The Destruction of the Books (29 page)

“Out!” Juhg ordered. “Get out of my sight before I do something we both regret.”

“You’re a barbarian,” Randorr accused. “A mainlander. Perhaps Grandmagister Lamplighter took you from those savage environs, but he didn’t exorcise the savagery from your nature.”

Juhg walked toward the door and Randorr fled. Out in the hallway, Randorr continued to run away, gathering his robes like an old woman and tottering away in an ungainly manner that Juhg found much more satisfying than he knew he should have. He knew he wasn’t a man to be afraid of. He’d met men who inspired fear in others as naturally as a fish breathed, but he knew he was not one of them.

Yet, in Randorr’s world, Juhg knew he truly was a savage. That saddened him. He would never be accepted at the Library. Not truly. He had pointed that out to the Grandmagister and received only arguments in return. The Grandmagister had remained certain that Juhg’s history would soon be overlooked. All these years later, he had still ventured the same argument when he’d tried to dissuade Juhg from shipping out with
Windchaser.

And now look at you,
Juhg chided himself,
back at the Library only a short time and already at odds with Randorr.
He walked down the quiet hallways, scarcely noticing the happy glow of the glimmerworm lanterns.

He followed the torturous maze that formed the inside of the Library. As the exterior buildings had been constructed on top of the caverns that had served as the first resting place for the vast libraries dumped there by the Unity transport troops, little thought had gone into the design. The way everything fit together came much later. At that time, the dwellers who worked in the Library had labored like ants, building more rooms for the Vault of All Known Knowledge, then shoveling the books into the areas that were delegated for the different categories. As a result, Novices were constantly getting lost in the labyrinth, forgetting that sometimes it was necessary to take staircases up and down to get places.

This one last task,
Juhg promised himself.
Once you’re finished with helping the Grandmagister find the solution to his latest puzzle, you’re going back to the Yondering Docks. If
Windchaser
won’t have you, there are other ships.

*   *   *

Nearly three hours later, Juhg was winded and his back felt near to breaking as he carried the latest stack of books into one of the Library’s Great Rooms.

“Is that the last of them?” Grandmagister Lamplighter asked across the room.

“Yes.” Juhg placed his burden on the floor, then placed his hands on his knees to stretch his back and shoulders like a cat. He felt so light after carrying the books that he thought he might actually float up from the floor.

“Did you find Darg Tarkenbuul’s
Treatise on the Lives of Inner Selves
?” The Grandmagister moved slowly through the three hundred and nineteen volumes they had gathered from throughout the Library.

“Yes.” Juhg massaged his back, thinking that it would surely never be the same again. “Dissitan had it. Just as you remembered.”

When the book had turned up missing from its shelf, Juhg had been convinced the search for it would take considerable time. Instead, even though the book wasn’t assigned to anyone—which required paperwork to be filled out, the Grandmagister had known exactly who’d had it. His knowledge of the Library, as well as the one hundred and twenty-odd Librarians who worked there, was nothing short of amazing.

“Well, then, Juhg, let’s be about our task.”

Juhg surveyed the stacks of books they had assembled. According to the hidden text in the mysterious book
Windchaser
had salvaged from
Blowfly,
the various volumes named were supposed to be gathered for quick reference and passages read and interpreted from them.

“Do you see anything among these books that immediately stands out?” the Grandmagister asked.

Looking at the titles, nearly all of them books that he had read at one point or another, Juhg shook his head. “Not really, Grandmagister. There are books on different sciences, different histories, plays, and adventures.”

“One thing I have noticed,” the Grandmagister said. “All of these authors are from the Southlands. And no two books are by the same author.”

Juhg glanced around the room, suddenly feeling too warm in his robes. The glimmerworm lanterns glowed against the walls, giving off enough light to illuminate the huge expanse of the room. Several shelves holding often-used books shared space with dozens of chairs and tables. The Grandmagister had cleared the room of Librarians when they had started to work.

However, Randorr and a few of the other Librarians had peered down upon them from the second-story walkway that ran around the inside wall. Evidently the whole Library knew about the Grandmagister’s latest project.

Craugh came through the main doorway. He carried a lantern and walked at a brisk pace that was almost a run. He had retired to the Library’s kitchens while the book gathering was going on. The Grandmagister was supposed to send for him when they were ready to begin.

“Wick!” the wizard called.
“Wick!”

The Grandmagister turned toward his friend.

“What have you done?” Craugh demanded.

“Nothing,” the Grandmagister replied. “Only finished gathering these books.”

Craugh marched through the room like a hound scenting the air. “There’s magic in this room.”

“Only the spells that protect the books,” the Grandmagister said.

“No,” Craugh said in a harsh voice. “This is something different. I know those protective spells. I helped put some of them in place. This—” He scented the air again in a deep draught. “This is something different. There is a new spell in this room, and it’s growing stronger.” He held out a hand toward the books. “It’s coming from the books.”

Even before the echo of the wizard’s words disappeared from the cavernous room, a shudder ran through the whole Library and a hole ripped into view in the air above the books. A violet sky streaked with crimson lightning blazed into view through the hole, but a gigantic bat-winged beast that flew through the hole and into the room quickly blocked the sight of that.

Broad-bodied and sporting horns, the creature looked a bit like a bull, but only if bulls stood as tall as a human at the shoulder. It breathed out huge gusts of gray vapor that immediately filled the Great Room with the stench of death.

A four-armed warrior dressed in full battle armor sat astride the strange beast. He carried a bow with an arrow already nocked back, and took aim at Juhg. He carried an axe and a shield in his lower two arms. Inside the helm, there were no features, only the grinning jaws of a bleached white skull and empty eye sockets with a hint of spectral crimson fire.

“You will die!” the warrior roared in a voice that sounded like splintering wood.

The arrow leapt from the bow and came straight at Juhg, who stood frozen, knowing only that the enemy had finally found the Library.

13

The Bellringer

Before Juhg could move, Craugh swung his staff with blinding speed, with no more apparent thought than he might shoo away a fly. The staff broke the speeding arrow in twain and both pieces hurtled harmlessly by Juhg.

“Move!” Craugh commanded in that steely tone Juhg had heard on occasion before. “Move if you would save your life, apprentice!”

Juhg threw himself to one side and dodged behind the stacks of books.
The treacherous books,
he couldn’t help thinking. Whoever had designed the trap had constructed it well enough. If there were ever to be any wooden horses of Phamscrifa brought into the Library, a book was surely the vehicle to deliver those enemies in. He placed his back against a stack of books and peered back toward the center of the room.

Craugh stood with both hands on his staff. Galing winds from wherever the monstrous beast and its terrifying rider had come from whipped at the wizard’s robes. The beast snarled, threw its head back and whipped it forward, spitting a line of fiery liquid.

Arcane words Juhg had never heard spilled from the wizard’s lips. Juhg had never seen the language anywhere, and had often felt certain if he ever did find examples of it that he would never want to read it. Wick had mentioned more than once that the older wizards, and Craugh was certainly one of those, had their own language.

Some said the language was from the Dark Times, even before Lord Kharrion had gathered the goblinkin and brought about the Cataclysm. Others said that the truly powerful wizards took their power from some other place, a world removed from the one most people knew, a place of terrible beasts and men where horrible events took place every minute of every day.

It was said that a wizard, a truly powerful wizard, was exposed to that world—like Annealis who was dipped into the River of Time as a baby by his mother so that he would be forever immortal, except for the ear that his mother held him by—for only a short time. The time was supposed to be long enough to gain the power, but not long enough to go mad.

Many of those who sought to wear wizard’s robes were dipped too long or not long enough. Very few were dipped just right. Wizardwork was a very hazardous calling, and not much appreciated by anyone.

Until you have need of a wizard,
Juhg thought, watching as Craugh caught the flaming spit in one bare hand and threw it back into the creature’s face.

Smashed full in the face by the seething mass of flames that clung to its obscene features, the creature reared straight up. Evidently the creature could contain the fire inside itself but not endure it the way that dragons could, or perhaps Craugh’s magic altered the flames in some way. Blisters, huge and weeping, appeared on the animal’s face sacked in thin green skin.

Driven by the rearing creature, the four-armed warrior slammed into the room’s tall ceiling. Stone shattered and a crack ran half the length of the room. Dazed by the impact, the warrior slipped from its mount and fell against the stone floor with a resounding clangor of metal. The warrior did not immediately get to its feet, and Juhg was heartened.

But even as Juhg thought they all might quite possibly survive the encounter, two more creatures bearing riders stepped through the impossible gate that had formed in the room. The riders fired arrows at Craugh, who stood his ground and called on the forces at his command. Green lightning blazed from the wizard’s eyes. One of the arrows caught in the wizard’s robes. The second came so close to hitting him that the broadhead sliced hair from his beard and the stiff fletching sliced his cheek from his nose to his ear. A line of crimson blood oozed out.

“Juhg!”

Drawn by the Grandmagister’s voice, Juhg glanced in Wick’s direction.

The Grandmagister stood behind one of the thick stone columns that supported the ceiling. Embers caught in his robes and his red hair.

“Go get the dwarves!” Wick yelled. “Ring the alarm bell! Tell them that we have Dread Riders and Blazebulls inside the Library!”

Dread Riders and Blazebulls!
Juhg wanted to kick himself. He should have known what the beasts were. He had read a few books about the fearsome riders and their merciless beasts. Of course, all of those books had come from Hralbomm’s Wing and had been at the Grandmagister’s suggestion to lighten Juhg’s “too scholarly” approach to his reading.

It was the Grandmagister’s contention—Grandmagister Lamplighter’s and not Grandmagister Frollo’s, nor the contention of any Grandmagister who had gone before, most of the Librarians said—that reading the incredible adventures and romances in Hralbomm’s Wing also gave insight to a culture’s beliefs and histories. Juhg had believed that because the Grandmagister had told him so. Too often, though, the tales twisted too much the events and people that inspired the romantic accountings. Where Wick seemed to grasp with ease the allegory and subtlety of the stories and fathom the hidden meanings, Juhg had struggled.

But Dread Riders and Blazebulls were something Juhg felt he should have known. As far as anyone knew, the creatures did not exist in the world. They were reportedly from some other place, a hidden place filled with horror and wickedness. Some even said that dragons had once lived there but had made their escape into the world.

But,
Juhg thought, staring wide-eyed as Craugh brought his staff down against the stone floor with a mighty crack that should have sundered the surface,
they are
real!

Lightning leapt from Craugh’s staff as he stood against the two newest beasts and their riders. Bolts of blazing green power shot across the room and blew great chunks from the Dread Riders and the Blazebulls. For a brief moment, their attack was battered back like an incoming wave against a rocky shoal.

Then small shadows crept in between the rearing, snarling monsters. The new arrivals were shorter, even than dwellers. The color of black ink, so dark that none of the lantern light or the Blazebulls’ flames reflected from them, the creatures had huge bulbous heads a full third of their body length that made them appear almost waiflike. But one look at the close-set malevolent black eyes encircled by pools of venomous yellow and the snapping jackrabbit teeth shattered that impression immediately. Their limbs were blade-thin, harsh lines devoid of muscle or fat, and the joints were heavy knobs. The hands and feet were three sizes too large for their spindly, featureless bodies. They wore no clothing, and their skin, as Juhg remembered from his reading of
Veskheg Versus the Hordes of Shadow,
was hard and slick as a beetle’s carapace.

“Grymmlings,”
Juhg whispered, giving a name to the terror the small creatures evoked. The few stories he’d read of the beasts left him trembling.

Despite their bulbous heads, the Grymmlings had no rational thought patterns. No one could communicate with them. At least, as far as Juhg knew, no one could communicate with them, but that couldn’t exactly be true because they were here now working with the Dread Riders and the Blazebulls. The general thinking was that Grymmlings were no more coherent than insects and worked through a group consciousness, a hive mind. Like locusts, they descended in droves to devour everything in their path. They were omnivorous, eating plants and meat, and seemed possessed by—not of, as the romance writer Iligurl had pointed out no less than seventy-three times in his story of Veskheg—
by
an insatiable appetite. They carried foot-long crystal blades spun from gossamer crystal by giant Laragan spiders they kept as pets in their lairs.