The Destruction of the Books

by Mel Odom

  Night hung over the Blood-Soaked Sea. Clouds obscured the stars and fog rode the waves.

  Floating there and taking in deep draughts of air, Juhg knew he had no idea where he was. Or how far it was to shore. Or even in what direction to swim.

  Gazing to his left, he saw the goblinkin ship pressing forward under full sails. Evidently she had been going full tilt to get away from Greydawn Moors and the monsters that lived in the Blood-Soaked Sea.

  As Juhg watched, lanterns ran up and down the deck. Evidently Aldhran had set his goblins to searching for Juhg, not realizing that the ship’s speed would take it away from him. There was no possibility that the ship would be able to turn around any time soon and come back, or even find the place where Juhg had slipped through the hull.

  He hoped with all his might that the Grandmagister was right and that Aldhran had not killed him. But Juhg knew the Grandmagister was right about one thing: If they’d both stayed on the goblinkin ship, one of them would have been killed.

  In minutes, the ship was gone, disappeared over a rolling wave and into a fogbank.

  Juhg treaded water, wondering if the Grandmagister had truly saved him or banished him to a long, lingering death in the middle of the ocean.

  Cold leeched into his bones. Resolutely, knowing that if he at least swam in the direction the goblinkin ship had apparently come from that he would be getting closer to Greydawn Moors, he started swimming and tried desperately not to think of the enormity of the task before him.

  His thoughts careened inside his head. The Book of Time. Lord Kharrion’s actual designs. Imarish. All those things and more bounced like puzzle pieces in his mind and he tried to make sense of them as he swam.

  Before he knew it, a ship crested a rolling wave of water and nearly ran over him. The vessel looked hard and bleak against the darkness of the sea and the moonless night. He couldn’t help thinking that any ship out on a night like this, especially in the Blood-Soaked Sea, couldn’t be out for any good purposes.

  “Help!” Juhg yelled up. “Help!” He choked on a mouthful of seawater and worried that he might get caught in the ship’s undertow and drown. He was more used to bad luck than good.

  “Avast there!” a man’s deep voice roared. “There’s someone down there!”

  Movement rolled along the ship as deck hands raced along the hurtling length of the vessel. She was passing Juhg by quickly, and he grew afraid that the same problems that had prevented the goblinkin ship from pursuing him would mark him for doom if this mysterious ship missed him now.

  Just as the ship passed him, a fishing net flew from the stern. It splayed like a spider’s web, barely visible in the darkness, then fell over Juhg and gathered him in tight, taking him into the brine.

  For a moment, he was again afraid he would drown, then he was pulled clear of the water and hauled to the deck. Sailors gathered around him in the darkness as he fought free of the net.

  “Give ’im a hand, lads,” a coarse, deep voice said. “Give ’im a hand.”

  In short order, Juhg was freed from the net and stood on his own two feet for inspection by lantern light. Someone brought him a blanket.

  The crew was dwarven, not unheard of in the Blood-Soaked Sea, but not common either.

  A broad dwarf taller than most of his kind faced Juhg. The dwarf’s broad shoulders made him seem almost as wide across as he was tall. A long, fierce beard hung down to his belly, and yellowed bits of bone cut into fish shapes held the beard in braids. Gold hoops dangled in his ears.

  “Well, now,” the dwarf said. “Ye’re the strangest fish we’ve taken up outta these waters in a long time.”

  The crew laughed.

  “Thank you,” Juhg said, teeth chattering. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  “Ain’t like I ain’t done it afore,” the dwarf said.

  Recognizing the voice then, knowing he hadn’t before only because he’d been so overcome and distracted with everything that was going on, Juhg peered up at the big dwarf. “Hallekk?”

  “Aye, Juhg.” Stepping into the lantern light so that he could be seen more clearly, the dwarven pirate frowned. “Don’t go an’ be tellin’ me ye’ve already forgotten me.”

  “Never,” Juhg said, feeling joyful. Hallekk was first mate on One-Eyed Peggie, the ship that had shanghaied the Grandmagister all those years ago. Juhg had met the ship’s crew while traveling with the Grandmagister.

  Hallekk pulled at his beard. “I know it’s been a lot of years, but I ain’t one most people forget.”

  “I didn’t forget,” Juhg said. “I just didn’t expect you to be here.”

  Hallekk grinned. “Oh, now, we didn’t just happen along.”

  Understanding dawned in Juhg. “You were following the Grandmagister.”

  “Aye,” Hallekk agreed. “That we was.”

  “But how?” But even as he asked the question, Juhg knew. “Through the eyeball of the monster.”

  Hallekk nodded again.

  Part of One-Eyed Peggie’s history included the tale of One-Eyed Peggie, the ship’s builder and first captain. One-Eyed Peggie had run afoul of a sea creature in the Blood-Soaked Sea that had taken one of her legs. For revenge, she’d hunted the sea monster and taken one of its eyes, though she hadn’t been able to claim its life.

  The eyeball was kept in a jug under the bed in the captain’s quarters. Every sailor who was made a member of the pirate crew had to swear an oath of fealty on the jug containing the eyeball.

  Juhg had never become a pirate, despite traveling with them while accompanying the Grandmagister on occasion, but he had seen the eyeball. The orb still lived within the jar, and through it the ship’s captain could find any of his men when they were separated from the ship. The bad thing was that the sea monster could also see One-Eyed Peggie through its missing eyeball and sometimes came to attack the ship.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” Juhg said. “They’ve got the Grandmagister. They’re going to kill him.”

  Hallekk looked troubled. “Well, now, that ain’t what we’re supposed to do.”

  “What?” Juhg doubted he’d heard the dwarf correctly.

  “Ol’ Wick, now he’s up an’ got hisself a plan,” Hallekk said. “He’s goin’ along with them people what’s up an’ catched him to figure out the lay of the land, so to speak. He knows some’at of the story of The Book of Time, but he don’t know it all. That’s why he up an’ let himself be catched as he was.”

  “He let himself be caught?” Juhg asked. And just behind that was the realization that the Grandmagister had told Hallekk about the book. “The Grandmagister told you about The Book of Time?”

  Was there anyone the Grandmagister hadn’t told?

  “Aye.” Hallekk grinned. “Why, Ol’ Wick is a slippery one, he is. I taught him everything he knows.” He shrugged and looked sour. “Well, me an’ Cobner, I guess it was, truly.”

  Juhg felt like he was going to fall over.

  “An’ ye best not be a-frettin’ over Wick,” Hallekk advised. “He’s got himself a potion Craugh whipped up that will see him clear of that ship when he sees fit to be. The sea monster’s eye will let us see that when it happens. Then we’ll pick him up.”

  “How many potions does he have?” Juhg asked.

  “One,” a new voice answered.

  Turning, recognizing the voice, Juhg saw Craugh standing on the stern castle. The wind billowed the wizard’s cloak.

  “You were dead,” Juhg said hoarsely. “I saw you shot with an arrow. I saw you fall.”

  The wizard shook his head and looked amused. “You saw what I wanted people to see. Wizards are hard to kill. When we want to be.”

  Juhg focused on the problems at hand. There were so many. “How many potions?” he asked again.

  “One,” Craugh said. “They are very hard to make. Very time-consuming. And if it hadn’t been for Wick, I wouldn’t have bothered at all.”

  The despair over what had happened hit Juhg like a punch. “Yo
u should have made more than one.”

  Craugh frowned. “The first one was bother enough. Having to divide the potion into two components that weren’t magical apart but were together, have you any idea of how hard that is? Near impossible, I tell you. And I—” Then understanding widened his eyes. “Wick gave you his potion. That’s how you escaped.”

  “Yes.” Juhg felt terrible.

  “Then he is trapped aboard that ship with them goblinkin,” Hallekk said. All the humor had drained from his voice. “We’ve got to—”

  “Think,” Craugh interrupted. “We’ve got to think. If we try to take Wick back by force, they may well kill him out of hand.” He stroked his beard. “No, to accomplish this, we’ll need to be devious and deceitful.”

  Hallekk nodded. “That sounds like somethin’ more along your callin’.”

  “I don’t know whether to be insulted or not,” Craugh said.

  The dwarves nearest Hallekk quickly moved away. A wizard’s wrath generally came quickly and unmindful of whom was around.

  “That there,” Hallekk said quickly, his left eye ticking nervously, “now that there, why, ’twas a compliment, ’twas. An honest an’… an’ complimentary compliment.”

  Juhg looked at Craugh. “The situation is worse than that. Aldhran knows The Book of Time is in Imarish.”

  “The canal city? I didn’t know it was there.”

  “The Grandmagister told me I needed to go there as soon as I could,” Juhg said. “Right before he told me to leave.” He paused. “They’ll try to get there as well, as soon as they put into port.”

  “Well, then, apprentice, it appears that you’re going to have to run your master’s race for him,” Craugh declared. “At least for a time.” He turned his face toward the ship’s prow, and Juhg had no doubt that the wizard was thinking of the Grandmagister.

  As Juhg stood there in the wind whipping across One-Eyed Peggie’s deck, shivering under the blanket in his soaked clothes, he felt the doubt and fear grow in him. He looked back at Craugh.

  “I can’t do it,” Juhg said.

  The wizard turned his steely eyes on him.

  “I’ll try,” Juhg said, wanting to make that clear, “but I’m not as good as the Grandmagister is. I don’t know everything he does.” He swallowed hard. “I’m afraid, Craugh. I’m afraid that I’m going to make a mistake or not know something I should, and that I’m going to get him killed.”

  The wizard descended the steps and walked to Juhg. He threw an arm around his shoulders.

  “Now, you listen to me, apprentice,” Craugh said in a hoarse voice. “Wick is my friend. I’ve got precious few of those in this world. He brought me into this and I believed in him. Now, he chose to set you free instead of himself, even though everything in the world appears to be at stake.”

  Juhg blinked back tears.

  “I’m not going to believe that my friend made a mistake,” Craugh said gruffly, “or that he threw away his life for no reason. I choose to believe that he knew what he was doing and acted in all our best interests. Do you understand?”

  Juhg nodded. “If I hadn’t been up on that Tower—”

  “But you were,” Craugh said. “And maybe that was meant to be.”

  “I was the one who brought the book to the Vault of All Known Knowledge and got all the books destroyed.”

  “And forced this confrontation,” Craugh agreed. “We were not ready for them, but hopefully they weren’t ready for us either. We will see.” He paused. “Now, compose yourself, apprentice. There is much we need to do and precious little time remaining to us to get it done.”

  Juhg nodded.

  “You’re not alone in this, apprentice,” Craugh said. “We will help you.”

  But with everything facing them, as unprepared as he was, Juhg wished that he were still aboard the goblinkin ship and that the Grandmagister was still free. All of them, he felt certain, would have a better chance if that were so.

  A preview of

  LORD OF THE LIBRARIES

  BY MEL ODOM

  Available July 2005

  1

  “They’re Our Monsters!”

  One-Eyed Peggie lurched hard over to starboard and a horrendous scraping noise drawn out like a banshee’s wail filled the ship’s waist from prow to stern.

  Only quick reflexes, a determination not to mar pages, and years of experience aboard a sailing vessel allowed Juhg to keep the freshly dipped quill from the paper before he could render a mistaken stroke. His other hand slapped at the papers, pinning them in place and managing to hang on to the inkwell.

  Then the fear set in as he, like all the dwarves gathered in the galley, waited expectantly for the sound to be repeated. Or for someone to scream that the ship’s hull had been ruptured and she was sinking.

  He sat alone at a table in the pirate ship’s galley working on the journal. Lanterns filled the area with golden light. He was the only dweller among the group seated at the tables. Brown breeches and a maroon shirt, his clothing marked him as different from the others as much as his smaller stature. His fair hair and light-complexioned skin spoke of a life spent mostly indoors with some time outside. He was also, despite a month of travel aboard the vessel, cleaner than most of the crew.

  One-Eyed Peggie was a pirate ship, one of those given the duty of patrolling the Blood-Soaked Sea so that no ships from the mainland sailed out to discover Greydawn Moors and the Vault of All Known Knowledge hidden there. Juhg had sailed aboard her before, but never with such grim purpose as he did now.

  “That weren’t just me, were it?” a dwarven pirate asked in the tense silence that followed the noise. One-Eyed Peggie still rocked as she leveled out again. “I mean, I’ve had a little grog to drink, but I didn’t think I just imagined that kind of cauterwaulin’—”

  “We’ve run aground,” another dwarven pirate cried out in a trembling voice. “We’ve been skirtin’ too near the coast. I knew this was gonna happen. There’s too much broken rock and reefs there. The cap’n knew that, too. He knew he orter be more careful.”

  “I didn’t think that were just me,” the first one replied. He finished his cup of grog and glanced anxiously around.

  “Stow that bilge,” another pirate growled. His name was Starrit and he’d been with One-Eyed Peggie under the old captain as well. Most of his life had been spent tending the pirate ship. “Cap’n Hallekk knows whereat he’s a doin’. I’ll not suffer ye to be a-talkin’ behind his back.”

  The accuser glared at the other pirate, but said nothing more.

  Captain Hallekk, Juhg knew, had the respect of his crew.

  The other pirates got up from their meals, automatically picking up their plates and cups so they wouldn’t slide around unattended if the ship should hit again. Gradually, the ship righted herself, pulled back into position by the ballast she carried.

  Juhg allowed himself a deep breath as he waited, as every pirate in the galley did, for the fear-filled cry that One-Eyed Peggie had been holed. He’d spent enough time aboard ships while journeying with Grandmagister Lamplighter on errands for the Vault of All Known Knowledge that he felt certain he’d know if the vessel had been damaged and was now taking on water. In years past, he’d gone down in both ships and boats while adventuring with the Grandmagister.

  I know this ship, Juhg told himself nervously. I’ve sailed on her many times. If she weren’t all right, I’d know.

  In fact, the Grandmagister had gotten shanghaied aboard One-Eyed Peggie all those years ago and set upon the path that had led him to his destiny. Edgewick Lamplighter had learned to wash dishes and peel potatoes in this very galley, something only cooks did at the Vault of All Known Knowledge.

  Juhg had seen dozens of drawings and sketches of the galley in the books that the Grandmagister had written that detailed his adventures with the pirates then and later. A lot of time at sea the galley had been a place where councils of war met, where wounds were tended, and where the pirates came for safe harbor d
uring fierce storms or lulls in hot seas.

  “Wasn’t a sandbar or a reef,” another pirate said. “Woulda hit again if’n it was.”

  “Unless we just got lucky,” said a third.

  Without warning, One-Eyed Peggie lurched again, turning even harder to port than she had to starboard. All of the dwarves who had been standing ended up on the floor, squalling and hollering.

  “Topside!” a raucous voice screeched from the companionway leading to the deck. “Topside! Topside, ye scurvy dogs! Cap’n’s orders! Squawk!”

  In the next instant, one of the ugliest and most malignant birds Juhg had ever seen flapped into the kitchen. The bird was a crimson horned rhowdor, intelligent as any being, some said. Of course, Critter, the bird, maintained that he was more intelligent than most.

  The bird’s harsh hatchet face, bearing its cruelly curved beak, looked merciless. The features matched their owner’s disposition perfectly. Bright pink horns, one of them broken off midway, thrust up four inches, each of them curled. He only had one bright emerald eye. The other was covered with a fierce black leather eyepatch that featured a skull made up of shiny brass studs. A gold earring dangled from one feathered eartuft.

  With a graceful flap of wings, Critter landed on the table where Juhg worked. That was impressive considering that One-Eyed Peggie still lurched back and forth. The effort was doubly impressive because the rhowdor had only one leg. The other was a wooden fork carefully whittled to size and fitted to his leg stump.

  Whatever we hit, Juhg thought as he held on to the table, or whatever hit us, was huge. The pirate vessel was large and wide-bodied to handle a lot of cargo and men.

  “Avast there, ye miserable flea-biters!” Critter screamed, flapping his wings menacingly and limping on the fork as he walked across the table. “Get yer fannies to movin’, ye goldbrickers! Cap’n’s orders! Peggie’s takin’ on water, she is, an’ I’ll have everyone of ye topside fer orders or I’ll keelhauls ye meself!”