by Alec Hutson
Brother Challindris grinned. “A fascinating study conducted by one of the first seekers to cross the Derravin. He writes of turtles as large as aurochs, and vines that can strangle a man who tries to pass through them.” The librarian reached out to affectionately stroke the binding of one of the volumes still on the shelf. “I can see you truly appreciate books.”
Keilan slid the tome back into its place. “This . . . this is what I’ve dreamed of. To be in a place such as this.”
“Then welcome, my boy.”
Vhelan’s wizardlight had drifted deeper between the rows, but the boundaries of the chamber had not yet resolved from the darkness. “How do you find anything in here?”
Brother Challindris turned to him. “This section of the library is well-catalogued. Any book that has come into our possession in the past three hundred years or so is here, and if you give me a title or author I could almost certainly pull it from the shelves within a quarter-turning of a glass.”
“And beyond that? What about older texts?”
The librarian smoothed his robes. “Ah, there are members of my order who are familiar with certain sections of the Barrow. Brother Tellimanchus is an expert in the chamber that houses most of our Min-Ceruthan writings. I myself have spent much of my adult life translating and ordering the collected philosophies of the pre-Warlock King ethicists of old Menekar. Those are located quite a bit deeper than where we stand now.”
Vhelan’s eyes widened. “You mean there are chambers other than this?”
“Oh my, yes. There are seven passages leading off from just this room. And each empties into another large chamber, and so on and so forth. Generally they slope down, so as you continue you go deeper and deeper. The age of the manuscripts increase – on this level it is all books, most bound with modern processes. But two levels below us the texts are much more rudimentary, and many are falling apart. By the fourth level it is nearly all scrolls, many so aged they crumble at the slightest touch – some of my brothers spend their lives treating the brittle paper and papyrus with solutions we’ve developed to help preserve them. And there’s even deeper levels, the original Barrow itself. Not many of us venture that far. There are tablets in writing we cannot decipher, piled within niches cut out of the walls. And the floor is strewn with bones mounded about huge stone caskets that we believe contain the remains of the first kings of Vis, laid to rest over five thousand years ago. The presence is strongest in that place, and there is always the sense of being watched.”
Nel shivered. “I feel like I’m being watched right now. Why don’t you remove all these books and put them above ground, away from whatever thing haunts this place?”
The librarian shook his head emphatically. “No, no, no. The presence in these halls is as much a part of our order as the Barrow itself. It protected us from the Pure a thousand years ago, and it often . . . assists us in finding books.”
“How does it do that?” Vhelan asked, and Keilan could hear the interest in his voice.
Brother Challindris shrugged. “It simply seems to know what we are looking for, even if oftentimes we do not have a clear sense of the same. That is why the Prince thinks you may be able to find answers down here – certainly, on your own, if you searched for a year you would come up with nothing. But perhaps the presence will lead you to the answers you seek. It has happened many times before.”
“And did the queen find what she was looking for down here?”
The librarian swallowed hard at Vhelan’s question. “Ah. That was . . . interesting. Sometimes the presence helps, and sometimes it does not. Why, I could not tell you. And if the queen found what she was looking for I do not know. None of us were allowed to accompany her. But when we came later, after she had ascended again . . . you could feel the agitation in the air. It made the skin prickle and the hair on your arms stand up. And the chamber where the tracts from the days of the Kalyuni Imperium are stored was in complete disarray. Scrolls and books had been torn from the shelves and tossed about, as if a great wind had swept through the hall. It was almost like . . . almost like there had been a contest of will between the queen and the spirit. I cannot hazard a guess as to who triumphed. I would not have thought that anyone could bend the spirit of the Barrow to their desires . . . but I have never met anyone like the queen before.”
Nel smirked. “She certainly wouldn’t have taken a refusal well, even from a ghost. I wish I could have seen what happened down here that day.”
The librarian cleared his throat. “Yes, well, hopefully your presence here won’t cause anywhere near the same disruption.”
Vhelan clapped his hands together loudly, the sound echoing in the vast hall. “Excellent. How do we begin?”
“I would suggest we separate. I will go with young Keilan here, and you and your . . . bodyguard can search elsewhere. In what age do you think the answers to your questions might lie?”
Vhelan rubbed his chin. “Seeker Garmond claimed to have seen references to creatures like attacked us from around the same time as the cataclysms that consumed the old sorcerous empires of the world. We could begin then.”
“Very well. If you go that way,” the librarian gestured between two long rows of shelves, “you’ll come to a passage that leads to where we’ve stored most of the Menekarian writing from that era. Some of it is a bit archaic, but you should be able to understand most of what’s there. It’s divided by subject, so I would hunt around for the section devoted to the natural world, strange beasts and what-not.”
“And where will you go with the boy?” Nel asked. Keilan saw that she was unconsciously stroking one of her tunic’s long sleeves, where he knew one of her two favorite daggers was hidden, strapped to her forearm. The Barrow clearly made her uneasy.
The librarian furrowed his brow. “Not much of Min-Ceruth’s writing survived the ice, but we do have a few hundred of the bones and shells upon which they laid down their wisdom. I cannot claim to be an expert, but I do have a passing familiarity with the ancient runes of the north – the language of old Vis used similar symbols. Now, we have a far more extensive collection of Kalyuni books and scrolls – the sorcerers of the Star Towers competed to see who could produce the most scholarly works, we think – but I’m afraid we would have to ask Brother Yeb to come down and translate for us, as he and his two apprentices are the only members of our order well-versed enough in the language of the Mosaic Cities.”
“The boy can read it.”
Brother Challindris whirled on Keilan. “Truly? You understand High Kalyuni?”
Keilan felt his face flush, and he ducked his head. “Yes, well enough I suppose. My mother taught me.”
“Humph. A fledgling sorcerer with great natural gifts who reads the most obscure and difficult – yet also the most useful – - of all the old wizardly languages. If you decide you do not like the Scholia, please consider returning to Vis and joining my hallowed order. Just imagine the joy of a life spent immersed in the knowledge contained within these halls . . .”
Vhelan coughed loudly. “Once Keilan meets the queen and sees what we’ve established in Dymoria he’ll never want to leave. It is a place where we can work together openly to awaken our powers, rather than hiding underground like burrowing voles – ”
“Burrowing voles?”
“He means it in the politest way possible,” Nel said, pulling Vhelan in the direction of the Menekarian archives.
Brother Challindris harrumphed again and smoothed his robes, a mannerism that Keilan had already seen several times when the librarian appeared agitated.
As the wizardlight of the Dymorian magister and his knife melted into the Barrow’s far reaches Keilan turned towards the Visani wizard, who was still staring off into the distance.
“So where should we start?”
“In the great sorcerous empires of old, my dear boy, as I said. Min-Ceruth, and then the Mosaic Citie
s.”
Brother Challindris took the lead, and together they passed through the huge chamber, the shelves soaring like cliff-faces around them. Keilan guessed that they must be at least twice the height of a man, and he was about to ask the librarian how they reached the highest tomes when he spied a rickety wooden ladder that had been left leaning against one of the shelves. The sheer number of books was intoxicating – Keilan caught only glimpses as Challindris hurried him through the stacks, but every shelf appeared to be bursting with the accumulated knowledge of the world: dusty grimoires bound in leather, slim folios of travel writing, weighty ledgers that claimed to contain the complete genealogies of the Visani noble houses, and even sheaves of wooden plates that had been held together with string or catgut.
Finally, they reached the far wall and entered a low passage that sloped downwards. After a few twists and turns they passed into another chamber filled with shelves, and this was repeated several times, until at last they entered a large room quite unlike the others. Instead of row upon row of shelves there were many what looked to be stone troughs, radiating like spokes out from some kind of squat white stool set in the chamber’s center. Brother Challindris paused beside one of these channels and gestured for Keilan to look inside.
What he saw surprised him. Laid out in neat rows were cracked and yellowing bones covered in tiny, squirming black runes.
“The saga bones of Min-Ceruth,” Brother Challindris whispered reverentially. “In the holdfasts they did not write on vellum or parchment – instead, they inked bones and other animal parts with everything necessary for the functioning of a great civilization: the legends of their heroes, the records of compacts between merchants, lists of possible transgressions and the punishments for each, and so on and so forth.”
“What kind of bones are they?”
“From all different animals. Aurochs, wolves, elk. Most of the heroic tales are inscribed on wraithbone, as the greatest of their old stories involve wars with those creatures. We’ve also identified a few bones that contain spells, though we have never managed to replicate the sorceries they contain. The magic of Min-Ceruth seems incompatible with our own.”
“What are the spells written on?”
Brother Challindris smoothed his robes again. “Human, every time. We suspect they laid down their sorceries on the bones of dead wizards, though there’s some disagreement about that.”
Keilan knelt down to more closely inspect the saga bones. “May I hold one?”
“Yes. These bones have all been coated with a lacquer that helps preserve them.”
Gingerly Keilan pulled what appeared to be a long thin femur from a stone trough. He studied the tiny jumbled runes etched in spiraling rings around the bone.
“Can you read this one?”
Brother Challindris bent closer and squinted at the crabbed writing. “Let’s see, it’s some sort of proclamation regarding the awarding of noble titles. It reads: ‘let the mountains witness, on the seventh day of the seventh moon of the year of broken horns, the high queen did raise up to the title of jarl the following bondsmen who demonstrated great valor in the war against the eastern tribes . . . ’ and then there’s a long list of names and deeds.”
Keilan set the bones back down carefully and stood. He began to walk beside the trough, peering intently down at the hundreds of bones set so neatly in their rows. The familiar pang of wanting to know, to understand, kindled again in his chest, so intense it was almost a physical ache. What secrets had the Min-Ceruthans possessed? Where had their great power come from? How could they have been so utterly destroyed? And why? One day, Keilan promised himself, he would learn their writing, and return here to read about this lost people in their own words. He shivered in anticipation at the thought.
No, he was shivering from something else. It almost felt like there were ants crawling on his skin, and the air suddenly seemed to shimmer around him.
“Brother Challindris,” he cried, looking around in alarm, “what’s happening? Is it the Barrow ghost?”
The librarian hurried to him. “No, no. I should have warned you. It’s that.” He pointed at the white stool from which the stone troughs radiated. There were runes etched into it as well, thousands of incredibly dense layers of lines.
“What is it?” Keilan whispered, scratching at the prickle creeping up his arms.
“Dragonbone,” Brother Challindris replied softly. “A single vertebrae torn from the back of a great beast. In every holdfast the ruling queen or king sat on one as a throne – most people would feel nothing strange standing before them, but to the gifted such as us the very air seems to warp and weft. Dragons are creatures of great power, and it lingers in their bones.”
Keilan backed away from the throne, the feeling of crawling wrongness gradually receding. “I wouldn’t want to have to sit on that every day,” he said with a shudder.
“And yet the queens of Min-Ceruth were always sorcerers. Perhaps over time the feeling grows more familiar.”
Keilan gazed around the chamber, with its dozens of long stone troughs, suddenly daunted by the task set before them. “How can we find anything here?”
Brother Challindris shrugged. “We must rely on the spirit to guide us. If we sense nothing, I suggest we move on to the Kalyuni archives. Yes?”
Keilan paused for a moment, hoping to feel a pull towards something in this room, but now that he was outside the radius of the dragonbone throne he felt nothing strange. “All right.”
They passed through more twisting corridors and rooms filled with shelves. In these chambers, mounded pyramids of scrolls were piled on the stone slabs instead of proper books, reminding Keilan of the Kalyuni scrolls they had discovered underneath Uthmala, and he briefly wondered what secrets would be discovered when those could be more thoroughly studied in Herath.
They were definitely moving deeper: the air, already chilly, was growing even colder, and the musty smell of earth and ancient parchment thickened, until he had to fight back the urge to sneeze.
At last they arrived at the Kalyuni archives, and at once Keilan noticed that there was something different about this chamber.
“As you can see,” Brother Challindris said, ushering him inside, “we haven’t managed to re-organize everything since the queen’s visit. She truly did leave it in utter disarray.”
The librarian spoke the truth: where in most rooms a sense of order pervaded, here chaos prevailed. Books and scrolls were jumbled together on the shelves, as if they had been scooped from the floor and dumped haphazardly wherever space could be found. There were even a few stray pieces of parchment strewn about the floor, evidently ripped from the books during whatever struggle occurred here between the queen and the spirit of this place. Keilan gingerly stepped over them as he approached the closest shelf.
Brother Challindris made a disappointed clucking noise with his tongue as he surveyed the mess. “That woman . . . her visit was certainly interesting, but I don’t believe many within my order want her to return too soon.”
Keilan carefully sifted through a mound of ancient tomes. “What was she like? Magister Vhelan talks about her like she’s almost a living god. Nel doesn’t feel the same, but she speaks respectfully of her.”
Keilan didn’t turn from his search, but he could be almost sure the librarian was again smoothing out his robes.
“She was beautiful. And intelligent. She had this way of speaking to you . . . she would stare into your eyes so deeply it seemed the rest of the world just faded away, and she could strip away any pretenses you tried to hide behind. I only spoke to her a few times – but once, for example, I slipped in a small falsehood, some simple white lie about why she couldn’t visit the Barrow at night, and she seemed to just know that I was lying to her. It was disconcerting. Especially from one so young – she couldn’t be much older than Magister Vhelan, and yet she just seemed to radiate power
and confidence.”
Keilan felt a slight breeze stir his shirt as the librarian finished talking. “Is there a passage to the surface near here?” he asked, glancing around the room. “I feel a wind.”
He heard the librarian suck in his breath. “Ah! My boy, we are no longer alone.”
Keilan froze. It did feel like there was something else now in the room, hovering just out of sight. Coldness crawled up his spine as the sense of being watched deepened.
“What should I do?” Keilan whispered, afraid to even turn his head slightly.
“Just relax. If the spirit wishes to help us, it will.”
Keilan concentrated on his heartbeat, trying to will himself calm. He felt a trickle of cold sweat trace a line down his back.
The breeze came again, playing with the hem of his tunic, and there was a slight tug, as if ethereal fingers were pulling him away from the shelf he stood beside.
“It feels like it wants me to move.”
“Let it guide you!” Brother Challindris hissed back excitedly. “There is something it wants you to see!”
Keilan stepped hesitatingly in the direction he thought the spirit was leading him. The tugging came again, more insistent, as if frustrated by his slowness, and he quickened his pace, passing three more rows until the feeling suddenly ceased and he was left staring at a shelf cluttered with ancient books. One caught his eye, and he felt a sudden, overwhelming certainty that it was this slim black volume that it wanted him to take. Just as he picked up the book another on a lower shelf seemed to shift of its own accord, and he also pulled it free, sensing that it also held some importance.
As abruptly as it had come the presence departed. Brother Challindris hurried closer, straining to see the books the ghost of the Barrow had bequeathed upon Keilan.
“What are they?” he asked, his voice brimming with almost boyish excitement.
Keilan studied the title of the second book he’d found, struggling to make sense of the flowery script. “I believe this book is named Searching For . . . no, no, I’m wrong . . . Hunting the Hidden Ones.”
