The Scrolls of the Ancients tcobas-3

by Robert Newcomb

  "But how could Krassus have known all of this was here?" Celeste asked. "Shadowood was supposed to have been one of the Directorate's greatest secrets, was it not?"

  "I already know how," Shailiha answered sadly, shaking her head. "That day in the palace-the day Krassus materialized out of nothing. It is something I shall never forget. Remember how he violated Wigg and Faegan's minds? From Wigg he gleaned the existence of Shadowood. And from Faegan he learned the whereabouts of his stores and library. He claimed he was searching their memories for information about Wulfgar and the scrolls, but he found much, much more, and he never ever let on."

  Suddenly thinking of Tristan, Shailiha's heart fell. But then something began prodding the back of her mind-something that had been bothering her ever since she had first seen the slavers in the glade.

  "But Shadowood is protected from the rest of Eutracia by enchantments," she mused, "including the invisible canyon that surrounds it, the deadly forest, and the tunnel of bones. Isn't that so? And the slavers can't fly. Or at least I have never seen one do so. So how did they get here safely? I can't imagine the wizards' protective mechanisms all failing at once. It doesn't make any sense."

  "If your assumptions are true about Krassus more completely violating my father's mind than we first thought, then he would have known about those dangers, as well," Celeste said, rubbing her brow. "But that still doesn't explain how he overcame them."

  "I think I know," Lionel said quietly.

  "How?" the two women asked in one voice.

  "I believe the slavers came by sea," Lionel answered, "rather than overland, through Eutracia. When Shadowood was created during the Sorceresses' War, the wizards of the Directorate were far more concerned about invasion from the land side than from the ocean. Remember, at that time the sorceresses of the Coven were their great concern, and the Coven's armies were approaching from the west. The only safeguard on the eastern side is the Sea of Whispers, and the invisible canyon. If Krassus already knew of the canyon, getting his slavers over it might not have been so difficult. Especially if he is now as powerful a wizard as Master Faegan's letter suggests. Remember, the canyon was made to keep out those who didn't know it existed, rather than those who did. It's invisible only to the untrained. There are many ways that an accomplished wizard might cross it, though Master Faegan would know much more about that than I."

  He paused for a moment.

  "The slavers that took the goods are now long gone," he finally added. "In fact, there is most probably another ship still anchored just offshore, waiting for the ones that you killed."

  Suddenly it all made perfect, tragic sense. Seething in her newfound knowledge, Shailiha yearned desperately to rush right to the coast, where Celeste could use her powers to blow that ship out of the water, along with any demonslavers that might still be aboard. But she knew that she couldn't. Gathering up whatever herbs and oils which were still salvageable and getting them safely back to Faegan and Abbey simply had to take priority. Krassus, she realized, had bested them at every turn. She turned back to Lionel.

  "So what do we do now?" she asked urgently. "Are any of these mixed herbs or oils still useful?"

  Lionel sighed. "Some, yes. But the rest must first be separated again, then tested to see how and to what extent their potency has been altered. Even then I cannot be sure how they will react if used. Something like this has never happened before on so grand a scale."

  Curious, Celeste walked over to one of the canvas bags. Bending down, she untied the cinched rope at its top and reached in. She came back with a handful of what appeared to be ground-up, multicolored leaves. "Isn't there any way to tell what these herbs are?" she asked the gnome.

  "Bring them over to me and I will try," Lionel said. "But don't expect too much, no, do not."

  Celeste carefully emptied her handful of herbs onto the tabletop. From another area of the table, Lionel produced a magnifying glass. Peering through the glass, he pushed and prodded at the herbs. Then he bent over and sniffed at them. His face fell.

  "This is even worse than I thought, yes, it is," he said, shaking his head. "There is an absolute riot of colors and odors in this handful alone. Too many to even try to count." Lifting his small head, he looked forlornly at the canvas bags lying on the opposite side of the room.

  "This could take years, perhaps even lifetimes to unravel," he added. "And from what I glean from Master Faegan's letter, we don't have that kind of time. Still, even on a small scale it is worth trying before I send you back."

  Reaching across the table, he picked up what he had referred to earlier as his equalizing spoons. Unhooking the ring that held them together, he placed them on the table in a neat row. There appeared to be about a dozen of them. He put a small amount of the herb mixture into each one, then sat back and closed his eyes.

  "E'masteratu, ventricumtitas, didebfan, sente!" he chanted deeply. Almost immediately, the spoons began to move.

  Shailiha and Celeste watched, spellbound, as the line of spoons rose into the air over the tabletop. Lionel opened his eyes. "Watch carefully," he said.

  The wooden spoons began to shake back and forth, spilling some of their precious contents onto the table. As they did, they rose a bit higher, each to a different level. Then they came to hover in a neat, level row once again. When they had finally all stopped moving, Lionel spoke again.

  "R'santos, tenticualrem, wensicat!"

  The spoons obediently lowered themselves back down to the table. Curious, Shailiha and Celeste looked down into them.

  There was now a different color and amount of herb in each spoon.

  "Each spoon now only contains one kind of herb, doesn't it?" Shailiha asked. "But gnomes don't have endowed blood. How could you make this happen?"

  "And that was Old Eutracian you were speaking, wasn't it?" Celeste interjected. "How does a Shadowood gnome come to know Old Eutracian?"

  Lionel chuckled. "Master Faegan is indeed wise," he answered. "He took the liberty of enchanting these spoons centuries ago, for just such an emergency as this-namely, the untangling of mixed herbs. They are enchanted to react to anyone who recites the proper phrases in Old Eutracian. One need not be of endowed blood to make them work-one need only be able to say the commands correctly. There are other items here in the herb cubiculum that the master enchanted so that I might be able to use them if need be. And it certainly seems our day has come. Still, this only solves part of the problem, and only to a very minor degree. I'm afraid the most difficult part is yet to come."

  Hopping down off his stool, Lionel beckoned the women to follow him over to what appeared to be a bare wooden wall. He raised his hands.

  "P'intastoretas, vintostmante erasdeat tomirenticas!"

  A vertical line appeared down the center of the wall, dividing it into equal halves. Then the gap grew wider as the two sections slowly slid to opposite sides, eventually revealing another wall covered by a gigantic chart.

  The chart was arranged in dozens of horizontal rows. Each row held hundreds of individual squares, and each square was its own color. The color of each row darkened slightly in hue as it ran from left to right.

  As Shailiha looked up, she saw that the top row was all descending hues of violet, each of the squares becoming lighter as one's eye followed along to the right. And as one looked down the rows from top to bottom, the colors of the rows changed gradually, following the order of a rainbow. After the violet rows came others in blue, green, yellow, orange, and finally red. Each of the individual, colored squares seemed to be labeled. A ladder was propped up over the chart, topped with wheels that lay in a track running along the entire length of the chart.

  "I give you the Chart of Herbal Hues," Lionel said proudly. "Master Faegan and I created it."

  "It's beautiful," Celeste said. "But what is it for?"

  "It uses the color of the herb to help us identify the family it comes from," he explained.

  From the top of the table he took up a clear glass globe th
at had a wooden, vertical handle mounted at its bottom. In the center of the globe could be seen a vertical rod with what looked like a miniature weathervane mounted at its top. Carrying the odd globe upright, Lionel walked to the ladder and climbed about halfway up.

  He pointed to the equalizing spoons that still lay on the table. "Please bring me one of those," he asked. "For our purposes just now, any will do."

  Celeste retrieved one of the spoons and handed it up to Lionel. The color of the herb in the spoon was a soft yellow-green. Lionel looked down at the herb, and then he raised an eyebrow.

  "Not an altogether simple one to start with, but it should prove an interesting challenge," he mused. Asking Shailiha to push the ladder, he directed her to a spot about midway across the face of the chart. Placing the spoon down carefully on one of the ladder steps, he used both hands to twist the handle at the bottom of his globe. It popped open. Carefully, he sprinkled a pinch of the yellow-green herbs into the base of the open handle, then twisted it closed again. He handed the spoon back down to Celeste.

  "Now we shall see what we shall see," he said with a wink.

  Holding the device before one of the many rows containing the yellows and greens, he closed his eyes.

  "W'ntesirare ostumae, ventarntateratu, oderastic!"

  Almost at once the familiar glow of the craft began to surround the globe, and the little weathervane within it began to spin slowly. Lionel held it still for a moment, then he started to move it horizontally, along one of the yellow rows. As he did, the vane started to turn more rapidly; then it went faster still, until it revolved so quickly that it became a blur. He kept it in place for a moment, taking note of the spot on the chart. Then he moved the device a bit to the right, and the vane began to slow. When he moved it back to the left, it sped up again. Lowering the globe, Lionel took note of the writing beneath the colored square before which the vane had spun the fastest. The azure glow surrounding the globe finally faded and disappeared.

  "Y267," he muttered to himself as he climbed down the ladder and waddled back to the stool at the table. Hopping up on it, he placed the globe on the tabletop, next to his equalizing spoons. "Y267, yes, it is," he chattered to himself, as if he were in danger of forgetting it. Quickly he made a note of the letter and numbers on a sheet of parchment. Only then did he seem to relax.

  "What did you just do?" Shailiha asked. Bursting with curiosity, both she and Celeste walked over to the table and bent over to examine the odd globe.

  "That device is called a hue harmonizer," Lionel said simply. "Yet another invention of the master's. It senses the color of the herb in its handle, then matches it to the one most closely represented on the chart. It is enchanted to make allowances for the passage of time, since once the herbs are dried and ground their colors generally fade somewhat. This can, of course, also be attempted by the human eye, but the results are far more vague-oftentimes even dangerous. Anyway, once the correctly colored square is found, one makes a note of the code written below it. In this case, our herb is of the yellow family, square number 267. Interesting, is it not? But we are not quite finished."

  He looked to the wall containing the vast library. "Source Book of Herbal Families, please," he said loudly. "Yellow Family, code numbers two hundred through three hundred."

  Almost immediately a dusty, ancient book slid out and came soaring through the air. It landed gently on the table in front of him. The thick, gilt-edged book looked as old as time itself.

  Thumbing through the text, Lionel finally found number 267. "Ah, at last," he announced proudly. "Yellow number 267 is the blossom of the witherwood tree-a rarity employed primarily for the relief of pain in the joints, particularly in the upper extremities. Probably nothing that Abbey needs, but with herbmistresses, one never knows." Then he looked at the bags lying on the floor.

  "Perhaps after having seen these procedures, you can better understand the immense nature of the task ahead," he said sadly. "Yes, the herbs can be isolated. But do you you realize how long it took to identify a pinch of just one? There are thousands of herbs in those bags, and they are all mixed together. And making things even more difficult is the fact that Abbey has a particular list of things she requires, and she needs them now. But because they are so mixed up, there is just no way to give priority to searching for the ones she wants. We must simply go through all of the bags, one by one, and trust to luck that we come upon those she needs, and soon enough to be of help." He shook his head for a moment.

  "Frankly, the task is monstrous," he added quietly. "And I'm glad I'm not the one who has to explain all of this to my master."

  Shailiha looked skeptically at Celeste. All Wigg's daughter could do was shake her head.

  Then the princess saw a curious look come over Lionel's face.

  "But we still do not know the effects upon the witherwood's potency from having been mixed with so many other herbs," he said. "It would be most interesting to find out, don't you think? And it would provide a ray of sunlight for Master Faegan, to be sure, oh yes, to be sure. Being able to tell him the potency of at least one of them might soften his mood when he hears about all of this, yes, it might."

  Taking another small pinch of the dried witherwood blossom from the spoon, he eagerly walked to another table at the far end of the laboratory. There he dropped it into a flat, gold pan.

  "One of the best ways to determine an herb's purity is to test the sample with fire," he called back to the women. "The amount I have here is far too small to cause much reaction. Still, it should tell us something."

  Striking a common match against his trouser leg, he held the small flame to the herbs. Celeste and Shailiha cringed instinctively.

  As the match burned, the top of the tiny pile of herbs began to singe and smoke a bit, but nothing more. Finally the match went out.

  Smiling, Lionel turned to them. "See," he shouted triumphantly. "I told you so! The potency must be so weak that-"

  The explosion that followed sent Lionel flying through the air. He landed hard onto the tabletop near them. Beakers overturned and fragile glass tubing shattered, their contents pouring out as the gnome came to rest on his back in the slick, multicolored mess. Flames shot upward into a giant red ball, its concussive force so great that it shattered a section of the ceiling, sending smashed glass raining down. The roiling smoke was at first so thick that Shailiha couldn't see a thing.

  Fearing for Lionel's life, she held her breath and waved her arms madly as she tried to make her way to the table she had seen him land on, the glass crunching beneath her boots as she went. By the time she got there, Lionel was sitting up, holding his head.

  Bits of glass fell from him. His spectacles were more shattered than ever, and lying halfway off his nose. He was wet and sticky from head to toe, and part of his vest was still smoldering. Shailiha quickly began patting Lionel down, making sure that he was not truly on fire. In the final analysis, he somehow didn't seem too much the worse for wear.

  Then the doors to the herb cubiculum blew wide open and an anxious group of gnomes burst in carrying buckets of water. Seeing that the fire was already out, they simply stood there, glaring at Lionel. Then an obviously indignant Samantha the Squat marched straight up to Lionel, threw her hands into the air, then pushed one of her stubby index fingers at his stunned, sooty face.

  "How could you do this again!" she shouted at him. Shailiha couldn't decide which was more merciless: Samantha's shrill voice, or her imperiously wagging finger. "You know you aren't supposed to experiment unless the master is present! He has told you that countless numbers of times! What in the name of the Afterlife is the matter with you? Are you deaf, as well as stupid?"

  Aghast, the princess and Celeste turned to Samantha. "Do you mean to tell us that this has happened before?" Celeste asked.

  "Oh, yes," Samantha answered angrily as she lifted one of Lionel's eyelids to examine an overly dilated pupil. "You just love to impress folks with your supposed knowledge of this room, don't y
ou, Lionel?"

  Smiling stupidly, Lionel looked back at her, his eyes partially glazed over. "I can't hear you!" he screamed. Shailiha and Celeste recoiled at the loudness of his voice.

  "You know it's like this every time there is an explosion!" he shouted as he swayed back and forth, animatedly gesturing to one of his ears.

  Beginning to wonder whether Lionel's hearing had suddenly become selective, rather than simply impaired, Shailiha turned to look around the room. Although the entire herb cubiculum was a slippery, tangled mess, the canvas bags of herbs blessedly remained unharmed, as did the vat of oils. But how in the world were she and Celeste going to manage getting them to-and through-Faegan's portal? Not to mention the Chart of Ascending and Descending Hues and the massive library that Faegan and Abbey would now apparently require.

  And then there was the matter of Lionel. She couldn't leave the curious gnome here, free to conduct more of his "experiments" without Faegan's guidance. Only the Afterlife knew what might come of it.

  There was only one solution: She would have Celeste and Lionel help her hide the bags, the vat, and as many of the books as possible before Faegan's portal opened the next day. Then all three of them would go back through the portal. That way, in the event that other slavers returned they would find neither the missing items nor the princess and Wigg's daughter. She hated the idea of leaving the rest of the gnomes defenseless, but she could see no other way.

  She shook her head as she tried to imagine the wizards' reactions when she walked out of the portal with only Celeste and a sooty, overconfident gnome who had just blown up Faegan's herb cubiculum.