The Book from Baden Dark

by James Moloney

  ‘You’ve come back, have you, ready for the message I have no words for,’ she called listlessly to the pigeon.

  ‘Coo,’ answered the bird, staring down at her as it jerked its head up and down in exaggerated movements. ‘Coo,’ it said again.

  ‘I don’t have any message to send; not the kind of message your magic was made for anyway,’ she muttered.

  Suddenly she sat up on the bed. ‘It doesn’t have to be that kind of message though, does it? Magic,’ she repeated. What had Ebert said? Only magic could open the way.

  Moving more deliberately now, she coaxed the pigeon into her hands. This was how the magic worked: she needed only to think the message she wished to send and it found its way into the pigeon along with a lot more besides — feelings, fears, a glimpse of her soul. She didn’t let that worry her now. But before her thoughts could take shape, she heard Long Beard’s words as he prepared to enter the mountain: You must promise … you will never speak of these creatures or where we take them … especially not to a human being.

  And Bea had sworn with the others. ‘A human,’ she whispered. ‘How can he bring my grandfather back from Baden Dark if he doesn’t even know it’s there?’

  She would have to tell him. She wouldn’t even think about it. It had to be done.

  The pigeon squirmed in her tightened grip while she mustered her thoughts. Think, feel, concentrate, she urged, and slowly she sensed her mind stir, but not as she’d intended. Instead, she saw Ebert’s drawn and bloodless face and heard his plea to Kertigan: You don’t understand the danger. Only an elf of his courage … sacrificed himself.

  A promise wasn’t so easily broken, she realised. Oh, why did she have to betray her grandfather in the hope of saving him? She had never lacked courage but the dilemma she faced now could not be solved with bravery. It had been easier to crawl into the darkened tunnel in Mrs Timmins’ house; easier to face the snarling Termagant, or fly on a winged horse into the face of a hideous dragon, than decide what she should do now.

  She let the pigeon go and buried her head in her hands. That was her decision then. Fly away, pigeon. I have no message for you this time either; maybe never again. You’re free to live like other birds, to roost in the tree tops if you like … or on a ledge outside a young sorcerer’s window in a palace in a great city.

  The pigeon didn’t fly away. It settled into the fur on top of Bea’s bed and stared at her quizzically with its head on one side.

  So the matter wasn’t final, not yet. She must make herself think again: of her grandfather, still alive; of the promise she had made; and a young man so far away who filled her head just as much as he confused her heart.

  ‘Trust,’ she said to the pigeon. If she trusted this one human to keep the secret, then was she really breaking her vow?

  Did she trust him?

  The question had barely formed in her mind before she snatched the pigeon into her cradled fingers. Marcel, Marcel, she called firmly in her thoughts. I need your help.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Sages’ Circle

  ‘MARCEL, YOU’VE ARRIVED JUST in time. I need your help,’ called Rhys Tironel. ‘Come here and join me by the window.’ His voice was deep and mellow, and alive with the kind of welcome that would make any guest feel at home.

  Five weeks had passed since Dominie Suskin had conjured his unexpected feat of magic and convinced the Grand Master of Noam to accept Marcel as his pupil. Marcel had been pleased to find the man unchanged since they’d first met before the Battle of Cadell a year and a half earlier. He was still stout round the middle, even a little rounder perhaps, with the first suggestion of grey in his hair. The mischief mixed with steel in his eyes was what Marcel remembered the most. He enjoyed every minute in the man’s company, usually in the dusty halls where the sages revealed their secrets; but on this day, he was as delighted as he was surprised to find himself in the Grand Master’s home.

  ‘You asked to see me,’ he said tentatively as a serving girl closed the door behind him.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ll tell you why in a minute. But first you can settle an argument. Liana!’ he called. ‘Marcel’s here. Let’s ask him to decide.’

  A few moments later, Rhys’s wife appeared in the doorway. She had a delicate, angular face and large eyes that crinkled at the edges in greeting as she came to stand beside her husband at the window.

  Their house was one of the highest in the town, which meant they were looking out over rooftops of orange and red tiles to the fields far below. In the distance, the eye could just make out the masts of fishing boats hauled up onto the beach at the end of the island, and nearby the dock that allowed larger ships to berth.

  ‘Liana thinks the fields need water,’ Rhys explained.

  Marcel pushed his head through the window. He’d been too busy studying since his arrival to visit any of the farms. ‘They do look a bit dry, and it’s been pretty hot for weeks now,’ he said, partly because it was true, but mostly to be polite to Lady Liana.

  ‘I’m concerned about the farmers,’ she announced seriously, although there was a gleam in her eye as she glanced towards her husband.

  ‘You’re just worried there’ll be none of those plump tomatoes you love so much, that’s all.’

  He was teasing her, playing the games Marcel had seen them enjoy many times. He wondered whether his own parents had loved each other this way, before tragedy had stolen his mother’s life.

  ‘Will you make it rain, Marcel?’ Lady Liana asked bluntly. ‘My heartless husband has refused every day this week and it’s time I searched somewhere else for help.’

  ‘For the tomatoes,’ said Rhys, laughing softly to himself.

  ‘To help the farmers!’ his wife insisted with a gentle slap to Rhys’s arm.

  ‘Well, Marcel, would you make it rain?’ This time it was Rhys who asked the question.

  ‘Weather magic isn’t my strong point,’ Marcel answered, in a deliberately unhappy tone. ‘I seem to recall a storm out to sea, one that I started and that you had to stop, Lord Tironel. I almost drowned everyone on board, even my own sister.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Rhys, immediately wiping the humour from his own face. ‘I’d forgotten. So sorry, Marcel, I didn’t mean to —’

  Marcel laughed at their solemn faces, showing he’d been teasing them as much as they’d been teasing each other.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m a better sorcerer now. The thing is, Lady Liana, no good magician interferes with the natural world unless the need is desperate,’ he said, as though reading the words from a book. Then he dropped the solemn tone and told her, ‘Nature has a way of evening itself out in the end.’

  ‘A good answer,’ said Rhys, leaning back with his powerful arms folded.

  ‘You’re learning more than you realise in Noam, Marcel. In fact, that’s why I invited you here just now. The Circle meets today and I want you to come with me.’

  ‘But the Circle is for the sages only.’

  ‘Normally, yes, but today I will make an exception. You’ve mastered all the knowledge this place can offer you, but that’s no guarantee of wisdom. Let’s see what you make of our discussions.’

  They left the house soon after, heading down a narrow street towards the town square. Rhys moved with a confident stride, expecting others to make way for him and his companion, which was hardly surprising when he was the most revered sorcerer in the Mortal Kingdoms. With the square close enough for them to hear the bustle of another market day, Marcel spotted a figure heading their way and ducked into the nearest doorway. Too late, he’d been seen, and trying to slip out of sight only made the meeting more difficult.

  ‘Have you found it yet?’ the figure called to him.

  The voice belonged to Noam’s librarian, a very helpful gentleman in most circumstances, but a terrier when it came to lost books. It didn’t matter if you were a prince or the most promising student Noam had seen in a century, what was borrowed had to be returned.

  ‘Not ye
t,’ Marcel answered.

  He was forced to stop, which meant that Rhys also had to wait, but that didn’t matter to the librarian.

  ‘It shouldn’t be so hard. The green leather would stand out, surely, even in the most untidy of rooms.’

  ‘I have looked for it,’ Marcel lied. ‘Actually, it was probably returned with some other volumes I borrowed, oh, a fortnight ago, at least.’

  The librarian tilted back his head, gave a weary sigh and turned towards Lord Tironel. ‘They all say that when they can’t be bothered.’

  To Marcel, he snapped, ‘I’ll expect it by next week,’ and stormed off up the hill.

  ‘You’re in trouble,’ said Rhys, enjoying a smirk at the young wizard’s expense.

  Marcel didn’t mind the ribbing, but he was angry with the librarian. Here he was, marching along beside the most important man in Noam, on their way to a Sages’ Circle no less, and he’d been stopped in the street to talk about something so trivial.

  ‘There should be a spell to ward off librarians,’ he muttered, drawing a laugh from Lord Tironel as they finally reached the end of the lane.

  The square was formed by grey stone buildings, all of them three storeys high. Some boasted ornate balconies and freshly whitewashed shutters while others crumbled quietly in neglect. Marcel could see the window of his own room in one of the latter. There were no special privileges for young sorcerers in Noam, even for a prince. The weekly market was coming to an end and farmers loaded baskets of vegetables and wheels of cheese onto their wagons. Scholars and their students streamed out of the buildings in search of lunch and a glass of ale.

  ‘This way,’ said Rhys, eyeing the foaming glasses enviously. ‘Normally we would stop and join one of the tables, but not today.’

  While Marcel’s fellow students looked on with open mouths, he was led into the grandest of the buildings and straight through to a courtyard that opened to the sky. This was the oldest structure in Noam, but if the building seemed especially ancient to Marcel it was probably because the men waiting for the Grand Master looked as old as the stone walls and every bit as grey.

  There were more than a dozen sages there already, and by the time they’d settled into the chairs that had been set out for them in a wide circle, the number had swelled to twenty. All but Rhys wore a simple robe decorated with the symbols of their magic; not as many as Dominie Suskin, but then these men didn’t have to prove anything.

  Rhys brought an extra chair for Marcel, which he placed beside his own, drawing frowns of disapproval from some of the wrinkled faces.

  ‘Who’s this, Grand Master?’ one of them protested finally. ‘He’s just a boy. Our Circle is more than he’ll understand.’

  ‘This is Pelham’s son, who’s taken Alwyn’s place in Elster.’

  The introduction did its work and those ageing brows relaxed in recognition. ‘You’ve all heard of him, I see,’ said Rhys. ‘You know what he’s achieved in his short life, against Mortregis and then last year when Ismar attacked Cadell. Perhaps you’ve also heard of the progress he’s made here in Noam.’

  Marcel felt his face flush crimson at this praise from the Grand Master, and it didn’t stop there.

  ‘Such magic is seen only once in a generation,’ pronounced a sage he didn’t recognise. The man looked him up and down with a mixture of interest and envy. ‘We may have among us the greatest sorcerer of the age.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ said Rhys, suddenly less comfortable with the plaudits he’d begun. ‘Today, he’s come to listen and take in what he can, nothing more,’ he said with a solemn nod towards Marcel to be sure he understood. ‘Let’s begin.’

  In the first hour, Marcel worried that the disapproving wizard was right because he barely understood a word. Not that some of the sages seemed to be doing any better. Half hadn’t said a thing and one was quietly snoring. Then, with the mention of just a few words, the discussion changed direction and the Circle suddenly came alive.

  ‘The source of evil! So we’ve returned to the problem we’ve talked about so many times before,’ said a wizard named Garda whom Marcel knew from his lectures. ‘Evil blights the lives of kings and ordinary folk alike and it has done since the beginning of time. Just read the histories. There has never been a time when men and women haven’t had to fight against its influence. Where does it come from; why does it seem so never-ending? Hardly surprising that we talk of it so much when we are the first ones called on when evil threatens. All of us here have battled against it. We have all won our victories, but why can’t there be a final victory against it and a peace that lasts forever?’

  ‘It’s the curse placed upon all beings,’ said Lord Darnstad, who seemed to have been dozing until now.

  ‘I don’t know about a curse,’ said Garda. ‘Recently I have re-read the ancient stories that have come down to us through the ages. Some say that evil was sown into the very soil that gives us life so that it sprouts up like weeds whenever we fail in our vigilance.’

  This suggestion startled Marcel. He found himself thinking immediately of Mortregis, the great dragon of war he had battled years before. The monster had emerged from the body of a real man — treacherous, despicable Starkey — yet Starkey couldn’t have been the only source of the evil that grew out of his body in such a hideous way. It had been fed by the Book of Lies, that wondrous creation of Lord Alwyn’s. But he couldn’t blame Alwyn either. Hadn’t the wizard fought against evil all of his life? He’d simply grown old and too tired to see how his greatest creation had turned against him. Alwyn certainly wasn’t the source of that terrible evil. So where had it sprung from?

  The Circle hummed with voices now, even the snorer who spluttered his way into the discussion. ‘Yes, evil is like a weed growing up from the ground,’ he repeated.

  Some took the argument further, while others were not so adamant, but none seemed to disagree that evil in its many guises would always threaten the Mortal Kingdoms.

  ‘That’s why we study our books; it’s why we pass on our powers to young ones like Rhys’s guest,’ said Garda, waving his hand loosely towards Marcel. ‘The battle will never end; there will always be another terrible force to confront. We can never rest, never take our eyes from what is happening around us, for as soon as we do …’

  ‘The weeds begin to grow,’ said a voice from across the Circle.

  Marcel didn’t see who it was because his head had drooped. An endless struggle, he thought. What kind of life was that? He wasn’t even free of his childhood yet and he’d already faced two awesome foes that might have killed him. He felt exhausted at the prospect of more.

  When he looked up, he found Rhys Tironel staring at him, his face softened by concern. ‘You don’t like what you hear, do you, Marcel?’

  If he answered, he would be breaking the silence expected of him.

  ‘Come on, you can answer that much at least,’ said Rhys, giving him permission.

  The others turned in their chairs to look at him, even those with painful joints, all of them curious to hear what he had to say.

  Perhaps it was best to agree with them. They were all learned men who’d studied the sorcerer’s arts since before he was born. But Rhys’s eye was on him and he’d know he was hiding the truth. And besides, he’d never been happy keeping his own ideas secret simply to please others.

  ‘I don’t think you’re right,’ he said boldly.

  ‘Is that so. Explain yourself then,’ was the call.

  He’d done it now. He looked to Rhys Tironel, but the man sat calmly with his arms folded and an expression on his face that was partly mischievous smile and partly cool detachment. There was nothing Marcel could do but blunder on even if they sent him packing from Noam on the next boat.

  ‘I don’t like the way you are all convinced that evil cannot be beaten, ultimately and forever. I think it can. Like Mortregis. The dragon of war threatened my father’s kingdom and I fought against it with magic I didn’t even know I had. I defeated it, too. It burn
ed before my eyes until it was completely destroyed.’

  ‘It will return,’ said Garda with a calm that made Marcel’s strident claim seem childish. ‘The dragon of war might be defeated, but it doesn’t die; it simply retreats to a place we know nothing of, where it grows again, to be ready when the greed of man calls it into being once more.’

  ‘The greed of man,’ said Rhys Tironel. ‘Then surely evil grows out of the human heart.’

  ‘But how does it get there?’ Darnstad demanded. ‘Perhaps Garda is right also. Evil seems to inhabit the land and it will live as long as the land itself, for eternity no less, always seeking to infect the weak of mind and will. It makes our lives a continual quest to prevent its growth, wherever and however it builds its forces, and so wizards like all of us, and you too, young Marcel, since you seem to have the power in you, we must all stay vigilant. You must learn to accept this if you hope to be Master of the Books for your father. Isn’t this so, my lords,’ he asked of the Circle around him. To a man, they nodded gravely.

  They turned to face one another again, leaving Marcel dismissed for his youth and his inexperience. He felt a fool, the very thing he had wanted to avoid. He had to fight hard to keep down the anger that rose in him. What did these men know? Many of them had done no more than conjure spells from books. He didn’t dare glance at Rhys Tironel in case the fury burned too brightly in his face.

  Garda pronounced their decision on the matter. ‘Evil can be defeated a hundred times in battle, but it cannot be banished forever.’

  When the Circle of Sages stood to signify the end of their meeting, Marcel left the chamber quietly without speaking to Rhys. He didn’t feel the envious eyes of the scholars who watched him from the taverns as he crossed the square. Once through the doorway opposite, he took the stairs two and three at a time to reach his room even faster where he hoped to find a refuge from his thoughts. It didn’t work. No matter how quickly he slammed the door behind him, his anger still managed to slip through.