by Hilari Bell
“Harcu hasn’t found any good rock,” Makenna told him. The Stoner also hadn’t been able to tell her what was wrong with it. Makenna didn’t think he really knew himself—but he was certain it wasn’t right, and that was enough for her. “I want to wait for the scouting party’s report before we settle in for good,” she added.
It surprised her how much she missed Tobin’s presence. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t manage without him—as she always had! It was just…things were easier, calmer, when he was there.
“They won’t find anything,” said Miggy. “We lost two months of labor at the old village. If we’re to get even one crop out of the summer, the Greeners need to get their seed in.”
“I know. But if we have to leave this site too, I don’t want them wasting any more seed, and the rest of us more effort.”
Besides, the wait was giving her time to study the priest’s stolen spell books. Makenna thought she might actually have figured out how to cast a gate—if anyone had enough magic left to cast it.
Miggy sighed. “That’s what the Greeners and the others are thinking as well. I’m just afraid that in trying to save seed and effort, we may be wasting too much time.”
Makenna feared it too. Even in this strange new world, the signs of summer settling in were all too plain. And without their growing magic, the Greeners’ crops couldn’t be hastened. Still…
“We’ll wait for Tobin to come back.”
CHAPTER 11
Jeriah
JERIAH RUSHED UP THE CENTRAL stairs, shivering in the predawn chill. If they discovered he’d failed to give the Hierarch his medicine a second time, he’d probably be dismissed! Though even if the goblins found the spell notes, he still had no one to open a gate! Tobin could be ill by now—but Jeriah trusted his brother to hang on to life until he got there. There had to be a way. He’d found one of the Lesser Ones—that was a step forward, right? One step at a time. But to help the goblins search for the spell notes, and to persuade Chardane, he had to be here, and if they learned he hadn’t given the Hierarch his medicine…
He was running when he reached the Hierarch’s door and he wasn’t even late. Slow down. They’ll be suspicious if you race in panicking.
When his breathing had slowed he went in, smiling at the Hierarch as if nothing could possibly be wrong.
The Hierarch smiled back. “Jeriah!”
“Yes, my lord. Good morning.” In spite of his worries, he was pleased. Perhaps this time the old man would remember for more than a day. The menservants smiled at him too.
Helping the Sunlord into his robes, Jeriah expected one of them to ask about the medicine any minute. Perhaps he should lie, say that he’d come in later and…No, the guards would know he hadn’t. Better to confess as soon as he was accused. Perhaps they’d only set him to scrubbing the steps for a year. He’d scrub them forever if they’d let him stay. Though if Chardane refused to help…
Jeriah barely heard the morning prayer. Was being in charge always like this? An endless succession of defeats and insoluble problems? The knights of legend never banged their heads against the wall and howled, but that was what Jeriah felt like doing.
After the Hierarch had disrobed and dressed, they ate breakfast. Mohri asked Jeriah how his business had gone. Jeriah said fine and added that Master Lazur would be pleased. He suppressed a desire to babble, waiting tensely for the next question—it never came. Gradually Jeriah realized that they all assumed he’d done what he’d promised and given the Hierarch his medicine later. They weren’t going to question the guards, or mention it to anyone. They trusted him.
A stab of guilt poisoned his relief, but the Hierarch seemed no worse this morning.
During the petitioning Jeriah tried to thrust his problems out of his mind. It took all his self-control to keep from looking guilty when Master Zachiros remarked that the Hierarch seemed to be having one of his good days.
When the Hierarch lay down for his afternoon rest, Jeriah tackled the next problem: How could he tell the goblins that he had the amulets? He hadn’t thought to set up a method to contact them, so all he could think of was to make himself available and hope they approached him. Daroo had first done so in the woods near the barracks, so Jeriah set off for the stables to visit Glory and take Fiddle out for a ride. Being around horses might soothe his fraying nerves. But what if the goblins didn’t contact him? Then what?
Jeriah thumped his head gently against a nearby tree, moaning with frustration. No wonder knights in the stories did everything themselves—trying to organize helpers drove you mad!
Fiddle seemed pleased to see him, and he felt guilty again for neglecting Tobin’s horse. Jeriah rode around the lake, problems spinning through his mind: the spell notes, the gate—the days were racing by. Once Tobin began to sicken, there was no way to know how long he might survive.
No goblins popped out of the trees. No contact. And every day counted now!
Jeriah unsaddled Fiddle and began to curry him, trying to come up with some way to let the goblins know that he’d gotten their cursed amulets and was—
“Congratulations, hero. Why’d the lady priest lock you up in that cupboard?”
Jeriah jumped and swore, and Fiddle gazed curiously at him. Cogswhallop was perched on a corner of the manger.
“That’s none of your business. Were you watching me last night? Wait a minute. If you were watching, why didn’t you let me out? I was in agony in there! I could have been caught!”
The goblin grinned. “The trade is amulets for the search—we charge more for a rescue. Though if you’re interested, we might—”
“No,” said Jeriah hastily. “I’ll rescue myself. You know I’ve got the amulets—are you ready to start tonight? I don’t want you running around in…What are you doing here in broad daylight? If you get caught—”
“Keep your voice down and I won’t be. Don’t worry so much. There’s enough cover on this tier to conceal a goblin village. That palace is another matter—we did some exploring last night. We’ll be safe enough once folk have gone to bed, but during the day it’d be risky.”
“Don’t even think about going there during the day,” Jeriah told him. “It’d be suicide. You can’t—”
“Then we’re in agreement, and if you’d stop yammering and arrange a time to hand over the amulets, we could begin the search tonight. Any particular place we should start?”
“The library.” Jeriah explained his reasoning, and Cogswhallop nodded.
“Makes as much sense as anywhere else. Bring the amulets to the terrace in front of the library door. When will you be there?”
Jeriah had lost control of this conversation, but the goblin’s plan was sound. “I’ll meet you around midnight. Everyone should be asleep by then, and—”
The stable door opened and a groom backed in, pulling a wheelbarrow over the sill.
Jeriah whispered, “You’d better get…” But when he turned back to the manger, the goblin was gone.
Jeriah crept around the third-level terrace, carrying the sack of amulets and thanking St. Cerwyn that the sunsguard was posted by the steps, on the other side of the palace from the library. He wondered how the goblins were getting in and out, but he had no doubt they’d manage. If they were vermin, at least they were competent vermin. And this time the Hierarch had been given his medicine and put to bed, just as he should be. So why was Jeriah so nervous?
The waxing moon shed enough light to see where he was going. The amulets jingled if he moved too fast, forcing him to creep along instead of rushing like a fool. Like he wanted to.
He reached the library doors. The fountains were shut off at night. The metallic rattle as he set down the sack sounded clearly in the stillness.
For once Jeriah didn’t jump when dark forms crept from the bushes. Most of them hovered in the shadows—a dozen, perhaps—but Cogswhallop and Daroo approached him.
Daroo was grinning. “I brought them, just like you asked. We’ll have those notes rig
ht soon. If they’re in the palace, that is.”
If they’re in the palace. But Jeriah couldn’t help smiling back. “I brought my half of the trade, too.”
Cogswhallop gestured, and a couple of goblins darted out to seize the sack and bear it off.
“You’re not going to count, to be sure there’s at least fifty?”
“I’ll trust you that far. Besides, fifty’d make a smaller bag.”
Daroo snorted, and a murmur of amusement rippled out of the shadows.
“We’ll get our own back if you cheat us.” The words were threatening, but Cogswhallop’s voice was neutral, almost approving. Perhaps he thought Jeriah was becoming “civilized.”
With some surprise, Jeriah realized that he had no doubts about the goblins keeping their part of the bargain. It wasn’t particularly honorable to demand payment for everything, but once you paid them, they’d do the job.
“So let’s get on with it.” He gestured to the library door.
“If someone’s fallen asleep over a book in there, it’d be better if you opened it. You can make excuses—we can’t.”
Jeriah glanced at the dark windows; that possibility hadn’t occurred to him. He tried to turn the handle, but it didn’t budge.
“It’s locked!” He shook the handle furiously. “I hope you can pick it, because I sneaked Master Zachiros’ keys back into his desk last night.”
“Keep your voice down. I’ll handle the locks. And if it’s locked, it’s likely empty.” Cogswhallop drew a slim probe from some inner pocket and inserted it into the keyhole—he had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. Jeriah heard him murmuring—magic? curses? senility? He couldn’t make out the words.
A familiar tug at his britches drew his eyes down.
“While you and Fa and the Bookeries do this, the rest of us are going to give some other rooms a proper search. I know the palace best, so I’m in charge of that.”
Jeriah winced, but Daroo looked so proud, he couldn’t bring himself to spoil it. “Good luck.” He fought down the impulse to add, You’ll need it.
“Ha!” Cogswhallop’s grin flashed and he eased the door open. Jeriah suddenly understood why the goblin had wanted him there—if he hadn’t been present, from inside the library it would look like the door was opening by itself. Which might make someone look down.
Daroo darted away. The rest of the goblins streamed into the library, and Jeriah followed. They’d obviously planned this, for they split into two groups and began tacking sheepskins over the windows. The scent of ink and paper was sharper in the dark.
“Won’t someone notice that the windows are covered?”
“They’d be more likely to notice a light. Not even Bookeries can read in the dark, young hero.”
“We shouldn’t be working at night at all,” said a prim voice. The room grew darker as the windows were covered, but the light from the open door enabled Jeriah to see the plump shadow approaching Cogswhallop. “I’ve always objected to this whole mad venture. And it’s not as if he’s trading us information. Shiny stones and buttons! That’s—”
“That’s a sight more useful than a bunch of scribbling,” Cogswhallop snapped. “Hero, this fool is Master Hispontic. He’s the Bookeries’ leader—”
“High scholar,” the shadow corrected.
“—who led them right into catastrophe, trying to save their books when they should have been saving themselves!” Cogswhallop finished.
“Information,” hissed the shadow, “is what will save us all in the long run, not your mad schemes. It’s your kind’s short-term thinking that—”
Jeriah wondered what scheme the Bookerie was talking about. He wished he could let them go on quarreling, but their voices were beginning to rise.
“There’s lots of information in here,” Jeriah interrupted softly. “You can’t take the books away, of course, but you’re welcome to read—”
“No!” Cogswhallop howled in a whisper.
“Read them,” Jeriah finished, baffled.
“Ready,” a voice whispered from the darkness.
Cogswhallop moaned and shut the door, and light sprang from half a dozen lamps. Jeriah blinked down at a bespectacled goblin with a neat beard and ink-stained fingers. The gratification in his round face outshone the lamps.
“Thank you, sir. We’re in your debt. Gentlemen”—his voice lifted in triumph—“we have full permission!”
Gasps of astonished joy came from a dozen throats, and the goblins darted for the bookshelves.
“Now you’ve done it,” said Cogswhallop through gritted teeth. He stalked to the nearest goblin, grabbed his collar, and spun him face-to-face.
“You’re looking for Lazur’s spell notes first, understand? We’ve got a bargain, and you’re not to read another thing till it’s fulfilled!”
His captive’s eyes were straying over Cogswhallop’s shoulder to the shelves. Cogswhallop shook him. “Understand?”
“Oh, aye, aye. Lazur’s notes on the Other…Is that…It is! Marcabus’ treatise on the forming of rock!” He pulled free of Cogswhallop’s grip and shot back to the books like iron to a magnet.
Cogswhallop sighed. “It’s the best I can do. You shouldn’t have given them permission, hero—they’d have been bad enough without it.”
Watching the Bookeries scramble nimbly up the shelves as if they were goblin ladders, Jeriah remembered Koryn perched so carefully on her stool denying the notes were there. Of course, she’d have denied it whether they were there or not. If they were there, would she have reported that conversation to Master Lazur? And would he have moved them? Or would she think Jeriah believed her, and decide that the spell notes were even safer in the library? Not that Jeriah could have found them—that would take a small army of scholars, which was precisely what he now had.
“As long as they find the spell notes first, I don’t care if they read every book in the place,” said Jeriah. “They will find the notes first, won’t they?”
“Maybe, but…Oh, don’t look so panicked. I’ll keep ’em in line. Is there another way out of here?”
Jeriah led him across the shadowed room. “What did you trade the Bookeries for this?” Master Hispontic’s comments about mad schemes had made him curious.
“None of your business.” A haunted look flickered across the goblin’s sharp face. “Where does that door go?”
“An inner corridor to some offices. There won’t be anyone in them now.” Jeriah opened the door and peered through. “Empty, just as I said.”
The few corridor lamps that burned all night were turned low, creating pools of soft light every twenty steps. You could walk without running into anything, but there was plenty of shadow.
“This corridor ends in the record room,” Jeriah murmured. “No one’s likely to be there this late.”
“We’ll still post a watcher. Pity the Flichters won’t do it, but they didn’t…The gen’ral’s the only one who could ever get sense out of them. This isn’t bad—if someone comes to one door, we can scoot out the other.”
The goblin wasn’t telling him everything, but that was nothing new. They’d do their best to find the spell notes. That was what mattered.
“Suppose someone comes down the corridor?” Jeriah asked. “And someone comes to the library door at the same time.”
“Then we hide.”
“What if they see you?”
“Then we run,” said Cogswhallop impatiently. “You’re jumping about like your fleas had declared war. Don’t be so nervous, hero. This is easy.”
“You think that now,” said Jeriah. “I’ve been breaking into places ever since I got here, and I’ve been caught every time.”
“We won’t be. Go back to bed. I’ll come by before sunrise and tell you what we found.”
“Go back to…I’m going to help you! I can search, or stand guard, or…or…”
Cogswhallop was shaking his head. “I was afraid you’d be wanting that. Then I noticed your clothes, and I thought you
might be sensible.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” Jeriah asked, gazing down at his plain dark tunic.
“Nothing, if you’re sneaking up on an enemy camp. But no one who sees you is going to believe you just got up to go to the privy.”
Jeriah’s mouth opened, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. “If I put on a night robe, can I watch the corridor? If anyone comes I can greet them, which will warn you.”
“Is the privy in this corridor?”
“Well, not the nearest one. But I’ll go mad shut up in my room all night! I have to be here.”
“I can’t stop you,” Cogswhallop admitted. “But if someone gets suspicious when you yawn all day, don’t say you weren’t warned.”
“I’ll be back,” Jeriah promised.
He hurried down the corridor praying he wouldn’t meet anyone. Cogswhallop was right—these clothes were suspicious in the palace this time of night. He reached his rooms unseen, pulled on his night robe, and had just emerged onto the terrace when a shriek shattered the night—but the shouts that followed came from the other side of the palace by the main staircase. Had someone caught one of Daroo’s searchers? Daroo himself? Jeriah ran.
Several people clustered at the top of the third-level steps. The guards’ torches covered the scene with flickering light.
“I swear I saw it,” a bony woman in nightclothes protested as Jeriah joined them. “It ran into those flowers. Right there!”
Two guards were searching the flower bed. Jeriah tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He should have realized that others might visit the privy!
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“This lady—”
“I saw a goblin!” she insisted. “It darted into those bushes when I screamed, but I saw it!”
“But that’s im…” Careful, don’t protest too much. “…incredible. Would they dare come into the palace?”
“Didn’t your brother get rid of all the goblins, Jeriah?”
Master Zachiros was standing behind him. Careful.