The Destruction of the Books (8 page)

Juhg envisioned that with dread. Fighting ship-to-ship was bloody business.

“Or,” Raisho said.

With stomach-sinking conviction, Juhg knew that his friend wasn’t talking about the paddle in his hands. He also felt certain he knew what the young sailor was about to suggest.

“—or I steal aboard that ship after the crew’s leave,” Raisho finished, “an’ look around to see what’s what.”

“That would be foolish.”

“Ye say ‘foolish.’ I say
brave
. Mayhap I can keep the cap’n from riskin’
’Chaser
an’ her crew from takin’ this ship later if’n there’s no reason to.”

“If we get caught, no matter what you call it, we’re just as dead.”

“Aye.” Raisho grinned. “But only if’n we’re caught, bookworm.”

Juhg swallowed.

“An’ it won’t be ‘we,’” Raisho continued. “It’ll be me. An’ I won’t get caught neither. I’ll just ask ye to mind this here boat whilst I’m gone to look fer that book.”

Juhg turned and stared at his friend. “Do you even know what a book looks like?”

Raisho scowled and watched the goblins rowing for the piers. He looked back at Juhg. “A lot like that one ye keep scribblin’ in.”

“No. That’s just one way a book can look.” Juhg shook his head. “There’s any number of ways an author can assemble a book. Before Lord Kharrion assembled the goblinkin and set to burning libraries and destroying books, authors used all kinds of mediums to record their histories, their philosophical discourses, and their texts concerning the sciences.”

“A book is a book,” Raisho growled defensively. “Yers wasn’t the only one what I ever seen.”

“But that’s all you’ve seen,” Juhg argued. “You haven’t been trained to look for books as I have.”

Grandmagister Lamplighter trained Juhg in that task. Seeing that Raisho either didn’t grasp his point or chose to ignore it, Juhg threw his verbal sails into the air and tried another tack.

“Did you know that the Kupper elves used to live in this hospitable place?”

Raisho didn’t answer.

“They did,” Juhg went on. “Before Lord Kharrion, before the Cataclysm reshaped the known world, the Kupper elves lived along the shore of the Frozen Ocean.”

“Elves live in forests,” Raisho grumbled. “Ever’one knows that.”

“Not always,” Juhg said. He was surprised at his friend’s limited knowledge of the world. Then he reminded himself how narrow his own knowledge of the world had been until Wi—until Grandmagister Lamplighter had taken him into the Vault of All Known Knowledge and begun his true education. “The Kupper elves divided their lives between the sea and the forest. They wrote books with shells and pebbles, and their language was laid out in color and shape and texture and sound.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“The Tordalian humans,” Juhg went on, “wove their books into carpets and tapestries. “Their language spoke through thread length and thickness, through skillfully tied knots and patterns. Khroder dwarves carved obelisks with their picks that interlock so tightly no seams can be seen. Reading a Khroder dwarven book requires a knowing hand, and the meaning of the sequence of the pieces, as well as the icons carved on their surfaces, tell the message.”

Raisho grunted in disgust.

“So you see,” Juhg said, “you might not know the book for what it is even if you see it.”

Growling an oath, Raisho shook his head. “Means I got no choice, then, bookworm.”

Juhg felt a little relieved, then felt guilty almost at once. He should want to know about the book as much as Captain—

“Ye’re gonna have to go with me,” Raisho said.

4

The Book

Juhg stared through the shadows at Raisho. The young sailor gestured again, pointing out the length of rusted anchor chain that ran from the goblin ship’s stern. Reluctantly, Juhg slowly stood in the cargo skiff and took hold of the rough links of the chain. He started climbing, hauling himself up the chain with relative ease.

Under the cover of the night and with the skiff lantern out, he and Raisho had quietly rowed to the goblin ship undetected. Whatever skeleton crew, and Juhg hated the images that term automatically summoned to mind after having read some of the selections from Hralbomm’s Wing that Grandmagister Lamplighter had recommended, remained aboard appeared uncaring about the security of the ship.

Of course,
Juhg said,
few people try to sneak aboard a goblin ship.
He grabbed another handful of rusty chain and pulled himself up farther.

Only a short time later, he reached the railing. His arms ached and his body quivered from exertion. He held on with his cramped fingers, his nose barely hung over the bottom rung, and peered across the deck.

The huge ship’s wheel stood abandoned, locked in place by a wooden bar and leather tethers. The furled sails along the ’yards above rattled in the wind. Three goblins stood in the hesitant glow of the ship’s forward lanterns. A pot of soup, so ill-smelling that Juhg’s stomach threatened to turn, hung from a nearby railing. The goblins filled bowls of the vile concoction, and—occasionally—bones crunched as the creatures chewed.

“Well?” Raisho demanded in a hoarse voice from below.

With his feet wrapped around the anchor chain and one hand securely on the deck, Juhg turned and held up three fingers.

“Three guards?” Raisho asked, rising to a standing position in the skiff. “That’s it?”

Juhg put his forefinger to his lips. “That’s all I see.”

Raisho growled a curse. He rigged a quick harness over his back to hold his cutlass, then tied the skiff to the anchor chain, and climbed.

Mastering the fear that resonated within him, Juhg hauled himself over the ship’s side and remained within the stern deck’s shadows. He crouched, thankful he was so small and so slight. But he knew that Raisho didn’t have those natural attributes. He dreaded his big friend’s arrival.

Staying in the skiff, Juhg realized, would have been so much safer. But he knew his own argument about whether Raisho would have recognized a book if the tome were rendered in any other fashion than the written page held true.

And if there was a book aboard the foul ship, Juhg felt beholden to get it. During the Cataclysm, the Old Ones first fashioned the dwellers, rendering them meek and small and weak so that they could better hide the books from Lord Kharrion. He had his heritage to live up to, as well as his Librarian training.

He calmed himself, drawing his breath in through his nose and pushing it out through his mouth, using a technique developed by Mathoth Kilerion, a noted human tactician who had raised fierce guerrilla armies to face the goblin hordes when Lord Kharrion had threatened to dominate the world.

The effort worked a little, but Juhg still felt frightened. At least, he felt a little better until he spotted Raisho’s hand appear and grab the railing. Lantern light glinted against his dark eyes and the silver hoops in his ears.

The three goblins guarding the ship stayed occupied with conversation and the meal.

Silent as a cat, Raisho vaulted the railing and landed on bare feet on the stern deck. He drew the cutlass in one smooth motion, reversing his grip on the handle and keeping the blade low. No light reflected from the blade due to the way the metal had been cast. The cutlass was a fighting man’s weapon, and Raisho took pride in his possession.

“Captain’s quarters,” Raisho whispered.

Before Juhg could object, the young sailor took two lithe steps and vaulted the railing from the stern deck leading to the main deck amidships. He disappeared below the stern deck’s edge at once.

Heart in his throat but determined not to let Raisho down, Juhg dropped to his hands and knees and scuttled to the stairs leading down to the main deck. He expected to hear startled shouts from goblins that Raisho might have inadvertently surprised with his bold move.

Juhg halted at the railing beside the steps, his hands wrapped around the rungs, and peered down.

Raisho was already on the move, racing for the door set against the stern castle. Broad in the beam as the goblin ship was, the vessel afforded larger quarters there, as well as a steadier ride across the rough seas. Captains always kept their private quarters there, if the ship was large enough to provide the necessary space.

Pausing at the door, Raisho glanced up. He pointed to his eyes with two fingers, then in the direction of the goblin guards.

Juhg understood immediately and nodded. He hunkered down in the shelter of the stairs, staying high enough to watch the goblins.

Raisho sheathed his cutlass between his shoulders, then knelt and removed something from the rolled-top boots he wore. He leaned into the door and worked on the locks. After a moment, he looked back up at Juhg with a grin on his face. He motioned to Juhg, calling him down.

Juhg’s hopes that the locks would force Raisho to give up sunk. He wouldn’t have been too badly disappointed if the locks had proven too much for Raisho. The dweller forced himself up again, crouching on trembling knees as he went down the steps. Once on the main deck, he joined Raisho at the door.

“I see that Herby isn’t the only one with dubious skills,” Juhg whispered.

Shrugging, Raisho replied, “A knack. Something I picked up in me youth. Merely a passin’ fancy.” He drew his cutlass again, then pushed against the door.

Juhg remained to one side of the door. His heart seemed like it was going to explode. He fully expected something to rush at them from the darkness of the captain’s quarters.

“Can ye see anythin’?” Raisho whispered.

A dweller’s vision at night, like an elf’s and a dwarf’s, was better than a human’s. That was one compensation the Old Ones had endowed the other races with after providing humans with such a capacity for reproducing and tastes for conquering and exploring. At least, Vodel Haug had put forth that possibility in his
Treatise on the Races: The Lasting Impact of Wars and Poetry.

Hesitantly, Juhg peered into the cabin. “No goblins,” he announced.

“Good.” Raisho strode into the room with his blade in his fist. “Come on.”

Juhg forced himself to follow. Cold wind blew in from the sea and crossed the back of his neck. He shivered.

Raisho lifted the glass on the lantern hanging on the wall.

“What are you doing?” Juhg demanded.

“I can’t search this room in the dark.” Raisho pulled up the wick.

Hurriedly, Juhg closed the door and stood with his back to it. He watched in disbelief as Raisho used his own tinderbox to light the lantern.

Yellow light filled the room and brought Raisho’s face out of the darkness in gleaming relief. Smoke twisted in tiny threads up to the cabin’s low ceiling and pooled there briefly before spreading and thinning away. Cargiff oil wasn’t completely smoke-free. After spending hours trapped in a room lit by lanterns aboard
Windchaser,
Juhg wistfully remembered the sweet smell of glimmerworm juice that lighted the halls within the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Now, however, he was glad for the oil stink because it helped cover up the stench of the goblin captain’s quarters.

Buckets of bones and refuse sat at the foot of the captain’s unmade bed. Weapons adorned the wall, and Juhg knew from past experience that goblin commanders and leaders all had stories to tell of the weapons in the creatures’ possession, of how the goblin had killed warriors in glorious battle. Most of the weapons came from junk the goblins picked up and passed off as trophies of war. Cloaks and outerwear lay strewn across the room and filled four sea chests.

Raisho wasted no time searching the room. The young warrior plowed through the personal belongings in short order.

Juhg took a more sedate approach, even though a screaming voice in the back of his mind kept worrying him with the possibility of discovery. He didn’t cover as much of the room as Raisho did, but he was thorough. Unfortunately, that thoroughness required coming in contact with the crawling vermin that lived within the goblin captain’s things.

“I don’t see how these creatures can live like this.” Raisho dusted an army of insects from his clothing. The bugs crunched underfoot. “If’n I was a bug, I’d choose somewheres else to live, I would.”

“Ships are worse than the houses goblins choose to live in,” Juhg said. “Goblinkin can move from house to house, abandoning each in turn, or live out in the forest if the tribe chooses. But a ship is a considerable investment.” He shook meal weevils from a pile of garments. “Goblins won’t just leave a ship because they’re too hard to replace. The creatures don’t build them, and dweller slaves don’t know enough to build them.”

Raisho glowered at the room. “There’s no book here.”

“There are often hiding places.” Juhg got down on his hands and knees. “Didn’t you notice that we also didn’t find any valuables?”

“Ye mean, aside from them dog bones what’s in them buckets by the bed?” Raisho’s tone was sarcastic.

Juhg shuddered. “You didn’t look closely at the bones.” He ran his hands across the dirty wooden floor.

“I looked close enough.”

“Those aren’t all dog bones or rabbit bones or cat bones or fish bones.” Juhg shoved more refuse out of his way. He forced himself to breathe through his open mouth so the stench wouldn’t gag him. “There are also dweller bones in that bucket.”

Looking into the bucket, Raisho cursed.

Even though seeing the bones of his people in the bucket hadn’t surprised Juhg, simply speaking the fact left him chilled and even more nauseous.

“Goblins are a blight,” Raisho whispered in a voice hoarse with disbelief. “Ought to kill ’em all.”

Even after everything he had been through, Juhg couldn’t find it within himself to be so hateful, even toward goblins. The creatures remained feared and ferocious enemies, but Juhg would rather have seen goblinkin put in places where the tribes couldn’t prey on the rest of the world. Before Lord Kharrion had organized and led the goblinkin, the creatures hadn’t multiplied to such vast numbers or lived in areas that could sustain a tribe well enough to allow those large numbers to thrive.

Rapping against the wooden floor with his knuckles, Juhg located a hollow spot beneath the planks. “Bring the lantern here.”