze Mountains.”
Juhg took the information in. The Haze Mountains, so named for the perpetual fogs that surrounded the mountain range’s top half, which was thousands of feet above sea level, were located far into the interior of the mainland. Some said the fogs were created by the spirits of those who had been slain in the Valley of the Dead below, that the ghosts couldn’t go on to their final rest until their business in the earth was finished.
Even though he had seen a number of strange things, Juhg didn’t believe the stories. However, as a result of the legends, few people ever traveled there, and fewer still returned. Legends persisted that hunters sometimes wandered into the Haze Mountains seeking game only to return years older with a head full of madness. Others came back with fabulous treasures, the like of which had never been seen or had not been seen in centuries.
“Craugh?” Cobner asked.
“We’re done with him,” the wizard replied.
A look of wild-eyed terror filled the man’s face as Cobner plucked him from the wall, still holding his weight one-handed, then slammed him against the wall so that his head hit with a meaty
thunk.
He slumped unconscious, then Cobner opened his fist and let the man drop bonelessly to the ground.
Cobner turned and surveyed the dead and injured men. There were over two dozen dead and unconscious at his feet. “Gonna be right interesting while we’re here,” he commented. Then he looked at Craugh. “Got any idea how long that might be?”
Craugh pointed his chin at Juhg. “He has all the answers at this point.”
Shouldering his battle-axe, Cobner looked at Juhg. “Well, if you got no more business with these men, I suggest we get back to whatever it is you were doing here. We’re a threat here to these men, and they’re not going to wait around till it’s convenient for us to fight them for our lives. And there’s Peacekeepers. Getting stuffed into a jail here on the island now wouldn’t be a pleasing prospect.”
“I know,” Juhg said.
“If you’ve got a place for us to be, let’s be getting there.”
Silently, Juhg agreed. He took the lead and trotted out of the alley with Raisho at his back.
 
 
“Windchaser caught up with One-Eyed Peggie out in the harbor,” Raisho said as he followed Juhg through the Garment District.
In terse sentences, he told how Captain Attikus had rendezvoused with the pirate ship and quickly talked with Captain Hallekk to find out that Juhg and Craugh had been set ashore. Raisho had quickly secured permission to be set ashore and had spotted Juhg and Craugh only a short time before Cobner and Jassamyn had staged their rescue bid. Captain Attikus and
Windchaser
took up the hunt for the Grandmagister with
One-Eyed Peggie.
The elven archer quickly recounted how she and Cobner had come to the Garment District fully expecting to meet up with the Grandmagister, as was prearranged by a note the Grandmagister had sent by pigeon months ago. The Grandmagister had asked them to be there, and had mentioned that Juhg might be with him.
The fact that the Grandmagister wasn’t at Imarish’s Garment District was news to them. Still, they had recognized Juhg and Craugh, and noticed immediately that they were being followed. By more than Mullock and his buddies, as it turned out. They’d caught and questioned Raisho while holding a knife blade to his throat. Once they’d found out they were all on the same side, Cobner had told the young sailor to follow their lead.
Several minutes later, Juhg led them deep into the warrens that made up the Garment District. The shrill pipes of the Peacekeepers sounded now and again.
“Ye know these alleys as well as any thief, scribbler,” Raisho grumbled. “Unless ye’ve up an’ got us all lost.”
“We’re not lost,” Juhg told them, suspecting they all thought that. After the rush of adrenaline had flooded through him, he felt tired. Carrying Craugh’s secrets, suspecting that the wizard accompanied him out of his own dark desires and fearful over the Grandmagister’s fate had kept Juhg up worrying most of the night. “There is a friend not far from here.”
“Why go there?” Craugh asked.
“Because he’s the only man in this town that I know the Grandmagister would leave anything with,” Juhg said. He led them on.
 
 
Sharz’s Beadworks was located in a small two-story building nestled between a tavern and a dye-maker. With dusk closing in over the city and some of the shifts ending at the looms and the mills, the tavern was starting to fill. Carriages and wagons trundled across the cobblestones, carrying passengers and cargoes.
The shop was narrow with a hard-weathered wooden face. A sign out front held only the name BEADWORKS pieced together of multicolored beads. Windows on either side of the door held samples of Sharz’s craft on jackets and pants.
Juhg led the way into the buildings. Shelves contained hundreds of small boxes filled with beads of different colors, sizes, textures, and even scents. Some were carved, some were poured from molds, and some were found in the wild, like the honeyseeds of the pearl ants. The smell of fruits and trees mixed inside the shop much as they did in a candlemaker’s shop.
The wall to the left held a thousand more boxes of beads in built-in shelves. A long counter occupied the wall to the right. Sharz’s personal workspace—used while he minded the store and not while he worked on special orders because he did those upstairs without interruption—filled the rear third of the shop, made up of small tables surrounded by simple straight-backed chairs where he taught his craft to others who wanted to learn as well as did a half dozen projects at any one time.
A customer stood at the counter haggling over the price of a jacket.
When Sharz spotted Juhg, he settled for the amount the customer wished, wrapped the jacket in colorful paper, and sent the man happily from his shop. Following the man to the door, Sharz shot the bolt and lowered the curtains in the windows so that everyone would know he had retired for the evening.
He was one of the smallest adult male humans Juhg had ever seen. Standing scarcely a foot taller than Juhg, Sharz was thin as a rake. His bushy brown hair curled tightly, making it look like he was horned. He wore a leather apron over his simple breeches and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Needles glinted at his left wrist, embedded in the special sponge he wore on a band there to hold them.
“Juhg,” Sharz greeted warmly. “It is so good to see you again.”
“Sharz, it is good to be here,” Juhg replied, then introduced his companions.
“It has been far too long, my friend,” Sharz said, waving them to the back of the shop where stairs led up to the second floor. “Have you eaten?”
“Not for hours,” Juhg admitted. Craugh had sampled sweets and meat pies from pushcarts along the way. Over the years, Juhg had never seen how the wizard had stayed so skinny because he had a sweet tooth and a prodigious appetite.
“Then you must be my guests. If I had known you were coming I would have been able to set a better table.” Sharz took off up the stairs, raising his voice to call for his wife.
Juhg followed his friend up the stairs, feeling suddenly guilty about bringing so many to Sharz’s humble home.
“Has Wick come with you then?” Sharz asked.
“Not this time,” Juhg answered.
“Pity.” Sharz shrugged. “Nyia loves the puppet show he always puts on for her.”

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