Riddle In Stone (Book 1)

by Robert Evert

  His fingers rising to his lips in astonishment, Reginald took a small step back, unable to breathe. “May, may I . . . ?” He held out his hand, the air leaking out of his lungs.

  Edmund gave him the diamonds.

  Reginald inspected them closely with an eyeglass. Edmund could see the pulse quicken in the merchant’s neck.

  “Well,” the salesman said, his voice trembling ever so slightly, “I could . . . I could buy these from you for, say, twelve gold pieces each. That would save you the trip to the jeweler. I’d even throw in the book for free.”

  “Are you sure? That’s a lot of money!”

  “Of course. Anything for the valuable customer, such as yourself!”

  Reginald counted out the coins and pushed them across the table before Edmund could change his mind. “And, of course, your exquisite purchase.” He smiled, handing Edmund the small green book.

  Slipping the coins into his thread-worn pockets, Edmund smiled back. “Thank you s-s-so much! Everybody is correct about you. You are a fair and honest businessman!”

  “You’re too kind.” Reginald bowed again, his hands still clutching the three inflated diamonds as if protecting them from thieves. “But you’ll pardon me. I must put these in a safe place.”

  “By all means. And thank you. I’ll come back—”

  But Reginald had already run to the back room.

  Beaming on the inside, Edmund turned to leave, nearly bumping into a rumpled woman standing behind him.

  “Oh,” Edmund said, attempting to calculate how long the diamonds would keep their present size. “Hello . . . Edith, is it? Yes. Hello. How, how are you doing this afternoon?”

  “You really shouldn’t purchase anything here,” the woman from the library said. She wiggled her fingers at Thorax. Thorax wagged her tail. “Most of these items aren’t genuine.”

  Wanting to be as far away from the shop as possible when the diamonds reverted to their original size, Edmund began walking out of the boutique, gesturing for Edith to come with him.

  “Really?” he said with forced disbelief, examining the small book of northern poetry he’d acquired. “It’s a fake?”

  “You already knew that,” Edith replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Get out of here! Those diamonds will change back in ten minutes if not sooner.

  Relax. It isn’t like he’ll stare at them for that long. He’ll gloat for a few minutes and then lock them in his safe. He won’t notice anything wrong until morning.

  Then what will happen?

  “So . . . wh-wh-what brings you here this evening?” Edmund asked, attempting to change the subject as he hurried down the street, the assistant librarian attempting to keep pace.

  “I wanted you,” she said and then corrected herself. “That is . . . I found something that might be of interest to you. Back in the library.”

  “Oh?”

  What could she have possibly found that would warrant her searching all over the city for me?

  “You expressed a desire to see maps of the northern portions of the Haegthorn Mountains.”

  “Maps?” Despite his desire to get as far from the phony antiquarian as possible, Edmund’s stride faltered. He turned to her. “What did you find?”

  “I think it would be best if I showed you.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Edith brought Edmund and Thorax to the book lenders building. It was closed, being that it was well past sunset. But Edith had a key to the front doors. She let them in.

  Inside, all was dark.

  Lighting a small lamp, Edith led them through several storerooms.

  They passed thousands of shelves overflowing with books. Crates and chests and cabinets lined the walls. Countless yellowing scrolls sat in holders like priceless bottles of wine stacked to the ceiling.

  Edmund gaped around him as they walked.

  There’s more here than I could read in a lifetime. Who knows what lost pieces of literature have been tucked away behind one of these boxes or cabinets, forgotten to the world for centuries?

  “You initially indicated you were interested in the Haegthorn, particularly any maps of the eastern side,” Edith said as she walked deeper and deeper into the darkness.

  Except for the three-foot ring of light around her lamp, everything was completely black, like an endless void. Their footsteps echoed in the rafters high overhead. Edmund inhaled the familiar scent of ancient parchment with satisfaction.

  “I thought that you might be interested in a small collection we have. We don’t let many people see it. But it may be what you are looking for.”

  Climbing up a ladder to the top shelf, Edith pushed aside several dusty crates with bundles of age-worn papers protruding out of them. Reaching as far as she could, she pulled a book the size of a tombstone out from the shadows.

  “This is what I wanted to show you,” she said, carefully descending the ladder.

  Setting the book on a worktable, Edith studied Edmund’s expression as he inspected the cover.

  It was old, even by Edmund’s standards. Its leather binding was worn completely through in places. The thick pages crackled as he opened to the middle of the tome.

  On the left-hand page, there were notes written in High Ruduel, one of the ancient languages that scholars once used when humans first made the voyage to the continent. It was an arduous tongue, especially in its earliest derivations, but Edmund knew it fluently. He skimmed through the many records and sketches, fascinated.

  “This part seems to be a paleographer’s translation tablet,” he said. “Whomever it belonged to was attempting to decipher—” He beheld the right-hand page.

  Those runes . . .

  “You’ve seen these symbols before,” Edith said.

  They’re the same from that book in the troll’s cave. I wish I could have rescued it. I wonder what it said.

  “What? Yes . . . yes, I have. Briefly.”

  Edmund turned a page, examining the runes painstakingly printed on the right side of the book.

  “The Royal Library is said to have an entire room full of manuscripts like this, but nobody can read them,” Edith said as Edmund scrutinized the pages.

  Really? Nobody? This is fascinating!

  He turned up the lamp’s wick. Black smoke spiraled up into the darkness above them.

  “So when a seller approached master Horic with this text,” Edith went on, “he purchased it with his own money. He never catalogued it for fear somebody might wish to check it out.”

  Edmund turned another page.

  “I bet he paid a fortune for it,” Edmund said, marveling at the quality of the sketches.

  “He did. He spent nearly his entire lifesavings.”

  It’s probably worth every penny. Shame nobody came to Rood trying to sell something like this to me.

  “Every few days or so he takes it down and tries to decipher the characters. He’s been trying for decades, but he can’t make heads or tails of what they say. As I said, nobody can.”

  Edmund examined the book’s binding. It seemed to be made of some strange silver thread.

  What does this have to do with anything? Yes, it’s remarkable. But why is she showing it to me?

  Edmund looked up at her, perplexed. “Why—?”

  “Because I thought you might like to see these.”

  Carefully, she turned past several hundred pages, past page after page of topographical charts, drawings of land features, and other sketches. As she turned, illustrations began depicting mountains, some crude thumbnail sketches, others detailed diagrams of unknown regions that unfolded into large pages several times bigger than the actual tome. She stopped when she came to a series of simple maps, faded arrows and notations drawn throughout the margins.

  “I believe this,” she said, pointing to a dark line angling off to the left, “is the River Laudrum.”

  As he studied the precision of the contour lines and the block-like letters of the ancient print in the margins, Edmu
nd nodded in agreement.

  His heart jolted.

  The River Laudrum!

  That might have been the river I saw when Crazy Bastard was running away! If we followed it north, it would lead the knights right to—

  Scanning the upper right-hand portion of the map, he found a tiny cartographer’s icon for a tower. A faded line connected it with a notation off to the side.

  Page 3811.

  His heart surging, he searched for page 3811, his trembling fingertips making it difficult for him to turn the pages.

  “Be careful,” Edith said. “You’ll tear . . . ”

  He found page 3811.

  A wave of cold washed over his clammy skin.

  “Are you okay?” Edith asked.

  Edmund pointed at the book, his throat feeling as if it were being squeezed closed. He fought for breath.

  There, on page 3811, was a meticulous pencil and ink drawing of the Tower of the Undead King.

  “Wh-wh-where . . . where did you get this?” He examined the drawing closer.

  There was no doubt that it depicted the Undead King’s tower. It was so clear, so precise, that he could make out the very window from which he had watched Crazy Bastard scamper down into the valley below. It was as if he could see himself in the picture, gazing out longingly with the telescope. Even the trees in the foreground appeared to be identical to what he remembered.

  “As I said,” Edith said, “Horic bought it years ago, long before I came to work here. Long before I was born, I’m sure. Would you like some water?”

  Edmund shook his head as he read the annotations written alongside the image of the Undead King’s tower.

  It was abandoned back when this was made . . . whenever that was.

  Turning to a page number printed in the margin by the picture of the tower, he clutched at Edith’s arm like a stumbling blind man.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  It’s the entire layout of the tower! Every . . . single . . . floor.

  With this information, we could rout out every goblin from every hiding spot in the entire tower. Now the King will most certainly be willing to send his knights!

  The goblins won’t have a chance!

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Edith asked again.

  Edmund nodded. “Y-y-yes, yes I am. Wonderful, in fact. Thank you.”

  There were more page numbers, more illustrations detailing every foothill, every stream, every mountain peak in the region. There were even indications where caves were as well as crude schematics of entire cavern systems—where they could be accessed and where they became impassible. One page even had a lifelike drawing of the three portcullises through which he and Pond had escaped.

  Edmund read aloud the notations under the picture. “ . . . unable to open . . . extraordinary alloy . . . unexplored ruins on other side . . . skeletons of unknown origins . . . ”

  “How old is this book?” he asked Edith. “Best guess.”

  Edith’s scrawny shoulders lifted. “A thousand years? But Horic believes that it is a copy of a much older text. If you notice, the handwriting is all different, as if it was copied by a series of scribes and bound. It’s far too precise to have been made in the field.”

  “I need to study this,” Edmund said. “Can I—?”

  Thorax leapt to her feet.

  The echoes of a door closing rolled through the darkness toward them.

  Edith went white.

  “We have to put this back,” she said, closing the tome quickly.

  “But I need it,” Edmund protested.

  Edith scrambled up the ladder, slid the book back into the shadows, and then repositioned the crates in front of it.

  “Please, I need—” Edmund said as Edith grabbed his hand.

  “Come on,” she said, leading him deeper into the storage room. “If he finds us, he’ll . . . ”

  She pulled him through another door, closed it softly, and urged Edmund and Thorax behind several dusty chests stacked on top of each other. She blew out the lamp’s flame and waved away the black smoke.

  “I really need—” Edmund began in a harsh whisper.

  Edith’s nails dug into his forearm. “Please be quiet!”

  A scarlet glow appeared underneath the door. There were slow, halting steps, then a shuffling movement, as if crates were being repositioned.

  An eternity passed. Edith clung to Edmund’s arm, her sharp breaths rasping in the darkness. Then there were slow steps walking away, the red light retreating with the echoes.

  When they emerged from their hiding spot, the tome was gone.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The next day, Edmund, Thorax, and Toby stepped out from a fashionable clothier shop in the upper levels of the city, their arms laden with packages wrapped neatly in paper. Edmund was eight gold pieces poorer. But his new boots and clothes were worth the expense. They were more elegant than anything he had ever worn. In them, he actually felt like a lord.

  “Are you sure they said this afternoon?” Edmund asked Toby again.

  “Yes!” the boy said, annoyed. “I even double-checked. Your audience with the King is at four bells. ‘Not a second later,’ the messenger said.”

  Moments before, the bells in the Grand Tower rang out two o’clock.

  Thank the Gods! If I had to sit around here any longer, I would’ve gone crazy!

  They stood on the sidewalk outside the clothier’s shop. Edmund felt his hairless chin.

  I should shave.

  You shaved this morning.

  It wouldn’t hurt to shave again. And maybe bathe again. I have a couple hours before I have to be there.

  You better not be late! This is the most important day of your life.

  “Let’s go back to the bathhouse,” Edmund said to Toby. “I want to freshen up and get ready.”

  He started walking.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to be a lord!” Toby said, loud enough for all to hear.

  I just hope the King will listen to me.

  He will. What King could pass up killing twenty thousand goblins?

  Somebody seized Edmund’s right upper arm from behind and spun him around, packages flying out of his hands and scattering across the street.

  “What the—” he cried out.

  “What’s your name?” a tall bearded man demanded, his sword drawn and pointed at Edmund’s stomach.

  “I-I-I . . . I beg your pardon?” Edmund said, angrily. Then he noted the pendant that the man wore on his grey cloak. It had a gold tower surrounded by red rays of the setting sun—the official symbol of Eryn Mas. “M-m-may I help you, sir?”

  The bearded man’s expression eased, as if he found exactly what he thought he’d find. He observed Thorax, squatting next to Edmund, leaving a smelly pile of excrement on the cobblestones.

  “I’ll clean it up,” Edmund said, trying to pull free from the man’s grasp. “Honest!”

  The man’s gaze shifted to the scimitar dangling from Edmund’s belt. Grinning, he lifted the point of his sword to Edmund’s neck and snatched the scimitar from its scabbard.

  “Hey!” Edmund shouted. “That’s mine. Give it back. What the hell are you doing?”

  “Come with me,” the man said, pushing Edmund up the street in front of him. “You’re under arrest.”

  “Under arrest? For what?”

  It’s those diamonds you gave to that merchant! Idiot! I told you they were going to get you in trouble!

  People stopped, staring at them.

  Thorax growled as she hobbled after Edmund.

  “What’s this all about?” Toby asked. “You don’t know who you are talking to. He’s going to be a lord!”

  “I’m b-b-being arrested?” Edmund asked. “Why?”

  The man pushed Edmund in front of him, sword to his back. “You’re under arrest for murder.”

  Shock rustled through the crowd.

  Murder?

  “You’ve got the wrong m-m-man!” Edmund said as
he was pushed farther up the street.

  What’s this all about?

  It’s a mistake. Just go with him and clear everything up.

  “Toby,” Edmund called, pointing to the packages that had fallen to the ground. “Grab those.”

  The man with the sword shoved Edmund another few steps, the muttering crowd around them growing.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t have time for this,” Edmund shouted at his captor. “I have a m-m-meeting with the King!”

  “Sure you do,” the man replied with a laugh.

  “He does!” Toby said, running up with the packages in his arms. “Really!”

  “He’ll be swinging from the gallows by sundown if the witnesses identify you.”

  “W-w-witnesses?” Edmund sputtered. “This, this is all a, a, a mistake! Honest. I have an audience with the King in just a couple hours!”

  “Oh, I have the right man all right.” He kicked the growling Thorax out of his way. “How many stuttering, one-eyed men, with a black and white dog and a goblin scimitar are there in Eryn Mas?” He pushed Edmund further up the street. “You’re going to hang after what you did.”

  What’s this all about? What did I—?

  Then Edmund remembered the bandit at the bridge flying through the air, blood spewing from his mouth, his chest caved in by Blake’s rear hooves.

  But he was a thug! He would’ve killed me.

  If the other two men on the bridge are here to testify, they’ll say—

  The man shoved Edmund again.

  “Come on and move it. Or I’ll stick you with this.” He shook his sword.

  This can’t be happening. Not now!

  The man forced Edmund further up the street. At least forty people were gathered around them, murmuring.

  “Hang him!” somebody shouted.

  Hang him?

  No!

  There was a grumbling of agreement.

  I have to get out of here.

  Edmund looked around frantically. He saw Toby, clutching the packages, his mouth open in shock.

  “Toby,” Edmund shouted. “This is a mistake. Just take the packages to Blake. I’ll m-m-meet you there when I get this all cleared up. Okay?”

  Toby blinked at him, as if he wasn’t sure what to believe.