by Jem I Kelley
“But in what sort of sentence? Was this Azabar talked about in the way an object or artefact might be talked about? Or in the way of a place or city name? Or could Azabar have been referred to as a person?”
“Person. I'm sure it was a person. I can’t remember much about the conversation except the person said, if you don’t know who Azabar is, you don’t know anything,” said Aden, lying smoothly.
“Well I don’t know who Azabar is,” said Duncan. “Although, to be fair my area of expertise is in rather a narrow niche.”
The deep lines in Duncan’s face became cracks as he frowned.
“Perhaps this Azabar isn’t famous, at least outside Dazarian. Brace yourselves against me finding any information on him. Let me confer with a colleague. I’ll be back shortly.
Bliss’s eyes followed the back of the disappearing Priest.
“My brain feels like mush.”
Aden felt the same.
“If we need our travels in our artefact world documented, we know who to go to.”
Bliss snorted. “You’re joking. He’d write it down exactly as it happened. We want someone who can spin a yarn, you know, spice up whatever adventure we have.”
Bliss had a point, Aden realised. When the exploration of their disc-word began in earnest, they’d need to find a scribe who could make a tale out of it; not someone like Duncan who get too caught up in facts and pen a manuscript about as dry as a dissertation on sawdust.
A face popped into Aden’s mind and he smiled.
“How about that old salt on the Grey Hind? Bran? He could make a trip to a barber sound like an epic.”
Bliss opened Duncan’s desk. “Possibly. You know…” She said, having a nose at the paper, documents, and quills inside, “Hacknor isn’t going to be happy with us when he finds out we’re in the Cathedral and not working for the market. He’ll be peeing vinegar.”
“When Hacknor asks Thalding for money to cover our wages not worked,” said Aden watching Bliss rummage through the desk. “That’ll really set sparks flying.”
Bliss examined a bulbous ink vial too forcefully, and a stream spurted out onto a sheet of paper.
Aden felt his heart jump into his mouth.
“Careful!”
Fumbling, Bliss replaced the vial, took out her handkerchief, and dabbed at the ink. This caused the liquid to spread and soon the paper was more black than white.
Aden heard footsteps and whispered a warning.
Bliss lowered the lid of the desk, and straightened, trying to look innocent.
Duncan re-appeared. He carried three tomes, and when these were placed on the table dust erupted from them.
“I believe the answer to Azabar might be in one of these. You can read can’t you?”
Aden waved at the dust, and felt a tickle in his throat; he suppressed a cough.
“That was quick!”
Duncan gave a gaunt smile.
“I spoke to a colleague whose speciality is the construction of language. He assures me the word is either early Amari or pre-Amari.”
Aden noticed the bottom-most tome had strings of cobwebs along its spine, making it look as if it hadn’t been opened since pre-Amari times.
“That long ago,” he said. “I was guessing that this Azabar might have still been alive.”
“Unlikely.”
Duncan put his hand to the cover of the first tome, then paused.
“I could make notes on parchment of what we discover?”
“No, we’ll remember,” said Aden.
“Yeah,” said Bliss tightly, staring at the desk and possibly thinking about the spilt ink inside. “We don’t need notes.”
Duncan shrugged. “As you wish.” He lifted the cover of the first tome, and flicked through the pages sending dust flying.
“My supposition would be King or Sorcerer.”
Aden stared at the yellowing pages as Duncan turned them, so fragile they might collapse into shreds at any moment.
“Why a King or Sorcerer?”
“It’s unlikely the name of anyone early or pre-Amari would be remembered by someone in a Dazarian prison, unless that name were very important in its time. Whoever told you the name, and said they were surprised you didn’t know it, might have been having fun at your expense.”
Duncan all the while stared the pages he turned, as if searching.
“What sort of book is that?”
“This tome… is 'Heriozehpyrs A to Z of early Amari notables'. I’ve passed all the A’s without spotting Azabar. It’s worthwhile checking for passing reference on other pages.”
Duncan paused on a page as he spoke to the friends and Aden let out a gasp as he saw what was drawn there. Duncan’s eyebrows furrowed.
“What now?”
Aden pointed at a fading woodprint and the figures depicted there.
“The water-seller.”
“What water-seller would that be?”
“Does look like him,” said Bliss. “A man we met in the Dazarian market.”
There were three people in the drawing. Two men and a woman. One of the man resembled the water-seller in Dazarian, the other had the features of an Haverlander, thought Aden. The women bore Eastern origins. Each had a mark on their forehead.
Duncan’s tone held controlled disdain as he read the flowing script under the woodcut.
“I doubt you met any of these particular people. These were the first Amari to arrive on our world. I expect your water-seller had a passing similarity.”
Aden wasn’t so sure. The moustache and the wide grin, the friendly eyes, the mark on the forehead...”
“Why do they have those on their heads?”
Duncan frowned, “You’re too young to have seen real Amari, aren’t you? From what I recall, they all had marks on their forehead. No records of significance exist…”
His eyes narrowed and his words trailed as his finger traced the handwriting on the opposite page. “It’s fortunate you caused me to pause here. I might have missed this otherwise.”
Aden looked at the script and was confused, how Duncan could make sense of such flowery writing, he didn’t know. Considering teachers put such importance on making each letter clear and distinct when in a classroom, he thought in that moment it was disgusting how adults allowed their writing to deteriorate so.
“What have you spotted?” he asked.
“This is wonderful. It explains how the early Amari eradicated Sorcerers and Sorceries in the world. It asks whether the greatest wizards of history would prevail against the Amari, if united, in the same moment of time. Then it provides names: Azabar, Binzolick, Thexoran, Necorbat, Pelixar and Zickorack.”
Bliss gripped the table.
“Azabar!”
“Yes, Azabar.”
“A sorcerer!”
Duncan gave the friends his gaunt smile. “Indeed so. That didn’t take long did it? Are you certain you don’t require this copied onto paper?”
“No!” Exclaimed Bliss and Aden.
Duncan tapped his fingers on the desk.
“Azabar is the sort of bizarre name a preening sorcerer would give himself. This puzzle is simpler than I expected. I retrieved two other tomes in expectation of discovering our Azabar to be Sorcerer or Ruler of State. ‘Thixlies collection of sorcery tales’, and ‘Parsimmons tribute to Aristocracy’.
He closed the first tome and turned to a dark leather-bound one, the one covered in spider-web.
“Let’s try the 'Thixlies',”
Flicking to the contents page, he slid fingers down it, mumbling to himself. All the words looked weird to Aden. The letters were squiggles.
“Was Thixlie a foreigner? The language is weird.”
Duncan paused, his finger on a word.
“No, Thixlie lived about three hundred and fifty years ago, in Haverland. The language is Old Haverland; used before the Amari came. Three hundred years of their domination led to this becoming unfashionable. The way we speak and write nowadays is more A
mari, than true Haverland. Which isn’t necessarily detrimental, many artefact worlds use the same syntax and grammar, allowing common understanding.”
Aden pictured the stone circle on the mountain ledge of their disc-world and the strange marks upon it.
“The writing around the edge of the Amari stone circles isn’t like this or modern Haverland.”
“You’ve visited the circle near the city wall?”
Aden realised Duncan had assumed he meant the circle to the East of the City which the Amari had used to appear from, now heavily guarded by Haverland soldiers. Aden couldn’t say he’d seen a stone circle on a mountain ledge after using a artefact to transport to a new world, so he nodded.
Duncan gave a rare smile.
“Well spotted. Yes the circle writing is unlike any other we’ve seen. We think it’s unique to the Amari and it invokes sorceries. It would make sense, a language for magic. Several professors have tried to decipher its nature in the hope of learning more about how the artefacts work, alas they’ve made no progress. Back to this … let me see… Abaitnott, Affriclong, Aggrible, Ansan, Attituze, Avarize... ah yes here it is, Azabar, page 75.”
Duncan turned pages to number 75.
Aden exchanged glances with Bliss and felt his heart pound. Azabar was the name Spud had spoken of, in association with the threat to Haverland. Perhaps I’ll learn the connection to Spud’s murder and the threat to Haverland, he thought.
Duncan frowned and murmured, causing Aden to become impatient.
“What does it say?”
“Thixlie uses too much hyperbole . I’m trying to make sense of what is said here. It’s all: ‘unleashed torrent of ruination with the gale of ensorcelled energies’, and ‘Dark defeat weighed Azabar’s demonic brow as knights radiant with God’s justice…’.”
Duncan looked up; “I’ll try to translate in a way that makes sense to you.
“Let’s see. Azabar, circa 800 ba before Amari… One of the most powerful of ancient sorcerers, Azabar was the first magician to deserve the word ‘great’…. His magical abilities exceeded those… of his peers by orders of magnitude. His area of expertise lay in… instilling magic into objects.
“Magicians before and since have fashioned wands or amulets with but one usage… Azabar was the first to… exceed… this. By his early twenties he gained the ability to carve wands that could… fire… a bolt of lightning, yet… be… re-charged… for subsequent spell use.
“By his thirties… he had perfected… rechargeable… wands and amulets each capable of holding up to five charges. Amulets of… protection… strength.. and healing, along with wands of… lightning… fire… panic... and frost, were within his abilities.”
“During these years time he gathered a… mercenary… army of bugbears and attacked the city-state of Rithinberg.”
Duncan looked at the friends.
“That’s present day North-West Novogorad. It appears Azabar himself was a Northerner.”
Novogorad! Aden felt suddenly chilled. Azabar led an army of Bugbears to attack Novogorad a thousand years ago!? Bugbears attacked Novogorad in the present – and his parents were there! Bliss was staring at him, having presumably noticed the similarities too.
Duncan re-found his position on the page.
“Each… mercenary battalion included commanders armed with Azabar’s artefacts. This… army… defeated the five-times more numerous Rithinberg garrison.”
“Seeking more power the sorcerer continued his… research. He desired… the knowledge to build artefacts that would re-charge themselves. During this period of experiment and conquest, which extended into his forties, much of what is now… Novogorad… Ameria… Solant, came under his rule.”
“Aged forty eight he turned his attention to the… temperate states. His first target was… Haverland… and to coincide… came his greatest invention. A… wand of glass… that could create… a giant ice-golem on command; a wand that could… re-charge itself, upon dawn. It became known as… “Azabar’s Icicle”.
“With wand and his army Azabar launched a… sea-borne invasion against Haverland. He took surrounding towns… attacked the city itself on the second day of landing.”
“Azabar faced stout resistance. His years of conquering gave Haverland notice… for the attack. Thousands of soldiers, hundreds of …church knights… sorcerers from other countries… flocked to defence. One sorcerer… Buornip… researching means to locate the position of… charged magical device within… mile’s range. This proved useful in the confrontation that followed.
“Battle… raged without quarter asked or given… large parts of Haverland levelled. Thousands dead. Midday of the fourth day of invasion, Buornip killed… one of Azabar’s assassins; however, the… ice-golem… too gone, smashed… stones from catapults… wand useless until dawn. Azabar’s bugbear army reduced… section leaders armed with wands, killed… Azabar wounded.
“Midday… mercenary army begin to surrender… early evening it was over. Azabar… evaded capture. Scouts and sorcerers hunt him… months… trail became cold. Some believe he died of wounds… No-one saw Azabar again.
“Azabar was a… cruel magician… abilities for… selfish and violent ends. Yet… these abilities mark him as one of the true greats.”
Duncan took his finger from the page and turned to the friends.
“Well…” he said. “Not a paragon of virtue.”
Pictures of raging battles, crashing stone and bolts of magic had grown in Aden’s mind as Duncan read from the tome, and fears for his parents raced unrestrained in his mind. He blinked and forced himself to return to the present.
“No.”
Duncan put a hand to his desk lid, ready to raise it.
“I could copy this document to paper for you?”
“We got the gist of it,” said Bliss.
“Yes,” agreed Aden, thinking about the splattered ink inside the desk. “I know what I needed to know.”
Duncan managed a smile.
“Excellent. I believe our business is concluded. Thank you for your time.”
Aden and Bliss left the library.
Chapter 45: A Meeting with Arple
The clock tower chimed 12:30 pm and Aden tried to persuade Bliss to go to the scene of the murder before Mrs. Todd put out the dinner.
“Plumbert wanted to keep us safe, that's why he gave us a night-time curfew,” said Bliss putting her hands on her hips, and looking dubious.
“This isn't night-time.”
“But whoever murdered Spud is still in the city, and maybe close to where he/she/it murdered Spud.”
Aden smiled reassuringly. “Look, if we feel unsafe we can leave right away. I don't think anyone would do anything to us during daytime, though, it's too difficult for them to get away without being caught, isn't it?”
Bliss pulled at her frizzy hair and groaned.
“Oh, Grokkin eck! Look, if I say we leave at any time, we go, agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“You should have owned up to Duncan about the ink,” said Aden, as they wandered through the trees. He recognised the boulder beside the clearing where they’d found Spud’s body, and headed towards it. In the daylight its rugged shape and the ferns growing in the cracks of its upper surface, lent it the appearance of a giant’s head sprouting green hair.
Bliss sliced a row of nettles with a willow branch she’d plucked.
“It was an accident. Anyway, only one page got splashed, and perhaps the edge of a few others.”
Aden pushed aside brambles; in the dark of the previous night these were what’d pulled at his cloths like tiny gripping hands.
Entering the clearing he rushed to where Spud had lain, and knelt to inspect the undergrowth.
“When Duncan tells Thalding about the spilt ink, and Thalding tells Hacknor, we’re going to be in the dog-house. We might have to work this weekend and miss out on exploring the disc-world, yet again.”
Bliss’s mouth turned down at the
edges as Aden's logic hit her, and casting back her hands she threw the willow branch like a spear at the boulder, from which it bounced harmlessly.
“Sorry. I didn't think about it like that.”
Aden gave a lopsided smile. “What will be, will be. I’ve made a list of things we aught to take with us when we do go on the expedition: hats, water bottles and salt, stuff like that.”
“Why salt?”
“It makes up for what you lose when you sweat a lot, according to one of Sally Blaine’s books.”
Aden brushed at the leaf litter. It was too early in the season for the trees to shed leaves and covering the forest floor was the decomposed remains of previous years. This mulch gave way to Aden’s searching hands, revealing roots entwining dark soil. An earthy aroma wafted into the air.
Bliss copied Aden’s actions.
“What we looking for exactly?”
“Clues to the murderer.”
Bliss scratched her forehead, causing a smudge of dirt to appear there.
“I expect Plumbert's men have searched here. That’s what they get paid for.”
“It’s worth us giving it a go too though. We know more than they do.”
“Don’t see any blood,” said Bliss. That’s what we should be looking for. That’s what Plumbert would do. See where the villain stabbed Spud, or whacked him on the head.”
“Can’t see no weapon either,” said Aden, finding a mud encrusted clay-pipe and throwing it from the clearing. “Not even footprints. I’m sure Spud looked funny though, last night. I can’t quite think why. Something about his face.”
Bliss walked circularly from where Spud had lain, all the time searching the ground. “I think it was just him being dead what made you think that. You know, like he didn’t breath.”
She climbed the boulder, and sat, the shadows from the branches playing across her face.
“That picture in that tome, in the library. Do you think it was the water-seller?”