The Library of Anukdun (Legend of the White Sword Book 5)

by P. D. Kalnay

  “Huh, I guess you’re not just a pretty face then.”

  Ivy looked as if she was about to call me an idiot. Then she stopped and spun toward the southern shore. There’d been no clumps of vegetation on that side of the river since the first day. Dark sand and rock had provided a stark contrast to the lush, vibrant jungle to the north.

  Something darker than the black sand moved to the water’s edge. I’d seen wyvern on Knight’s Haven, but not like the one drinking at the riverbank. The wyvern was many, many times the size of the ones I’d battled. It was slithery and coiled, making an estimate difficult, but it couldn’t have been less than two hundred feet long. As with the ones on Knight’s Haven, patches of shadow clung to its scaly body.

  “Ivy,” I began.

  She shushed me with a look and didn’t speak until we’d left the monster behind. For the next while Ivy sang a slow and quiet song that reminded me of a lullaby. It even made me sleepy. When the wyvern was a mile back, she stopped singing.

  Ivy slumped down, exhausted, “That was very near my limit.”

  “Are you OK?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I will need to spend time on land to replenish my strength. That wyvern was old and sly. I spent a great deal of strength diverting its attention from us.”

  Then Ivy slipped into sleep.

  Chapter 24 – Tragraal

  A short time after passing the giant wyvern, the Dun widened into what amounted to a lake, and the current became sluggish. Ruins of a city filled a long island, separated from the northern shore by a channel. The stone footings of a bridge rose from the channel like broken teeth in a rotten mouth, but none of the arch remained, cutting the island off from the north shore. Towers flanked a tall, open gate in the Watching Wall, half-filled with jungle. Trees and assorted vegetation spread across the island too, but nature had yet to reclaim it all.

  Ivy still looked exhausted after her nap, and thanks to the absence of stone and storm, I didn’t feel in peak condition either.

  “How about we stop there so you can recover your strength?” I suggested.

  Ivy considered, examined the island, and then nodded.

  “We should stay by the boat, to be cautious,” she said.

  After what I’d seen, I wasn’t about to argue, but I held out a small hope of having a look around while she rested.

  ***

  Stone wharfs circled most of the island and we tied up on the riverside at a spot where the vegetation grew well back from the shoreline. It was nice getting off the boat and having stone underfoot. The further west we travelled the less generally magical I felt, but it was only in the last days that my weakness had become truly tangible. Ivy was amazed at how far I’d travelled from Knight’s Haven before suffering noticeable effects from the Longing. I figured it was lucky that I didn’t rely much on my magical abilities—even if that was mainly a result of ignorance and incompetence.

  “How’s this?” I asked Ivy.

  I felt better already with stone underfoot, if nowhere near as strong as on Knight’s Haven.

  “Too rocky,” Ivy said. “I need soil between my toes.”

  “We’ll have to leave the shore and go further in then.”

  Ivy nodded. She eyed city and jungle suspiciously. “I sense nothing unusual, but…”

  “I’ll stay by the boat, ready to go, just in case,” Falan said.

  “Very well,” Ivy said. “Jack, fetch our weapons.”

  ***

  We had to cross half the city before finding suitable soil near the middle of the island. That didn’t bother me at all. I got a good look at the buildings and the exotic plant life strangling them. Up close the jungle had a distinctly prehistoric quality with oversized bugs and funky tropical flora. I remembered the biting flower from The Hanging Garden and touched nothing. There was a frightening moment when we surprised a herd of blue lizards the size of crocodiles that scattered in all directions, including up trees and walls. Ivy assured me they were harmless and we moved on.

  Eventually, we found ourselves in what I suspected was an open park, in the days when people lived in the unnamed city. The jungle grew thick and there were no buildings. Ivy stopped, declared the spot acceptable, and had me bury her in the soft loamy soil. It was like burying someone in the sand at the beach. I’d never done that, but I’d seen it in movies. By the end, only her little face showed above ground. After brushing dirt from her cheek, I stole a kiss.

  That earned me a frown.

  “You should keep watch,” Ivy said. “I’ll be partly asleep, to speed the process further, and won’t be able to warn you of danger.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  I set her bow and quiver on the ground next to her, and took up hammer and shield. Ivy was already asleep by the time I looked back at her again. If it had just been me, I’d have gone exploring. Who knew what cool stuff hid beyond the dark doorways of the buildings we’d passed? Ivy lay in the middle of an open clearing surrounded by a view of trees, bushes, and vines. After a few minutes of keeping watch, I grew bored. After an hour, I paced in a circle around the clearing; half hoping something would show up.

  Then I heard a stick snap.

  I immediately took back my wish, but it was too late.

  The noise came from somewhere in the surrounding jungle. I’d been lost in thought and couldn’t say from which direction the sound had come. Not the best example of keeping watch. I peered hard into the dense foliage, attempting to see what had made the noise, and though I saw nothing, I felt eyes on me. I didn’t think it was my imagination.

  The watching went on and on. I had to push down the inappropriate urge to demand that whoever it was show themselves. Ivy still hadn’t stirred, and I didn’t want to look away from the jungle or set down my weapons. Then a big black shape slid into my peripheral vision as something stepped silently from the leafy shadows.

  It was a maigur, and though I had no immediate proof, I thought it was the same one that had followed us. The ‘little’ maigur seemed plenty big in person. It was smaller than the guy I’d released in Felclaw, and it moved with a feline grace the old prisoner hadn’t displayed. Big creatures on the First World were often startlingly swift compared to large terrestrial animals. I’d partly acclimatised, but seeing it still weirded me out sometimes.

  Ivy hadn’t stirred.

  “We aren’t looking for trouble,” I told a pair of luminescent red eyes.

  “You trespass on Imperial soil,” a female voice said.

  The voice triggered a flashback to a moonlit night, three years back, and to the maigur Ivy and I fought between the standing stone markers of the gate behind Glastonbury Manor.

  “We don’t want trouble,” I reiterated. Then without thinking I added, “Plus, the empire has been gone for thousands of years.”

  That got me an angry growl and bristling fur. I raised my shield, figuring that the fighting was about to begin. My first priority was drawing the maigur away from Ivy, and though it was hardly my first fight, and the wyvern I’d fought were bigger, and the clansman, I suspected, faster—I was sure the maigur would prove deadlier than either of those. It was all muscle, like a Bengal tiger grown to five times its normal size. I could tell from the way it moved that it was very, very fast. If that had been everything, then with the power of my hammer and shield, I’d have been in good shape.

  A dumb animal would pose a danger, but not a real threat. Intelligence filled the eyes that looked back at me… and plenty of hatred. I knew that maigur had successfully fought for and defended the Shogaan Empire for long time. They were warriors, not animals, and I didn’t doubt for a second that they’d earned their deadly reputation.

  “The Empire will live as long as a single soldier stands to defend it,” the maigur said. “I am Tragraal, Captain of the Wall Guard. You are an enemy who has dared set foot on Imperial soil and fouled it with your fae stench. The punishment for that is dea–”

  Her muzzle rose higher into the air and intense sniffi
ng interrupted whatever else she planned to say. Tragraal gave me a low threatening growl and leapt back into the undergrowth. She vanished again with distressing speed. I raised shield and hammer, expecting her to spring from one of the countless shadows.

  “She’s gone,” Ivy said.

  I glanced back to see Ivy brush clumps of soil from her dress and take up bow and quiver.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. Even now she races for northern shore. We must run the other way. Hurry!”

  Ivy didn’t wait to explain or see if I followed. She dashed back the way we’d come. I barely stayed with her as she wove and ducked through patches of dense undergrowth. Ivy moved lithely, like she was a part of the jungle, and none of the vines or leaves so much as brushed her clothing. I smashed my way through, hitting everything, and I only kept up thanks to my longer stride.

  We tore back down the overgrown city streets like we were running from a wildfire—I had no idea what we ran from. Finally, Falan and the boat appeared in the distance at the end of a long, open stretch of road.

  “What are we running from,” I asked between desperate breaths.

  “I don’t know,” Ivy shouted without looking back, “but they are hungry, and they are many!”

  That’s when I heard a lot of somethings running behind us. Whatever they were, they were big—and unconcerned with stealth. Falan saw us running and hurriedly untied the boat. Then he jumped aboard and held it to the wharf with his hands.

  A cry rang out behind us.

  I thought I already ran as fast as I could, but found a new burst of speed at the sound. I’d never heard an animal make a similar noise before—it was like the threatening warning of a trumpeter swan and the roar of a lion blended together. Only something scary would make a sound like that.

  Other cries answered the first, and some came from either side of us. We were flanked and soon might be surrounded. The boat floated less than fifty paces ahead. Ivy reached the wharf before me, turned, knocked an arrow, and fired without slowing her pace. Her arrow flew down the wharf at the first of our flanking pursuers to show itself. Ivy made a perfect shot, and the arrow flew towards the centre of the unicorn’s chest. The unicorn sidestepped with impossible speed, and Ivy’s arrow skidded across the stone behind it to no effect.

  I recognised the unicorn right away from illustrations in one of Gran’s books. About all that mythical unicorns got right was the horn and the number of legs. Real unicorns do have a single horn in the middle of their foreheads—the shortest of which are a good yard long and magically sharp. Gran’s book said that unicorn horns can pierce anything, including the scales of a dragon. Most armour doesn’t even slow them. Real unicorns look nothing like horses or goats, and no young maiden would be tempted to embrace one. The thing that dodged Ivy’s arrow was reptilian and had a long muzzle full of sharp teeth—it reared and roared, giving me a good look. Long, powerful legs ended in claws, a spikey crimson crest ran back from the horn down its neck, and fine white scales covered the rest of the monster. The sinuous, spineless way it moved reminded me of wyvern.

  Too many unicorns to count appeared behind and on either side of me. Some bounded along the tops of the ruined rooftops lining the road. Ivy paused at the boat.

  “Get on and push off!” I shouted. “I’ll jump!”

  Ivy didn’t hesitate. She flung herself into the bow of the boat, driving it away from the wharf. Falan ramped up the pump and steered straight out into the river. They were well away by the time I reached the water. A bunch of unicorns had almost caught me when I jumped. I had no time to think about it, making with the air pillars and leaping for my life. One unicorn drove off the wharf and into the river beneath my feet and a second skewered a third to outraged screams. I focused on landing in the boat, just making it onboard, and kicking Falan in the head on the way by. Then I felt the pump drive us away at speed. We’d escaped!

  Or, so I thought.

  Unicorns are excellent swimmers—a detail my grandmother’s book had failed to mention. Behind us the river swirled as hundreds of the monsters gave chase. They were fast swimmers too, tearing up a frothy mess as they fought the slow current, and each other, to reach us. Falan took the pump up to six, and they still paced us. If we ran aground on a shallow spot…

  “Head for the southern bank!” Ivy shouted, above the howls of the enraged herd.

  Falan followed orders and veered to port, bringing us towards the dark sandy shoreline. Unbelievably, the unicorns were closing the gap. Ivy fired off a few arrows at the front of the herd. She chose well and the bodies of the frontrunners slowed the rest. They couldn’t dodge her arrows in the water.

  “It doesn’t look like they’ll give up,” I said.

  “They won’t,” Ivy agreed. “We must give them something more interesting.”

  I racked my brain trying to figure out what that might be. Unicorns had an insatiable hunger for virgins and we had a boatload of snacks. I was about to ask Ivy what her plan was when she started singing. It was different from any other song I’d heard her sing. The words were sharper and the melody more dramatic.

  Given our speed, we soon approached the Black Wastes; a side of the river we’d studiously avoided.

  “Am I to make land?” Falan asked Ivy.

  “No,” Ivy interrupted her song. “Turn upstream and stay back from the shore. It is coming.”

  A crazy tangled mass of unicorns closed on the stern of our boat. Sometimes one would leap forward from the backs of its brethren and gain impressive distance. Getting in shallower—where they’d find their feet and greater speed—seemed crazy.

  “Ivy, what’s your plan?” I asked.

  Ivy pointed at the nearest dune, “That!”

  Before I could ask, “What?” the giant wyvern came over the crest of the dune. It looked even bigger than I remembered.

  At the sight of us, or maybe the herd, the wyvern let loose an undulating wail. I didn’t need to speak wyvern to know a challenge when I heard one. It seemed impossible that the herd of unicorns could become more manic or more frightening, but they managed it.

  They also forgot about us.

  Falan took us upstream, and the herd turned in unison like a school of fish, or flock of birds, toward the wyvern. All added up, pound-for-pound they might have been equals. Falan conscientiously piloted the boat, while I watched the show.

  The wyvern came down to the riverbank and waited for the unicorns. It threw up a cloud of sand with its frenzied thrashing. Then the first of the herd climbed the riverbank, and the battle began. It was more evenly matched than I would have expected. The first few unicorns went down quickly under clawed feet or were snatched up in the giant mouth. The wyvern didn’t eat them. It just shook and tore the unicorns apart and threw the bodies away. The fight was one of rivals, not predator and prey.

  It looked like it would be a one-sided contest—until the rest of the herd made landfall. Once they surrounded the wyvern, the scales balanced and tipped. There were a lot of unicorns, and each attacked with a simple head-on, head-down strategy. Although they had sharp teeth and claws, every one of them charged forward, horn-first. The wyvern stopped dozens, but it was completely surrounded. In short order, blood wept from countless wounds.

  “The blood won’t clot,” Ivy said.

  “What?”

  “It is a part of a unicorn horn’s magic,” she explained, “the wound will not close or heal, and the flesh will dissolve, becoming more… tender.”

  I had nothing to say to that. Half of the unicorn herd had already been crushed or torn apart, and the wyvern slowed as its coating of shadows grew thinner. We’d moved a good distance up stream, but the screams still rang loud in my ears. Over and over the unicorns charged, retreated a short distance, and charged again. The wyvern caught fewer each round, and, as it slumped to the sand, its enemies found an easier target.

  By the time we’d reached the end of the long lake, the battle had ended, and the herd milled around th
e enormous corpse. At least two thirds of the herd had fallen. The rest began viciously tearing the wyvern’s body to pieces.

  “Will they come after us?” I asked Ivy.

  “They have forgotten us in their bloodlust,” she said. “Our scents will be hidden for the time we need to make our escape. They may also draw other creatures from the Wastes. We were lucky it was a small herd, and that we had warning.”

  “That was a small herd!”

  “Yes, they can number in the thousands.”

  I tried and failed to picture a bigger or scarier herd.

  “Did you see the maigur?” I asked.

  “I only woke as it left. It was the same female that followed us.”

  I already suspected that, “I’m not sure what we can do about it.”

  “Not land again, unless there’s no choice,” Falan said.

  “A wise suggestion,” Ivy said.

  Chapter 25 – Bookston

  We didn’t land again for over three weeks of travel upriver. We drank from the river, ate cold rations, and slept wet when the rain lasted long enough to soak everything—making for a fairly miserable journey. The Dun grew narrower as we travelled, but I suspected it was still wider than any river on Earth. That was a bonus because it meant that we still had a wet buffer from the two hazardous shorelines at night when we stopped. We usually waited until dusk before stopping, and the person with the final watch pulled anchor and got us moving at first light.

  Over the course of those weeks, I grew to hate my boat and the smell of my body. The river contained too many dark slithery shapes to risk bathing, and as Ivy grew more tired, we had increasing visits from annoying, stinging, and biting insects. Some of them were big, too. It was worst when she was asleep and not using any of her keep-away voodoo. I felt like an idiot for originally assuming that the First World didn’t have mosquitos, leaches, or snakes. It had plenty of everything—and most came in jumbo sizes.