The Tasters Guild (16 page)

A distant roar came from somewhere far below, and a dank wind blew past and, with it, a horrible, mildewy odor.

Some long-ago traveler had placed a board across the pit, reaching treacherously to the other side. This was fortunate since the channels were designed not for foot traffic, but for the steady flow of wastewater, and without the plank, this would have been an impasse. Yet the board was a weathered one, sagging in the middle, and it seemed unlikely to support the weight of a trestleman, let alone the others.

“I shall be first,” Axle announced, as he threw his satchel over to the other side.

“Hardly,” Peps argued. “That will leave us stranded here should you fall!”

“Stranded, but safe.” Axle was feeling about in his pockets in an attempt to balance out his load.

“Safe? What sort of safety is this? We will be stuck here forever!” Peps continued.

“I think”—Rowan’s voice was shaky—“since I’m the biggest, I should go. We’ll know for certain if I am able to cross.”

“I’ll go first,” Ivy announced.

Here the other three finally agreed. “No!” they bellowed at once.

Ivy blinked.

“We can hardly spare you! A hard time you’d have curing the King from the bottom of this stinking pit!”

And thus began a lengthy discussion, and since everyone had quite a strong opinion, it was with great diplomacy that the order of the crossing was finally established. Peps would go first—with his bountiful waistline, his successful passage would almost guarantee that everyone, with the exception of Rowan, the largest, would be light enough to cross.

“Where’s Six?” Ivy asked, looking around for the cat.

The cat had vanished—only to appear on the opposite end of the pit. He had crossed the plank during the debate and sat, quite lazily, scratching his scruff.

They began their meek parade across the old board. Putting one foot in front of the next, Peps nearly ran. Ivy’s years
upon Axle’s trestle had instilled in her an enviable sense of balance, and she walked quite easily to where Peps was waiting. Axle, too, had an uneventful crossing.

And Rowan? Rowan would have been fine, had he not looked down.

A
ctually, falling in the dark is probably the best way to fall.

There is no scenery racing by to distract you. There is no view of where it is you are falling
to
. There is only the mad rush of wind. That, and the occasional bump as your body collides against the confines of the brick pit—and the ancient, broken ladder.

The ladder!
Rowan realized, as it struck the side of his cheek in passing. The next time he bounced against it, he was prepared. Somewhat. He managed to catch hold of it, but, like the rest of the sewer, it was slick and wet, and he lost it soon enough.

It did eventually interrupt his fall.

An old and rusted rung had come loose and stuck out, like a broken and dead branch. It was upon this that his robes caught, and the former taster had a moment in which to reflect upon the fact it was his robes that very well might have saved his life. But this thought was followed by a terrific
rip
,
and Rowan found himself again falling, downward, ever downward—and into the river below.

No more troubled waters had he seen than these. But
see
he did, for there was some sort of dull light now in the gaping opening into which he had fallen—a cavern that served mainly as a housing for a vast underground river, mostly storm runoff. A bitter swill, indeed.

As he surfaced, spitting and gasping for breath, he saw what lay ahead. The waterway opened up somewhat into a wide underground lake. It flowed steadily against the sheer walls of rock and then bottlenecked in a mad rush of falling water. Beyond the drop-off—for that’s what Rowan was heading toward—was nothing but darkness.

T
he roaring grew much louder as Rowan was swept along in the sturdy current toward the cascading, falling water. With a sickening feeling, he saw that what followed was a sheer, wet drop into nothingness. In desperation—and cursing the fact that he was not the most athletic of swimmers—he cast about the cavern looking for something to grab on to. Made from the rock of the mountains above, the walls were a sheer, smooth stone. Then, he saw it. A large, cluttered mound of debris to one side. With his last strength, he battled toward it.

His robes clung to him heavily and he gasped for air, but aided by the current and utter strength of will, he made it to the perimeter. There Rowan clung to a maze of tangled waste. It was a watery web of clotted and decaying matter—branches, soggy term papers, a twisted and ruined tail feather of a vulture. The river surged by quickly, and it was hard to gain a foothold on the shifting matter, or anything of substance. His face was pressed roughly against an old shoe.

As he contemplated his predicament, somewhere deep within him was born the urge to simply let go. Perhaps, this new voice reasoned, it would be easier to face the rapids than to continue on a journey certain to bring him further indignities. How impossible this task he had embarked upon! How utterly foolhardy to return here, to the Tasters’ Guild, delivering himself to his enemies. He allowed this thought to blossom in his mind like an invasive weed—and, as is the nature of such thoughts, it quickly grew, offering its defeating reasonings up to his tired mind.

Verjouce, his distorted face, swam before him, a vision of ruin. He felt his fingers letting go of the web of deadwood.

But something caught his eye. It was something quite impossible, and just atop the pile of debris in which he was tangled.

A splash of green—of life. And from the thin green stem, more color, this time five petals of golden yellow.

A cinquefoil!

The King’s flower was growing very much as if for Rowan himself, growing against all odds in the bowels of the Tasters’ Guild. Somehow he found the strength to reach for it—and beyond. He pulled himself up, tired and dripping from the dark underground river, and heaving deep, grateful breaths, he lay beside the flower, and slept.

T
he Field Guide to the Poisons of Caux
contains but a passage on the great and tragic loss of the contents of the Library at Rocamadour. Axlerod D. Roux did not dwell too long upon this sad part of Caux’s history, for his hand trembled and his heart ached too much as he wrote the text.

The ancient fire of Rocamadour that even Hemsen Dumbcane cursed was ordered by the new and evil King Nightshade—but, like many other things, was actually the sinister idea of Vidal Verjouce. It destroyed nearly all the books in the famed Library, and the ancient knowledge that those magical books contained within. It doomed Caux to a fate of sorrow, for without knowledge, one is left only with folly.

The fire was fashioned by Outriders: in their menacing silence, they gathered armfuls of the enormous tomes and threw them in a growing pile. But the flame was cast by the trembling hand of the Librarian.

Oh, to go against one’s character in such an evil act as that! To be charged, as a librarian is, with the caretaking of knowledge—only to be the cause of its demise! It is a betrayal of one’s very nature—a poisoning of the soul.

Deeply ashamed, the Librarian of Rocamadour, a man named Malapert but for whom names had now become obsolete, came to live in the cesspit beneath the city. He sought for himself the most miserable of existences—a penance for his evil deed. He built a small shack from a pile of nearby stones and took up a wet residence beside an underground gulch—finding a certain irony in his proximity to the antidote to fire.

Fire and water. Doomed to this watery existence, the wretched soul of Malapert. The soul of the Librarian.

The soggy tip of Malapert’s cane was poking at a suspicious lump of boiled wool. It hadn’t been there yesterday—nor even that very morning—and he wanted it away. But the Librarian was realizing now that things were more complicated than he had first thought. The boiled lump was moving about—and moaning. The boiled lump was a boy.

“You there—” He continued his poking. He idly wondered what fate had brought the wretched creature down here, but this was not a compassionate thought. He was too soaked in misery for compassion. “Rise at once!” he ordered.

Rowan was in fact dreaming.

In his dream, Ivy was there, her eyes searching for him. But as he drew closer, they withered into distant knots—her skin was now a wrinkled brown. Ivy, Rowan dreamed, was becoming a tree. A great and wild one. And the tree struggled with him—pulling him rudely with her branches. Poking him repeatedly in the ribs. The tree, oddly, smelled of fire—of smoke.

It was this smell that finally awoke Rowan, and it was Malapert who was the source of it.

Rowan blinked at the strange and pathetic specter he now saw. The creature was stooped and clothed in the remnants of a robe, but one so ruined by fire that it was a miracle it stayed together at all. At regular intervals, his scalp showed through in places where his long gray hair refused to grow. And his skin—it possessed a particular sheen to it, and the texture was of melted wax.

Rowan received another poke in the ribs and this time cried out.

“Oww! What are you doing?”

“None shall pass!” The Librarian leaned on his weapon and tried to stand tall.

“Pass? I’m hardly moving!” Rowan pointed out.

“I am the guardian of this waterway, and you are but a trespasser. I say again: None shall pass!”

After one more prod, Rowan struggled to his feet. His side ached horribly.

“Very well,” he said, looking about him. An uneven set of steps carved a jagged path in the rock wall, leading up to a dubious overhang. There, upon the precipice, Rowan now saw that the pile of stones he had glimpsed from the river was in fact a home of sorts, built haphazardly and threatening to fall down at any moment on top of their heads. “If you’ll just show me the way out …”

Malapert blinked.

“I don’t mean to trouble you, Mr.…? If you would just show me another way out. I can hardly go back the way I came, now can I?”

Malapert opened his ruined mouth and snapped it shut again. He cocked his ear. A look of disbelief passed over his shiny face.

“No—this is not possible,” he muttered, and crossly he escorted Rowan up the remaining pile of refuse, along the precarious stairs, to terra firma.

There, a second source of dismay awaited the Librarian.

For countless years he had lived a life of lonely exile, and not once had he had the trouble and bother of visitors. Yet, incredibly, twice in one day he had faced trespassers.

“None shall pass!” he repeated a bit incredulously.

But his warning was not to Rowan this time. Ahead, the lonely precipice of the Librarian’s home met the stone wall at a tunnel. In the opening stood Ivy, an enormous cat, and two trestlemen.

R
owan!” Ivy ran across the bridge to where the taster and the Librarian were standing.

“Rowan! I was sure—” She dared not finish her sad thought but instead rushed to hug her friend.

“None shall pass!” Malapert’s cane stopped her in her tracks.

“I—I’m not trying to pass. I just want to see my friend!”

Malapert looked momentarily flustered but soon regained his menacing composure.

“Back off, child!” He waved his ragged arms in his burnt cloak.

Ivy ignored him.

“How did you ever—?” She was trying to peek around the bothersome man, but with each attempt she was matched by him. This dance continued for a moment, until Rowan merely sidestepped Malapert, to the Librarian’s great chagrin. There was a great hug, followed by a painful gasp. Rowan’s
side was bruised, and each breath seemed somehow incomplete.

“Let me see.” His robes were torn on one side, and she examined this. “Deep breath—good. Nothing’s broken. You’re pretty banged up, though. Scrapes and scratches—and quite a splinter, I think.” She looked at it closer. “That’s probably a thorn from the hawthorn forest. I can get it out if you want. And you could use a bath.”

“No kidding.”

Axle and Peps had advanced along with the tattered cat, and everyone began chatting happily—talking over each other and embracing.

The Librarian suddenly felt uneasy.

Such joy disgusted him. Better to get them out of here as fast as possible.

He cleared his throat.

“None shall pass,” he tried again weakly.

“Yes, yes, we know!” Ivy said.

“Unless …”

“Unless, what?” She was curious.

“Unless you first answer my riddle.”

A
h! He had gotten their attention, he saw. Malapert looked around the bridge carefully and asked, “Are we agreed, then?”

The Librarian took a step forward, toward the group, and for his efforts received a warning hiss from the mangy cat. Malapert hissed right back.

“We are agreed,” Axle spoke.

Had Malapert been a more perceptive sort (he had lived a life entirely devoted to literature, until his undoing), he would have seen a strange look pass over the trestleman’s face. But the Librarian was currently enjoying a dramatic pause before his challenge, and in this pause he congratulated himself upon the insoluble nature of his special riddle, one that he had carefully composed over his many lonely years. No one had ever before answered it.

“Is that
you
—Malapert?” Axle asked, incredulously wiping away the grime from his pince-nez and replacing it. “You are alive!”

The riddle stalled upon the burnt man’s tongue.

“It
is
you! I knew it!” Axle stepped forward and clapped the old man upon the back. A puff of disintegrating cloth swirled about the gesture, smelling fiercely of fire, and was gone.

It had been countless years since the Librarian had thought his own name, let alone heard it spoken. Nevertheless, he was not one to let a good riddle go unasked. Stepping away from the small trestleman, the Librarian raised his head high.