Jadde - The Fragile Sanctuary (25 page)

It was exactly as BalthWolf had said. The
roar and flash deafened and blinded Malkrin. A section of plaster crashed down
in a cloud of dust. Malkrin dropped to the floor his hand on Palerin ready to
defend himself. BalthWolf just stood there holding the magic implement, a look
of awe frozen to his face.

‘I told you it spits wasps,’ he gestured to
the bare brick where just now plaster had covered. A small hole was bored into
one brick where the insect had entered.

‘This is powerful magic; I will have a
specific use for it.’

BalthWolf handed Malkrin the magical device
without further comment and whispered, ‘was it worth the diversion here?’

‘Indeed it was,’ Malkrin said absently as
he tried to understand the ancient purpose behind this old settlement.
Obviously the chief in charge was a great magician cruelly overseeing a large
amount of people. Had they already been judged guilty of criminal acts? It was strange
and complicated; he risked another glimpse at the paper in the top drawer
withdrawing a metal clipped sheaf entitled.

Centre 34 Detainees

Each page was divided into columns and the
first one was headed by the word ‘Date’ and below it lines of numbers, the
second column repeated ‘Detainees’, and was a list of people’s names. The third
column was headed ‘Crime’. He read along from each name and read in the crime
column, ‘Looter’ the next line; ‘Mugger’, the next ‘Malcontent’ or ‘Anti-authority’.
This last word seemed to be more common as he looked further down the list.
Some crimes were to him justified, others a mystery, but it gave the solution
to his nagging suspicions. He imagined the last days of the great ones before
Jadde came to save the survivors from the demons. Pictures of turmoil and
hatred rose into his mind and he threw the document back in the drawer.

‘Let’s go, we’ve a long run back,’ he
snapped.

As the sun disappeared and stars sparkled
to take its place they reached their camp. Malkrin reclaimed a sense of
security in his band’s companionship. But his mind kept returning to the old
ones and the nightmare of their last days. He felt the weight of the magic wasp-stick
in his pocket alongside the three sun symbols. He added it to the plan forming
in his mind.

CHAPTER
TWENTYONE

N
ardin blinked in the glare of the unnatural
light that filled the lower library.  As his watering eyes adjusted he made out
rows of benches built along two walls, on them sat strange glass infilled
boxes. Small lettered slabs were connected to each by a white root. Padded seats
were neatly tucked under the benches before each glass-eyed box.

He stood routed to the spot, the light of
Jadde beamed down and he hardly dared move. He allowed his eyes to stray to the
centre of the huge room where great banks of books were located on metal racks.
The racks were built above the ground and Nardin saw small wheels beneath them which
locked into tracks. Immediately he surmised each rack could be moved against
another to create the maximum storage space. All you had to do was pull a rack
to create space to browse the book shelves within.

Steth extinguished the oil lamp and strode
into the room as if he owned it. Then he took a volume from the nearest shelf
and smiled.

‘Any idea what Quantum Physics are?’ he
laughed as Nardin shook his head vigorously. ‘Neither do I, nor any of the priesthood
for that matter. The text this scripture contains is full of numbers in strange
combinations. I came here when my master confided of this place. I examined
this book for a day, and finally decided it was a code – a huge and clever one
which refused to reveal anything of Jadde at all.’

Nardin decided to go back to basic concerns
before he dared move.

‘This light – someone is already here?’

Steth chuckled, ‘No, it has always been as
this. Jadde has hidden an enchantment here somewhere and her magic powers many
things. Most of the strange devices she once used have been destroyed by age,
but as you browse you may discover some that still contain enough of her spell
to work.’

‘Jadde has decided it is safe for me to
move.’

‘Of course. I believe this room is her work;
just waiting for the right time for a chosen one to rediscover its secrets.’

‘Who will she approve of? She obviously
favours you.’

     ‘And because I have let you into her
secret, she now favours you. So relax and make yourself at home, as you have in
the scriptorium above.’

     Nardin dared to take a step.

     Then another.

     Two more steps and he reached the book
racks and Steth. He started to read faded writing on the spines of the scripts
stored there. ‘Chaos Theory’ announced one. ‘Modern Engineering Mathematics’
said another. ‘The Science behind Splitting the Atom’ another mysteriously
stated.

     Steth interrupted his examination. ‘Let
me show you how this library is organised. Then I will show you how to leave and
operate the wall mechanism in the top library.’

     The priest led the way through the
glaringly bright but deathly silent room. Nardin was sure the unnerving silence
parted with a whisper as they moved deeper into Jadde’s Repository – for that
is what he had already christened it. The first rack he examined was labelled, ‘Advanced
Mathematics’. The next was ‘Aeronautics’ and so it went on past ‘Biography’ to ‘Earth
Sciences’ then ‘Ecology’ and ‘Reference’ and on to many, many others. At last
they reached the far end where some recognisable subjects appeared. This last
rack announced, ‘Poetry’ then ‘Fiction’. The bench opposite this rack had a
selection of dusty volumes stacked untidily as if someone had been reading and
left urgently, never to return.

     ‘Now before we leave, we must deal
with some business.’ Steth looked deadly serious as he turned to face Nardin. His
hands were now clasped loosely before him causing the cloth of his priest’s
habit to hang in folds about his arms and shoulders. ‘You will need to spend
more time down here than your outside life allows. So I have convinced the Abbot
that I need an assistant to help research the origin of an ancient evil that
may threaten us again. He has agreed, and because you have a wife and children
relying on your hunting and growing skills, he has awarded you a bursary to provide
for your family.’

Steth stated an amount which amazed Nardin;
it was almost as much as the award given to the recipient of highsense ability.
Then Steth capped it all by saying. ‘This will mean you no longer hunt or
involve yourself in menial tasks. You come here to study every day. I mean down
here, not in the scriptorium. Then every evening you go home to your family.’

     Nardin was stunned, it was everything
he had wished for, he almost felt guilty of his hidden objective to aid Malkrin
and avenge Cabryce. But he would accept, for it was a giant step forward. He
would also ensure he didn’t betray this kindly priest and his fellow
conspirator Sire
Josiath.

     ‘You are more than generous Sire, I
will endeavour to find the information the priesthood requires.’

     ‘I know, Assistant Nardin. You are the
most suited for the task, for I am too old and woolly headed to focus for the
long periods needed.’

Nardin knew the deal was sealed. Steth had
promoted him from apprentice to assistant and he felt a warm glow spread
through him at the welcome responsibility. He desperately needed to start
proving his mentors trust.

‘Show me the exit and entrance spells then
I will start immediately.’

Steth chuckled and pottered back toward the
entrance door, then glanced back over his shoulder. ‘It grows late Assistant
Nardin and it is time for an old man to take his sleep and for you to return to
your wife.’

He turned then paused and pointed above the
door, ‘You know of clocks Nardin; that one needs no winding and is always
accurate. From it you can tell when to leave – otherwise night and day are
meaningless down here.’

Nardin nodded and reluctantly followed him through
the door they had entered from. Steth closed the door.

‘You see there is a red and green button on
the wall.’ He pointed to the left of the door in the corner at chest height.
Nardin saw a small box glowing in the two colours. He looked closer; the two
protrusions could be pushed.

‘The red should be pressed on exit. After
thirty seconds it turns off Jadde’s light and activates a wheeled metal guardian
that emits a bee-hive hum. It does nothing to threaten this place – and will
not harm you. The ancients devised the guardian to maintain this library in
some mysterious way.’

‘And the green one?’

‘Ahh – you did not see me press it when I
opened the door?’

Nardin shook his head in puzzlement.

‘When you enter, it activates Jadde’s light
and silences the bee-hive hum.’

Steth pressed the red button and used the
oil lamp to guide their way back to the scriptorium, where he showed Nardin the
secret of the pivoting wall.

‘I wish you a good night Assistant and I
will see you first thing tomorrow.’

Nardin hardly realised he had taken the
winding track downhill to his home. He entered noisily in his excitement to
tell his family of their elevation in status.

The next day he was back in the scriptorium
at the exact time he would have joined the hunters leaving town. Steth was
already in the room sharpening a quill pen and preparing ink.

‘I have a small gift to aid you with the scripts
in the lower library,’ Steth announced immediately. He produced a strange metal
frame with a hand grip; the centre was filled with thick glass.

‘Some of the texts in the lower library,
are faded badly, this will aid you.’

He demonstrated on a parchment containing
his spidery scrawl. The words leapt in size in front of Nardin’s eyes.

Nardin smiled, by now used to unexpected
revelations.

‘Thank you Sire, I can see this will be of
great use.’

‘It has been handed down from generation to
generation of librarians, and is greatly treasured as the insignia of our
position. It’s a glass magnifier, look after it Assistant.’

Nardin nodded his thanks and Steth gestured
him to his task. Nardin hurried to the rear wall, keen to start his ‘research’
– another ancient word he had picked up from Steth.

He pressed the green button and entered the
room below, and heard the guardian retreat into its cavity to sleep. Then the
deathly silence worried him and the absence of windows made it feel like a
tomb. But the realisation that it was a repository of living knowledge not a
place of dead irrelevance comforted him.

He had already decided to examine a book
from each rack to familiarise himself with an overview of the rooms contents. He
ignored the first section called ‘Mathematics’. He had no interest in numbers
and certainly not complex codes needing a lifetime to unravel. So he started on
the next section down entitled ‘History’ and pulled out a volume called ‘A
Brief History of the World’. It was thick and heavy and not at all brief. The
pages were yellowed and brittle, the text was grey but contained some very
intriguing pictures and he read the volume all day, marvelling at the diversity
of humanity that had lived before Edentown even existed. He wondered where in
the world Cyprusnia was actually situated. When he had browsed to the end of
the book he wondered whether any of the great cities and lands mentioned still
existed outside Cyprusnia’s boundaries. He surmised they could only be ruins.

And then he wondered whether Malkrin had
already come across the remnants of twenty-first century man and his
civilisation. His head felt full of new terminology and concepts. The following
day he moved to the next rack entitled ‘Technology’ and began to learn of the
evolution of labour saving inventions from the wheel to steam engines and
beyond to the digital age. But the digital age was confusing . . .

Steth shook his shoulder and he nearly
dropped the glass magnifier. He had not heard him enter.

‘Come on Assistant it is time for you to
return to your family. Give me a progress report tomorrow.’

They went upstairs and as he reached the scriptorium
Nardin felt bleary-eyed but expanded in a way that he would never have thought
possible.

The next day he finished a book on the
history of modern inventions and took down a volume called Digital Technology,
and by the end of the day realised the glass fronted boxes were computers and
worked out how to switch them on. But each one he tried was lifeless, and he
did not have the knowledge to bring them to life. An element of frustration confounded
him for the first time.

Days flowed into one another, he abandoned ‘Technology’
for ‘Spiritual’ and realised there had been an awful diversity of competing
religions. There was no mention of Jadde descending to alleviate mankind’s
pain. He assumed the books were written before her coming. He found the Holy
Bible and then the Koran but neither contained even an acknowledgement of the Goddess
Jadde. He hoped to find an account by someone that served Jadde in the same way
that Jesus Christ’s disciples had once worshipped him or the followers of Mohammed
had served the great messenger of Allah. He filed for later contemplation a
sudden conviction that Muslims and Christians had served the only true God.

He moved to the ‘Politics’ section and
within a day moved on.

At home his wife confessed to being bored of
his attempts to expand her awareness. But his children were enthralled – before
Rose insisted he concentrated on teaching his sons to hunt whilst she taught
home skills to their daughter.

He spent the next day in Jadde’s repository
a little depressed at his failure to be a good father, but the gathering of new
knowledge soon extinguished that. Nardin skipped the final rack, the Poetry and
Fiction sections, after ascertaining their content. His search could not be
distracted by anything unreal. Maybe in years to come, he thought hopefully.
Then he swung a previous rack over its roller track and realised he had skipped
an important category. It was entitled ‘Biography’ and it appeared to have the
most probability of finding personal accounts of mankind’s demise and even
possibly details of how the great Goddess had redeemed humanity. Biography spoke
of the lives of real people, and he was sidetracked by some of the incredible personalities
that had once served the ancient civilizations in a multitude of ways.

He adopted a mantra, apparently part of a
speech by a great ancient called Winston Churchill. ‘
Never,
ever, ever, ever, ever, give up. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.’ He
found himself muttering it every time he failed to find any reference to the
great Goddess.

The following weeks saw him return to all
the racks and re-browse each section. Steth compressed his search into reports
for the Abbott.

Late one day he gave up with the reference section
and was about to move back to the history shelves when he had a sudden
intuitive thought and
looked
up to the highest shelf in the rack. Although appearing as empty as all the
other rack tops, he thought he ought to check along all the tops from above,
just to be sure. The ancient librarians must have been as lazy as other
ordinary folk, and disinclined to pull over steps to climb, store and bring
down volumes. That was why the top shelves were all empty – he was certain. But
what about on top . . . Nardin pulled over a pair of light metal steps he had
previously spotted in a corner and erected them in the centre of the Biography rack.