by Robert Beers
They looked up as Adam and Milward walked down the steps of the ladder. The wizard's staff tapped loudly onto the wood of the steps as they descended.
The old man without a pipe stood as they approached and slapped his hands together. “Good morrow, m'lords. Will ye be needin’ a ferry?”
“That is exactly what we need, my good fellow. We wish to go across to the library, post haste.” Milward indicated the direction they wished to go with the point of his staff.
“The library, eh?” The old man rubbed his chin with a hand covered by a fingerless glove of knitted gray wool. “You be scholars then, eh? Never mind. Ol’ Rawn'll get ye there quick and safe, don't you worry.”
Milward snorted. “I wasn't worried in the first place. I know your work, Rawn, and I know of your boat. That's why I'm letting you ferry us over.”
Adam had been busy looking over the boat the old men were sitting in, while Milward dickered with Rawn. He knew nothing about boats, but his senses told him that this craft was the better of the three moored at the dock. It seemed ... more tightly put together than the other two, and, as far as he was concerned, if he was going across those waters, he wanted the best he could get underneath his feet.
“Done!” Rawn stuck his hand out to Milward, and the wizard took it as they closed their agreement.
“Come on lad, let's get going.” Milward spoke to Adam, as he stepped down into the boat.
Adam followed the Wizard, and found a spot to sit down in the rear of the craft, but the old man made him stand back up. “Sorry, boy, but that's me place, lessen you know how to guide her ‘cross to the books.”
“Books?” Adam stood and made way for Rawn to take his place at the tiller.
“That's what some of the locals call the library. It's sort of a pet name.” Milward rested his hands upon the butt of his staff, as the breeze began to fill the sail, easing the small craft out into the waters of the straight.
The ride became rougher as the boat cleared the wharf area and sailed into the channel itself. The ridge the library sat upon was a dark smear upon the horizon, and Adam began to wonder if they would ever get there, as he discovered his stomach wasn't suited to sailing.
“Are you feeling all right?” Milward asked him. The wizard's body shifted easily with the motion of the boat.
“He's turnin’ green.” Rawn smiled at them from his spot at the tiller. “The side's right there lad, if you need it.”
“I'll ... be fine.” Adam managed to get out before letting go with a huge belch.
“Sure ya will, lad. Sure ya will,” Rawn chuckled, as he steered them into a tacking maneuver.
Adam felt a partial sense of pride over having kept his breakfast down, as Rawn pulled his boat alongside the Library's dock. It sat nestled into a protected cove at the base of an imposing cliff. He could smell the combination of salt and seaweed from the rocks on either side of the dock. Seagulls cried above them, and pelicans squabbled among themselves on their cliff side aeries.
“There's a lot of birds here,” he said to Milward, as they climbed out of the boat and onto the dock.
The wizard looked around himself, as if noticing where they were all of a sudden. “Yes. Yes, there are. But we're not here sightseeing right now. Come on. It's a long climb up to the top.”
Adam looked at Milward quizzically. “Are you sure you're fully recovered? You seem ... distracted.”
“What? Oh, don't worry about me, my boy. I am quite fully recovered, as you put it, from whatever it was. I'm just thinking about the Prophecy, that's all.” And about the part you're going to play in it, he added silently.
The wizard readjusted his grip on his staff, and began the climb up the stair that led to the library above. The steps were carved into the living rock of the cliffs below the library, and followed a curving track that twisted back upon itself once before edging along the cliff face to a final steep climb to a gatehouse.
By the time Adam and Milward reached the gatehouse, they were panting and wiping off beads of sweat from their brows. There was no guard, and the door opened easily with just a push.
“Where are the guards?” Adam asked, as he pulled his sleeve across his forehead.
“There aren't any. There haven't been guards here for, oh, it must be three or four hundred years, now.” The wizard's laugh was slightly bitter. “Eh. You would think it would be different. If they only knew the vast store of riches these walls contained. But to them, they're just ... books, and you don't see many gaffers willing to pull a pint in exchange for a book.”
“I'm not sure I follow.” Adam cocked his head at Milward's rumination.
“You don't? Eh, no, you probably don't. But you will, lad, in the years to come, if you survive them. The taste of the hunt for knowledge will teach you the true value of what's in this library. Men can forget, and some societies can even actively unlearn the wisdom of their past, and fall back into the darkness they clawed their way out of, but that wisdom, once written down, is saved for the future. A book never forgets. A scroll or a parchment will teach the reader just as thoroughly today as it did a thousand years ago. All that student has to do is begin reading it, and class is in session.” Milward's eyes lit with the fervor of the eternal student speaking about his first love.
Adam nodded at the old wizard. “I think I'm beginning to follow, now.”
Milward looked at him searchingly for a moment. “Good,” he said. “Good. Come now, we don't want to keep them waiting.” He hurried on up the walk through the gatehouse, and onto the wide palisade that climbed up to the library proper
“This looks even larger than the palace,” Adam remarked, as the dome-capped walls of the library came into full view.
“It is,” Milward replied, as he pointed toward the library with his staff. “It covers almost half again the surface area of the Ducal Palace. You'll notice that the building stones come in different sizes for different areas? That's because it was built over several generations, during the reigns of several different rulers. The first was Labad himself, when Grisham was a part of the unified empire.”
“I see,” Adam said, as he visualized the construction of the library in his mind's eye. “And different rulers had different ideas about how they wanted it to look?”
“That explains a lot of what you see around us, doesn't it?” Milward smiled. The blocks of stone that made up the walls they walked by were carved out of a black marble streaked with a pale green. The tower they approached, in contrast to the wall, was built of granite that boasted white and black specks. Over all, the effect it gave Adam was that of a building that couldn't make up it's mind.
The librarian met them at the main entrance to the library. The massive pillars bracketing the portal to his private world of knowledge emphasized his small stature.
“Milward! You old reprobate. You've come to visit me at last. How long has it been?” The librarian gripped his friend's hands in greeting.
“A few years, but I've been busy, my old friend, and it is a long journey from my home, as you well know.” Milward returned the librarian's grip of friendship.
“Busy, he says.” The little old man looked at Adam with bright blue-gray eyes that showed no sign of the age displayed by the rest of his body. “Most likely holed up in that cozy little cave of his, investigating the secrets of some defenseless root or berry.”
“How well you know me.” Milward replied, not bothering to dispute the good-natured accusation.
Adam couldn't help smiling at the scene of two old friends meeting after a long absence.
“And who is your strapping young companion, Wizard?” The librarian kept his gaze on Adam while he asked the question.
“He is partially the reason why I'm here, old friend.” Milward replied, putting one hand on Adam's shoulder. “This is Adam, one of the two promised in Labad's prophecy. You'll notice the sword at his hip?”
Rather than reacting in surprise as Adam expected, the librarian merely nodded and murmur
ed. “So. It has begun. And I live to see it.”
He looked up at the two of them and said, in a louder tone of voice. “You must be thinking me a horrible host, keeping you standing out here on the stoop. Come in. Come in. Felsten!” He called out the name in a surprisingly loud voice.
“My apprentice will be here shortly to take your things. Come inside.” He led them up the short flight of steps and into the foyer of the library.
Adam stopped as they entered the foyer, and then stood there, transfixed. The ceiling above him ended in a multi-colored translucent dome high enough to accommodate a large dragon. Thick pillars four yards thick of opalescent stone bracketed the four points of a mosaic compass laid into the floor. Inside the compass, a map of the world, set with tiny colored chips of tile, looked back at him. He found Cloudhook Mountain, and traced his journey back to the southern edge of the great forest, and then up to its northern border, where he and Charity began their adventures.
“Quite impressive, isn't it?” The librarian's statement pulled him out of his reverie.
Adam blinked and then focused in on the librarian's face with its tracery of deep lines. “It is very impressive. It must have taken years to complete.”
“Almost a century and a third, from what the histories tell me. Sometimes I find myself getting lost within the trails I make for myself here.” The librarian looked down at the map with a wistful expression.
“Is it very accurate?” Adam asked.
“Is it accurate? What a question.” Milward stepped onto the mosaic and gently tapped a spot on the map. “Labad himself commissioned the laying of these tiles. Mashglach himself drew the plans. I believe you would consider him a source for accuracy in map making, would you not?”
Adam looked at the map again with elevated respect, beyond what had been there for its beauty alone. “The Winglord designed this?”
Milward smiled. “He did, indeed. During the time of Labad, there was trade between mankind and Dragons such as had not been for many centuries prior to his reign. It was an enlightened time.”
He indicated the library with a wave of his arm. “There are histories here which speak of it in great detail. You may find one of them useful in answering your questions.”
His smile faded and he shook his head. “Sometimes ... sometimes, I wish I had the power to return to those days.”
The librarian noticed the change. “What troubles you, my friend? Why the sudden morose nostalgia?”
Milward rubbed his eyebrows with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. “As you said. It has begun. I think ... the destroyer has come into the world, in fact, I am sure of it.”
They continued to speak as the librarian led them past the foyer into the library itself. Adam saw acres of books and manuscripts, rolled parchments and vellums stacked neatly into row after row of dark wooden shelves. The air within the library smelled of deep age tinged with musk and lemon oil.
Milward continued to tell his old friend about his concern. “Gilgafed has released a Seeker from the shadow realm. Before that, it was Chivvin.”
“Blessed Bardoc, no!” The librarian staggered back in shock at Milward's revelation. “How is it you still live?”
“I told you. He's one of the promised ones. Where the sword proved useless against the Chivvin, his instincts did not.”
Adam felt uncomfortably like a class assignment that was being presented for grading. His memories leapt to those times Aunt and Uncle made he and Charity attend the village school, and everyone turned to look at them in their rags.
“Magik? The young man used a shaping on a creature of shadow? And it worked?” The librarian peppered Milward with his excited questions.
“Yes, yes, and yes.” The wizard gestured with his left hand, while his right kept the staff tapping the tiles of the library floor as they walked. “He noticed the Chivvin avoided the sunlight and kept to the shadows. The shaping created sunlight. Simple, ordinary sunlight. It broke them apart like water hitting soft sand. The rest of that day's journey proved quite uneventful.”
The librarian nodded, absorbing and cataloging the story just like one of his manuscripts. “Uh hmm. Uh Hmm. But you say the destroyer is abroad? I know that term ... I read something about it ... Oh, yes, the folio, Visions of Darkness. Yes...”
He looked up a Milward sharply. “Gilgafed is the Elven Sorcerer? Of course! He'd have to be, wouldn't he?”
Milward took his old friend by the arm. “Have you this folio at hand?”
“Oh, yes, certainly. It's back in my study, through that door over there, and up a few flights of stairs. I also have something else you might be interested in seeing, Milward. It's a true treasure.”
Milward smiled inwardly. “I have something to show you myself.”
“Really? How nice.” The librarian hurried forward with surprising speed for one so old. “Where's that boy gotten himself? Felsten!”
Chapter Thirty-One
Cremer found Alford in the tower where the pigeons were kept. He cleared his throat.
“What is it, Cremer?” Alford's voice was a low growl.
“Is ... is it, true Milord? Is... she dead?” The Emperor's Aide's voice trembled.
Alford's tone dropped to a whisper. “I knew her, Cremer. I watched her grow into a young lady. She was headstrong and willful. At times, even aggravating, but she was my niece. My flesh, my blood!”
“The ... Seer?” Cremer asked, dreading the answer. Hoping against hope there could be some chance the message was wrong.
The Emperor turned to face his aide. With shock, Cremer saw that Alford had been crying. The haggard look in his eyes also said he'd not slept for a number of days.
“She confirmed Hypatia's death and the manner of it. I kept her at it until I was sure. Just finished, in fact. Sent her home, think she'll sleep for a week.” Alford chuckled at the end of his statement. There was no humor in his laugh.
“I never thought Bilardi actually hated me that much.” He turned back to look out the arched cupola that opened to the city below. “To go to such lengths,” he murmured. “I will kill him, Cremer. I will gut him like the pig he is, and watch his eyes as his spirit falls into the pit itself.”
“He will deserve it, Milord.” Cremer nodded. He'd known the girl himself.
“She was most explicit.” Alford continued, speaking over Cremer as if he wasn't there. “I tried to have her hunt the bastard down, but she couldn't, or wouldn't. Maybe it was her exhaustion. I don't know.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Something frightened her, so I sent her home.”
He turned again and looked at Cremer. “Fetch Jarl-Tysyn and bring him to my suite. I'm leaving for there, now, and I don't want to wait long, so bring him to me regardless of his state. I don't care if he's eating or with his wife.”
Alford left the tower and Cremer followed him. At the level where members of the court lived, he turned aside to take the left hallway. Jarl-Tysyn's apartment lay at the far end in the southwestern corner of the palace.
Cremer tapped on the door to the bath diffidently. The General was a man with a temper, who little liked being disturbed, especially when he was enjoying one of his rare private moments.
There was no answer, but he could hear water splashing. He knocked louder.
“Go away!” A string of profanity followed the demand.
Cremer knocked again. “I'm terribly sorry General, but the Emperor told me to fetch you. He is in his suite.”
“I said go ... what was that?” More splashing, and then the door was yanked open.
Cremer found himself facing a man equal to his own age and height, but powerfully built, with close-cropped white hair, ice blue eyes, a slash of a mouth underneath a beak of a nose and a towel gripped in one callused hand. Water dripped from the point of his nose and pooled at his large feet.
“Cremer.” The General's tone told the Emperor's aide just what the military man thought of Imperial functionaries. It wasn't much. “Wha
t in Bardoc's balls are you babbling about?”
Cremer, a religious man, winced at the epithet. “Pardon the interruption, milord, but the Emperor commanded me to bring you to him, immediately.”
“What is so bleeding urgent that it can't wait until I finish my bath?” The General's shout nearly blew Cremer's hair back.
Cremer told him.
Jarl-Tysyn stood there looking at Cremer for a moment, and then he whispered. “Gods.” And ran off, clad only in the towel.
The only thing faster than a released bolt from a crossbow is rumor. Jarl-Tysyn gave birth to several in his near-naked headlong dash to the Emperor's chambers that afternoon. One of the longest lived, and the one that the palace staff circulated with the most enjoyment, concerned Alford the 23rd greeting a dripping wet Jarl-Tysyn, clad only in a towel, at the door to his suite. A subplot spread among the guard staff pondered the reasons why the Emperor showed no concern at the sight of the unclad General. Wiser heads persuaded the others to not mention it in the General's presence.
* * * *
“He's awake, my Lord Duke.”
McCabe heard the coarse voice, and recognized it as that of the guard who'd kept watch over him in the Duke's dungeon before ... before what? New sensations ran through him on butterfly feet. Voices, other than those of the two small lives, why did he think of them that way? On either side of the...
Ah! He was chained. Chained on that lovely slab the Duke had been so kind to provide him with on his earlier visit. He decided to reward the Duke for his kindness by not draining him. Draining him? Where did that come from? The other voices were speaking to him, but not in words ... feelings. Yes, that was it. Feelings, primal, strong lustful feelings. McCabe began exploring, testing and ... tasting the new rooms that he found within himself.
He found that he knew he could leave his chains anytime he desired, but he was content not to do so. There was so much to discover, and he liked the feel of the harsh, cold granite against his naked flesh. He found it restful and stimulating at the same time.