Songreaver (23 page)

Caleb shambled forward, toward the girl in
brown with his hand outstretched.

"Hey! Get away from me!" she shouted, backing
away from the oncoming zombie.

"Come back, Caleb!" Garrett commanded, and
the zombie turned and shuffled back toward him again.

"Thanks," the girl said, eyeing Caleb
warily.

"So Caleb can see you too," Garrett said,
rubbing his chin with his free hand. He
did
need a shave. He
struggled to collect his thoughts again. What had he just been
thinking about?

He looked at the girl in brown again, and
suddenly remembered what he had been trying to say. "There is
something special about you that makes people forget you when
you're not around," he said.

The girl in brown rolled her eyes and
sighed.

"And you can't talk about it either," he
said, "Is it some sort of curse?"

"
And you can't talk about it either
,"
she said, mimicking his voice.

"Yeah," Garrett said, "I guess so."

The girl slumped to the ground and sat with
her back against the tunnel wall. She wrapped her arms around her
knees and buried her face between them.

Garrett hesitated a moment and then handed
the torch to Caleb before walking over to sit down beside her.

"I guess you don't have a lot of friends
then," he said.

The girl gave a muffled snort but did not
raise her head.

Garrett looked away, but looked back at her
quickly, feeling his thoughts wandering. He didn't want to lose his
train of thought again.

He reached out and put his hand on her
shoulder.

The girl in brown moaned softly and lifted
her face to him. A tear ran down her cheek across her trembling
smile.

"Well," he said, "I'm your friend."

She snorted a wet laugh and nodded. "Thanks,
Garrett," she whispered.

"And you want me to guess your name because
you can't tell me what it is," he said.

She looked away, her lips trembling.

"Easy enough," he said, "I'll just work my
way through the alphabet. It may take a while, but
eventually..."

"No," she moaned, "not like that..."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because I wanted it to be special," she
said, "I wanted you to just... know it somehow. Then it would mean
something."

"What difference does it make?"

She shook her head. "Because I wanted you to
be different," she said, "I wanted you to..." she stopped herself
and stared off into the darkness, saying no more.

Garrett felt a tingly sort of chill inside,
strangely not unpleasant.

"Anyway," she said, elbowing him in the arm,
"why do you want to be a Templar? Those guys are a bunch of
brickheads."

Garrett sighed. "I don't know," he said, "I
guess I
don't
want to, really. It's just that other people
seem to think it's important that I do it. Does that make any
sense?"

"More than you know," she laughed.

"Yeah," Garrett said, "but the temple isn't
so bad, once you get past the beatings." He laughed.

She looked at him, concern in her eyes. "That
place isn't safe," she said, "You don't know what goes on in there.
Nobody does."

"They seem nice enough," Garrett said, "I
mean,
most
of them. Miss Serepheni thinks I'll do all
right."

"Serepheni's a fool!" the girl in brown said,
"If she really cared about you, she wouldn't put you in harm's way
like that."

"What do you mean?" Garrett said.

"The things that I've seen in that place,
Garrett..." she said, "Please be careful."

"So, you've been inside the temple?" he
asked, "Like, in the places you aren't supposed to go?"

The girl in brown sighed. "I've been
everywhere
, Garrett."

"Are you some sort of spy, or something?"

She laughed.

"Wait," he said, "can you tell me how they
make skeletons? We never have figured out how they could do that.
All we can make are zombies."

She glared at him. "Is
that
why you
want to be a Templar?" she demanded.

Garrett cringed. "No," he said, "... not the
only
reason."

"Forget about it!" she said, "They'll kill
you before they let you learn
that
secret, and anyway, it
wouldn't do you any good if you knew it. It's not something you'd
be able to do outside the temple anyway."

Garrett laughed.

"I'm serious!" she said.

"I know," he chuckled, "It's just that you
told me to
forget about it
. I mean, I'm going to forget
anyway, whatever you tell me, so why not tell me just for fun?"

She frowned, and he could see that he had
hurt her.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't mean it like
that."

She looked away.

Garrett worked up his nerve and leaned close,
putting his arm around her shoulders. She pulled away for a moment,
and then the resistance drained out of her body, and she leaned
against him, her head under his chin. It felt good.

"I don't want to forget about you," he
said.

"It doesn't matter," she whispered.

Garrett chewed his lip in thought. "Hey!" he
said, "I've got an idea."

She lifted her head from his chest and looked
at him.

"I've got a pen in my satchel," he said,
moving his arm to reach for the strap of his bag, "I could write
myself a note..."

"No!" she said, her fingers clamping around
his wrist like an iron vice, "Don't even think it!"

"Why not?" Garrett said, "Maybe I can't
remember you normally, but, if I wrote myself a note..."

"Garrett," she hissed, "I don't want to kill
you!"

Garrett froze. He looked into her eyes and
saw the desperate madness within, and noticed, for the first time,
that her eyes were not those of a normal human. Where a human's
eyes possessed tiny striations within the iris, hers were as smooth
and flawless as polished gemstones.

"No notes then," he said, relaxing his hand
in submission.

She released his wrist and buried her face in
her arms again. "I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't mean to scare
you."

Garrett exhaled slowly and then laughed.
"Don't worry about it," he said, "You are, by far, the
least
scary of my friends."

She snorted. "What about the fairy?"

"You haven't seen what she does to teacups
when she gets angry," Garrett said.

The girl laughed, lifting her flawless brown
eyes to look at him again.

"You want me to try to guess your name now?"
Garrett asked.

She straightened up and shook her head. "No,"
she said, "I don't really want you to right now... would you mind
just sitting with me a while longer?"

Garrett smiled and put his arm around her
again. She leaned close, and he enjoyed the feeling of her hair
against his cheek.

"Hey, so you go up into the city sometimes,
right?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said.

"Would you want to have lunch together or
something sometime?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, "I'd like that. Same place
as last time?"

"Last time?" he asked.

She laughed. "Don't worry," she said, "I'll
find you. I always do."

"Start here," Matron Beeks said, thumping a
heavy book down on the table in front of Garrett.
History of the
Holy City
was written in Gloarish runes across the green
leather cover.

Garrett eyed the thickness of the tome. "What
part should I read?" he asked.

"I would start at the beginning and finish at
the end," Matron Beeks said, "That is the customary procedure."

"All of it?" Garrett asked, struggling to
keep his voice down.

Matron Beeks scowled. "Well, you don't have
to read it all in one day," she said, "but it shouldn't take you
more than three sittings to finish it."

Garrett stretched his face into a grateful
smile and nodded.

"Enjoy," Matron Beeks said, tapping the cover
with her finger before walking away.

Garrett drew in a slow breath and ran his
finger along the book's spine, plowing up a little furrow of fine
dust. He cracked it open and found he had to pry the first chapter
loose from the inside cover and feather the pages apart. He
slouched forward in his chair and skipped over the first dozen or
so pages which seemed to be mostly praises for Mauravant and a long
list of former Matrons. The history itself finally began about
twenty pages in with the line
In the Age of Darkness, the First
Mother decreed that a city be raised in the shadow of Padras that
his flame might be quenched
.

The history swiftly thereafter descended into
another fourteen pages of praises for the First Mother for having
the wisdom to create Mauravant, the great Mother Worm. Garrett
counted the pages until, at last, he came to some mention of the
elves, first inhabitants of the city, and their lineage, which
continued on for another six pages of coronations and
abdications.

He did his best to at least skim over every
line, but came to the conclusion that the elves did very little
besides pass the throne around between themselves over the many
centuries they held Wythr in their possession. Toward the end of
the chapter on elves, he noted that the city's monarchs did not so
often abdicate their rule to another as they died off or
faded
, whatever that meant. The last elven monarch listed
was a Queen Anaraellu, and, with her name, so ended a rather
uninformative chapter.

Garrett blew out a heavy sigh and flipped the
next page over.

The next chapter began with the words,
In
the thirty-seventh year of the Age of Ascension, Brahnek, son of
Veremon, known as the Spellbreaker, entered the Holy City and drove
out the unworthy
. Garrett caught his breath.

He quickly scanned the following lines and
the pages beyond, but they proved to be only a succession of the
human monarchy in Wythr, a four-page list of names and
begats
and little more. He kept one finger in his place at
the beginning of the chapter and riffled through the rest of the
book, discovering it to be more a history of the Mauravantian
church than anything else. He laid the book open to the line about
the
Spellbreaker
and got up to go in search of Matron
Beeks.

He found her talking to a small group of
young women in the green frocks of third-year students. He waited
politely to the side until she finished instructing them on the
library's reshelving policy.

"Yes, Garrett?" she said, turning to face
him, "You aren't done already, are you?"

"No, Matron Beeks," he said, "but I did have
a question."

She nodded.

"I was reading about Brahnek, the
Spellbreaker, coming to the city, and I was wondering if we had any
books about him that I could read."

Matron Beeks glanced toward the column of
shelves at the center of the library, and she frowned. "You don't
need to waste your time with such... war stories. Go and finish
reading the book I've assigned you. When you can recite the line of
High Priestesses to me by heart, then you may ask me again about
this other nonsense."

"Yes, Matron Beeks," Garrett said. He turned
to walk back to his table, and his eyes went to the restricted
stacks as well. Even if he could find a way to sneak a book from
those shelves, he would never find the right one without the
Matron's help.

When he reached the desk again, he searched
through the book until he found the line of succession for the High
Priestesses of the Church. He stopped counting after twenty-two
pages. He wasn't going to find the answer here.

He thought of going to Marla. Surely she
would know all about the Spellbreaker and whether he really was the
one that the elves called the Songreaver. Then he realized that
Marla would want to know why he needed to know, and he did not want
to tell her that. How could he tell her that he was on a personal
quest to learn how to break the very spell she had cast?

The more he thought about it, the more he
realized that he could never let any of the vampires learn what he
had in mind. Marla might only have her feelings hurt, but what
would someone like Krauss do if he found out that Garrett was
trying to negate the power of vampiric magic? Garrett had to keep
quiet about this.

Uncle Tinjin was the next logical choice for
information, but the old man seemed lost in his research lately,
hardly emerging from his study for more than a few minutes at a
time. He took most of his meals in there these days and only left
the house to purchase new books. Garrett stopped by the door to his
study at least twice a day to pick up empty plates and the stacks
of books that Uncle deemed unhelpful. He might know more about
Brahnek, but he would also want to know what was so important about
him that Garrett should interrupt his studies.

That left Max and Cenick, but they were both
away to the North on campaign. They had been gone for almost a
month now, having sailed a fresh army along the coast to land, just
short of the Astorran border.

Serepheni hadn't gone with them. Her new
duties kept her too busy to accompany them on the campaign this
time, and, though it pained Max to be parted from her, Garrett
suspected that he appreciated the greater freedom of command he
would now enjoy.

When the chimes rang that signaled his
banishment from the library, Garrett hurried out, anxious not only
to avoid any sight of Matron Shelbie, but also to try to catch
Serepheni before her afternoon prayers. When he reached her office,
he found that she was not alone.

"Garrett," Serepheni called out when she saw
him outside her door.

"Good Day, Miss Serepheni," Garrett said,
then nodded at the man standing next to her, "Good Day, Mister
Marsten."

The blonde necromancer quickly hid his flinch
of discomfort behind a smile when he saw Garrett. "Master Garrett,"
he said, "I hardly recognized you without your hood."