by Mel Odom
“Yes.”
Craugh paused. “No one—no one—has ever thought that before.”
“What I’m saying is true,” Juhg stated quietly. Even though he knew the wizard was listening to him, he felt near exhaustion from having to fight to get Craugh to hear him out. When the ideas he was talking about now first began to circle within his mind, he had resisted them. That line of thinking seemed too far-fetched, immensely above anything the goblinkin could do.
At least, Juhg corrected himself, above anything the goblinkin had been able to do before.
“The trap set in the book and the wizard aboard the goblinkin vessel in Kelloch’s Harbor indicated that the goblinkin weren’t working alone.”
“I can see that.” Craugh stroked his bearded chin with his free hand. “Now.”
“When I was a slave in the mines,” Juhg said, “there were always stories the goblinkin slavers told. The overseers talked about the Cataclysm and Lord Kharrion. Told each other over and over again how the whole world had very nearly fallen to the goblins to loot and pillage and enslave.”
“It very nearly was.”
“I know.”
“If Lord Kharrion had not fallen in the end, it very well could have been.”
“The potential yet remains for that to happen,” Juhg said. “The goblinkin numbers still flourish.”
Craugh frowned. “They breed constantly.”
“Yes. And they’ve gotten more conscious of other places in the world. In these recent years, the goblinkin have grown strong enough to recapture and hold the South. How long will it be before the clans spread over the rest of the world?”
“That will never happen,” Craugh said.
“Why not? Who will stop the goblinkin. Who is strong enough to stand against the clans? Who can unite the races and have them pull together as they did during Lord Kharrion’s reign?”
Craugh hesitated, and Juhg could see that his words were having an effect on the wizard.
“The dwarves,” the wizard said. “The elves and the humans. None of them will allow the goblinkin to grow that strong again.”
“How long ago,” Juhg asked, “were they saying that about the South? About how they would never allow the goblinkin a toehold in the nearly destroyed cities that line the mainland there? The South started falling a hundred years ago, and the goblinkin are firmly entrenched there. Nothing less than a war will get them out of those places. And no one wants another war with the goblinkin. None of the races can produce enough warriors to make that happen. They seldom band together to defend each other, choosing instead to fall back grudgingly before the goblinkin. I’ve seen that happening. You have, too.”
“Apprentice, all of these things you’re talking about—”
“Lord Kharrion died all those years ago,” Juhg said. “But—Don’t you see, Craugh?—the Cataclysm has continued. It is a specter that has continued to haunt our world, to leech the life from it. Only slowly.”
“The Cataclysm ended—”
“Lord Kharrion ended,” Juhg interrupted. “Lord Kharrion died. Not the Cataclysm. Do you know why Lord Kharrion truly tried to get rid of all the books?”
“To take away knowledge,” Craugh replied. “Without knowledge, the humans, elves, and dwarves lacked the resources to stand against him and the goblinkin army.”
“It was more than that.” Juhg felt hesitant. All those months and years ago as he had formulated the ideas that had driven him from Greydawn Moors, he had doubted himself, doubted his thinking and his logic. Then he’d become convinced, but also convinced that neither the Grandmagister nor any of the other Librarians would listen to him. His theory was largely unsupported. And now, looking at Craugh, he was grimly aware of that again. “Lord Kharrion planned deliberately. The books died. The music died. Art—all the paintings, sculptures, and all the beauty that the races learned to create—died. Do you know what truly died for most people? Do you know what Lord Kharrion and the goblinkin truly destroyed?”
“I suppose—”
“With the destruction of those books, of those libraries and collections, the past for the dwarves, humans, and elves died,” Juhg stated clearly. “Much of the history. Much of the way those races did things. The voices of those who had gone before and who had learned so many valuable truths were stilled forever. They could no longer look to each other’s culture and find similarities. Without books, without a proper accounting of history, their lives became small and selfish. In fact, they were reduced to the same level as the goblinkin when Lord Kharrion went among them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lord Kharrion took their histories from them and left them only the uncertainty of today and the hatred of the hardships of all the yesterdays before. They forgot how to look forward to the future with hopes that better things might lie ahead.”
“Bosh!” Craugh exploded. “They remembered enough. You talk like nearly everyone read in those days. It simply wasn’t true.”
Juhg kept focused. He was right and he knew it. The attack on the Library, the means with which it was done, made him even more certain. Grandmagister Lamplighter had taught him how to argue and present his thoughts in an orderly fashion. He leaned on that skill now. “What did they remember?”
A fierce look carved Craugh’s face. If Juhg had been a true enemy of the wizard’s, he knew he would have feared for his life in that instant.
“They remembered that Lord Kharrion was the most evil enemy the world has ever faced,” Craugh stated vehemently.
“They did.” Juhg nodded and locked eyes with Craugh. “In the end, that proved to be the undoing of all the races.”
20
Evicted
“What are you talking about?” Craugh demanded. The dark scowl on his face clearly indicated that he didn’t agree with Juhg’s assessment that the defeat of Lord Kharrion had somehow made present matters for the survivors of the Cataclysm worse. “How can the human, dwarven, and elven remembrances that Lord Kharrion was their enemy be in any way debilitating?”
“Because,” Juhg said, “in the end Lord Kharrion was defeated.”
“Of course he was defeated,” Craugh said. “I was there. I was among the army that brought his citadel down around his ears. That’s what we were there for: to defeat him.”
“Yes.” Juhg waited a beat. Thunder cracked overhead. “But what happened then?”
“We pursued the remnants of the goblinkin armies and defeated them where we could. We couldn’t destroy them all.”
Juhg nodded. “And then?”
“And then nothing.”
“Not true. A decision was made to keep the books—to keep the Vault of All Known Knowledge—secret.” Juhg studied the wizard. “How many knew then that so many of the books had been saved?”
“Not many. Nor did many care.”
“Why?”
Craugh waved a hand. “Because most people during those times were illiterate. Reading—and books, for that matter—lay within the realm of kings, princes, nobles, wizards, healers, and merchants. A common male couldn’t read, and even if he could, he couldn’t afford the price of a book.”
“But there were readers in those days,” Juhg said. “I know that because I have encountered tales of them in the histories, as well as the romances, from Hralbomm’s Wing. The Grandmagister has even written monographs and essays on the role of the reader in those societies. If a healer had a question about how to do a surgery, there were books he could resource. But if a common man had a question about animal husbandry or proper crop rotation in an area new to him, he could go to a reader at a library or to the owner of a small, private collection of books and receive information for a modest price.”
“Yes.”
“The books could have been used in those days following Lord Kharrion’s fall,” Juhg pointed out, “in an effort to get the devastated cities and outlying lands back into habitable shape more quickly.” He drew in a breath. “But that isn’t what happened.
”
“The decision was made not to do that.”
“Why?”
Craugh sighed, letting Juhg know the argument had been a long one and full of emotion all those years ago.
“The chiefest reason was that most of the common folk didn’t want anything to do with books again. They didn’t share your certainty that possessing such things would be a boon. Most of them, if you’d care to ask, still don’t. Many of those people you would attempt to give the books back to would only destroy them or throw them away.”
Juhg shook his head. “I’ve read about those times. In the volumes penned by the Grandmagisters who set up the Library. Those people weren’t given a choice.”
Craugh stamped his staff irritably, sending off sparks. “Faugh! You don’t know whereof you speak, apprentice! Old Ones, preserve me from some young know-it-all who believes he has all the answers in a handful of years that the Founders struggled over for decades!”
Juhg resisted his immediate impulse to disagree and challenge the statement.
“You are looking at those days from the perspective of today,” Craugh went on. “In those days, having a book equated a death sentence to the survivors of the Cataclysm. To all the elves, dwarves, and humans. Especially those who had never had much to do with books when they were accessible. They didn’t want books, or even rumors of books, existing in their settlements, towns, or cities. Books drew the vengeance of the goblinkin. Despite our best efforts, too many goblinkin yet remained in the world.”
“Yes.”
Triumph flashed in Craugh’s eyes. “The goblinkin targeted any place where books were kept. Even during those days, the army of the unity still transported a few books now and again. The goblinkin were merciless in their destruction of books.”
Juhg knew that. He’d read stories about those transportation efforts, even after Lord Kharrion had fallen. Goblinkin land forces had descended upon caravans and slain them to the last man, and goblinkin navies—something that had never before existed until the Cataclysm—had sent ships to the bottoms of a dozen seas.
“The goblinkin targeted those places then. Not now.” Juhg drew in a breath.
“And they would again,” the wizard said. “Those times haven’t changed as much as you seem to want to think they have.”
“They set a trap for us with a book, Craugh. Something has changed.”
“The goblinkin didn’t do that.”
Juhg waited. When it became apparent the wizard was not going to go on, he asked, “Then who did?”
“You’ll need to talk to your master, apprentice. As I told you, that isn’t my story to tell.”
Frustration chafed at Juhg. He wanted nothing more than to walk away. But he couldn’t do that; not as long as a chance remained that he might learn more.
Craugh stamped his feet for a moment, obviously deep in thought. His voice was soft when he spoke. “I will tell you this: Fear of the goblinkin wasn’t the only reason the books continued to be held in the Vault of All Known Knowledge.”
Juhg waited, but he sensed that the wizard was going to do his best to make the situation no clearer than it had been. The friendship between the Grandmagister and Craugh ran too deep. So deep that Craugh had stepped over several boundaries by talking to Juhg in the first place, threatening him in the second, and third by continuing to attempt to reason with him. For whatever reason, the wizard saw Juhg’s continued presence as beneficial to the Grandmagister and was willing to strive to make that happen.
“You have to remember,” Craugh said, “all of those books were hauled pell-mell to this place. Without plans, without organization. Those salvagers operated under the threat of death. If they were caught by the goblinkin, they were put to horrible deaths. The island was lifted from the sea bottom and caverns formed, then structures built over them. Chests and boxes and bags of books were dumped into those places. Ships arrived, on occasion, several times in a single day. The work was just too immense to keep up with. There was no rhyme, no reason. Just a great evacuation of books from the mainland.” He drew in a breath. “Centuries passed before we even knew all that we had managed to save. You saw some of that in your earliest tenure here.”
Juhg remembered the vast caverns of books, the large rooms that awaited organized and orderly books that would be placed on carefully constructed shelves. He didn’t have to imagine what the Vault of All Known Knowledge had been like in those early days. Every Grandmagister, from the first to Edgewick Lamplighter, had written of and illustrated images of the chaos that had been their lot to make tidy and known.
“We didn’t have the luxury of transporting many multiple copies,” Craugh said. “We only hoped that we were able to save a copy of each book. At least that.” He gazed at Juhg. “And how could we allow those books back out of our possession until the Librarians knew what it was they had? Until the Grandmagister knew and could pass judgment on such an action? Knowing that we might never see its like again? Or that the goblinkin might hear of a community getting its books back, its libraries returned, only to go into that town and destroy those books—as well as those people?” He remained quiet for a moment.
Juhg returned the wizard’s flat gaze with difficulty.
“What choice would you have made in those days, apprentice? Would you have given those books back? After warriors had come together from all walks of life to fight and shed blood for those books that most people never truly understood or cared for?”
Juhg made himself answer. “I don’t know. Truly, I don’t, Craugh. But I don’t question what was done then. I only question how things are progressing now.”
“Would you see a book leave this Library that we did not have a copy of? Do you know how many, how much, we have already lost?” The wizard glanced toward the broken back of the Knucklebones Mountains, where the ridgeline had collapsed in on itself and created the deep pit that plunged into the mountains. “Can you even fathom how much I destroyed only a few days ago?”
Shaking his head, Juhg said, “No.”
“Then how dare you take umbrage with your master for the things he chooses to do, apprentice. His responsibility for the protection of this place and those books has not been easy. He’s been the only Grandmagister to ever leave the safety of this island and journey along the mainland questing after books and rumors of books. As such, he’s seen terrible things. Horrible things. Things that most dwellers from Greydawn Moors never see.”
But I’m not from this island, Juhg thought angrily. My whole life, until I arrived here, I was surrounded with those things. Murder and cruelty and depravations. That was my world. And that is the world the mainlanders live in.
In that instant, Craugh seemed to recall that Juhg was an outsider as well. The wizard’s fiery gaze softened, then turned away. An uncomfortable silence descended between them.
After a time, only so the wizard might finish whatever he had to say, Juhg said, “I … I am not proud of my dissatisfaction with the way things have been going here.” He knew that he wasn’t. Disagreeing with the Grandmagister was possibly the most futile, unpleasant, and disloyal thing he could envision.
Craugh replied, “Nor should you be,” but his remark wasn’t as cutting as it might have been.
“That’s why I tried to leave. I knew that someday I would have this very same conversation with the Grandmagister. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or our friendship.” Juhg stared at the ruins of the Library, but his mind was on the Grandmagister. “The Grandmagister would never be able to understand why I feel the way that I do.”
“I think Wick understands his station in life perfectly. He was supposed to protect all that was held dear here.”
“But he held the Library here,” Juhg pointed out in a quiet voice, “all in one place. That was a mistake. He made the collections more vulnerable than they would have been scattered around the mainland.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I felt it,” Juhg said. �
�Even before this, I felt it. All the goblinkin had to do was find this place and they could destroy everything that has been protected.” He glanced at Craugh. “You’ve read Motherby’s Concordance of War?”
Craugh hesitated, then nodded. “Of course.”
“What is the first principle of protecting people or things?”
Sighing as understanding filled him, Craugh said, “Not to keep them all in one place.”
“‘Separating multiple targets makes it harder for an enemy to get at them,’” Juhg said, quoting from the book. “‘Your enemy will be harried trying to find all the targets, and will be exposed during his efforts to gather information about those targets or to eliminate all of the targets.’”
“Yes. But we chose to hide everything in a place that we shaped,” Craugh said. “A place that was not known to exist.”
“Hidden things don’t remain hidden.”
“We didn’t hide something the goblinkin knew about.”
“You hid the books.”
“In a place that had never before been part of the world. We were careful, and we were clever.”
“Towwart has an axiom about such things,” Juhg said. “‘Even an omission leaves a noticeable trail; a hole, a vacuum, an occlusion that marks the deliberate loss or the crafted lie.’”
“Towwart’s Forensics of the Discussions and Negotiations of Kings and Princes and Skilled Liars,” Craugh said. “I know the book.”
“Even with all the precautions you and the Founders took, the goblinkin knew the books existed somewhere.”
“Not knew, apprentice. Perhaps they suspected.”
Juhg glanced pointedly at the ruins of the Library. “Someone did more than suspect.”
Craugh said nothing.
“You stripped away the books from the mainland and hid them here, but you did more than that. You took away the history of the races that survived the Cataclysm.” Juhg looked at the wizard. “They needed that history, Craugh. They needed it so they could go on. While Lord Kharrion existed, they could exist. They had survival as a goal, and an enemy that interferred with their lives. After he was gone—they had nothing.”
