The Destruction of the Books

by Mel Odom

  Juhg truly believed the wily old wizard had met his doom. All the majestic power that Craugh commanded seemed unable to release him, and there was no chance for the cunning that so many of his enemies had witnessed just before he had bested them.

  “Grandmagister,” Juhg pleaded, pulling on the Grandmagister’s arm. “We need to leave this place.”

  “No.” Grandmagister Lamplighter stood his ground. “I will not leave Craugh. He will not let this thing beat him. He’s too prideful and stubborn. But you may go, Juhg. I’m quite capable of standing here on my own.”

  Juhg held tight to the Grandmagister’s arm but made no effort to move away. “If you believe in Craugh, Grandmagister, then I believe in him.” But I think we’re both fools.

  Craugh’s hand started to tremble. The quaver ran up his arm and intensified. The old wizard set his jaw in determination. Green fire returned to his eyes.

  Then, with a clap of thunder that popped Juhg’s ears, the table beneath the flames shattered. Burned boards and ashes dropped to the hardwood floor, but the flames winked out inches from hitting it.

  Craugh drew his hand back and tucked it into the folds of his traveling cloak, obviously aware that he was shaken. “Well, now, that was exciting.” He let out a loud sigh that sagged his narrow shoulders.

  “What happened?” Juhg asked.

  “Obviously the book was booby-trapped.” Craugh glanced around and saw Carason standing nearby with a bucket of water. “You won’t need that water now, Carason, though I feel the need for a mug of mulled wine, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” Carason said. “I’ll see to it straightaway.”

  “What of the book?” Grandmagister Lamplighter asked, moving closer. He took a lantern from the wall and peered closely at the inches-deep pile of gray and white ashes.

  “You’ll want to be careful mucking about in that,” Craugh advised in a hoarse voice. “That was a powerful spell—and treacherous. I wouldn’t put it past whoever worked that nasty bit of magic to render the ashes poisonous to the touch.”

  Juhg slipped a knife from his boot, one that Raisho had given him to seal the agreement they had made to trade together. “Let me, Grandmagister.”

  “Yes,” Craugh said. “Let the apprentice do it. You still need both your arms, Wick.”

  That, Juhg thought, is not positive support. He knelt and dug through the ash and kindling with the point of his knife. To his surprise, he found the book whole, more or less.

  “It survived,” the Grandmagister whispered, sounding just as astonished as Juhg felt. “Quickly, Juhg, fetch the book up and let’s see what’s been done. Perhaps we can save most of the pages.”

  As carefully as though he were handling a loathsome swamp toad that might leap at him at any second with a mouthful of venomous fangs, Juhg pulled his hand into the sleeve of his cloak and used the material to keep from touching the book. Of course, he knew from studying toxicology that any number of poisons transferred through material—and even a fair number killed by scent alone. Remembering that, he breathed more shallowly.

  “Craugh,” the Grandmagister said.

  “Hasn’t your curiosity caused enough damage?” the wizard demanded petulantly.

  “Doesn’t a book that was filled with such raw magic make you the least bit curious yourself?” the Grandmagister asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell me if the book is safe to touch.”

  Craugh leaned down and pointed his staff at the book. As the wooden length came closer, Juhg turned his face away and closed both eyes. He expected nothing less than getting his head blown off.

  “It’s safe enough,” the wizard declared. “And no poison either.”

  Quick as a wink, the Grandmagister snatched the book from Juhg’s hand.

  Breathing out in relief and feeling more than a little light-headed, Juhg pushed himself to his feet. Movement at the eatery’s front door and windows let him know that the explosive nature of the spell had attracted a crowd.

  “The book didn’t exactly weather the spell well,” Grandmagister Lamplighter observed. “The one it contained or the one that you used to banish the trap.”

  Craugh brushed at some stubborn embers that still burned orange in his clothing. “It should have been destroyed. I held nothing back.”

  Juhg stared down at the burned and crumbled remnants of the heavy wooden table they’d dined on and knew that the wizard was right.

  “It wasn’t meant to be destroyed,” the Grandmagister said. “That spell was designed to kill anyone who used magic on the book. Maybe there was a word that released the spell without setting it off.”

  “Or perhaps the book was not meant for wizards,” Juhg said.

  Craugh harrumphed his displeasure at the suggestion. “Books and wizards go together, apprentice, just like books and Librarians.”

  Juhg knew that was not true, but he also knew well enough not to argue with Craugh while he was in a particularly grumpy mood. Wizards read books only to learn what they wanted about powers and things with power and—on occasion—about treasures to finance further searches for things with powers. Librarians read for the education promised with the opening of each book.

  Despite his harsh beginnings among the goblinkin mines, Juhg had experienced those same feelings when he lifted a book’s cover. Grandmagister Lamplighter had taught him to read while they had traveled together after Juhg’s rescue from the mines. They had spent weeks aboard, running from enemies deep in the goblinkin-infested Southlands.

  Juhg still carried the very first journal the Grandmagister had made him, the one he had scrawled his first letters in, then words and sentences and paragraphs. The Grandmagister had also taught him to draw, to render people, places, and things so those could be captured in more than words.

  “There was some damage,” the Grandmagister said, flicking a fingernail under a heat-blistered and -cracked section of the cloth binding. He also riffled the pages. The heat had caused them to draw and wither, much like water damage. “But I think it remains legible.” He opened the book.

  Juhg glanced at the front of the eatery and wanted to be out of the place. The eatery still stank of ozone in the air, stronger than even a close lightning strike. And the crowd outside was growing larger with each passing second.

  How long is it going to be, Juhg wondered, before someone suggests that we are to blame for this? That the Librarians are to blame for this? He reconsidered. Well, we are to blame for this. A little.

  “Look!” the Grandmagister exclaimed. He held high the lantern he’d taken from the wall. The book lay open in his free hand and he shined the soft light over the singed and rippled pages.

  Craugh leaned closer and surveyed the pages. “What?”

  Juhg saw the difference at once. “The writing,” he whispered, feeling the awe at what was revealed before him. “The writing has changed.”

  A smile spread across the Grandmagister’s face. “I knew there had to be a secret other than just a made-up language. It just didn’t make sense for a book to be written that no one could read.”

  Craugh caught Juhg’s eye and nodded toward the crowd gathered outside the eatery. “Perhaps, Wick, you’d like to read the book in the Library.”

  Before someone gathers a howling mob and comes in for us, Juhg thought. A ship nearly lost at sea, seventeen sailors dead, and now magic spells thundering in the local eatery. No one in Greydawn Moors is going to like that.

  “Of course,” the Grandmagister said. He licked his forefinger and thumbed through the pages.

  “Apprentice,” Craugh directed as he clapped his pointed hat back on his head and turned for the door.

  Understanding the wizard’s unspoken command, Juhg took the Grandmagister by the elbow and guided him in Craugh’s wake. The wizard led the way out of the eatery as the Grandmagister continued turning pages. The crowd drew back from the imposing wizard, but unkind words followed them.

  * * *

 
Juhg sat in the back of the cart as it rumbled up the Knucklebones Mountains. Craugh drove the team of mules while the Grandmagister continued to read through the mysterious book that had held two secrets.

  Two secrets so far, Juhg reminded himself, watching the Grandmagister meticulously making notes in his own journal, despite the way the cart rocked back and forth. Both of them dangerous. And this last secret of all, Grandmagister, will it be the death of us? Or will it be a fantastic treasure?

  Juhg tried not to worry, but the attempt was doomed to failure. He could still see the sailors’ bodies dropping into the ocean only a few days ago, and he had a few flashburns and blisters from the magical fire that had vomited forth from the book back in Carason’s Eatery.

  The clatter of the mules’ iron-shod hooves against the worn stone trail rang out over the mountains and made the whole world sound empty. No soil remained on the winding path up into the mountains where the Vault of All Known Knowledge sat, leaving only the naked bone of the earth.

  Huddled in his traveling cloak because he still was not rested and because he was still not over the fear that had filled him with first the lynch mob and then with the magicked book, Juhg leaned back against the seat in the port corner of the cart bed. He smiled a little at his mental reference to his position. He’d been on a ship long enough to pick up ways that would be hard to get shut of.

  He wondered if Raisho had heard of the excitement in the eatery. And if his friend had, what Raisho thought of it all.

  That led Juhg to the realization that he didn’t know what to think of it all. Questions assailed his mind, and from time to time he watched the Grandmagister reading and nodding his head as if in agreement with something he found in the pages of the mysterious book. Still, Juhg bided his silence because he knew from experience that the Grandmagister wouldn’t acknowledge him till he was ready.

  Instead, Juhg turned his attention to the hard granite mountainside on his starboard, and the wide-open spaces of the forest far below. They had come up beyond the treeline in short order, and the wind turned colder still.

  With the rhythmic slap of the mules’ shoes and the creaking of the rocking cart, Juhg found himself lulled to sleep before he knew it. He awakened with Grandmagister Lamplighter’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Wake, Juhg,” the Grandmagister said gently. “I know you’re tired, but there’s a lot we must do to solve the riddle the book poses.”

  “Riddle?” Juhg repeated.

  “Yes.” The Grandmagister nodded. “This book lists volumes of texts that had secret messages embedded in them. We have to look up passages in other books to get the full meaning of this one.”

  “Couldn’t the author of that book simply list whatever secrets he had hidden?” Juhg grumbled. “After all, the book was magicked several times over.”

  “This book,” the Grandmagister said reverently, “was one of the last written during the Cataclysm. Whoever the author was, he couldn’t be certain that it wouldn’t fall into the hands of the goblinkin and Lord Kharrion. It hints at a secret weapon that could be used against Lord Kharrion.”

  “Evidently it wasn’t needed,” Juhg observed. “The warriors of the Unity put an end to Lord Kharrion.”

  “True,” the Grandmagister replied, “but the thought of some great weapon of destruction lying about out there is unsettling.”

  “Does the text mention what that weapon might be?” Craugh asked.

  The Grandmagister looked at the wizard with suspicion. “No.”

  “Pity,” Craugh commented. Then he clucked to the mules. “What about the location of the device? Does it mention that?”

  “I’m certain it does. But to get that information we’ll have to decode the hidden messages.”

  “And to do that, you’ll need the books in the Library.”

  “Yes.”

  “How could the author of that book know you, or the reader, would have access to a library of books?”

  “I would think,” the Grandmagister replied, “that an assumption on the author’s part would be the correct thing. If anyone could decipher the book, anyone could find the weapon. Right? He wouldn’t have wanted just anyone to find it. He would have wanted it in the hands of people who were civilized. And civilization, as everyone knows, includes written records. A collection of them.”

  “A library,” Craugh said derisively.

  “Yes.”

  Juhg knew the wizard didn’t mean to be offensive. He was just irritated. And the fact that the Grandmagister gave more respect to the tomes within the Vault of All Known Knowledge than to the power a wizard wielded rankled Craugh to some degree. Craugh was used to respect everywhere he went. If he didn’t get respect, he earned an opponent’s fear.

  “Not everyone who could read in the old days was civilized,” Craugh countered. “You know there are a few scattered across the mainland who can read who aren’t civilized.”

  “Yes,” the Grand Magister agreed, “and most of them are wizards.”

  “Are you saying I’m not civilized?”

  “At times,” the Grandmagister replied immediately, “you are not. You have your own agenda in all things. Even for your presence in Greydawn Moors today.”

  For a moment, Juhg feared that Craugh would take offense and that in the next moment the Vault of All Known Knowledge would have a warty toad for a Grandmagister.

  Then Craugh chuckled. “Point taken.”

  “Your saving grace,” the Grandmagister said in a lighter tone, “is that you have always cared about the world and other people. From what I’ve seen of most wizards, that isn’t always true.”

  “I suppose,” Craugh replied grudgingly. “After all this time, the weapon is probably gone. Perhaps it was even used in the struggle against the Goblin Lord.”

  “Perhaps,” the Grandmagister agreed. “But I’ve never been one to let a secret pass me by.”

  “Pain in the rump dweller curiosity, if you ask me,” Craugh grumbled. “Though I’m loath to hold you accountable for the egregious parts of your nature.”

  “A dweller’s curiosity is second only to a wizard’s lust for secret things,” the Grandmagister said in an even tone that relayed he’d taken no offense at his good friend’s pronouncement.

  “Even if the weapon is there,” Juhg asked, hoping to distract both of them from finding fault with the other (in case dire warty and toady things happened), “what would be the use of looking for it? Lord Kharrion is gone.”

  “Items of power, especially magical power,” Craugh said in a grim voice, “if true, should not be left lying about for anyone to discover. Usually a high and painful price has been paid to bring such objects into the world, and they are fashioned for specific purposes. The world would be a terrible place indeed if all the things wizards conjured up were allowed in the hands of just anyone. When not used for good, many things created by wizards end up in the hands of evil men and fools only to beget atrocities.”

  “If it is still there, if it can be found,” the Grandmagister said, “then we must find it.”

  “And then what?” Juhg asked.

  Grandmagister Lamplighter hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know. Yet. We’ll know more, should we find the device.”

  Out of the fog clinging to the upper reaches of the Knucklebones Mountains, the Great Library started to take shape. Squat towers and turrets of blue-gray stone shot through with white sprinkles along the defensive wall jutted up from the steeply sloped mountainside only a few yards above the Ogre’s Fingers.

  Juhg wiped sleep from his burning and blurry eyes and stared forward. Craugh headed the mule team toward the huge twenty-foot stone gates that sealed the entrance to the Vault of All Known Knowledge. There on the doors in bas-relief were the images of a giant quill and an inkwell. The title VAULT OF ALL KNOWN KNOWLEDGE ran in deep and richly cut letters across the tops of the two doors.

  Despite the years that he’d lived within the edifice, though probably helped by the fact that he
had been gone from the place for weeks, the sight of the Great Library took Juhg’s breath away. Carefully mortised as they were, the main tower and four outlying towers looked like they’d sprouted from the mountains at their feet, stolid and proud, with mortared seams that did not show at that distance. Windows showed through the patches of fog now, many of them filled with sparkling stained glass depicting the arts and the sciences in dazzling gem-bright blues, greens, reds, and yellows.

  Besides being a great storehouse, over the years under the loving attention of the Librarians, who lived there their whole lives, the Library had come to be a work of art. Yet it never lost the air of being a place of learning and education.

  Craugh brought the mules to a halt in front of the gates just as three dwarven warriors in full armor stepped out of the gatehouse in front of the mammoth doors. The dwarves carried halberds at their sides and battle-axes slung over their shoulders.

  The dwarven guards met the cart where the trail was still narrow. Enemies, if ever anyone dared attack the Library, could be easily forced from the trail and down the steep side of the Knucklebones Mountains to the Ogre’s Fingers a bowshot distant. No enemy could mass the gate and hope to get through without pouring blood for the effort. Coming up the mountain undetected, even in the dead of night, because a moonless night made the stone trail plain as well, was impossible. A large group could be seen coming for over a mile.

  “Grandmagister,” the lead dwarf called out in a deep gravelly voice. He stepped up beside the mule on the right and fisted the mule’s bit so he could control the animal.

  Juhg knew the move was a habit because he knew both Grandmagister Lamplighter and Craugh. The dwarves who guarded the Library had all taken oaths to lay down their lives in the defense of the books and the Librarians.

  “Varrowyn,” the Grandmagister replied, then smiled.

  Shifting his gaze from the Grandmagister, Varrowyn looked more closely at the wizard. His greeting wasn’t quite as warm. Dwarves didn’t care for magic as much as humans, who were drawn to the power, or elves, who were curious about how magic worked with natural things. “Hello, Craugh.”