Flip broke off at the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps outside the library door.
“Memo,” said the creature. “A wonderful name. My name is Memo! I’ve got a name at last.”
Then he, too, became aware of the sounds from the corridor.
“Oh no, that’ll be my master. I was supposed to have finished this grimoire for him by now, and I’ve not nearly done so. Because I was interrupted.” He gave Flip a black and meaningful look, name or no name. “He’ll be mad at me and punish me. Again. I’ve only just started walking straight since the last time.”
“He will not punish you,” said Flip stoutly. “Not this time he won’t.”
Leaping onto the open page, Flip grabbed Memo’s tiny hand and dragged him toward the edge of the desk. He heard the sound of the doorknob being turned. They only had seconds to find a hiding place, but where?
As if in answer to his unspoken question, he saw the black rectangle of the half-open drawer beneath their feet.
“Jump,” he hissed to Memo.
Without waiting for a response, Flip jumped, still gripping Memo’s hand.
They landed in the drawer in a tangle of limbs with not a moment to spare as the door was thrown wide. It was a matter of sheer good fortune they weren’t anywhere near the crumpled candy wrapper and its grim contents.
“How do you do?” said the memorizer shakily, offering his paw to the empty air. “Very pleased to meet you, I’m sure. My name is Memo. Let me repeat that, in case you didn’t hear it properly the first time. I’ve got a name, and it’s Memo, and—”
“Shut up,” whispered Flip frantically. “Do you want him to hear you?”
“I was just trying out my new—”
Wheessshhhht!
Whoever it was who had come into the room had shut the door behind him. Flip could hear a screech and a kerchunk as the heavy ancient key was turned in the lock.
Standing up on his hind legs to peep over the edge of the drawer, he could see the back of the person doing the locking. It was a big, wide wizard dressed in a white robe. Something about the man’s stance reminded him of someone. As the wizard turned away from the door, Flip dropped back down, but not before he’d caught a glimpse of the man’s face.
“Deicher,” he mouthed to Memo. “Your master’s Deicher?”
Wide-eyed, the little memorizer nodded. “Yes. Do you know him?”
“I wish I didn’t.”
Very, very cautiously, Flip rose up again and peered out at the library.
Deicher seemed to have no interest in the desk. Instead, he was feeling along one of the bookshelves on the same wall as the door. After a moment, he gave a little grunt of satisfaction. He turned to survey the library, in one of those unnecessary nervous movements you make to check that a room you already know is empty, really is, and once more Flip dropped to his haunches.
“What’s going on?” said Memo.
Flip shook his head. Later.
There was a click, then a protracted scraping noise, like chalk being dragged along a blackboard.
Flip looked at his new friend, who was quivering. “What’s that? Any ideas?”
Memo shrugged. Search me.
They waited until the silence became more than Flip could bear. This time, when he stood up to look out of the drawer, Memo scrambled up his back to peek over his shoulder.
“He’s … he’s vanished!” said Flip, before it dawned on him that Deicher could have simply moved to the other side of the desk. He clapped a paw over his mouth.
“It’s okay,” Memo reassured him, his voice low. “He’s gone into the bookcase.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” said Flip sarcastically, looking sideways at the little memorizer. “You wouldn’t think it’d be a bit cramped in there, would you? What, with all those books and scrolls and things?”
Memo scrabbled up onto the drawer’s edge and turned to look Flip in the eye. “No, I’m not being stupid. There’s a button on one of the bookshelves and if you press, it the bookcase swings back from the wall and there’s a doorway you can go through. I’ve seen my master do it lots of times. Only I’ve never it done myself. I’d not dare, even if I were strong enough to press the button. My master said he’d squash me if ever he caught me trying anything like that.”
“Squash you?” Flip clambered over the front of the drawer onto the chair, then reached up to help Memo down beside him. It was the least he could do, he reckoned, to make up for having disbelieved the memorizer.
“Yes. You know, stomp me underfoot until I’m flat.” Memo landed on the chair seat with a little breathless puff.
Flip gulped. “Nice guy, that master of yours.”
Memo looked embarrassed, as if he didn’t want to be disloyal. “Oh, I don’t know. There are worse.” He quaked at his own daring as he added, “But not very many of them.”
Flip patted the little fellow on the shoulder, wishing he could think of some more effective way of comforting him. “Well, whatever the truth, it’s my suspicion that he’s up to no good now, and I’m going to find out what it is.”
He climbed easily and quickly down the carved chair leg, then waited until Memo joined him.
“How’re you going to do that?” said the memorizer once he’d got his breath back.
“We’re going into the bookcase.”
“You can’t do that.” Memo looked aghast.
“Watch me. You can come too.” Flip started heading for the shelves.
“No!” The memorizer grabbed at him, trying to stop him. “If you do that he’ll squash us both.”
“Or we’ll squash him,” said Flip determinedly, clenching his forepaws into fists.
“How?” said Memo.
“That’s, er, the second part of my plan. Let’s concentrate on the first part for now, shall we?”
“What’s the first part, then?”
“This.”
Pulling Memo along behind him, Flip scuttled across the library floor until the two of them were standing beneath the approximate place where Flip reckoned the wizard must have pushed the button. It would have been useful to have a more accurate estimate, but that couldn’t be helped. Memo, realizing the problem, told him it was the third shelf up that they should be looking at, and this narrowed the search area down a bit.
To Flip’s surprise, Memo was much more nimble at climbing up the backs of books than he himself was. Remembering Sagandran’s oaths when they’d been climbing the cliff a few days ago, he guessed it must be because the memorizer was so much lighter, and that his claws required far smaller crevices as pawholds. Regardless, Flip was already panting by the time he had climbed up the leatherbound spine of the book whose gilt letters informed him in Gothic script that it was called 101 Spells to Help YOU Kick Sand in Other Wizards’ Faces. Standing on the first shelf and realizing that there were still two more book spines to go, he wondered if he was going to make it. Why couldn’t these blasted wizards make their blasted grimoires a bit smaller? His next ascent revealed to him, with agonizing slowness, that he was using Potions, Lotions and other Concotions as his ladder. By the time he reached the “S” of “Concotions,” every joint was trembling. The third, and thankfully last, tome he had to climb was called simply Hell Fire but in typography of such tortuous embellishment that Flip knew the book had to have sold lots of copies. He wondered, with that tiny portion of his brain that wasn’t concentrating on stopping his tortured lungs exploding in his throat, where this Hell place was, anyway. He’d heard Sagandran mention it once or twice when he thought Sir Tombin wasn’t listening, and Perima mentioned it quite frequently without a care as to whether Sir Tombin was listening or not. So far as Flip could deduce, it was a distant land of which word had never reached Mishmash. Obviously not a very nice part of the world, from the tone of voice Sagandran and Perima used when they spoke of it. Just thinking about Hell, Flip observed, made them do things like stub a toe or drop a plate. The time Perima had told Sagandran to go there she clearly hadn’t b
een suggesting the destination was, well, very nice.
“Hurry up,” hissed Memo. “Don’t just slump there gasping. The button’s over here. I’ve found it.” The memorizer turned his attention to a space he’d opened up between a pair of books. “Hello, button,” he said. “My name’s Memo. What’s yours?”
Flip joined him.
The button was big and bulbous and opalescently gray. It seemed to glow with some internal light. All in all, it had a rather nasty mystic look to it.
“Here goes nothing,” said Flip, trying to make his voice sound devil-may-care. He pushed the button with his paw. Nothing happened, just as he’d predicted.
“Hm,” he said, “it’s a bit stiff, this button.”
“Perhaps if you sat on it?” suggested Memo.
Flip eyed him with distaste. “That’d be a bit undignified, wouldn’t it?”
“It might work.”
“True.”
In the end, the only way Flip could get the button to depress was by jumping up and down on it. There was finally that same click he’d heard from the drawer, and the section of bookcase they were standing on grated out from the wall.
“Hurry, before it closes again!” cried Memo, hopping agilely down the spines of a few books and running around the back of the bookcase.
Flip followed as swiftly as he could, teetering as he landed after each new jump. More than once, he was certain he was going to fall and injure himself. At last, more winded than ever, he was standing beside Memo as the two of them looked at the room that had been opened to their view.
“Come on,” said Flip. “I don’t want to be standing here when that bookcase decides it’s time to close.”
The room they found themselves in was dark and smelly and dusty. Flip felt a tickle begin in his nostrils, and fought the urge to sneeze. Behind them, the bookcase ponderously swung closed again, making the room even darker.
“Um, Flip,” said Memo.
“Yes, Memo?”
“I know you don’t want to talk about the second part of your plan yet, but—”
“Yes, Memo?”
“Is maybe the third part of it some way of getting back out of here?”
Flip considered this for a moment. “I think,” he said, “it would be unwise of us to discuss the third part of the plan until we’ve talked through the second.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, it’d be illogical, three coming after two and all that.”
“Yes. Okay. That’s all right, then. Forget I asked.”
“To put it another way—”
“There’s honestly no need to, Flip.”
“You sure?”
“Quite.”
“Well, I’m glad we’ve got that settled. Nothing like a good debate to clear the air and get things fixed in our minds.”
Flip stood in a little cloud of satisfaction at a job well done.
“Um, Flip,” said Memo again, dissipating his cloud.
“Yes?”
“Don’t you think we should find out where my master went? Follow him, you know?”
“I was just getting to that bit.”
Flip’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the gloom, and he could see that what they were in was not so much a room as a passage. Its walls and ceiling were made of unadorned cobwebs, and a thick carpet of the same material covered the floor. It was easy to see the dragging footmarks left behind by Deicher as the wizard made his way to the passage’s far end.
“That way,” said Flip, pointing.
“I know that” said Memo, then bit back further comment.
“Right. What are we waiting for?”
The footprints led them to the top of a spiral stone staircase. Peering down it, Flip could see there was a dim light source somewhere far below.
Once again, Memo proved much more able as they picked their way down the crumbling stone steps. After a while, Flip began to wish the little memorizer would make some disparaging remark about his clumsiness so that Flip would have a good excuse to punch him out, but Memo wisely kept his silence.
The stairs seemed to go on forever. The air on Flip’s face seemed definitely cooler than it had been higher up, and the sides of the stairwell changed from stone to packed, dried mud. We must be underground by now, he thought. Down where the bodies are buried. Oh, I wish I’d not thought of that.
Just when he’d decided the descent would never end, the stairs stopped in front of a solid stone wall. Like the button, the wall glowed as if it were lit from within.
“Well, so much for nothing,” he puffed in disgust. He looked back up the stairway. From here, the spiral seemed to get smaller and smaller until it vanished into a black dot. Flip wasn’t looking forward to climbing all the way back up again. He doubted that he could.
“Look,” said Memo, distracting him from his dismal thoughts.
He followed the direction of the memorizer’s upraised paw.
“Ah,” said Flip glacially. “Someone’s drawn a bucket and spade on the wall. How interesting.”
“That’s not a bucket and spade.” The memorizer gave another of his infuriating don’t-you-know-anything? shrugs. “That’s a rune.”
“A rune?”
“A magical symbol.”
“I know. I was just—”
“You’ve already tested me once, remember?”
“So I did.”
“What this rune means,” said Memo importantly, “is that this is a magical door. Only a wizard who knows the opening spell can enter.”
Again, Flip looked back up the stairs. That small black dot in the distance didn’t look any closer now than it did last time, but there was no point in hanging around waiting for the door to open. When that happened it would be because Deicher was coming back out through it, and there was nowhere for them to hide. The wizard would see them and he’d squash them for sure.
With a sad sigh of resignation, Flip started for the bottom step.
“Wait,” called Memo.
Flip looked back over his shoulder at the memorizer, who was gleaming with triumph.
Memo chuckled. “What do you think my job is?”
“You’re a memo. Oh, I see.”
“I know every spell my master does. Four more, in fact, because I’ve not yet told him about the new ones I found in that last book. They’re all safely locked up in here.” Memo tapped the top of his head with a clenched paw.
“Ouch,” he added.
“But you’re not a wizard,” Flip objected. “I thought only wizards could do spells.”
“Okay, I’m not a wizard, but this is an enchanted rune. That means that anyone who knows the correct word can make the door open,” replied Memo portentously, proudly drawing himself up to his full height.
Flip looked at him skeptically.
“I’ve studied more rune books than probably anyone, I know hundreds of runes. This particular rune is very interesting because—”
Flip held up a paw. “Well, how about using your profound knowledge to open that door a little bit, then?”
Memo drew in a breath, puffing his chest out.
“Just a little bit,” stressed Flip. “I only want to be able to see through the crack.”
The memorizer looked at him in disappointment, but nodded. Sending the door crashing back against the wall would be impressive, but it would do nothing but draw attention to them. Memo might know more about runes than Deicher, but there probably wasn’t one anywhere in the countless grimoires he’d digested that dealt specifically with stopping yourself from being stomped flat by a descending boot.
“Okay,” he said weakly.
He stared at the door. “Streborgling mancianus!” he whispered, moving his paws through the air in the complex pattern of someone struggling with a faulty can opener.
“What?” said Flip, but even as he said the word, the wall swiveled silently by a few degrees, just enough that they could see flickering light through the opening.
“Wow,” said Mem
o. “It actually worked.”
“Sh,” warned Flip, tiptoeing forward.
The gap was just big enough for him to be able to squeeze through it. Memo followed him easily. By the light of a pair of guttering candles, they could see Deicher seated at a rickety wooden table, his forehead resting in his palms as he concentrated on a large, dark, polished stone in front of him. As they watched, the stone began to glow a deep, smoldering red. Flip found that the was holding his breath. The stone’s radiance grew until the walls of the little cell were the color of blood.
“Deicher,” said a susurrating voice that seemed to speak from the air. It was so quiet that Flip couldn’t be certain he’d actually heard it at all, and yet the word cut right through to his very core.
“What do you have for me, Deicher?”
The wizard lowered his head yet farther. “I am sorry to have disturbed you, Master, but I wished to tell you that all is going according to plan.” There was a slight quaver in Deicher’s voice. Clearly, even he was terrified by the person he was talking to. “That accursed brat of a boy should be in your hands by the end of the morrow.”
“I sincerely hope he is, my apprentice,” said the voice. It was as thin and piercing as the edge of a dagger.
“I will see to it, Master, that the others are … disposed of,” continued Deicher. “It should be easy. That old fool Fariam is blind to what is happening right in front of his eyes. He is making it almost too easy for me.”
“You have done well, Deicher. See that you continue to do so. By the end of the morrow. Do not fail me in this.”
“Indeed, Master.”
The glow of the stone began to ebb, but before it was completely gone, Flip noticed something that had escaped him before.
In the council chamber of the Elemental Orders, who knew how far above where he was hiding now, Deicher’s robe had looked white. Here in the light that was the color of blood, he could see that, in reality, the robe wasn’t white at all. That its whiteness was just an illusion, a glamour.
In reality, it was black.
As black as Deicher’s treacherous heart.
“Time to rise.”
Oh no it isn’t, thought Sagandran, trying to bury his head deeper in the pillow. Why was every morning in Sagaria like this?
Sagaria Page 47