The Faithful Traitor (Wizard & Dragon Book 2)

by Robert Don Hughes

  Taken aback, Seagryn answered, “Why am I here? This is the library, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is,” the white-haired old man countered, sizing up Seagryn’s build as if he were considering a physical attack. “Are you authorized to enter it?”

  Seagryn stared. “This isn’t a public library?”

  “Doesn’t it say so on the building? We’re only here to serve the public.” The librarian sniffed. “Of course, no member of the public ever comes in here.”

  “Why is that?”

  “They don’t care,” the librarian said firmly, and he shook his head in dismay and repeated to himself, “They don’t care.” Then his eyes stabbed back at Seagryn. “The only people who ever come in here are spies!” His eyes narrowed. “Now what is it you’re after?”

  “Ah … I … just wanted some information —”

  “There. I knew it.” The librarian scowled triumphantly. “Didn’t I know it? You’re a spy, aren’t you?”

  “I … no … I’m …” It had worked before. Seagryn tried it again. “I’m a magician from the outside. I’ve come to do a magic show for the Children’s Club.”

  “Then why aren’t you doing it?”

  “I … just thought I …”

  “You just thought you’d pop into the library for a little — information.” The librarian made this word drip with sinister intent. “And what sort of information would a magician from the outside be interested in? Do you mind telling me that?”

  Seagryn stared at the old man, then turned his gaze to examine the row upon row of books and shelves that climbed up the walls of this dome, just as the streets and shops outside climbed the circumference of the cavern. And he guessed, in a way, he was a spy. “I’m looking for Garney, Keeper of the Outer Portal. He was meeting with others of your leaders to talk about a national problem you have sitting on your front porch. A dragon.”

  “So.” The librarian grinned broadly. “You are a spy.”

  “Not by my intention.”

  “I knew it.” The old gentleman smiled, obviously pleased with himself.

  “Do you know where Garney is, and where this meeting might be taking place?” Seagryn asked.

  “Of course. I’m the Keeper of the Annals — I know everything that goes on within the Royal Advisory Board.”

  “Then you could direct me to him?”

  “I could.” The Keeper of the Annals nodded. “But the information wouldn’t do you any good, since you’ll be in the company of the light bearers.”

  “The light bearers?” Seagryn frowned.

  “Yes. I sent for them as soon as you came in. I knew you were a spy.”

  “What are the light bearers?” It sounded to Seagryn like the name for some religious cult.

  The Keeper of the Annals gave him a superior smile. “Since you’re from the outside, I trust you would know them as the police.”

  The front door of the library burst open, and a group of uniformed warriors carrying torches suddenly filled the room, forming a ring around Seagryn. He remembered the cut of the uniforms now. It had been a group of guards dressed just like these who had expelled him and the other members of the Conspiracy through the hole he’d made into the mountain over a year ago. Seagryn wondered if he could find that room again and reopen the hole for a quick exit. He was growing weary of the attempt to warn these people of their danger. The very idea that only spies used the library! “Forget it,” he snarled as he pushed through the circle of light bearers and stalked out the door. No one tried to stop him, not even the librarian, for Seagryn had just invented a new spell, and it was working quite effectively. “I think I’ll call that a memory block,” he mumbled to himself as he turned up the lamplit street and started walking back around the lake. “I’ll have to tell Nebalath about it the next time I see him.”

  Back in the library, the light bearers were asking the librarian what they were doing there, and he was responding to them with equal confusion. But the answer to every such incursion came to him easily. “Spies!” he was shouting at them. “You’re all spies!”

  Seagryn left the gigantic cavern quickly, intent on somehow finding his way back to the throne room and out of this place. The yellow corridor he had chosen made a long, sweeping curve to the left, so he heard the oncoming soldiers before he saw’ them. These had to be more light bearers. This time he simply cloaked himself from view and stepped back against the cool surface of the tiled wall. Sure enough, a column of torch-bearing warriors trotted into view, led by none other than Gainey himself. Seagryn started to reveal himself to the little man but decided against it. He assumed they were coming from the Outer Portal; if so, he was heading in the right direction.

  Of course, I could be wrong, he thought to himself a moment later when this corridor came to a dead end. He wasn’t blocked entirely — while the main corridor came to a dead end at a wall of raw stone, a small rampway curled down to his left. As he stood contemplating his options, he heard the tramping feet of soldiers jogging back up the corridor. The light bearers had turned around and were returning.

  “Spread out across the corridor!” he heard Garney shout. “Link arms so that we don’t run past him if he’s cloaking himself!”

  Seagryn frowned and ran down the spiraling rampway. After-one full turn, he had a choice. The ramp opened onto a lower level, and he could either go that way or continue on down the curve. Where, he wondered, was that outside room where the Conspiracy had met? If he could find the outer wall he could break through to the mountain, but it seemed as if that would be up and not down —

  The tramping on the ramp above him grew faster. He decided to go on down.

  This is ridiculous, he told himself silently. Why am I running? As a powershaper, there were dozens of other ways he could deal with the warriors who pursued him. Yet he continued to run while he thought. When the ramp opened again onto a still-lower level, he realized at least part of the reason he fled instead of standing to fight: The more he saw of the Remnant, the more intimidated he became. How big was this place? What a monumental task it must have been to carve these passageways from the rock! How long had it taken, and who had done the digging? Of course, the megasin could have carved these galleries easily …

  He stumbled to a stop and listened. Fewer feet pounded along above him, so Garney was evidently breaking up the detail to follow different avenues. Seagryn continued down the ramp, descending still deeper into this impressive maze. After two more lull spirals, the rampway ended, opening onto a passageway that looked more like a cave than a corridor. As in the galleries above, torches guttered in brackets spaced evenly along the wall. But these walls were raw — they’d not yet been tiled over with those civilizing yellow ceramic squares. Seagryn felt relieved to find that this enormous underground nation did have its limitations. And while he felt both a responsibility to see the people of this place warned of their danger and frustration with the Remnant’s leadership’s attempts to prevent him from doing so, he also felt a keen curiosity to explore further the secrets of the maze. He walked swiftly up the curving tunnel — and stopped. A cavern opened before him. A pitch-black cavern.

  His curiosity wavered. Enough light spilled around him from the torches behind to illuminate a few yards into the cavern, but this discouraged him more than it urged him to go forward. He didn’t fear the dark, exactly, but it reminded him of a fearful time: days — or perhaps even weeks — spent as a captive in just such a black tomb. Only a miracle had allowed his escape — a miracle and a promise to the megasin who’d imprisoned him that he would introduce her someday to a more permanent companion. Where was the megasin these days? Could she be somewhere out there in that inky blackness, watching him?

  The sounds of soldiers on the ramp above pushed him into the darkness at last. He could have shaped a ball of fire above his head — that same trick that had bored the king — but that would certainly have pinpointed his location for the pursuing torch bearers. Instead — and this felt odd t
o him, even as he did it — he cloaked himself, as if his best protection in a place where he was blind was to make others blind to his presence. He walked forward.

  He’d been in several large caverns already this — morning? Evening? Whether because of the lack of light or because of his fear or both, this cave seemed to dwarf them all. The pool of light that spilled from the tunnel behind him shrank smaller and smaller, while at the same time he became aware of a vast emptiness opening above him. Was this a natural cave, or had it been carved by the Remnant’s engineers? He recalled now how regular had been the shape of the grotto that contained the lake and the library — like a soup bowl inverted over a platter. It seemed this space might share that shape, for he judged himself to be dipping down every twenty yards from one level to another, still-lower level. He felt a great surge of confidence as his mental prediction of when the next dip would occur proved correct. It evaporated the next moment when he stumbled over something and went sprawling forward in the darkness.

  He landed with a clank upon a pile of coiled chain. He could tell that much by feel. Frustrated at himself for not watching where he was going, he was about to form a ball of light when he heard voices behind him in the brightly illuminated tunnel. He rolled quietly to his feet beside the chain and turned back to watch as a group of torch-bearing warriors stopped at the cavern’s edge and quietly discussed whether they should continue on or not. “Why would he go in there?”

  “He’s a wizard — he’s liable to go anyplace.”

  “Just as likely to be above us somewhere, then, as to try to make his way through the dark.”

  “Besides — if he’s in there, the little ones probably have him already. Let’s go back up.” The torch bearers appeared to be weary of tramping purposefully about. They shuffled back up the ramp, murmuring quietly among themselves, and Seagryn was left to wonder who, or what, were the “little ones”? Then he heard the whispers around him.

  “They’re gone.”

  “Who were they looking for?”

  “I told you! There was a figure in the tunnel! I saw it — then I didn’t.”

  “Too much light, Merkle! How could you see anything in that glare?” These two voices came from between him and the light. The next came from either side of him.

  “Nothing over here.”

  “Nor here.”

  “I tell you I heard someone clanking over the chain! And you heard them talking! He’s a wizard, they say, and you know how wizards are!”

  “I know absolutely nothing about wizards, Merkle. Let’s go.”

  “You’re not going to convince me I didn’t hear what I heard. The sound came from right — Unnfh! Help! Someone’s got me! The wizard’s got me!”

  Seagryn had acted on reflex, not thought. When a figure the size of a child bumped into him hard, Seagryn had stooped to catch him. He was trying to prevent Merkle from falling, not to capture him. He immediately put the struggling little man down and stepped a few paces away. Unfortunately he stumbled over another tiny figure, tripped, and fell himself.

  “Right here! I’ve got him right here!” This little person grabbed his legs and held them fast. The fellow had a powerful grip. Feet scuttled toward them in the darkness and Seagryn thought of insects and shuddered. “He’s trembling!”

  Light blossomed like a brilliant orange flower above them, and Seagryn got his first good look at the little ones. They were all around him — twenty or more figures the height of four-year-old children but with arms as big around as his own. He thought at first they had no eyes, but realized quickly that they were all just squinting their eyes shut. Several reeled backward, hiding their faces from that brilliant ball of flame, but those who had hold of him — there were several now — did not release their grip.

  “Oww!” the one called Merkle groaned, and he gripped Seagryn’s legs more tightly. “Put that out, would you? I can’t see!”

  “But I can’t see without it —” Seagryn explained.

  “‘Course not! You’re a light-lover. Put it out!”

  “You let go of my legs first!” Seagryn demanded.

  “If I let go of your legs you’ll run away!”

  “If you don’t let go of my legs I’ll light this place up like the Capital Cathedral!” Naturally that image held no meaning for the little man, but Seagryn knew exactly what it meant, and when the grip on his legs and several other portions of his anatomy grew even tighter, he remembered how the high holy place of City Lamath had looked on celebration days and imagined that same amount of candlelight in here. The cavern burst into illumination, and the little ones around him shrieked with pain. Merkle let go. Quickly.

  “Put it out! Put it out! Put it out!” Merkle pleaded, and Seagryn did — eventually. First, however, he took a good look at his surroundings, as well as at the tiny little persons who rolled around in pain upon this evenly shaved rock platform. He had been right — this cavern was bigger than the lake room above them. And he had found new reason to be grateful to the Power: the circumstances that had prevented him from going any further into the darkness had kept him from tumbling into a basin carved in the cavern’s center. Evidently designed to hold an even larger lake, it would have been a thirty-foot drop. He gasped in relief, then doused the lights. Equally relieved sighs greeted his action. It took only a moment for the band of little people to recover and reassert themselves.

  “Who are you?” a voice — not Merkle’s — demanded.

  “You’re a wizard, obviously. Why?”

  “Why what?” Seagryn asked. He heard several inquiring grunts. “You want to know why I am a wizard? Or why I’m down here?”

  “I’d like to know both, myself.”

  Seagryn recognized the voice. “To tell you the truth, Merkle, I would, too.” His answer caused a sensation.

  “He knows Merkle!”

  “Merkle knows him!”

  “How does this wizard know Merkle?”

  And from Merkle himself, “How do you know my name? Was it by — magic?”

  “The megasin told me, Merkle,” Seagryn answered. “She says she knows you well.”

  Perhaps it was the intensity of these little people that had piqued his dormant playfulness and caused him to answer thus. They did, after all, take themselves quite seriously, and Seagryn found it difficult to keep from smiling broadly at that. Or maybe it was talking into the darkness that summoned again those chilling memories of days spent underground. In either case, Seagryn couldn’t anticipate the reaction his words received.

  First there was silence. Then, in almost-holy tones, a voice said, “You know the megasin?”

  “Why? Do you all know her?” He heard tiny feet quietly shuffling away from him. “Wait! I was teasing … !”

  “The megasin knows me?” Merkle muttered, obviously horrified. At least he wasn’t leaving.

  “No, Merkle, she doesn’t know you. I picked up your name from the others’ comments to you. Why does my mention of the megasin terrify you so much?”

  Merkle paused a moment before answering. Seagryn heard only silence and guessed that the others had left them alone together. “It’s just that —” The little man hesitated, “ — no light-lover has ever spoken of her before — that I know about. I thought she was just a legend we use to frighten children into good behavior …”

  “Oh, no,” Seagryn said quickly, and he was immediately sorry. He hadn’t realize until just now how horrible this affirmation might be to a darkness-dweller. “Well, I mean I have met her, and she is real, but she’s a long way from this place, I can assure you.”

  “How can you assure me of that when the megasin swims through rock? She does, doesn’t she?”

  “Ah —” He’d never thought of it that way, but it was a perfect image. “Yes, I suppose she does.”

  “And she could be swimming right at us this very moment —”

  “Perhaps, but why —”

  “And she eats digger children for breakfast, and adults for dinner and
supper —”

  “No,” Seagryn said firmly. “On that point let me reassure you. The megasin eats dreams. She eats peoples’ feelings, not the people themselves. If she did, I wouldn’t be standing here.”

  “I said she eats diggers, not light-lovers,” Merkle grumbled quietly.

  “You little people are these ‘diggers’?”

  “Of course.”

  They stood there in. the silence a moment, each thinking his own thoughts. Seagryn was angry at himself. Here he was, destroying the security of a tiny man in a black cavern under the earth, while outside this cave a dragon he’d set free destroyed the well-being of the nations on the surface. What a troublemaker! Wherever he went he brought grief!

  “Are you hungry?” Merkle asked, and Seagryn was surprised.

  “Why — yes. Yes, I am.” He’d had a good meal earlier, but he’d done a lot of walking since then. Besides, he’d not eaten regularly for days.

  “Fine. Let’s go eat.” Merkle started away, but Seagryn didn’t move. “You coming?” the little man called.

  “I — can’t see you. Would you rather I made a light —”

  “No!”

  “I mean just a little light, or would you rather take my hand and —” He stopped, for Merkle had grabbed his hand and was leading him, as nearly as he could tell, in a wide circle around the perimeter of the pit. Seagryn had a new thought. What did these little people — diggers — eat?

  “You’ll have to duck your head,” Merkle advised him after they had been walking for several minutes.

  “Where are we?”

  “At the door of the double row,” Merkle replied. “But you light-lovers are too tall —”