by Mel Odom
Glancing to his right, Juhg saw that the Grandmagister was experiencing similar problems keeping his footing. The chunk he stood on suddenly upended and tossed him into the air. Out of control, he fell toward a crack in the floor that was already starting to push back together. If he got caught in that, Juhg knew the Grandmagister would be crushed. The purple and green lights from the conflicting magics showed the fear on his face.
Without thinking, Juhg threw himself at the Grandmagister. Despite his modesty and self-confirmed lack of bravery, the Grandmagister had saved Juhg’s life on a number of occasions, often putting his young protégé’s survival ahead of his own. Juhg could not sit by and watch the Grandmagister fall to his doom.
Throwing out his arms, Juhg slammed against the Grandmagister and carried them both clear of the gaping crack just as it closed again with a deafening crunch. They rolled and came up against the wall to the right of the door.
The Grandmagister said something, but Juhg could not hear him over the horrendous roar of the shattering rock. Out of breath from the collision, his heart beating frantically at how he had just risked his life, Juhg stood on shaking knees.
The floor beneath Craugh shattered so hard that plumes of stone dust spat up like a whale pod breaching and blowing. A section of stone only an arm’s breadth across twisted like a bucking horse. The wizard nearly toppled from the stone.
Pointing to the stone with his free hand, Craugh snarled more harsh and guttural words. The stone section took on a silvery sheen, then rose up from the floor and leveled off, despite all the turmoil that took place in the space it had vacated.
Power filled the room. Juhg felt the arcane force. The hair on his arms and his head and the back of his neck stood up in response.
Craugh threw both hands forward, chanting the whole time. The wind picked up intensity, whirling and whistling around the great room. For a moment, the purple web swayed, then it pushed back. The waves of invisible power slammed into Craugh and nearly took him from his feet.
Still, the wizard remained unbowed and unbroken. He grinned into the fury of the forces warring against him. He threw his hands forward again, and this time Juhg saw the green power lash out against the purple web. Whole sections of stone broke where the lines of the web touched the walls, floor, and ceiling, spreading cracks across those surfaces. The entire room shook and clouds of stone dust poured down.
Juhg knelt, hiding from the wind as best as he could. The wind picked up small pebbles and stone shards and hurled them like missiles. A few of them struck Juhg with ringing pain and slashed at his face and hands. He wrapped his left arm over his lower face and breathed through the material of his robe to filter out the dust. His eyes teared from the dust and the grit. He barely managed to stand on the heaving surface of the floor. Grim certainty that the Library was about to come plunging down onto them dug into him with fishhooks.
Then the green fury Craugh unleashed tore chunks and strings from the web of purple power. The strands ripped away, stretching and popping and curling in on themselves until they disappeared. In the space of a drawn breath, only the fractures across the floor, the walls, and the ceiling remained to mark the web’s existence. A few faint tremors shook the Library—and perhaps the Knucklebones Mountains themselves—then they faded away.
The Grandmagister dusted himself off. His face bled in a dozen different places and one eye was swollen nearly shut.
“Craugh,” the Grandmagister called.
His voice sounded strange in Juhg’s ears, now that the roaring wind was absent.
Stepping gingerly from the floating chunk of rock, which dropped with a crash to the broken floor as soon as the wizard’s foot left it, Craugh stared up at the ceiling. He held his staff tightly and caused the light at the end of it to blaze to life again.
“Craugh,” the Grandmagister called again.
“What?” The wizard’s voice held irritation.
“Is it done, then?” the Grandmagister asked.
“The spell is banished.” Craugh walked around hesitantly, his eyes never leaving the center of the ceiling where the cracks stemmed. “But whether that is the end of it…” He shook his head. “The spell was a true one, Wick. Woven strong. It dug deeply into the magic that was placed into the Library. I don’t know what the removal of the spell has done to the Library.”
“But how would anyone know how to tie that spell in with the magic that is part of the Library?” Juhg asked. Despite his dazed state, his ever-inquisitive mind sought answers. “The magic that helped create the Library is so old that not many remember how to work it.”
Craugh glanced away from his survey of the ceiling and smiled grimly at the Grandmagister. “Well, Wick, people will certainly be asking that question over the next few days.”
The Grandmagister evaded his friend’s penetrating gaze.
Juhg knew that something important was passing between the two, but he couldn’t fathom what it was. Evidently the Grandmagister knew more about the attack than was immediately apparent. Although Juhg had known both of them for years, he found he wasn’t surprised that they could hide secrets from him.
“You knew,” Craugh accused bluntly, “you knew that this might someday happen. You knew the risks.”
“I did,” the Grandmagister replied. “I did know the risks. But they were acceptable.”
Craugh waved an impatient arm at the destruction around them. “And are they acceptable now?”
The Grandmagister straightened himself with dignity. “What we’ve lost remains to be seen.”
Even though the Grandmagister said those words, Juhg heard no hope in his mentor’s voice. The disconsolate sadness in the Grandmagister’s words hurt Juhg and made him feel helpless.
“Or perhaps,” Craugh ventured, “what you’ve lost will never be seen again.”
The Grandmagister started for the doorway. Chunks of rock lay in the way. Cracks turned the carved arch into a ragged tear through the rock.
“They were after the books,” Craugh said. “Not to keep them, Wick, but to destroy them. They started fires in the rooms we were in to destroy the books. Any Librarians they chanced to meet along the way were just bonuses. They came to destroy the Library.”
“I know that,” the Grandmagister replied heavily.
“You know who did this.”
“I don’t.”
Craugh stamped his staff furiously. Green sparks spurted from the end of the staff and belled in the air before dying out on their way to the floor. “By the Old Ones but you can be stubborn when you’ve a mind to. You’ve known about them for years, Wick. The time is well past that something should have been done about them.”
The Grandmagister peered over his shoulder, eyes catching first Juhg, then the wizard. “Craugh, please.”
The tone was a warning. The Grandmagister giving a wizard a warning! Juhg’s mind spun wildly at the very thought.
“Faugh!” Craugh clomped about angrily in his boots. “That’s your dweller’s instinct talking, Wick. You can’t just stick your head in the sand and hope that this goes away.”
“I couldn’t stick my head in the sand here,” the Grandmagister said in a weary voice. He kicked a loose stone. “All we have here is rubble.”
“They won’t give up after this.”
“I can’t talk about this now.”
“You have to.”
The Grandmagister halted and turned around quickly. Anger and pain warred across his face.
Instinctively, Juhg took a step forward, certain that he would have to intercede on the Grandmagister’s behalf before the wizard turned him into a toad. And what will that do? Ensure that I get turned into a toad before the Grandmagister? So there will be a pair of toads that go hopping out of this room?
“They don’t know where we are,” the Grandmagister said.
“They do now.”
“Do they?”
Craugh glowered, evidently set back by the Grandmagister’s question. “You h
ave to assume that they do.”
“No.” Grandmagister Lamplighter looked at the wreckage in the center of the room.
With the shadows draping the room, the damage didn’t look nearly as bad as Juhg was certain it would in the light of day. Or even under torchlight.
“The Dread Riders and Grymmlings got here by that spell,” the Grandmagister said. “That doesn’t mean that they know about this place. Or even about this island.”
“Wick, please. You’re making a mistake.” Craugh sounded almost as if he were pleading.
Juhg remained silent and still, but he was only a step away from placing himself between the wizard and the Grandmagister—if it came to that.
“No,” the Grandmagister said. “I can’t allow myself to think like that. That way lies…”
A rumble started distant and high in the Knucklebones Mountains. Juhg turned his head automatically, tracking the sound as his heart slammed into full speed again.
The rumble grew in intensity and came closer, faster and faster. Stone dust shot through the cracks of the ceiling, spewing out in long, thin clouds that smashed against the broken floor and spread like warm autumn fog.
Juhg tried to yell out in warning, but his voice became lost in the discordant clatter and crash of breaking rock. Grandmagister Lamplighter grabbed the sleeve of Juhg’s robe and yanked him into motion. Juhg followed the Grandmagister, stumbling over a broken slab of rock. He stayed upright only because the Grandmagister supported him. Together, they raced for the broken archway. Craugh was but a half-pace behind them.
The rumbled deepened, growing faster and coming closer, till it reached a crescendo and filled the rooms on either side of the doorway, where Juhg stood grim and fearful.
The center of the room’s ceiling, where the web had stood, exploded, shattering into a million pieces and pouring into the room, becoming a waterfall of tumbling stone shards, bookshelves, and books. Juhg went deaf with the sound of it. Several stones skidded across the floor and slammed into his feet, shins, and knees with bruising force. He fell, but the Grandmagister and Craugh grabbed his robe and hauled him to his feet again before the growing pile of rock could cover him. He covered his mouth with the sleeve of his robe but still felt certain he was going to suffocate in the swirling sea of dust.
Then, so quick it was unbelievable, the carnage that racked the Library stopped.
Wheezing for his breath, eyes filled with dust and tearing as they tried to clear the debris, Juhg stared at the incredible mass of broken rock that filled the room. So much of the wreckage piled from floors above that the jumble had choked the hole that had opened in the ceiling. Only the fact that the falling stone had gotten bogged down by its own volume saved them.
The Grandmagister was the first of them to move. Slowly, walking as though stunned, the Grandmagister limped forward.
“Grandmagister,” Juhg managed with what little breath remained in his lungs.
“Wick,” Craugh called out. “Come back from there. It might not be safe. If that pile of stone shifts, you could be buried in a fresh avalanche.”
Obviously unable to stop himself, the Grandmagister kept going forward. “It can’t have come to this, Craugh. Not this. We simply can’t have lost the Library.”
A huge hole gaped in the ceiling. In the darkness, Juhg was barely able to see how large it was, but Craugh caused his magical flame to grow larger and chased the shadows away.
“Perhaps it’s not as bad as it looks,” Craugh suggested.
Juhg knew that was a poor attempt on the wizard’s part to allay the Grandmagister’s fears. There was no mistaking the damage that the Vault of All Known Knowledge had suffered.
A few stones slid free of the pile, tumbling down with harsh clack-clacking clatter. Other stones shifted, offering immutable evidence that the pile of broken stones wasn’t in any way stable.
“Wick.” Craugh started forward, but one of his legs slid out from under him, obviously injured, and he sat down heavily. In the glare of his magic flame, his face went white with pain. He shifted his attention to Juhg. “Go get him away from there before we lose him, too. We’ve lost enough today, and we can ill afford to lose him.”
Warily, feeling the pain in his legs, Juhg limped forward. “Grandmagister,” he called. “Grandmagister Lamplighter.”
More stones slid free and tumbled down the pile. Juhg felt the vibrations through his feet, feeling the certainty of an impending shifting that would spill the stones loose again.
How far up did the damage go? A stone bounding across his foot painfully interrupted Juhg’s reverie.
“Get him,” Craugh growled, trying in vain to lever himself to his feet with his staff.
Weakness showed in the wizard’s every move, and Juhg knew that Craugh was all but done in. He ignored the shifting stones, clamped down hard on his own fear that he should run for his life, and approached Grandmagister Lamplighter.
“Grandmagister,” Juhg whispered. This close to the stones, at the very edge of them, he feared that even the vibration of his voice might be enough to set them loose. “Grandmagister.”
Tears ran down the Grandmagister’s face.
Seeing the raw emotion on his mentor’s features made Juhg feel as though a huge hand had closed around his own heart and was squeezing the life from him.
Over the years that he had known Grandmagister Lamplighter, Juhg had seen the Grandmagister cry on a number of occasions. Sometimes it had only taken a sad song in a tavern when they’d been far from home in inhospitable lands, because the Grandmagister possessed a tender heart and a great capacity to care for others than himself. And at other times, the Grandmagister had wept over the graves of comrades when circumstances had forced them to bury in lonely places where no one they knew would ever travel.
“Grandmagister.” Juhg took his mentor’s robe sleeve. “Grandmagister, we have to go.”
“Look at what has been done, Juhg,” the Grandmagister whispered. “All of this was put on me. It was my duty to protect the Library. I failed.”
More stones shifted, rattling and capering down the pile.
“You did all that you could to protect this place.” Juhg stared at the books—ripped and torn and scattered into pages and pieces of pages—that lay strewn within the debris.
“It wasn’t enough,” the Grandmagister whispered.
Juhg barely heard him over the growing roar of the shifting stones. “Grandmagister, please. We have to go.” He pulled on the Grandmagister’s robe sleeve.
More stones skittered across the floor.
“Grandmagister,” Juhg said, “Craugh needs our help.”
Reluctantly, the Grandmagister turned his attention from the hole in the ceiling and the ponderous tonnage of stones shifting there. “Craugh.”
“He’s been injured,” Juhg said.
The wizard still struggled to climb the staff.
“Craugh,” the Grandmagister said.
More stones shot outward, beginning a slow tide of detrius that tumbled down from the hole in the ceiling.
The Grandmagister turned and ran to his friend. Together, he and Juhg managed to get Craugh to his feet and started rapidly stumbling for the arched door. Behind them, the pile of stones broke loose from the precarious positions they’d been locked in. The tide of stones became a full-fledged flood, a roaring, snarling beast that pursued them.
Craugh grunted in pain as they ran through the doorway into the next room. The tide of stones halted for an instant against the walls while a tongue of debris lapped out at them through the doorway.
The Grandmagister said something that Juhg couldn’t understand, but the younger dweller knew that the Grandmagister had hastened his pace. A huge, cracking roar thundered through the room, overcoming the grinding noise that had filled Juhg’s ears until then. Unable to stop himself, he glanced backward.
Craugh’s magical green flame still dancing atop his staff revealed the sudden destruction of the walls of the room. They c
racked and broke, then became part of the inexorable tide of rock shoving through the room.
Rocks rebounded from Juhg’s back, causing him to break his stride and nearly fall. But he kept his hold on Craugh and marveled at the wizard’s own efforts to escape the brutal death that pounded at their heels. The room shook underfoot. Then they were through the next doorway and turning to the right to gain the stairs they had followed down to the Library’s lowest level.
Like the last wall, this one held only for a moment, but a spray of stones followed them into the hallway and ricocheted against the wall in front of them. Juhg fell, nearly bringing Craugh down with him. But the wizard yanked him upright again with strength that belied his frame and his condition. There were many impossible things about wizards, Juhg knew.
Guided by Craugh’s magical flame, they ran up the stairs.
The walls broke behind them, then the stones filled the hallway and began climbing the stairs. If the stairs hadn’t been carved from the very heart of the Knucklebones Mountains themselves, Juhg had no doubt that they would have fallen.
The stones eventually slowed as they climbed above the height of the room. Once the room was filled, the downpour stopped. However, the clouds of dust followed, clogging their lungs with thick, acrid air and coating their eyes so they wept grainy tears.
Juhg coughed weakly, all but out of wind and strength to go on. He made himself go on for a little more, then Craugh fell, dragging the Grandmagister down and causing Juhg to miss a step. Juhg fell heavily, barking his shins on the steps. He pushed himself to his knees, his free hand on the wall beside him.
The wall vibrated. At first, Juhg thought the vibration was caused by the mountain of stones that had pursued them from the rooms below, then he noticed that they pulsed in counter-rhythm to the shifting stone, and that the stones below had mostly come to rest.
It’s coming from up above!
Fearfully, Juhg glanced upward, watching as a few dozen small stones bounced and careered from the turn of the landing ahead and came down at them. Juhg covered his head with a hand, fearing that the stones were only the heralds for the mass only now starting to come.
