by Sasha White
Right here in this very building. By the man he now needed to outthink.
He and Elin sat in side-by-side chairs in the main library. A few greasy candles sputtered around them, bathing them in warm but uneven light less likely to be seen from the corridor than the room’s oil lanterns. They’d waited until the last of the scriptorium’s scholars had gone to bed, and while there was no guarantee that someone might not suffer a bout of sleeplessness, or be struck by a late-night inspiration and return, for the moment they were alone.
“Where would he hide something so precious?” Elin asked, leaning toward him.
“I . . . I have no idea,” Kord admitted. “Remember, it’s been years since I’ve seen him.”
“True. But some things don’t change. As long as I’ve known him, Murdis has been a constant sort. When he talks about you—”
“You said that before. I’m still not sure I believe you.”
“Start believing. He told me that besides Kenaris, one of his former students knew him better than anyone. It took me a while, but eventually I figured out that he meant you. And now here you are, in the flesh. It’s almost as if you were . . .”
In that instant, he caught her aroma and a dream came flooding back into his mind, one he’d forgotten. He had been Panther, chasing a scent he could not name. But now he could—that smell belonged to Pantheress. To Elin. “As if what?” he asked, his voice catching in his throat.
Elin turned her head away, drew back from him. “Nothing. Never mind.”
Kord wanted to press her, but he recognized that doing so might just drive her away. There was something about her, something he could not define any more than he could ignore, that made him not want to risk that.
He was about to say something else, anything, to shift the subject in a more constructive direction, when three sharp claps sounded, echoing through the silent structure.
“He wants me,” Elin said.
“For what?”
“How do I know? He’s sick—far sicker than he lets on. He has his servants, but he prefers for me to attend him.”
“Go to him, then.”
She pushed herself up out of the chair. Was it reluctance he saw in her eyes, in the deliberate, dilatory pace of her motions, or was he only trying to convince himself of that? Either way, she had barely taken three steps when Kord heard the dry rasp of Murdis’s bare feet coming toward them with his characteristic shuffling. “Elinore?” the old man said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“Coming, my dear.”
Murdis chuckled, then coughed. “Stay,” he said. “And save your endearments. I’m afraid I am past the point—” He coughed again, this time longer and harder. When he finished, he stepped into the library “—past the point where they matter.” The old man’s gaze took in the room, empty but for Elin, halfway to the door, and Kord sitting in one of a pair of chairs pulled close together, and the candles that cast their glow on those chairs. “Good, you’re here too.”
“What is it, darling?” Elin asked, taking another step toward him.
Murdis froze her in place with a glare. “I said to save it. We need to talk.”
“I can go,” Kord offered.
“No! We need to talk. You and I, Kordell.”
Elin’s head swiveled between the two men. Kord rose from his chair, at a speed at least as desultory as hers had been. “Can she—?”
“Go to your chambers, Elinore,” Murdis ordered. “She’s quite comfortable there,” he said to Kord. “Right next to mine. She has everything she needs.”
“Yes, milord,” Elin said. If Murdis caught the edge in her voice, or her choice of words, he didn’t let on.
When she was gone, Murdis turned his attention to Kord. “I need it,” he said.
“Need what?”
“You know. Don’t toy with me, boy. I haven’t time.”
“You didn’t used to be so impatient.”
“I didn’t used to be almost dead.”
When Kord didn’t respond, Murdis said it again. “I need it.”
“Haven’t you taken enough?”
“You know I haven’t, Kord. I will die, if I don’t get it. With it, I could save myself. And more.”
“And the cost doesn’t matter to you. It killed Kenaris, didn’t it?”
Murdis glanced away. It was the closest thing to shame Kord had ever seen him exhibit. “She volunteered. Neither of us knew what the price would be. And she had so many shards, more than we could have known. With you, I’m only asking for one.”
“The last one. For all you know, that’ll kill me.”
“I know it’ll be easier given than taken. Easier on you.”
“You know? Truly? Or you believe?”
“Kord, you learned much, when you were here. But you didn’t learn everything. Don’t pretend that you did.”
“I never do. But the one lesson I learned best is not to trust you. If you want the damned shard, you’ll have to take it. If you can.”
A wheezing cough escaped Murdis’s lips, leaving behind a wet streak. He wiped it with the back of his hand, where the scabbed, mottled skin looked as thin as old paper. “Oh, I can—” he started. Another cough interrupted him, this one coming from deeper within. Others followed, a series of them, each stronger than the last, exploding from his core. He doubled over, and when he looked up there was panic in his eyes and blood hanging in red streamers from his nose and mouth.
“Elin!” Kord cried. “Elin, come quick!”
Murdis coughed again and his legs gave out. He dropped in a single motion, too fast for Kord to catch him. His legs spasmed and his hands fluttered and the coughs continued, each one arching his back and causing his head to slam against the stone floor.
“Elin, damn it!” Kord shouted. He got a hand under the old man’s head, but he feared it was too late. The coughs were becoming weaker, but so was Murdis’s breathing. Blood and snot glistened on his cheeks and chin.
“I’m here,” Elin said before she was even in the room. “What is—oh!”
“He’s had some kind of attack.”
“He does, sometimes,” Elin said. “But this one—what happened? Did you get him worked up?”
“Not by design. But yes, we argued.”
“By the Thirteen, Kord! He’s not a well man.”
“I can see that. What can we do?”
“Lift him—gently, you ass! Take him to his bed and we’ll try to make him comfortable. I’ve a poultice there that sometimes helps, but . . .”
Kord scooped the old man up in his arms and rose. It was like lifting a child, or a large bird; no weight to speak of. Murdis’s coughing fit was over, but his eyes stared, unblinking, into the distance. His muscles were stiff and his breathing was shallow and strained. “But what?”
“I’ve never seen him this bad, is all.”
Kord carried Murdis to his rooms. When he put the old man down on the bed, Murdis’s eyes had lost some of their panicked look. But they were filmy, glazed over, and Kord didn’t think that was an improvement. Elin busied herself at a nearby cabinet, and after a few moments she came bearing the poultice she had mentioned, a gray mound of something, veined with black. She pressed it against the old man’s forehead. “This will make you feel better.”
Murdis gave a soft moan and relaxed visibly, tension running off him like water from a man stepping out of a stream.
“That’s remarkable,” Kord said.
“It will ease his pain, that’s all. It won’t make him better.”
Kord recognized the unspoken undercurrent there. One thing could make him better—the power of an intact soul. And despite whatever Murdis had told Elin, he didn’t have that. Not fully intact. Not yet.
Lost in thought, he was startled when Murdis’s bony fingers clutched his wrist. “I . . . I am dying, Kord,” he said. His voice was weak, and Kord had to bend close to make out his words. “I see that now. There is no help for me, even with . . .”
The real
ity of the situation struck Kord with the force of a mallet. Before, he had responded like the boy he had been when he left this place; still angry, unforgiving. But Murdis had given him so much. How could he refuse the one thing that could save him?
“You can take it,” he said. “Take the last shard. Use it to save yourself.”
“No,” Murdis said. “It is . . . yours, now. All of it.”
“The Hand?” Kord asked. He felt Elin’s presence, close beside him. This was what she had come for, and once Murdis revealed the location, it would be a race to claim it. And now that she knew the soul wasn’t complete—could not be, until Kord gave up the last of Murdis’s soul-shards, the one he carried inside himself—if she got the Hand, she would want to take that shard as well.
He might have been willing to give it to Murdis. He’d said he would, at any rate, although on some level he must have known the old man was too weak now to take it by force. But could he give it to Elin? Let her have the Hand and all the power it promised? She was a beauty, and smart, and she had worked hard to get in Murdis’s good graces. In a surprisingly short while, he had come to feel drawn to her in a way he never had before, to any woman.
But she was a thief, just the same. A patient one, a lovely one. But a thief. If she got the Hand first, he doubted that she would be interested in sharing.
“The Hand . . .” Murdis said.
“Where is it, then?”
“Well hidden.”
“Where?”
The old man’s eyes rolled up in his head, and his mouth went slack. Dead? No, he breathed yet, and then his jaw worked again. But his voice was a mere whisper, like a light autumn breeze passing through a dried-out husk.
“Clues. Follow . . .” Before he could finish, his mouth sagged open again. A thin stream of bloody spittle ran from the corner. He was still breathing, and when Kord put two fingers against his neck he could feel a faint heartbeat. But Murdis was through with words, he thought.
“Follow what? The clues?” Elin asked.
“That’s what he said.”
“What clues?”
“How would I know? You’ve been here with him. I’ve been away.”
“If I knew, Kord, I would tell you.”
He doubted that. But what if he was wrong about her? Perhaps she had come as a thief, but had turned into a true lover, or an acolyte. He had come as a child and left as a scholar, after all. People changed.
Not often, or easily. But they did.
“Kord, I heard what he said. It’s yours. The Hand belongs to you, now. If we can find it.”
“You won’t try to take it?”
“If I help you find it, I’ll expect a reward. Of some kind. We can work that out when the time comes.”
She held her gaze with his, and her full lips were parted ever so slightly. She breathed heavily, her breasts rising and falling, and he wondered if the reward she wanted was power, or gold, or something more common, more base, and yet precious all the same. She could have that, regardless, he thought. And there was every chance she knew exactly the effect she was having on him, and it was meant only to distract him long enough for her to get away with the Hand.
He looked at Murdis, who appeared to be sleeping. A sleep, Kord suspected, from which he wouldn’t waken. “Do you have any ideas?” he asked. “What do we do now?”
“What is most important to him?” Elin asked in return. “That’s the place to start.”
“When I knew him, these. Books, scrolls. The wisdom of the ages, he called it. His life’s work.”
“Yes!” Elin said. “Yes, that. His books, his scrolls. Where he would hide his most valued possession—it would be in those somewhere, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know. He’s collected so many. Over years. Decades. A few, he wrote himself, but if he’s written any since he acquired the Hand, I wouldn’t know.”
Elin sighed. “He’s always working on something. Some he doesn’t finish, and those he burns, taking care to scatter the ashes to the four winds. I remind him how precious paper is, how dear, but he won’t listen.”
“We’re wasting time here, Elin. Will he be safe, alone?”
“Whatever is yet to happen to him will happen whether we’re here or not,” she said. “Back to the library, then?”
“Back to the library.” He spared a last look for Murdis, and started toward the hallway.
“And when we get there,” she added, “you’ll tell me what that was all about? The last shard?”
Kord’s turn to sigh. “I’ll tell you.”
###
Standing in the middle of the library, Kord stared at the overflowing shelves of books, wondering where to start. There had to be thousands upon thousands of volumes in the scriptorium, and most of them were collected here, in this room. How in the name of the Thirteen was he supposed to find Murdis’s clues in this vast hoard?
“If he told you about the clues, then it must be because he thought you could figure them out,” Elin said when he voiced his doubts. “So maybe they’re hidden in books that were meaningful to the both of you in your past, when you were here?”
Kord nodded; that made sense, and he should have thought of it himself, instead of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of books and scrolls—and, if he were honest with himself, by the memories of that shared past.
“There were several.” He walked over to one shelf and bent down to reach a section of leather-bound books whose covers had been well-worn by smaller hands. He pulled two off the shelf—The Lives of the Warriors and Moulten’s Mathematical Principles, the first decidedly more worn than the second.
He handed the Moulten to Elin.
“He was always after me to read this one, though he knew I found it dry as an old whore’s—” he stopped himself before Elin could do more than raise an eyebrow. “He knew I hated it. So it would be just like him to stick a clue in it somewhere.”
“And that one?” Elin asked, graciously ignoring his slip. Perhaps because she’d heard worse from Murdis, who’d taught Kord that particular pejorative in the first place.
“My favorite. Which means I’ll likely find nothing in it. But these are the two most likely choices out of all of them. As good a place to start as any.”
She took in a breath as if to respond, but Kord turned back toward the table where they’d been sitting together earlier. He’d promised he would tell her about the last shard, but he wasn’t ready to dredge those memories any further out of the muck of his past than Murdis and his illness had already done. He knew she wanted answers, and she deserved them, but she was just going to have to be patient. Something he didn’t think she’d have a problem with, considering.
He sat in his same seat, and after a moment, Elin sat beside him. A companionable silence fell over the library as the two read, the flutter of carefully turned parchment pages the only noise to disturb the stillness.
The warmth, quietude, and familiar words almost served to lull Kord into a dream of his childhood, when he’d sat in this very room, with this very book, imagining himself in the midst of the battles so vividly portrayed in the meticulous script. His favorite story had been that of the warrior twins, Hunah and Balank, who had used their wits as well as their arms to vanquish the Lords of the Underworld. He skimmed over the once-beloved tale, knowing the shape of the words so thoroughly that he no longer needed to read them, having committed them to memory long ago. So it took him a moment to realize that something had been altered in the last line of the story.
It had once read, “…and so the brothers passed into legend, lauded as heroes and venerated as saints where they had sought only to do what is right, as we all should.” But a word had been changed, carefully erased and recopied in a script different from the original. Now it read, “…sought only to seek what is right…” Which made no sense, and was redundant besides. Why would anyone alter the words…?
Of course.
“That wily old bird,” Kord said aloud, shaking his he
ad in bemused admiration.
Elin looked up from her own text.
“What did you find?”
He showed her, and explained the change.
“But how is that a clue? It’s nonsense.”
Kord smiled at her, knowing his expression verged on the predatory, but not caring. He’d caught their prey’s scent. The hunt was in his blood as Kord now, just as surely as it was as Panther.
“Not nonsense—a title. To Seek What is Right, by Wardon. It was one of Murdis’s favorite punishments when I’d done something he thought was wrong. Which was frequently.”
Elin’s slow smile matched his, in both approbation and excitement.
“It’s brilliant. Changes only you would catch, in volumes only you would know. I’d never have been able to find these clues on my own.”
Which reminded Kord that there would be a price for her aid—aid he may not even have needed in the first place, but a price he was fairly certain he’d be happy to pay, regardless.
“Come on. The Wardon is in a different section.”
They found the book quickly, a thick volume bound in layers of brittle hide. As Kord brought it back to the table and began skimming through it, he couldn’t suppress a groan.
“This thing is a thousand pages long! I have no idea where to even begin to look.”
He looked over at Elin in frustration. She pursed her full lips in thought and tilted her head so that the candlelight caught her dark hair and made it shine like spun silk. Kord bit the inside of his cheek so he could focus on her words.
“Are there particular passages he made you return to over and over? Favorite topics?”
Kord shook his head.
“Sometimes he’d just open the book up at random, point at a line without looking, and tell me to start reading.” But as he said it, he realized that wasn’t entirely true. It had been that way at first, certainly, but as Kord grew older and better able to at least hide his transgressions from Murdis when he couldn’t refrain from them entirely, the old man’s method had changed. More and more of Kord’s reading came from the back of the book, where the heavier philosophical discussions lay.