by Mel Odom
“Well, then, Juhg, let’s be about our task.”
Juhg surveyed the stacks of books they had assembled. According to the hidden text in the mysterious book Windchaser had salvaged from Blowfly, the various volumes named were supposed to be gathered for quick reference and passages read and interpreted from them.
“Do you see anything among these books that immediately stands out?” the Grandmagister asked.
Looking at the titles, nearly all of them books that he had read at one point or another, Juhg shook his head. “Not really, Grandmagister. There are books on different sciences, different histories, plays, and adventures.”
“One thing I have noticed,” the Grandmagister said. “All of these authors are from the Southlands. And no two books are by the same author.”
Juhg glanced around the room, suddenly feeling too warm in his robes. The glimmerworm lanterns glowed against the walls, giving off enough light to illuminate the huge expanse of the room. Several shelves holding often-used books shared space with dozens of chairs and tables. The Grandmagister had cleared the room of Librarians when they had started to work.
However, Randorr and a few of the other Librarians had peered down upon them from the second-story walkway that ran around the inside wall. Evidently the whole Library knew about the Grandmagister’s latest project.
Craugh came through the main doorway. He carried a lantern and walked at a brisk pace that was almost a run. He had retired to the Library’s kitchens while the book gathering was going on. The Grandmagister was supposed to send for him when they were ready to begin.
“Wick!” the wizard called. “Wick!”
The Grandmagister turned toward his friend.
“What have you done?” Craugh demanded.
“Nothing,” the Grandmagister replied. “Only finished gathering these books.”
Craugh marched through the room like a hound scenting the air. “There’s magic in this room.”
“Only the spells that protect the books,” the Grandmagister said.
“No,” Craugh said in a harsh voice. “This is something different. I know those protective spells. I helped put some of them in place. This—” He scented the air again in a deep draught. “This is something different. There is a new spell in this room, and it’s growing stronger.” He held out a hand toward the books. “It’s coming from the books.”
Even before the echo of the wizard’s words disappeared from the cavernous room, a shudder ran through the whole Library and a hole ripped into view in the air above the books. A violet sky streaked with crimson lightning blazed into view through the hole, but a gigantic bat-winged beast that flew through the hole and into the room quickly blocked the sight of that.
Broad-bodied and sporting horns, the creature looked a bit like a bull, but only if bulls stood as tall as a human at the shoulder. It breathed out huge gusts of gray vapor that immediately filled the Great Room with the stench of death.
A four-armed warrior dressed in full battle armor sat astride the strange beast. He carried a bow with an arrow already nocked back, and took aim at Juhg. He carried an axe and a shield in his lower two arms. Inside the helm, there were no features, only the grinning jaws of a bleached white skull and empty eye sockets with a hint of spectral crimson fire.
“You will die!” the warrior roared in a voice that sounded like splintering wood.
The arrow leapt from the bow and came straight at Juhg, who stood frozen, knowing only that the enemy had finally found the Library.
13
The Bellringer
Before Juhg could move, Craugh swung his staff with blinding speed, with no more apparent thought than he might shoo away a fly. The staff broke the speeding arrow in twain and both pieces hurtled harmlessly by Juhg.
“Move!” Craugh commanded in that steely tone Juhg had heard on occasion before. “Move if you would save your life, apprentice!”
Juhg threw himself to one side and dodged behind the stacks of books. The treacherous books, he couldn’t help thinking. Whoever had designed the trap had constructed it well enough. If there were ever to be any wooden horses of Phamscrifa brought into the Library, a book was surely the vehicle to deliver those enemies in. He placed his back against a stack of books and peered back toward the center of the room.
Craugh stood with both hands on his staff. Galing winds from wherever the monstrous beast and its terrifying rider had come from whipped at the wizard’s robes. The beast snarled, threw its head back and whipped it forward, spitting a line of fiery liquid.
Arcane words Juhg had never heard spilled from the wizard’s lips. Juhg had never seen the language anywhere, and had often felt certain if he ever did find examples of it that he would never want to read it. Wick had mentioned more than once that the older wizards, and Craugh was certainly one of those, had their own language.
Some said the language was from the Dark Times, even before Lord Kharrion had gathered the goblinkin and brought about the Cataclysm. Others said that the truly powerful wizards took their power from some other place, a world removed from the one most people knew, a place of terrible beasts and men where horrible events took place every minute of every day.
It was said that a wizard, a truly powerful wizard, was exposed to that world—like Annealis who was dipped into the River of Time as a baby by his mother so that he would be forever immortal, except for the ear that his mother held him by—for only a short time. The time was supposed to be long enough to gain the power, but not long enough to go mad.
Many of those who sought to wear wizard’s robes were dipped too long or not long enough. Very few were dipped just right. Wizardwork was a very hazardous calling, and not much appreciated by anyone.
Until you have need of a wizard, Juhg thought, watching as Craugh caught the flaming spit in one bare hand and threw it back into the creature’s face.
Smashed full in the face by the seething mass of flames that clung to its obscene features, the creature reared straight up. Evidently the creature could contain the fire inside itself but not endure it the way that dragons could, or perhaps Craugh’s magic altered the flames in some way. Blisters, huge and weeping, appeared on the animal’s face sacked in thin green skin.
Driven by the rearing creature, the four-armed warrior slammed into the room’s tall ceiling. Stone shattered and a crack ran half the length of the room. Dazed by the impact, the warrior slipped from its mount and fell against the stone floor with a resounding clangor of metal. The warrior did not immediately get to its feet, and Juhg was heartened.
But even as Juhg thought they all might quite possibly survive the encounter, two more creatures bearing riders stepped through the impossible gate that had formed in the room. The riders fired arrows at Craugh, who stood his ground and called on the forces at his command. Green lightning blazed from the wizard’s eyes. One of the arrows caught in the wizard’s robes. The second came so close to hitting him that the broadhead sliced hair from his beard and the stiff fletching sliced his cheek from his nose to his ear. A line of crimson blood oozed out.
“Juhg!”
Drawn by the Grandmagister’s voice, Juhg glanced in Wick’s direction.
The Grandmagister stood behind one of the thick stone columns that supported the ceiling. Embers caught in his robes and his red hair.
“Go get the dwarves!” Wick yelled. “Ring the alarm bell! Tell them that we have Dread Riders and Blazebulls inside the Library!”
Dread Riders and Blazebulls! Juhg wanted to kick himself. He should have known what the beasts were. He had read a few books about the fearsome riders and their merciless beasts. Of course, all of those books had come from Hralbomm’s Wing and had been at the Grandmagister’s suggestion to lighten Juhg’s “too scholarly” approach to his reading.
It was the Grandmagister’s contention—Grandmagister Lamplighter’s and not Grandmagister Frollo’s, nor the contention of any Grandmagister who had gone before, most of the Librarians said—that reading the
incredible adventures and romances in Hralbomm’s Wing also gave insight to a culture’s beliefs and histories. Juhg had believed that because the Grandmagister had told him so. Too often, though, the tales twisted too much the events and people that inspired the romantic accountings. Where Wick seemed to grasp with ease the allegory and subtlety of the stories and fathom the hidden meanings, Juhg had struggled.
But Dread Riders and Blazebulls were something Juhg felt he should have known. As far as anyone knew, the creatures did not exist in the world. They were reportedly from some other place, a hidden place filled with horror and wickedness. Some even said that dragons had once lived there but had made their escape into the world.
But, Juhg thought, staring wide-eyed as Craugh brought his staff down against the stone floor with a mighty crack that should have sundered the surface, they are real!
Lightning leapt from Craugh’s staff as he stood against the two newest beasts and their riders. Bolts of blazing green power shot across the room and blew great chunks from the Dread Riders and the Blazebulls. For a brief moment, their attack was battered back like an incoming wave against a rocky shoal.
Then small shadows crept in between the rearing, snarling monsters. The new arrivals were shorter, even than dwellers. The color of black ink, so dark that none of the lantern light or the Blazebulls’ flames reflected from them, the creatures had huge bulbous heads a full third of their body length that made them appear almost waiflike. But one look at the close-set malevolent black eyes encircled by pools of venomous yellow and the snapping jackrabbit teeth shattered that impression immediately. Their limbs were blade-thin, harsh lines devoid of muscle or fat, and the joints were heavy knobs. The hands and feet were three sizes too large for their spindly, featureless bodies. They wore no clothing, and their skin, as Juhg remembered from his reading of Veskheg Versus the Hordes of Shadow, was hard and slick as a beetle’s carapace.
“Grymmlings,” Juhg whispered, giving a name to the terror the small creatures evoked. The few stories he’d read of the beasts left him trembling.
Despite their bulbous heads, the Grymmlings had no rational thought patterns. No one could communicate with them. At least, as far as Juhg knew, no one could communicate with them, but that couldn’t exactly be true because they were here now working with the Dread Riders and the Blazebulls. The general thinking was that Grymmlings were no more coherent than insects and worked through a group consciousness, a hive mind. Like locusts, they descended in droves to devour everything in their path. They were omnivorous, eating plants and meat, and seemed possessed by—not of, as the romance writer Iligurl had pointed out no less than seventy-three times in his story of Veskheg—by an insatiable appetite. They carried foot-long crystal blades spun from gossamer crystal by giant Laragan spiders they kept as pets in their lairs.
“Juhg!” Grandmagister cried out.
Embarrassed at having been caught so flatfooted by everything that was transpiring, Juhg glanced back at his mentor.
“Go!” the Grandmagister ordered.
Out in the center of the floor, Craugh backed up three paces. His voice sang with fury and the raucous sound of a file rasping along a rough edge not yet ready for fine work. He thrust his staff up before him in both hands, stamping forward with his left foot.
In response to Craugh’s movement and the magic he commanded, the three hundred nineteen books that had been brought into the room leapt from the floor and swirled into the advancing line of attackers. The heavy books bludgeoned the invaders, knocking the Grymmlings back like tenpins and even thudding swiftly enough to dissuade the three Blazebulls that had entered through the mystical gate from continuing on inside the Library.
“No!” Grandmagister Lamplighter wailed. “Craugh! Not the books!”
But the wizard gave no heed, gesturing again to send the books once more against their opponents. Several of the books burst their bindings in the second assault. Pages from paper and vellum books flew into the air, turned into fiery crisps in a heartbeat as the Blazebulls breathed flames on them. The pages swirled in circles, propelled by the winds that blew in from wherever the creatures had come from.
Other pages—stone pages from books made from a single rock, glass pages blown by glassmakers and fused with a dozen different colors, delicate seashell pages hung together by seaweed strings and turtle sinew, snake scale sash books that told histories of individuals and events, and a dozen others—shattered, broke, and fragmented in a rush across the stone floor. Several of the pieces pierced the huge feet of the Grymmlings, but if the creatures cared, they didn’t slow a bit. Bloody footprints, black as squid’s ink, followed them.
Juhg caught the Grandmagister’s eye.
“Go!” Grandmagister Lamplighter ordered again. “Get to the bell! Call the dwarves! You are faster than I am!”
Juhg knew that wasn’t the truth, though. He might have been a little faster than Grandmagister Lamplighter, but Juhg knew the real reason the Grandmagister stayed behind was to stand with his friend. The Grandmagister had never been a brave soul, and tended more toward cautiousness, even after years of adventuring along the mainland and surviving dozens of close calls.
“Now!” the Grandmagister commanded. “Before those horrible imps catch your scent!”
That fact had slipped Juhg’s mind. Grymmlings were noted in the annals he’d read of being expert trackers. Once they had locked onto a potential victim’s blood spoor, they did not deviate from that victim until one or both of them were dead.
Juhg pushed himself into motion, crossing the room as quickly as possible. His movement attracted the attention of a half-dozen Grymmlings. He saw their black, black eyes focus on him, their black tongues ooze between the yellowed jackrabbit teeth, and felt their unwanted attention, their hunger.
One of them threw itself at him. As it closed, hurtling like an arrow launched from a bow, it swept the gleaming crystal knife out at his throat.
Juhg ducked.
Out of control, the Grymmling slammed into a chair, bowling the chair over and spilling in a tangle of arms and legs. Another leapt for Juhg’s legs, arms outspread and jackrabbit teeth open wide to bite deeply.
Leaping into the air, Juhg watched the Grymmling shoot past beneath him. Juhg landed on a study table, knocking over other stacks of books as he skidded across the top. He slipped off the other side before he was ready and dropped to the floor. He landed off balance, gave in to gravity and fell forward, and rolled, coming up on his feet once more. The robes hampered his movement and he shed them as he ran.
Three Grymmlings slammed into the table behind him. They made vicious little noises that sounded like paper cuts might if given voice. The buzzing, burning, irritating chatter filled Juhg’s ears. His lungs filled with deep draughts of air, and he tasted the smoke of burning paper.
Before he reached the door, one of the enchantments laid upon the Vault of All Known Knowledge by the Builders activated. Fire was a problem to any building made up of wood, or even any building made of stone that was shored by wooden timbers. But a fire inside the Library was thought to be the worst thing that could ever happen.
Until the Dread Riders, Blazebulls, and Grymmlings arrived, Juhg thought as he ran for the door.
Many of the enchantments laid on the room were designed to protect the books. Water was the first line of defense. Drawn from the southern shores of the Blood-Soaked Sea and pulled by magic through the countryside and the stones of the building, water wept from the ceiling inside the room. By the time Juhg reached the door, the condensation that had begun the protection effort had turned into a monsoon, evidently reacting to the intensity of the flames the Blazebulls breathed, as well as Craugh’s own use of that fire.
At this rate, the spell will drain the Blood-Soaked Sea, Juhg thought. He caught the edge of the door and peered back, watching as Craugh grudgingly gave ground before the fierce aggressors. Then a Grymmling jumped onto the wall almost at Juhg’s face, clinging there with its strong fing
ers and prehensile toes.
Unable to stop a cry of surprise, Juhg stumbled back in shock, tripped, and fell on his backside. Three more Grymmlings appeared in the door, their yellow eyes vacant and hungry, their crystal blades scraping across the stone floor.
Juhg got himself up and ran, trying desperately to remember which way the alarm bell that would summon the dwarves stationed within the Library as well as those presently on leave down in Greydawn Moors.
In all the history of the Library, the great bell had never rung before. He was going to ring it—the first ever. If he lived.
* * *
“Gangway!” Juhg yelled, barely able to part with the breath that it took to force out the warning. “Gangway! Grymmlings!”
He wanted to shout out everything, to tell the Librarians wandering the dimly lit halls of the Vault of All Known Knowledge that the Great Library was under attack. He wanted to tell them that Dread Riders, Blazebulls, and Grymmlings ran rampant. That the Grandmagister’s life might already be forfeit and even Craugh, when Juhg had last seen him, wasn’t faring so very well.
But he didn’t have the breath. And he didn’t have the time.
Librarians by their very nature were not slow creatures. They had a tendency to size up situations quickly. Although none of them had ever seen Grymmlings, at least a few of them recognized the deadly little creatures for what they were.
“Grymmlings!”
“Grymmlings!”
The shrieks roared through the long hallway Juhg was presently running along. He had at last gotten his bearings and remembered where the great alarm bell was located.
Six Librarians ahead of Juhg took up the cry, froze in their tracks for just an instant, then fled in the other direction.
No, Juhg reflected grimly, if you show a Librarian a Grymmling, they know at once what to do. He tried to suck in a deeper breath, and couldn’t. He tried to cry out again to say that the Grandmagister needed help and couldn’t. Desperately, he tried to lift his knees higher to lengthen his stride, or more quickly to hasten his frantic pace, and couldn’t.
