From a vantage point on a hill protecting a small wood, another old man sat watching in the lee of a boulder. His cloak was the colour of the surrounding grass, so he was camouflaged well. He cursed the fact that the drunkard who had stumbled upon his home had decided now was the point to flee. He grimaced and closed his eyes, opening them only to shed tears when he heard the animal scream of the man's death cry. “The Gods bless the poor bastard,” he said quietly, in reference to the passing soul. He looked down at his feet, and shook his head. Turning around, he regarded the dozen or so strangers hidden in the path behind. They were of a dark complexion, with a strange tattoo on their throats. He shook his head slightly, and they too bowed their heads in grief for the stranger. Nobody should suffer as he had done.
Chapter One
The old man, known as the Witch finder for deeds accomplished in times long past, watched through a scrying focus as his creature apprehended some of those he felt sure would lead him to the girl. His thoughts turned sour as he reminded himself that he could no longer trust anybody not directly under his control to accomplish a task for him. His former underling Maolsechlan had shown him that. Despite his years of service and unswerving loyalty, indecision had proven his downfall, and he had been sent to the eternity of torment that awaited any of those unlucky enough to be taken by the Golem, a creature of stone and darkest magic. He should have taken the chance when it presented itself, and captured the girl he was sent to look for, not return with assurances that they would not get far. His chance had now passed to another though, as he had been enveloped by the dark magic of the old man's greatest achievement to date, the binding of a mortal by use of the darkest focus ever conceived into the creature of stone that now filled the vision in his focus. It had always been a means to an end, and the souls of countless mortals had been used to keep the ever-increasing hunger of his creature at bay.
“Will it ever reach a point that there are not enough people left for the magic to consume?” Armen, his long-time aide, watched the focus from behind.
“It matters not. By the time that ever becomes a possibility, I will be the owner of the book, and the source of a stronger magic.” He frowned again, twisting parchment with meaningless scribble from one of his scribes into a tight knot. “I walked the land ere most of these lower beings were born. I have waited long enough, but I am patient.” In the highest tower of Raessa, where he could view the world with a magical eye, he was as impotent as a mule when it came to controlling the destinies of mortals. He had captured the tribe that harboured the Tome of Law – the book of the Gods, but that had yielded nothing to him. Even though he had not been successful, his reputation had spread far and wide, and rapidly so. It was this that kept the ways to Raessa clear of any traffic, and it was this that had allowed him to gain knowledge surpassing that of any being in the world.
“One day soon we will no longer need these rocks to cast a spell. The time is at hand when emotions will rule. Heavy, useless rocks. They will be obsolete.”
“How?”
“You will see, if you live that long. The Golem grows ever hungrier.” No matter what his servants tried; no matter what magic they employed through other means, it did not work. The cold rock was still the source of all magic. Something had garnered his interest somewhat more just now. “Look, Armen, what do you see beyond them in the focus.”
Garias shifted so Armen could get a better view. “I see nothing beyond them, master.”
“Exactly. That is what you are supposed to see. There is a distortion there, much like that of the Forest people. It is something the focus cannot penetrate, and something that the Golem and that fool O'Bellah will not notice by being there. There is a distortion in the focus, designed to divert the eye.” As he had watched the capture of the tinkers through the eyes of the Golem and the focus generated by what was left of the Earth guilds pitiful circle, it dawned on him that there was something special about this valley. There were differences to the forest. The distortion concentrated on a single point whereas the great forest had generally encouraged one to look elsewhere. None of it fooled him. Weak in power though he may be, the wisdom of countless years showed him what he needed to see. “There is something of great importance there, and I will have the answers.” If he had to travel for years to get them then he would do so, but there were other ways.
“Get out, wizards.” He dismissed the few old men that had survived the backlash of the explosion. Once young and full of vitality, they had had nearly all of their ability to focus taken away from them in the harshest possible manner. They scuttled out, fearfully avoiding his gaze. He looked out of his tower, full of contempt. Once he would have gained pleasure from watching lesser creatures timidly stepping around him, looking down, scared to tempt his wrath. He had lost all pleasure in such entertainments as he had gained wisdom. They were no more than a distraction to him. The book that he quested for consumed his thoughts. His zealots were enough to keep the public scared that he should ever pay them a visit in person. He could do without all that, but he would never let on to anybody of that fact. Even as he stared out over the mountain range to the South, so close to his window that he could almost touch the nearest peaks, he pondered the conundrum. In a rare moment of reflection, Garias spoke normally to Armen, as he guessed others might do. “Twenty seasons back or thereabouts, the book was on its way to me, courtesy of that lowlife thief from Dupodi's Tail. All of a sudden, the book and the thief disappeared. Not a word, not a clue as to where it had been. I had people set in place everywhere. The plan to bring the book in secrecy to my hands had been executed perfectly, but not to fruition. What went wrong?”
“I… uh… don't know.”
“Spoken like the true commoner you once were. I swear to this very day that those forest rats had hidden my book in an attempt to call on their pathetic Old-Law Gods, but they too escaped my plans.”
“Well what else is there to do?”
“There has been time enough to try stealth and clever ideas. Now it is time for me to try something more straightforward. The armies I have created with the taint of the Golem's evil will do the grunt work. They will drive out the scattered tribe from their temporary hiding places in the lowlands, and scare the villagers into believing that they are coming for them as well. There will be no place for them to hide in the flat grasslands of Ardicum and Ciaharr. He will see them rounded up and dealt with, and I will have my Tome! But that was not for now, no. I have waited for so long, I can wait another year or two. The Tome will be mine!”
A stray breath of wind whispered around him from the open window, reminding him that while he felt little for humanity, he was still human. “I have stood here long enough. Go about your duties, Armen. The mountains are not as inspiring as once they were. I will seek my inspiration elsewhere.” Not waiting for a response, The Witch Finder opened a side door into the wall of his chamber. He climbed down the polished stone steps from his tower into the halls that comprised most of his citadel. Enough gold to pay for a country shined back at him as he walked past, unaware of the splendour. As with the lives of humans, the meaning and worth of gold meant less to him than to most. He existed, he wanted. That was enough. What it took to get it was immaterial, but failure would not be tolerated.
A timely reminder of this appeared in the silent form of Maolmordha. Tall and lithe, the striking woman fell in behind him, following to wherever his feet led them. From the corner of his eye he noted her blonde hair, tied back in a horsetail with a band of silver. That was all she needed. She was far more than the beautiful woman most perceived her to be. If he had had any feeling at all about her predecessor, Maolsechlan, it was anger over his failure to deliver up the girl who would one day touch the Tome of Law. That was unforgivable. That they had at least brought somebody with them was small consolation. “The training progresses?”
“At a rate unheard of.”
The girl, now clad in darkness, was maybe a few years older than the age that Maolmordha
had been when she had been dragged screaming into his tower. The Golem had cowed her soon enough, its very presence scaring her to silence. He glanced aside as they walked through one of the towers' long maze of corridors. The woman was striking, intelligent, and very useful as a tool through her total and utter dedication to him. She had not turned out bad in the end. “Excellent. She will have a chance at completing before you did perhaps.” The thought that chafed at him most, like the continual rub of manacles on one of his captives wrists, was that it had taken nigh on twenty years or seasons or whatever the commoners called it for her to become as she was now. “There must be a faster way to subvert the minds of the young, and speed their development.”
“You would know if there was, master.”
“Perhaps. There are many ways, some more successful than others. My experiment with binding farmers to the Golems aura was not a total success. It is true that nearly all of them are now under my sway, whether they knew it or not. Come the gathering in the springtime, I will have an army at my disposal the likes of which have never been seen before. The coastal Dukes in their fine mansions care not a whit for what happens leagues inland from their pretty women and fine wines. Gold sees to that. As long as they have their sea trade and their great vessels, they are content. A well-placed bribe in certain places ensures that the inland Dukes are always distracted. My web of followers is placed all over the land, so why can nobody find my Tome?” This, more than anything else frustrated him. He had been giddy with anticipation as he felt Maolmordha and the lackadaisical Maolsechlan nearing Raessa such a short time ago. The rug had well and truly been pulled out from under his feet in that respect. “Still, with a little training and a lot of reconditioning, the tinker girl might end up being our most prized asset, if for no other reason than she might be a good bargaining tool with the fools hiding the girl I am truly after.”
“She will be found.”
“I know. You will find her for me.” The portents had been read, and everyone had stated that she was destined to find the Tome of Law. It should only be a matter of tracking her, but it seemed that he could trust nobody else to do that for him. He would have unleashed the Golem but for the fact that the very aura that kept it in that form and enabled it to contain the magic it did gave it away. He was immune, as he just did not care anymore, but it was easy to spot that the aura of evil that was the very essence of the creature quailed most people. Even Maolmordha looked uneasy, and that was despite her years of conditioning. So he was reduced to searching by stealth.
“There are many deeds to be accomplished ere this is over. We need more tools. It is time to call in some of my allies. There are not enough wizards in the tower, and I need their talents.”
“What about your greater focus?”
Maolmordha knew of many of his secrets, so this comment was unsurprising. “Useful if one is within range, but we need a more direct approach. That is not your concern. There is a new mystery, one I wish you to see to personally. In the valley where the Golem stands is something of great importance to me. Seek it out, and discover the meaning. No focus can scry there. Perhaps you will find other means.” He was sure there was a significant meaning, never previously considered, and Garias realized now where he had intended to go.
“I will start at once.”
Pondering his thoughts, he came back to himself for a second to find that Maolmordha and the girl were still accompanying him. He stopped.
“Take the girl, and train her in the arts of the assassin,” Garias commanded with a smile of malicious glee.
“Is it not too soon, master?” Queried Maolmordha.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he replied, his mind already elsewhere. “Try her with it and see what you can accomplish. Be persuasive if you need to, but I think she will be tractable.”
Maolmordha immediately stopped following him and set off for a side door in the corridor.
“Of course, it is on your head for her to succeed,” Garias added, his tone frosty with clearly implied meaning.
Maolmordha stopped, turning to face him, her face an unreadable mask.
“Remember what brought you to the fore, my dear. Nobody in my domain is immune. If she should not prove useful, you had better pray that you are beyond my reach.”
Maolmordhas eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “She shall succeed.” She pivoted with a flick of her blonde mane, and exited through the door, her protégé right on her heels.
The door slammed, and Garias relished the anger that had emanated from her. “Still an echo of the resentful girl she had been as a child, so much the better,” He chuckled as he strolled along. This day had its positive moments despite all that had happened.
One of the benefits of power and influence was that the wielder often had the opportunity to gather a significant amount of information, should one but have the desire to. Garias dismissed the pathetic Dukes, more concerned with their gold coins and pretty wenches. True power came through research and carefully laid plans, and for seasons had been gathering information on any event of significance, right back to the alleged forming of the world, which lesser beings believed to be the truth. Garias knew that if the world was formed in the way the stories told, that there would be some evidence of their tampering. The discovery of the focus in Ciaharr now had him wondering if this was the proof he sought, and whether or not it was related to the cavern in the forest that he could not penetrate. He knew that he would find the answer in his library, perhaps the largest single collection of scripts, tomes and scrolls outside any ducal collection. They collected books to impress others with their wealth and large, imposing rooms. He collected them because he valued the information.
The library was nearly the size of his beloved grand hall, but there was an obvious difference. The hall was grand in every respect, golden, bright and spacey, with the air of a throne room. The library was the complete opposite. Shelves crammed every conceivable space, some reaching twice as high as a man. If there was knowledge to be gained here, he knew it was merely a matter of time before he found the answers.
At length, he reached the doors of the library, monoliths looming over him guarding a treasure of information. It was ostentatious of him, but he loved the huge doors everywhere, even when they were not practical. With a lack of wizards, Garias did not open the main doors, but chose instead a side entrance through the servant's quarters. It amused him to sometimes come upon his servants unawares and find them not performing as they should. It often meant an object lesson involving the Golem, but then the Golem could always do with another soul to tap. That in itself would be a problem he would have to deal with, and he was sure that in the library he could track down the information that could at least lead him to somebody that he could use to control the destructive magic inherent in the Golems aura. Slipping quietly in through the door meant he had to pass through an antechamber which was packed full with useless rubbish. It was amazing to him the amount of pointless detritus humans could accumulate. Why a dried up orange would bring so much amusement to one of the menials he never knew, but to have a whole series of them, each one in a different stage of desiccation was beyond him. Still, he was not petty, and as long as the library was orderly, he was not the least bit bothered about one small antechamber. Emerging into the repository of his accumulated intellect, he was struck by the aroma that threatened to take him back to his youth, before he had had any aspirations. The musty smell was overpowering, and it took a bit of getting used to. Fortunately for them, the menials who maintained his great collection were hard at work cataloguing and arranging new additions to his growing base of knowledge. He may have had to rely on capturing wizards for their use of focusing, but he paid these people to look after his library, and they did their job well.
The sun filtered down from windows high up in the lofty ceiling, highlighting specks of dust in the air as it shone down to land on the rows of parchment below. The warmth glowed from the wood of the many shelves as the sunshine landed on the
m. It was almost enough to make Garias forget that he was the most feared man in the Duchies, and just another scholar. But not quite.
He approached one of the librarians. “Show me the listing of rare works from the southeast Duchies.”
The librarian turned away, a rare breach of respect, but one Garias was willing to forgo. “Would that be rural editions, or Ducal collections?”
“Collections, but of rural origin.”
“Here.” The librarian handed him a list.
“Take me to them.” Garias found himself being guided through the honeycomb of shelves. There was a raised walkway along one side of the library where new shelves had been added. From there it was possible to see the entire lower section of his collection. It was more like one of the mazes that the Dukes wasted a fortune on in construction, so that empty-headed ladies could wander and get lost, pursued by over-ardent suitors for a hidden tryst. But he had selected every one of the librarians personally from the Order of Knowledge; one of the Guilds noted for their affiliation to the God Jettiba, the God of life. They had memories like no other people, and were among the few beings tolerated. They served their purpose splendidly, and led him right to the book he had been hoping he would find. “The prophecies of Eimaj.”
“Would you like to know a little about it?”
“No. Leave me.”
Grasping the leather-bound tome tightly, he moved to one of the nearby tables and brushed away the paraphernalia from its surface, unmindful of the fact that the very same person that had brought him here and found his book had been working for several days cataloguing everything in this section. He never heard the small pleasantries tinged with extreme annoyance at what he had just done; he was a thousand leagues away, already digesting the text that had been scrawled on the pages contained therein. This tome was not the original, but a scribe had been paid a fortune to spend his life making copies of the original text, as the orders prized them highly. Some madman in the southeastern Duchy of Pahrain had scrawled the original. Now this Duchy was barely known for anything save its imports of rare material from far-off countries to the East. It was fortunate that a merchant had been travelling near the headwaters of the river Todya, and had discovered the tome. Some madman living at the base of Mount Eimaj, one of three extinct volcanoes, had been yelling for years at anybody who would pass near him about the Gods' methods of talking to mortals, and how they were not really gone, just waiting to be contacted. Most people dismissed the lunatic as insane, and left him well alone, but for some reason the merchant stayed and listened. Something in the manner of the madman made sense to the merchant, and he sat there for a full month writing the ravings down. At the end of the month he looked through what he had written, and found that it was more than a passable tale. The Lord of the small Duchy, a fat Duke that lived in the coastal backwater of Cuc decided to take a copy with him on a visit to one of the other Duchies, and the fame of the tome spread from the squabble that ensued for nearly a generation over possession of the piece. Now Garias had found all this out by means of another tome, one that described rare works of great potential, and he had demanded a copy. Of course, events had transpired to keep him away from his books until now; the discovery of the girl destined to wield the Tome of Law had consumed his every thought. He considered that maybe he was going about this the wrong way.
The Path of Dreams (The Tome of Law Book 2) Page 2
